Radical Alterity

The ideas behind UDL are, in some ways, pretty radical. As teachers, we “plan from the margins.” That is, we think about some of our most disadvantaged students as we contemplate our instruction.

Maybe you think this is not possible?

In response to this, my contention might be that we always have a student in mind when we plan our lessons. Perhaps this student is ourselves? While this is not a bad place to start—indeed, can we ever start from anywhere else but our own experiences?—I would argue that it is not enough.

For our own experiences as a learner only take on their full shape and meaning as we put them into dialogue with other experiences. In this way, I would argue for a type of “radical alterity” to be put at the heart of our planning.

That is, we should think about the children who might be most different from us in order to spot both commonalities and differences. To see what in our experiences is helpful for our teaching practice and to see where our own experiences might not actually be all that helpful as a guide to the learning needs for some of our students.  

If we are always thinking about the “average” student, we risk treating all of our students as average—as typical, as not unique, as not a gift to the world. 

But of course all children are gifts and carry with them gifts that the world is in desperate need of. When we plan from the perspective of those in most need of our assistance, hope and support, then we perhaps plan in ways that work harder to uncover those gifts.

As I pointed out in the context of our immigrant and refugee language learning students, we never want to be caught unawares by the trauma and tragedy that our students might have lived through.  The work of uncovering gifts happens best, perhaps, when we start to recognize the shadows that keep us from seeing our students in their best light.

Socratic Seminar: Providing a Frame for the Picture

We developed a metaphor in class today that is worth thinking about. A powerful text is your picture—a powerful question is your frame.

We are so accustomed to teaching as telling, that sometimes it can be hard to see that our most powerful tools for shaping student learning might be questions.  Questions suggest, they don’t dictate. They open up possibilities rather than certainties. Because a good question can be answered on many levels, questions might, I think, more easily meet students where they are at.

We can ask questions that move student attention in many different directions—inwards, towards their values; backwards in time, towards their experiences; out into the world, to a historical context they may or may not know much about; towards a problem, that a collective “we” must try to solve.  Each of these questioning strategies can be valuable in the social studies classroom.

In a Socratic Seminar, we ask questions that move students into a personal encounter with a text. What does this text say? What does this text mean? What does this historical actor think she is up to? What do I think she is up to? What parts of the text make me think the way I do?

The text is a great picture, but it is ultimately the frame that sets it off . . .

Assessment: Catching Kids Acting Smart?

Assessment is one of the trickier areas for us as new teachers to approach. For so long, assessment was done roughly the same way. On the high school level, at least, it was about grades, report cards, taking tests, and fitting oneself into a curve.

Things have changed drastically over the past fifteen years, so it’s important to realize that our own experiences in this area may not be completely reliable guides for our professional actions in the future.

Take the issue of grades. We spent a bit of time in class trying to disentangle issues of grading from issues of assessment. While the two are no doubt linked, it is important that we do not let the current (and perhaps archaic) grading system totally determine our assessment practices. At the end of the day, we will likely be required to give a student a single grade of either A, B, C, D or F. But that should not prevent us from providing that student and his or her family helpful and targeted information that will lead to a better appreciation for what needs to happen in the future. It should not prevent us from communicating strengths and areas of needed growth, in the domains of knowledge, skills, interests, disposition, character, and leadership. It should not stop us from telling students whether or not they have met specific state-mandated standards.

Assessment can be one of the more inspiring areas for us as educators. It’s where we get to search out the hidden talents and gifts that each human being possesses. It’s where we help children connect what they can do (or what they are interested in doing) to the needs of the world. It’s where we help children discover their passions and help them reach out for them.

But it’s important that we don’t tell easy truths in this search for inspiration. We need to trust that kids can handle the truth. But to get to the truth, we need to be smart. We need to realize that no one instrument can tell us everything we need to know as teachers (even the best written test can’t do that).

So we need multiple forms of assessments, with multiple instruments: some standardized and some classroom developed, some authentic and performance-based, and some objective. With this rounded picture of summative assessment tools (and with the help of a ready stock of formative assessment strategies—something we will continue to talk about throughout the year), we, as teachers, can help take us out of the past of education and into its future.

To Arrive Where We Started . . . Changed

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot

What have we learned through our exploration of lecture these past two weeks?

First, we have thought about the temporal flow of a lesson (a unit, a semester, and beyond).

We start by building purpose. That involves a complex bringing together of prior knowledge, interest, excitement and, perhaps most crucially, a sense of disequilibrium. For a purpose to be set, there has to be some sense that effort is needed to reach a goal. That the world needs another look. That is how we invite students into the world of learning.

We then move into the “body” of our lesson. With lecture, we are not only conveying content, we are building up various organizational schema that allow students to arrange their knowledge. Hierarchical outlines, timelines, and Venn Diagrams are not just graphics onto which we take notes, but are powerful heuristics that should help students interact with meaningful content.

Of course, as with any other instructional strategy, lecture can potentially forward our goal of critical thinking by exposing students to multiple perspectives and interpretations of events.  Indeed, perhaps more so than many other strategies, lecture is actually ideally suited to do so.  The roots of lecture come from the Latin, lectura and legere, meaning: to read. In that way, we can think about a good lecture as a concise summary of years of reading.  We share with the students some of the fruits of our labor (understanding that it is ultimately the student’s labor that matters). We seek to inspire by giving them a glimpse of the possible.

We conclude our lessons by returning to those places where we began, understanding that we should be different people because of the experience we have just undergone. We assess knowledge, skills, and dispositions. We seek evidence of growth and change. We try to understand if our teaching has made any difference.

Teaching, as we said, is both a circle and a line. Combining those images, we can see it as a continuous spiral, a projection and retrospection, all as we seek to deepen and enliven our present.

The Art of Negotiation

I enjoyed class on Wednesday, as I thought we did a good job of not only continuing our discussion of curriculum and the creation of rich learning experiences for students (resources, standards, big ideas), but also got a chance to talk about some of the procedural and relational aspects that are such a big part of teaching.

We started class by thinking about what to do with students who don’t have a writing utensil. It’s a small example, but helpful. What I hoped you gained from that discussion is the importance of not just solving the everyday problems that are constantly coming at us as a teachers, but also of stepping back and looking at the larger puzzle of human behavior: Why is this student acting this way? What is she trying to communicate to me? What is the proper response?

I hope you saw that the meaning of “not having a pencil” can vary quite dramatically depending upon the student and the situation. Therefore our response would need to vary as well.

At the end of class, we considered the student who wrote to Ben that “you think you know a lot about teaching, but you don’t.” I suggested this student was trying to get under Ben’s skin by communicating something to him that was intentionally hurtful. I suggested that this comment was less about Ben and more about the student. If we let our egos get in the way of dealing with such a situation—our own need to feel liked and important—we are probably not going to do the situation justice.

Ultimately, I suggested we have to be comfortable being ourselves before our students. But, upon reflection, that is only part of the truth.

For we have to be comfortable letting our students be themselves too. And those selves may not make us very comfortable at times.

All teaching is ultimately a negotiation, a co-creation between teachers and students. Learning to teach is learning to make space for that co-creation.

Have a good weekend!

Teaching the Text

Our class thus far has focused on two insights that need to be developed by aspiring social studies teachers.

1)   All historical work comes with in-built perspectives and assumptions about the way the world works; and

2)   A text does not, in itself, teach.

Over the coming weeks, we will focus more on point one. Indeed, our first major assignment (due October 5) will be built around the importance of helping students learn to see the assumptions and perspectives hidden away in various types of social studies curricular resources.

But this leads us on to the importance of point number two. How do we help students with such seeing?

We examined selections from Ben’s textbook yesterday. We also compared the layout of his textbook to that of a typical French textbook. Through that juxtaposition, it was my hope that you came to see how important your role as a teacher is in guiding students through text.

Ideally, I suppose, texts would “teach themselves.” By that, I mean, they would have a theory about how attention works—how students learn. And that theory would guide the construction of the text in terms of content and layout. A student could just pick it up and use it—no other assistance required.

I think most textbooks do a pretty good job with this. But the fact still remains—when a typical secondary student looks at a text, they have little idea about “how to attack it.” They need your help.

As we thought about Ben’s text yesterday, we noticed the following aspects: narrative explanatory text, guiding and essential questions, headings and subheadings, vocabulary assistance, pictures, snippets of primary documents, etc. As we continue to move through the text in the coming weeks and months, we will see charts, maps, graphs, and many other things as well. Can we assume that students will know what to do with all of these various elements?

In short, no.

I started to imagine with you the possibilities for teaching the text. How do we set up the lesson so that students maximize the learning resources embedded in the text? How do we direct their attention in smart ways? How do we get them to see this picture as more than two “dudes” fighting in wigs and suits? How do we get them to see what you, as practiced students of history, see?

This is the art of lesson planning—sequencing student attention to “bring out” the learning potential embedded in the text. And this is what we will be practicing over the coming weeks—indeed, over the entire year.

Have a great weekend!

Creating a Reflective Practice

At this point in your semester, you are no doubt well in to your lead teaching. It’s therefore time to start turning your thoughts toward your MSU coursework.

No doubt, at times, your coursework feels like a hoop you need to jump through in order to finish the program. While that feeling is completely understandable, I would ask you to not get yourself in that habit of looking at things.

Your MSU coursework is a great opportunity to teach yourself how to manage the life of a teacher while still maintaining daily time for growth and reflection. Doing so is absolutely essential, I am convinced, to your long-term mental resilience.

Teachers are extremely busy. I don’t need to tell you that. The demands on our attention are innumerable. It is all the more important, therefore, to make time. The key to realize is that by giving, you receive; by giving time to yourself, you actually create more of it for others. These are the laws of mental efficiency.

I’ve heard it said of Gandhi, that when told he would have a particularly busy day, he committed himself to doubling the amount of time he would devote to meditation and reflection. Only in that way would he ensure that he could be fully devoted to the work he needed to do.

This is, therefore, about the discipline of building a reflective practice.

My advice is that you devote approximately 10 minutes a day to each of your MSU courses during the next few weeks.  But make this 10 minutes essential. Make it regular. Don’t let anything else crowd it out.

I recommend that you write about what you are noticing about your case student. Write about what you are seeing, what you are noticing, and what you are learning. Create character sketches. Doodle. Free write. Explore.  While some of your writing will be exploratory, my guess is that other writing you do will be able to go directly into your final case study report.

I’ve learned that university students are pretty vocal about what, in a course, works for them. That can be a mixed blessing. But mostly it’s good. University professors don’t have the option of allowing the silence of students to trick them into believing that everything is going just great for every single student in their class.

I think it was different in high school. Since students were less accustomed to speaking up, unless I actively sought out their feedback, it was rarely offered. Unless I really took the time to examine what was happening to a student in my class, it was easy to assume that everything was mostly fine.

Reflection on the lives of children and teenagers is one of the greatest sources of growth we can have as a teachers. I invite you to use this case study assignment to get yourself in the habit of using it to improve your practice.

But doing so requires discipline. It requires regularity. It requires us to set priorities around our own continued growth as teachers.

Have a great rest of the week. Sharpen those pencils—your March Madness bracket is just around the corner!

Kyle

Surviving the Late Winter Blues

Yesterday, I read an interesting article by one of my favorite theorists, Adam Phillips. 

Phillips has written books such as Missing Out that I have found very helpful as I have written about the role of frustration in both our personal and professional lives as teachers. Phillips is a psychoanalyst working out of London, but I find his insights pretty universal to the entire human condition.

In his article, Phillips provides an interesting take on the Christian version of the Golden Rule: Love your enemies as yourself. And what is interesting here is that Phillips doesn’t argue that we are falling short in our attempts to live out this moral rule--rather, he says that we have lived out this moral rule all too well.

How is that, you ask?

Well, Phillips spends a lot of time in his article unpacking the fundamental ambivalence that underlies everything that matters to us in this life. The way in which love and hate often alternate for us in our deepest and most intimate relationships. In particular, he does a wonderful job showing how our consciences--under the guise of self love--often inflict a lot of internal damage.

In short: We are usually incredibly hard on ourselves. It’s therefore no surprise that the disgust we often feel with ourselves gets communicated out onto others.

Phillips’ is a not a feel-good message about self esteem. Rather, I think it’s about recognizing the way in which we often set ourselves up to fail by holding unrealistic expectations of our ability to manage and control the world.

When I get mad at a student or colleague for not responding the way I want them to, am I not in essence also getting mad at myself for my inability to get them to act the way I think they should?

What if we freed ourselves up from some of these expectations? What if we just focused on being more honest, with our students and with ourselves, about how things are going in the moment? What if we framed every teaching moment as an inquiry into the state of our relationships--with each other (I’m really annoyed with you all right now), with the subject matter we are teaching (This is terribly boring), and with the world we are attempting to understand and change (This textbook underestimates the amount of dysfunction in our government).

This is an incredibly hard time of year. It’s easy to fall into bad habits. It’s easy to let our emotions get the better of us. I invite you to take a less combative and controlling attitude towards your world and try out an attitude of acceptance of what currently is. Let honesty and authenticity be your weapon of choice. Expect that the world will return to you what you give it. See if this change in attitude helps you--for one period, for one day, for one week.

Take care!

Kyle

Ethical Dilemmas in Accommodating Students

Today, we got pretty deep into a very perplexing and complicated dilemma of public schooling teaching: How far and to what degree do you accommodate the needs, behaviors and preferences of your students? 

I left class totally excited about that conversation and the degree of depth we achieved in it.

On the one hand, we can say something like: Rules are rules. No excuses, no exceptions. If the rules, criteria and expectations are clear and transparent from the start, then the facts are what they are. A democratic society depends upon a set of predictable and consistently enforced rules and procedures in order to ensure that fairness reigns and justice prevails.

On the other hand, we can say: Context matter. Not everyone starts the race from the same place. So it’s not so much about where each individual starts as where we collectively end up. Equality of opportunity means nothing absent equality of resources and means. A democratic society depends upon sharing resources in order to ensure that opportunity is truly equalized.

And so it goes . . . 

Here are some dilemmas.

• Do we accommodate a student who is tardy to our class because she overslept, due to being up late studying?
• Do we accommodate a student who requests to re-take an exam because he was feeling ill on the day of the test?
• Do we accommodate a student whose parents request she be excused from watching Schindler’s List because the family believes that the movie overstates the extent and depth of the Holocaust’s brutality?

In the above examples, I’ve tried to point out the range of accommodation requests that come at us as teachers.  I want you to see that they are all, more or less, ethical dilemmas.

I also tried to write dilemmas that would push me, as a teacher, in different directions. I would probably not accommodate the first, I probably would accommodate the second, and I would have a very hard time accommodating the third--though, if pushed, I would probably view it as an exercise in free speech that I would be hesitant to deny.

My point? I am not “all for” or “all against” accommodation. It really does depends.

But what does it depend on?

I have two pieces of advice here. 

First, know what matters to you. Pick your battles. Things like talking while I was talking, putting your head down in class, or coming in tardy--these were all things that felt disrespectful to me and made the classroom chaotic or uninviting for other learners. I had a very low tolerance for any of these behaviors and was pretty inflexible with them all. 

But, when it came to student work, I felt differently. If I was going to take the time to grade it, I wanted it to be good. Since I couldn’t get to all my student’s work in one or two days, what difference would it make if it came in one or two days late? As long as students took initiative to request an extension, I was usually ok giving it.

This leads me to a second piece of advice. Last week I linked to an article about reliability in grading that mentioned the work of  Douglas Reeves. I think last week’s article made some important points. 

Increasingly, it appears, grades will come to be tied to specific standards. This is already how a lot of elementary schools work, and I think middle schools and high schools might head in that direction as well. Doing so gives us a lot more helpful and accurate information than a single grade that represents a mixture of ability, achievement, effort, attendance and compliance.

When I give a student two extra days to do their best work, am I increasingly or decreasing the reliability of grades as indicators of student learning? When I give a zero for not doing their homework, am I increasing or decreasing the reliability of grades as indicators of student learning?

I’ll return to my sunny optimism and assert that each child is gifted to enrich the world in ways we can only begin to imagine. As teachers, I think we want to act in ways that bring out these gifts, rather than stifling them.

Perhaps, when viewed in this light, the question of accommodation becomes not so hard after all . . .

 

Finding the Special through Assessment

Thank you for a great class on Friday! I am pleased with the level of engagement and collegiality in our class!!

As I have told some of you, I have an interest in European education. I taught for several years in Hungary and I have done research in French classrooms. As we talked about assessment and students with IEPs, it recalled for me some of the things I observed in those classrooms.

We are very used to think about mastery as 90% in the US. Indeed, for us, there is hardly another way to think about what “mastery”--or what an “A”--represents.

It might therefore interest you to know that in France, 14/20 is a very high--even an exceptional--grade (everything is always worth 20 points in France--don’t ask me why). 

I have heard stories about US teachers who spend time teaching in France and are shocked to receive parental complaints about them being “too easy graders.” Americans, it seems, are all too willing to give out unheard of scores, such as 18’s, to their students.

My point? Grading is often a somewhat subjective enterprise.

Now, there are test writers who use very sophisticated procedures as they work. Think about the IQ test. Most of the population will score 100. That is going to be the most common score. It represents “average intelligence.” Scores will naturally cluster around that number, with increasingly fewer scores as you move further away (up or down) away from 100. This is the idea of the normally-distributed bell curve.

In such a test, 100 means something fairly objective. 

But in most assessments that we as teachers write, there is nowhere near this level of certainty. I can write an assessment on which the most able student will receive 50/100. Does that mean this student failed? Does it mean the test was too hard? Or does it mean that that 50/100 represents “mastery” for that content on that particular exam?

When I think about assessment, I think about it as an opportunity for students to show me what they can do. My goal as a teacher is to find assessments that best allow me to see what each student can do. To accommodate my tests to their unique skills, interest, and knowledge.

Literally, as a teacher, I want to “catch” students acting smart. That’s how I think about my job.

It’s a different mindset, but one I would ask you to consider. 

Is our job to rank and sort our students, or is it to empower them to do increasingly well on a range of diverse, real-world tasks?

I put a lot of stock on informal, diagnostic assessment. It’s a way of thinking about universal screening. That I am constantly documenting the circumstances under which different students can excel. That I use that knowledge to not only structure up my curricular and instructional decisions, but that I also use it to make decisions about assessment and grading.

I love being that teacher who can uncover hidden potential in my students. That teacher who can legitimately point to outstanding work from a student who may be doing poorly in other classes. Please think about this perspective as you undertake your case studies.

You will be sending me your Case Study Proposals this weekend and I will be responding to them as quickly as possible. By next Friday, January 30, you will need to have done some work toward the next step of the project, the Analysis and Interpretation stage. 

For class next week, I know it says you should bring a paper copy of your Analysis and Interpretation. That is not necessary. Rather, in whatever form--paper, notes on your computer, jottings on the back of a napkin--I would you to bring the ideas you have started to form about your case. Read at least one article that helps illuminate something about your student (use the course library, prior MSU readings, or materials you find on an Internet search), analyze all assessment data you have about this student, and reflect on the functional meaning of the student’s behavior in your class (what is gained by acting this way?). 

These are the next things I want you to send, via email, by Saturday evening, January 31. 

Have a great week!