Perspective

One thing that really grinds my gears is when students claim that they "didn't have enough time" to finish an assignment.

Our school system policy is to allow students to turn in late work with no penalty to their grade, which, okay, I can accept because according to the standards we are supposed to be evaluating demonstrated academic ability, not behavior. It also helps that we are given (some) flexibility to set harder deadlines, so that we don't receive a metric ton of work at the end of the term from students who are scrambling to pull up their grades.

I think I want my policy to be "once I return an assignment, I will no longer accept it for credit." Ideally I'd post a running tally of how many had originally been turned in and how many I've evaluated so far. Generally, the more work an assignment takes from the student, the more complex it is to evaluate. That would give me more of a sliding scale so that my deadline is both clear and flexible.

Additionally, we allow students to re-assess, so long as they complete a contract identifying problems they encountered and make a plan (usually including additional work for practice) so that when they complete the assessment the second (or third...) time, hopefully they'll do better. But when I see "I didn't have enough time" listed as one of their problems it sends my blood pressure skyrocketing.  Because, see, there was additional time available - I am here before school starts and after it ends. I allow students to come in from any of their other classes to work, so long as they have permission from their other teachers. The library is open before and after school and during the lunch periods.

Did you use any of those opportunities? Did you even ask about them? No? Then don't you dare claim that you "didn't have enough time."

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End of Term Exhaustion

One of the buzzwords this year has been "grit." In the reading I've done, I've heard it explained that students who take responsibility for their achievements are more likely to be successful than students who attribute their success or failure to external factors. This makes sense on the surface, but when I was reading my students' reflective essays, I noticed something interesting.

I had asked them to write about a standard they had mastered and a standard they still needed to work on. And for quite a few of the students, they claimed that the standard they mastered was because of their own skill and hard work... then went on to give all sorts of excuses I mean reasons that they'd been less successful. There were very few students who took responsibility for both their successes AND their failures. Needless to say, this was enlightening for me, but also somewhat discouraging. According to my students, any learning that happens is apparently in spite of me, not because of me.

Grit is variously defined as a mixture of determination, resilience, motivation, and courage. Here are some recent articles and blog posts that discuss it:

• Got Grit
• Grit Plus Talent Equals Student Success
• The Best Measure of Success
• The Grit Test
• Does Teaching Kids to Get Gritty Help Them

But while these all exalt the value of getting back up after failing (and in fairness, students who don't do that won't succeed) the truth is that simply trying again, or even trying harder, may not be enough to ensure success. Because if you did something that didn't get you the desired result, if you just do the same thing again, you're likely to get the same less-than-desirable result you did the first time. Perseverance alone isn't enough.

One of the skills that I don't see mentioned in the articles that talk about grit is reflection. After experiencing failure, but before charging back into the fray, it's important to take a good look at what led up to that failure. What were the factors that caused it? Which can I influence directly? What can I do to compensate for the factors that I cannot change? But while we practice this on a regular basis, I'm not entirely sure how I can break it down into smaller steps or try it at an easier level or provide support to help students who are struggling with it. (A lot of my students seem to equate "helping them" with "giving them the answer.")

How do you teach effective reflection? Do you teach it? If not, how do you encourage students to look for ways to improve?

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Friday, October 17 - Homecoming

Brief note - it seems like blogger has changed things and my 'Continue' links aren't working the way I wanted them to. That's frustrating. Part of me feels like I ought to take just a little bit of time this weekend to check and see what I can do to make them work again, but then there's another part of me that says "you haven't been keeping up with your blogging anyway, so it's not like it matters."

:P

So today is Homecoming. I must confess, I'm not a particularly rah-rah sort of person. I mean, I do like my school and my students (even if their attitudes and behavior aggravate me on a regular basis). But I'm not particularly interested in extracurriculars. I'm here at school all day, focused on my work, and when the day is over I want to go home and focus on other things. It doesn't help that I have a 40-minute commute; I wish the school was closer to the house we could afford, but it's not. And I could get a job at a school that's closer - there's at least one that's within walking distance - but like I said, I do like the school I'm at and I particularly enjoy working with the colleagues I have here.

So in addition to a lot of school colors everywhere this week, we've had dress-up days and the student government had a competition to raise money for their floats and there was a parade last night. Tonight is the big game so there's a pep rally today. During school. All of our classes are shortened so that for the last 45 minutes we can put all the students in the gym and have them scream a lot.

And we have to be there.

I guess you can tell that I'm not a big fan of pep rallies. For one thing, I just generally don't like large ceremonies. They feel impersonal and bland, and the larger they are, the longer they tend to go on. Additionally, I'm not fond of the fact that we take time away from academics for the purpose of supporting extracurriculars. And it's so loud.

I feel like this makes me a big gloomy cloud of not-fun, but I'm looking forward to next week, when hopefully things will go back to normal!

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Wednesday, August 27 - Lesson: "Beginnings"

Every story starts with the promise that reading it is worth your time & effort, and gives clues about what to expect. In the first sentence, the author establishes this promise, enticing the reader to continue, and hints about what the reader can expect from the rest of the book. Consider these famous beginnings:

• Call me Ishmael.
• It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
• Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
• They shoot the white girl first.
• 124 was spiteful.
• Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
• It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
• You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.

As a class, we discuss a few of these openers - I generally start with Moby Dick and ask students what they notice. They either mention "he has a weird name" or "he's introducing himself." Each of those leads into a significant point - Ishamel is an allusion to the story of God's promise to Abraham in the book of Genesis, and there's an important distinction between call me and my name is, which allows me to touch on the concept of an unreliable narrator.

I always finish with the beginning of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, because I love the way it builds from a dull start to an exciting finish:

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

"There was" is about the most boring start to a sentence you can write! Then we move to "a hand" so there's at least an object, but it's ordinary and there's no description. But then we get "in the darkness," which adds description and some mood - kind of suspenseful. Then "and it held" provides some action, and we finish with "A KNIFE." Cue the dramatic music!

Then I take out my copy of the book and ask them what the first thing they notice about the page is, and I very briefly open the book to that first page:

I need to get out of the habit of asking them what they notice first, because they always pick the knife! Then I have to go back and ask them "how is this first page different from the first page of just about every other book? How is it different from the book you're reading?" Then they point out that most books have black text on a plain page, but here, the typeface is reversed on a black background.

So in the same way that the author's words are designed to grab the reader's attention, here we have the book's design working together with those words!

Then I ask them to look closer. What is right there by the end of the sentence? The knife! they say - by this point they're always getting a little excited, because they see how it's all connected. What part of the knife? I ask, and they say the blade or the point.

Okay, so where does your eye go, after you see the knife? Of course they say they want to know who's holding it, and what's going to happen. I trace my finger along the knife, past the hand and up the arm, saying okay, so this is where you look, and - uhoh! What happens here? I ask, pointing to where the drawing cuts off. What is the book itself encouraging you to do? What is supposed to happen when your eye gets to the bottom right corner of the page?

And it's just delightful to watch their eyes light up as they say you're supposed to turn the page and keep reading!

Exactly.

That's what every author wants the reader to do - keep reading! And this book does a particularly good job of getting you to do just that.

Then we start our classwork. Because each student has a different book, there's really no way they can cheat; I let them help each other out and discuss the work together.

Turn back to the beginning of the book you chose, and re-read the first sentence. Based on that sentence alone, what clues can you gather about the rest of the story? Images thanks to theguardian.com and tygertale.wordpress.com

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Summer Feathers

Goals for the summer:

• Change the address on my driver's license √
• Register to vote (waiting on card to arrive)
• Create Antigone unit
• Check the used bookstore for The Hunger Games (√), Catchphrase, and Taboo (didn't have the latter)
• Read Things Fall Apart
• Practice doing voice work √
• Write sample video game quest trees
• Continue learning to code √
• Continue tap lessons and practice √
• Daily cardio/weights/yoga √
• Develop clicker games and review practice
• Create other review games

I've been doing pretty well, I think - I haven't done any of my planning-type stuff yet but I want to wait until I actually have my classes for next term. That way I can create plans and materials I can actually use!

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Tuesday, September 10: CSS Glossary

The weekly goals are going well! I had a doctor's appointment yesterday and had to leave early, so today during planning I doubled up and finished my parent calls (yay!) as well as getting some practice in over at Codecadamy. The downside is that I wasn't able to update the class webpages in advance like I had hoped. Oh well!

As I continue my lessons in CSS, one of the difficulties I'm facing is that there are all these terms and I don't really know what they're used for. Like today I learned about how to assign a trait to the first example of an element. But I'm like... why would you want to do it that way instead of just finding the particular item you want and assigning the trait to it? Why is it necessary to have this syntax? Generally I'm pretty easygoing, but given the number of new terms that they're dumping on me, it's really frustrating to try to remember them all when the context is so limited.

So I think for the next few Tuesdays, I'm going to work on a glossary of the CSS terms I'm supposed to know.

Properties are the traits assigned to items. So if you were describing a pair of your socks as blue, the PROPERTY is 'COLOR.'

Here is a list of CSS properties, according to HTML Dog and my explanation of what they are. Also a bit of whingeing along the way.

• font: The name of the font you want the page to use
• font-family: The basic type of font you want the page to use
• font-size: The pixel size you want your font to be. I'm not sure what the numbers measure, but my guess is from the bottom of a descender, like the downstroke of a lowercase p, to the top of an ascender like in a t.
• font-weight: I think this is how 'thick' or 'heavy' you want the font to look.
• font-style: This adds slant to a text. I don't know the difference between 'oblique' and 'italic.' Guess Imma haft learn.
• font-variant: This lets you add smallcaps as an option. It also has 'inherit' and 'normal' as options. Which makes me wonder why you would set it as a property if you weren't going to do anything with it. Why can't 'bold' and 'heavy' and 'lighter' and 'smallcaps' be properties of a font's style? UGH!
• line-height: I think this is what I learned as 'leading' - it's how much room there is for each line of text.
• letter-spacing: presumably the amount of space between each letter in a word.
• word-spacing: presumably the amount of space between words!
• text-align: how the text is placed horizontally on the page - flush left, flush right, centered, or justified (even on both left and right)
• text-decoration: lines - over, under, or through. Again, IMO this should be included in font-style, dammit!
• text-indent: I'm not sure if this means it's indented from the margin for all lines, or if it indents the first line of a section like a paragraph or a division.
• text-transform: Changes text to all-upper or all-lowercase. Can also capitalize the first letter of every word, but that seems useless to me.
• vertical-align: moves the lines of text up or down in relation to the page they're on or the box they're in. Useful for degrees or things like chemical notation, or squares and cubes and stuff.
• white-space: I have no idea. This either 'maintains' or 'collapses' white space. What white space? The white space between paragraphs? maybe?
• color: the color of the element
• background-color: the color around/behind the element
• background: idk
• background-image: the picture around/behind the element
• background-repeat: idk
• background-position: idk
• background-attachment: idk
• padding (top, right, bottom, left): how much space is allowed between adjacent elements

There's plenty more, but I'm out of time for today.

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Feathers Again

I went back through my 'hope' tag and found my end-of-year self-assessment series. I hadn't realized it was so long since I'd revisted it!

There's a lot that's still relevant. Portia is still a nauseatingly sexist portrayal of womanhood. Composition books are way better than binders or spiral-bound notebooks. I still haven't kept in touch with parents as often as I feel I ought to (although I've improved and I probably call at least as much as I need to). We still do silent reading each day, although I switched it to the start of class instead of the end. I punted the journal-style writing assignments to homework, because the plain truth of the matter is it's far more challenging to fake those!

But a lot of things have changed, as well. As I look over the list, it's very reassuring (even encouraging!) to see that the changes have been positive. I don't really notice anything where I'm like "oo, I used to be awesome at XYZ, and now I suck at it! bugger that!" Like, last year I didn't do small-group literature circles as much, and for a little bit I felt bad about that... but then I realized I did more with individual choice reading. So there was something of a tradeoff there. However, one of the things I'm going to attempt for THIS year is kind of blending the two. (Keep your fingers crossed for me.)

I'm also trying to be as specific as possible with my goals. I hear that's important. So here they are:

1. Go to the library each Monday. Return all of the books from the previous Monday. Read at least the first ten pages of each book and log it in Goodreads.
2. 20 parent calls per day first 4 days. 10 parent calls each Monday beginning 9/9.
3. Review coding lessons on Tuesday.
4. Unit plan reviewed and revised if needed each Wednesday. Plans for upcoming unit emailed to department head the Wednesday before it begins.
5. Write a chapter of fanfic on Thursday.
6. Homework grades input daily; quizzes, projects, tests, essays graded by Friday.
7. Check that focus question, standards, and quickwrite for the next day are posted before leaving.
8. Progress reports handed out every Tuesday. (I have planning at the end of the day, so I’ll print them Monday and hand them out Tuesday.)
9. More student work posted to the class website. This is going to be iffy – we’ve lost access to one of our two labs as it’s been set aside for online classes. This is important to me but I can’t count on students having their own internet access, so if it works, it works, if not… I’ll just hope for next year.
10. Try using individual choice books in literature circles. Not sure how that's going to work when there's a mix of novels and nonfiction, but I guess I'll find out!

The coding thing is because I'm still mad about blogger screwing up my click-throughs. I'm working with Codecademy and so far I've reviewed HTML (I really need to get rid of some of my bad/old habits, but it's harrrrd!) and moved into CSS. I think the problem is in the definition of the "fullpost" descriptor. But I haven't yet learned how to define descriptors. I suppose that's more advanced.

The writing thing is harder. I mean, I started trying to write more because Penny Kittle said so, but she (and Mardie! *hearts*) also say that it's important to write WITH them. And I just don't know if I can do that. See, the thing is, I'm not by nature a Professional Person. I'm pretty casual and quirky. And I have to squish that part of me at school. I can't wear jeans except on Friday and then only with a professional-casual shirt, because the T-shirt featuring Chernabog that we got at Disney was deemed inappropriate. If I dye my hair, it has to be normal-looking colors. So when I've tried to model writing for my students, I have to have "writing something that won't get me in trouble" as a priority ahead of "writing truthfully."

Hm. I hadn't actually realized that before. Interesting. Clearly I'll have to give it some more thought.

So I have ten new goals for this year. That sounds reasonable. And I think I'll submit five of them to my evaluator. We aren't required to do so, but I don't find rubberstamp evaluations particularly helpful. I would rather take charge "pursuing professional excellence," as I put it in my tag, on my own, rather than waiting around for a bunch of legislators to tell me how they've come up with some kind of computerized algorithm that's going to rate me based on how well my students do on tests. No thank you!

Now I'm going to take my own advice and go back and update the HTML in this post.

Image thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/nane-zwerg

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YEEP.

So it's been an exciting few days, schoolwise. I'll write more about some of the rest of it tomorrow (I hope) but last night I posted over on the EC Ning asking if anybody else was interested in a book discussion of Notice & Note, by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst. And by the time I went to bed there were five people who'd already replied and said yes!

This will be the first time I've facilitated such a discussion. I'm kind of nervous (see photo!) because I'm not entirely sure what to expect. I don't know what problems might come up. Well, except for one - I'm kind of afraid that I'll start things off... and get crickets!

I just (like 45 seconds ago!) put a notice up on twitter, which I haven't been on, like, all summer. I'll probably retweet it a few times over the next couple of days, see if it gets any traction. I really hope to get a nice-sized crowd and some good conversation and idea-sharing back and forth. The lasting connections that you can form with people who share your purpose and your passion... that, to me, is the best part of the internet.

Then again, I feel like I've kind of neglected those connections this summer - at least professionally. I've been away a lot, for one thing, and for another I've really tried to focus on my writing and along that line been much more active on tumblr as a new platform.

So once again I find myself reaffirming my commitment to Epic Adventures here. I feel like I'm at some kind of professional turning point; I've developed confidence in what I'm doing as a teacher but at the same time -- or perhaps as a result? -- I feel like it's time for me to develop My Thing, to craft some sort of niche for myself that can be my area of expertise. It's a very nebulous, uncertain sort of feeling, though, and I'm not at all sure that I'm up to the task.

But oh well! I suppose the fact that it's "uncomfortable" just means it fits in completely with my "professional theme" as it were, haha... because it's definitely going to be an adventure!

 Stock image

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Scaffolding

I think I already do a pretty good job of offering support for our study of Julius Caesar. It's a challenging text, and one of the things I hate most about it is that there's not a lot of GOOD supplemental material. The Shakespeare Set Free series from the Folger Institute is awesome, but there's nothing in it for Caesar.

Additionally, the feature films are WAY out of date and somewhat painful to watch. I'm sure that film buffs may be able to appreciate the way that the costuming, lighting, camera work, use of color, etc. fits that particular era of film, but... that's not the audience I'm working with.

I've contacted a local Shakespeare group; they did a series of readings a year or two ago that I went to & it was pretty neat. You could tell that they were there simply because they enjoyed it. Thing is, their website hasn't been updated since last February, and I don't know if that's because they haven't had anything to add, or because the webmaster quit & hasn't been replaced, or because the entire group is kaput.

My next step will be to see if I can dig up a literature or drama class at a local college, contact the professor, and see if any of the students would be willing to come and present to my classes.

I'm not sure what else I can do. The workshop at the beginning helps generate interest, but the text is just HARD, and it doesn't take long for things to degenerate into absolute torture. I'm not sure what I can do to maintain engagement and focus. I can't say I blame the students for their frustration - it's mentally exhausting!

I feel like I'm hamstrung. A play is meant to be SEEN as a PERFORMANCE, and I've got zero access to top-notch performances. HEY RSC. WTF? WHY CAN'T YOU SELL DVDS OF YOUR PERFORMANCES? I WOULD TOTES BUY ONE. OR LIKE BUNCHES, ACTUALLY.

I would love to have some help/suggestions.

Image thanks to http://www.zdnet.com/blog/emergingtech/

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Survey Says:

I decided to take a survey posted over at the EC Ning.

Details after the cut.

What grades do you teach? High school; mostly sophomores right now, but others 9-12.

Do you have a classroom library? yes

How did you collect your books? And how do you get new ones? (Garage sales, gifts, bookstores, grants, school money, book fairs, etc.) Mostly through donorschoose grants, giveaways at conventions, and used bookstores.

Do you make a point to continue adding to your classroom library? yes

What sorts of resources do you have in your library? Books (fiction, non fiction, graphic novels, etc), newspaper articles, magazines, music, movies, etc? Just books - fiction, nonfiction, and graphic novels.

What materials do you wish you had? I always want more books, but at this point I need more bookshelves. I wish I could have a fluffy rug and a reading lamp, but I'm not allowed to have those because of fire code (or so we've been told). I'd like some floor pillows.

What books do you think should be in every classroom library? I doubt there are any books that belong in every classroom library, because it really depends on what kind of reading the students are doing. A classroom library in a 3rd-grade room probably won't have any of the same books I do.

Do you have suggestions for how a new teacher can build a library? Donorschoose has been very helpful. If you're in an affluent area, ask parents to donate books. It takes time; I've been building my library since I started teaching, and it's taken me seven years to get it to where I'm actually proud of it.

How do you use your classroom library? The students have daily reading; we also use the books to study grammar, writing, and literary techniques. This prevents copying and (in theory) ensures that each student is working with material at a comfortable challenge level.

Do you have a system for students to check out books or can they borrow them at will? They show me the book and I keep a record of what book each student currently has.

What are the most popular books? I currently do not have a copy of Hunger Games because the three I've bought have all been not-returned by someone. I've never had a student ask to switch out of The Graveyard Book.

Do you keep potentially controversial books in your library? Why or why not? Yes; I live in an area that is so conservative that EVERY book is "potentially controversial." So if I wanted to avoid all controversy I couldn't have a classroom library.

Do you require parental permission for students to borrow certain books? A few, due to language or thematic issues. I like my job and would prefer to keep it.

What do students think about your classroom library? It's an interesting change of pace, I think, from their other classes. I get new books on a fairly regular basis, though, so sometimes I think they kind of take it for granted.

What do you wish this survey had asked, and how would you answer? Hm. I can't think of anything right now. If I do, I'll come back and add whatever it is I think of.

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Humor

I actually posted this over on the EC Ning, but then I figured, hey, why not include it here? Who knows, I may have some readers that don't frequent the ning.

So when I started pulling books from my classroom library to create themed sets, I noticed that I was having a difficult time finding ones I'd clearly categorize as "humor." I'd looove to hear some suggestions! Here are some of the ones I already have:

Every Man for Himself
Matilda
Nerd Girls
Skullduggery Pleasant
The Squire's Tale
Schooled
Wayside School Is Falling Down
Models Don't Each Chocolate Cookies

Suggestions have been

I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President, Josh Lieb
Soul Enchildada, David Macinnis Gill
Swim the Fly, Don Calame
Born to Rock, Gordon Korman
Beauty Queens, Libba Bray
An Abundance of Katherines, John Green
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, Sherman Alexie
Word Nerd, Susin Neilson
Will Grayson, Will Grayson, John Green
Going Bovine, Libba Bray
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E. Lockhart

Other ideas?

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Finally

I've finally gotten to the point where I'm actually proud of my classroom library. I was going to take pictures today, but there were parents to call and photos to print and posters to hang and bulletin boards to decorate and journals to review and receipts to write and file and... and... and...

UGH. Hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures on Monday. It was so hectic at the end of the day that when we left I forgot both my laptop charge cord and a stack of journals that I planned to finish grading over the weekend.

Anyway.

For the longest time, I had some serious book-envy. It seemed like everyone else online had read the latest YA stuff. And in #titletalk discussions, people would make lists of books they were going to buy! I don't know how they manage it, because let me tell you, looking at the price on a new book about gives me palpitations from the sticker shock. $30 for a new book?! That's, like, three days of food!

But then I learned that being poor sometimes comes in handy. Like when you're writing grant requests. And over the last few years, I've built up my classroom library slowly and steadily, thanks mostly to the local used bookstores and DonorsChoose. And then this past summer, I got to go to the ALA conference, which was within driving distance.

I took the truck.

Anyway, long story short, I have lots and lots of books now. And I'm ready to do more with them. At the end of the summer, for example, I nabbed a couple of beat-up armchairs at a yard sale, and now they grace that corner of my classroom. I'd love to add a standing lamp but I was told NO. Same thing for rugs. NO. I might be able to get away with a stack of floor cushions, but I don't really have anywhere to put them.

Everything is so damn expensive. $20 a cushion? And don't get me started on how much shelving costs... yikes!

There seems to be a lot more out there for elementary-school classroom libraries. Is it sooo unusual to have one in high school? I want to decorate my walls, but I don't just want a silly "Read! :D" poster. With a worm wearing glasses. You know, a bookworm? HA! *sigh*

What does an ideal high school classroom library look like, anyway?

Image thanks to http://blog.syracuse.com/

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Why Charter Schools Should Not Be the Enemy

Bear with me; the ideas connected to this post are all jumbly and I think I'm going to go ahead and publish before I'm truly satisfied with it, just so that something is OUT THERE. And I'll revise and tweak it bit by bit.

There seems to be a general consensus that charter schools and traditional public schools are pitted against each other in some kind of siege war; that charters are The Alternative to regular public education. And whether it's a good alternative or a bad alternative, well, that depends on what side of the war you're on, you know?

But the more I reflect on this, the more I am confounded by the wtfery of it all.

From what I understand, charter schools are not under the same guidelines as public schools because they are supposed to be research facilities. Now... as I understand it, in research, you typically have a control group and an experimental group. But people keep insisting on comparing charter schools to public schools. Shouldn't the comparison be WITHIN the charter school? between the students being taught with standard methods (control) and those being taught with methods under study (experimental)?

And when I learned about the scientific method, I was taught that you start out with a hypothesis and you do your research to test it. But when I'm looking at charter schools I haven't been able to find out what hypotheses they're testing.

Reframing charters in this way would be an enormous help to education in general. Public schools could learn from the charters without being threatened by them. Charters wouldn't have to worry about producing results that are better than what public schools can accomplish; finding out that a new technique isn't as good as what's already being used is helpful information!

I'm going to point my accusation at the media: they don't want to lose the "FIGHT TO THE DEATH!" story. Apparently ratings are more important than actual progress.

And I'm gonna stop for now. I think I have more explainin' to do, but it's past medtime, and my brain is tired.

Image thanks to http://youoffendmeyouoffendmyfamily.com/

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Examining Success

So I've been thinking about trying to write things that might be helpful for other teachers, and it's been difficult. Mardie asked why, and I realized that I hadn't really thought about that.

When things go wrong, it's often fairly simple to point to when: you have a pull of tension in your lower back that shoots up your spine, your ribcage tightens and your breath gets shallower and faster. Often there's an increase in the "audio clutter" - teachers, you know what I mean by that, right? There's just a different tone in the room when conversation is off-task, even though I still have a hard time pinpointing who's talking about the lesson or the assignment and who's out in left field.

Or you get a bunch of faces staring at you blankly before students start leaning towards their friends to see if someone else got it and can explain it in a way that makes more sense.

I guess perhaps I've been exceptionally fortunate in that when things go wrong, they don't go wrong for several different reasons all at the same time. This makes it much easier to pinpoint the trouble-spot so that I can tweak it for the next go-round.

On the other hand, when things go well, it's because everything is working well -- but to greater or lesser degrees. (My thought: Hey, at least it's working.)

So it can be difficult to figure out which parts are carrying the weight and which parts are along for the ride.

How can we pinpoint which activities or strategies best help students learn? It's easy to see non-learning: faces turned away, heads down on desks, fingers texting away under the seat... I'm sure you could keep adding to that list all day!

But when students are reading or listening or writing and appear to be on task, how do we pinpoint the cause? Or, perhaps more accurately, how do we rank the causes?

That's what I haven't figured out.

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Writing for Others

Up until now, I’ve been writing primarily for myself. And it’s really neat that I’ve been able to engage in discussion with other professionals, because doing so has helped me to refine and clarify my own ideas. But I’m getting to the point where I feel pretty confident in my teaching and so I’d like to begin sharing with others. It’s just that up to now I hadn’t really thought about what might actually be worth something to someone ELSE. I think I tend to write more about my struggles than my successes, because I’ve been more concerned about improving in areas where I have difficulty. It requires significantly less reflection to just re-do something that worked well! So now that I want to start thinking about what I DO do well, I’m kind of floundering.

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Book List

I try to keep a running list of books I'd like to get for my classroom library. I'd love to hear additional suggestions! I've also had people say "get anything that this person wrote!" Here are some authors that have been mentioned - some of them I've read, others are ones I still want to look into.

Walter Dean Myers, various
Sharon Draper
Gary Paulsen
Malcolm Gladwell
David Macaulay: How Things Work, Castle etc.
Bruce Catton
Sarah Dessen
Oliver Saks
Lewis Thomas
Tony Horwitz
Gary Soto
Julia Alvarez
Ivy Sparks
Nicholas Sparks
Bill Bryson
Patricia Cornwell
Christopher Pike
Vivian Vande Velde

Click here to see the complete list of titles I'd still like to buy. Warning: it's a long list!

I do wonder if the 'span' tag is working at all...

Whew! I hope to get back to more frequent posting now that we've wrapped the yearbook. I would love to hear additional suggestions for my classroom library, too!

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More on gaming

Over on a discussion at the EC Ning, Andres Esquivel Jr shared this TED talk:



And while I replied within the context of that particular discussion, I think I still have quite a bit more to say on the issue. And for once I actually feel pretty confident about what I'm saying. (In fact, I just took a quick break to add "play theorist" to my profile!)

A bit of background - first of all, I don't see myself as an avid gamer. I do play World of Warcraft, but while many players have multiple characters of different types at maximum level, I've got one. I almost always play by myself rather than in groups. I don't know that I've ever played another multiplayer game. Wait - no - I think I've played two or three songs in Rock Band. (I wasn't bad, but then, I was just the singer.) And perhaps more significantly, I began playing as an adult.

Maybe it's because of the resulting distance from play, or maybe it's just because I'm WEIRD. I don't know. But I find myself as engaged by the systems and the reasoning behind them as I do by the experience of playing.

I've finished up my yearbook work for the weekend but I still have a class set of notebooks to check & respond to. As a result, I think I'm just going to copy-paste in the quick notes I took on the seven things-we-should-do points Chatfield made in his TED talk:

1. XP bar measures progress - I have liked this idea for some time but it's hard to do; see my remark below.


2. multiple long & short-term aims; lots of small tasks (quests) that both produce small rewards (XP & loot) that lead to bigger rewards (levels). THIS, I think, we can at least begin to do.


3. Reward effort - not sure about this one. If a monster kills you, you don't get the XP for it. In fact, you face an in-game penalty because you have to pay in-game money to get your in-game equipment repaired. "Teeny reinforcements" I agree with.


4. Rapid, frequent, clear feedback. Tougher to do in person though. And we already know this is incredibly helpful in education. In WoW, it tells you how much damage you take from each time something hits you, and it tells you how much damage you DO from each hit you make, and how much something heals you, or if a power is available, or if you've activated something special, and this is tailored to your character to reduce the amount of noise on screen BUT you also have the flashy show of using your powers, so that others can see that you're helping out.


5. He says "uncertain rewards," I say varying levels of reward at different levels of likelihood. This also applies to story endings - we want something that makes complete sense (that fits our expectations of what is likely to happen) but that isn't predictable.


6. Windows of enhanced attention - huh? he didn't explain this as much as others.


7. Collaboration - this one needs to be expanded as well. There are more threads than he explored (all he mentioned were DKPs)

"We can break things down into highly-calculated small tasks." Can we? I mean, it's not hard to calculate how many quests I will need to complete at 100 points per quest to get to the next level if I'm 1000 points from the next level! BUT. It is MUCH harder to calculate how many metaphors I need to explain in literal terms to get to the next level of understanding... whatever that is!

Re point 3 - I think he means reward BEHAVIOR. Studies have shown that when you offer rewards for simple, achieveable behaviors you get more of them; when you offer rewards for complex tasks, there's no resultant gain.

Okay. I'm off to add to my article bank and close out some tabs. I've had a lot going on in my head lately about Wisconsin and all of that as well. Don't know if that'll come to a post any time soon... WE MUST FINISH THE BOOK! :D

Wish me luck! :)

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Idea? I don't know.

It's entirely possible that I'm still logy from whatever was pumped into me for today's surgery - I got my port taken out. It feel SO GOOD to have it gone, though it didn't really trouble me that much. There's just this loosening of tension that I hadn't noticed. Though that may also be the drugs...

Anyway, so my copy of The Results Fieldbook came today - well, yesterday, I guess, since we got it out of the mailbox this morning. And in poring over it I got an idea. I think it's a good idea, but I'm just not sure. Rather, I'm sure there've gotta be problems with it, because it seems simple and effective and helpful but I haven't heard of anyone doing it.

In reading through, so far a lot of it has been about using data to find what you need to work on. And that gave me the idea. What if we used the most recent end-of-course test scores in English to identify each student's strongest and weakest skills? Then we could put students into groups based on those skill areas. It'd create the streamlined effectiveness of tracking without the stigma, because EVERY student would have a strength and a struggle.

And then on - I think of them as Challenge Days - you could set up modules or learning areas, and students would work together either to help each other with their struggles or to push each other to further excellence in their strengths.

So. What I want is help finding the problems. Does this seem too babyish?

Image thanks to http://oneanswer.tv/

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WoW: Guidelines for Addiction

Monday morning and we're getting washed and dressed and we'll be taking things down to the truck in just a little bit. NCTE has given me a lot to think about - in some ways, it has raised more questions than it answered.

So at the conference, rockstar teacher-author Carol Jago gave her NCTE Presidential address. She also posted it to the EC Ning.

In her speech, she brought up an issue that I've been thinking about a lot lately, so I'm going to strike while the keyboard is hot, so to speak, even though I plan to continue thinking about it and fine-tuning my ideas.


In the transcript, Carol writes:

Jane McGonigal, a game designer working at the Institute for the Future, thinks this idea has merit. She explains that online games are so compelling because they promote “blissful productivity.” Players of games like World of Warcraft feel they are accomplishing something important, that the battles they are fighting have “epic meaning,” and that they can be their best selves in this virtual environment. She has a point. Why else would people all over the world invest three billion hours a week playing video games? By the age of 21 the average gamer will have spent 10,000 hours playing video games, approximately the same amount of time spent in school between grades 5 and 12. It is no wonder that a generation of children, the same children whose NAEP reading and writing scores are below proficient, are becoming expert gamers. Imagine if students put a comparable amount of effort into reading and writing that they do into World of Warcraft. Imagine if students felt so “blissfully productive” at the end of every school day that they were eager to return on the morrow for more.

That last sentence is what I'm working on for my classroom - even though I disagree with just about every other point in the paragraph.

Full disclosure? I had no idea who the heck Jane McGonigal was. Heck, after googling her name and reading her blog, I still don't much know who she is. (She loses points for discussing games that change the world without mentioning FreeRice, though.)

But.

Granted, my evidence is purely anecdotal, based on the gamers I know. But I know quite a few - heck, I am one. And I can say with a fair amount of confidence that none of the gamers I have EVER met "feel they are accomplishing something important" by playing video games.

And it is certainly not true that "the battles they are fighting have 'epic meaning'" - in a static world, which is the case with every MMO that actually exists, player characters can make no significant or lasting changes to the game world. In short, nothing the players do matters at all. But that, I would say, is part of what makes the game so attractive.

The addictive quality of RPGs - particularly MMOs, which involve not just the purchase of the game itself, but also a continued subscription to access the online game-world - is not inherent, but derived from carefully-researched market strategies.

1) Immediate choice. Even before players can enter the game world, they must at least choose race and class for their characters. They may also choose the name, facial features, hair color, eye color, and other minor details (in WoW, it varies by race - some have tattoos, some have jewelry, etc.) for the character, but this is optional. Names can be randomized, and there is a 'default' for the appearance. What's interesting is that even though only race and class affect actual game play, players choose their characters' appearance carefully - it was a big deal when an update to WoW introduced barber shops, allowing players to change characters' hairstyles at will.

Choice is vital, particularly in a culture that darn near idolizes individuality and personal expression. This continues throughout the game - players can advance their characters in many different ways: exploring new areas, completing quests, killing monsters, and even gathering materials like herbs and ores.

2) Repeated investment. So right away, even before beginning to play the game, customers have put something into the character. This is key, and it continues cyclically throughout play. As each new objective is met, or a new choice is made, the level of investment increases. There's this feeling that you can't give up now - you've already put so much "work" into the character! This is part of what gets players to persevere (and keep paying!) despite the frustration of failing a quest multiple times, or of being unable to find certain materials.

3) Expectation of success. As the investment at the start of play is slight, a successful experience must follow as quickly as possible. There's not a whole lot tying the player to the game yet (psychologically speaking). So the first batch of quests is quite easy, allowing even the newest players to experience a positive return on their initial efforts. Additionally, there are all kinds of resources available for help (for example, I like to use Thottbot when I want to know where to find a particular NPC or item).

3) Graduated success. Of course, if there's no payoff for that effort, eventually the frustration will outweigh the investment. Therefore, rewards must be seen as equivalent to effort. Next time, the quest will be harder, but that's okay, because you'll get a better reward. The additional challenge also helps keep it interesting.

4) Success unlocks additional content. This is huge. The rewards received are directly tied to further play! You don't get a discount on the cost of playing because you've progressed your character to a certain level - rather, you might be able to have your character learn to ride (level 20), cutting down on travel time. Or your character can learn to use heavier armor (level 40), which decreases the amount of damage taken from attacks.

5) Failure is almost risk-free. When your character fails at a quest, there's a 'dong!' sound and the quest is marked 'Failed' in the quest-log. No problem - the character can just go back to the NPC from whom the quest was obtained and get another chance. Death is also a minor inconvenience: your character's spirit appears in the graveyard, and you must choose either to reanimate there (away from whatever she was doing AND with abilities temporarily decreased) or to move the spirit-form all the way back to where the character died and reanimate there (at half-health and possibly in range of whatever killed it). The character also loses the benefit of any spells that were cast on her, and her items are slightly damaged. However, most spells can be re-purchased, and item damage can be repaired in just about every town. Death is effectively about a five-minute setback.

6) It doesn't matter. This kind of piggybacks off of #5. There is absolutely no pressure. If your character agrees to go slay the wolves that have been marauding the town, and you decide to have him go and pick herbs for a few hours first, hey! no problem! The townspeople will be just as happy to be saved a few hours - or even several weeks - later. Contrariwise, if your character goes back to the town the day after slaying all the wolves, guess what! (I bet you can guess.) The wolves are back in full force!

Finally, I would like to note that gaming does not "lead to a dangerous disengagement from the real" any more than reading does. Indeed, through reading good books, we enter virtual worlds as engaging as any of the continents on Azeroth.

Image thanks to http://www.park48.com/

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Minor Point

Allusions can make you sound well-educated. However, when you misspell the titles or character names you're referencing? Not so much.

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