Much ado is being made about age these days. Maybe it’s my own resentment of being a digital pioneer, and constantly being reminded I’m in charge of training children for jobs that don’t exist yet (for Pete’s sake, it’s not like I’m asking them to be farriers or corset-stay carvers!) At the NCCE, included in one lecture’s description was “NOT YOUR PARENTS’ TEXTBOOK!” which, yes, using the “o” word — offended me a tad. And not only am I playing a shoddy offense but defense as well. In this political climate my sons’ generation is constantly maligned: labeled entitled, privileged, whiny, and naive. My friend John Spencer gets it. VSauce has a great video about “Juvonoia,” the idea that younger generations are lame.
So I suppose if those younger than I are a bit miffed and allow for casual ageism to creep into the conversations, I must try not to cast my own disapproving glare.
But ageism is actually quite horrifying. We’re all living longer, and creating a world where each generation gets a little smarter (thank you unleaded gasoline!) and a bit more savvy with all these critical thinking skills we’ve been touting. We’re creating awesome smart monsters humans. And while young folks may think of us as “elders” in their capitulating apologies, it has very real consequences.
Yes, young woman, you are contributing quite a bit. But over-40s are not quite “elders” yet.
So why does this get to me? Perhaps because it has an ‘ism’ at the end. “Ism’s” connote binary decision making: yes or no, black or white, up or down. Ageism is permission to assume someone cannot learn something about anything, but usually, especially technology, because they are old. Is it as bad as racism? I can’t make that claim. Its consequences may mean someone doesn’t get hired, so while we elders are trying to pay for our millennials’ college, we also can’t save for retirement. This article feels like a biography. Ageism decreases opportunity and allows for mocking on good days, and discrimination on bad. There’s that binary thinking again.
That moment when you realize someday you too, will be old as….never mind.
So, tiny examples: if I see something cool, guess what I do? I try to figure out how it was done. One of my little goals right now is to create gif doodles. Believe it or not, I can’t find any good tutorials, and this is making me feel a bit doddy. But they’re so cool! Not as cool as the Silicon Valley holographic mustache, but still…
Is there something you’d like to learn how to do? Can anyone help me with this? I’ve fallen in a gif and can’t get up!
PS I know how to use Snapchat. I just choose not to. My students laugh at me because my husband is my only friend. /sigh You’ll understand when you’re older.
http://sho.co/embed/17FCLRecently our administration sent out a valuable PD article, ‘Write More, Grade Less: Five Practices for Effectively Grading Writing’ by Lisa Lucas. Having been a big believer in the quick write for years, this sparked a renewed interest in R.A.F.T.S. writing. In addition to our drabbles, R.A.F.T.S. prompts can be content-focused, creative, and imaginative. Middle school students, in particular, feel the squeeze away from creative writing and often freeze up. RAFTS are not new, but they are tried and true.
All over social media my colleagues post ‘hang in there!’ Or, ‘is it a full moon?’ kinds of posts. Spring break for our district (and my son’s) occurred the first week of April, and we have quite a ways to go. In the Love shack, we have our own things going on: three years ago we managed to get our older son through his senior year, and now it’s time for our younger son, and it’s a{…………….} time and experience.
Daniel and his friend Nate at my school, job shadowing teachers. My son would be an amazing teacher, and I hope he considers this path. (Daniel is the one in the Seahawks sweatshirt.)
In addition to our personal lives, which always seem to go off the crazy train rails this time of year, we’re so focused on student learning, testing, classroom management, data collection, etc. we may be overlooking a key element to unnecessary stress, and that is stress from other colleagues. So this morning, I poured myself a large cup of magical coffee (see Exhibit A) and decided to collect my thoughts on stress, colleagues, and collegial relationships. My first order of business: don’t be a jerk.
Exhibit A: magical beans
So how do we cause each other stress? Well, it all depends. We may have long-standing philosophical differences that start to rub raw this time of year, or projects and collaborations that fall apart (group work doesn’t always work for adults, either). There may be personal grudges, or simply someone flat-out doesn’t like us. (And young padawan, that’s completely cool.) Dealing with one’s own or others’ overt or hidden mental illnesses shadow and taint our own reflective and critical thinking capacities: if we’re worried how something we say or do may be misconstrued, work and flow become mired down and muddy. These ideas are intended to keep me on track, try to be the best teacher and colleague I can until the year’s over. (And then I can be a jerk again?)
Disclaimer: I write for myself. If anything I say resonates with others, so be it. Writing is my therapy and helps my process and reflection. Think of it as advice columns for oneself.
How to Get to Summer In One Piece:
Embrace the monster: if you see your inner demons taking up residence, acknowledge them, and ask them to hold tight until the end of June. Monsters and inner demons are notoriously impatient and guaranteed they will disappear by then.//giphy.com/embed/11GmblfBjrA3gAvia GIPHY
2. Use your defense mechanisms wisely, or let them go entirely. You don’t need to shoot blood out of your eye or slime someone, as Sir Texas Horned Toad, or Lady Hagfish, you just need to make sure you’re not being a doormat or conceding or capitulating too quickly. Process and breathe. (Although that blood-eye thing would come in handy. What a cool writing prompt: what animal defensive mechanism super-power would you choose?)
One of my dear friends told me years ago my life lesson would be ‘patience.’ Thinking back and realizing I most likely had ADD then, (and learned coping strategies on my own), this may have been well-intended advice but not exactly doable for me. Patience sometimes feels like unnecessary waiting, but there’s a difference between considering points of view waiting and waiting passively to be trampled on. If instincts create a flight/fight response, something might be up, spidey senses tingling and all that:t tap into that patience thing now.
4. Or…Don’t be mindful: escape. Last night after a weird week with Bizarro-World events, I and my husband watched a movie or two, and I played with our puppy. Lovely.
This was taken a few weeks ago, and I love the joy–
4. Play your way. Clearly if others are doing their best to drag you into their mind games, change the rules. Take your ball and go home. If this happens, you’re not being petulant or punitive, it’s really okay to go. Ever watch kids play a board game, and there’s that one kid who bosses everyone, changes the rules to suit the game-play, and flips the board if things aren’t going their way? It happens with adults, too, only much more subtly.
5. Be around people who love you, no matter what.
My boys and my mom from a past trip: trying to plan for a summer road trip as I type…
6. Look at something beautiful, create something beautiful.
If stress from colleagues is like a pebble in your shoe, stop and take out the pebble. If you’re working in a toxic environment, you may need other allies or support. It might not be your destiny to clean it but get out of the way so others can. And be honest: are you the one causing the stress? Or you contributing to the drama? Dang: are you the pebble?! Well, if you can honestly say you’re operating with integrity and attempting with every best effort to act with empathy and maintain dignity for yourself and others, then no. You’re the rock. (Get it?)
Personally, I love my job. I’m having a fantastic year: my students are doing amazing work, it’s a blast teaching Humanities, and we’re all thriving. My own confidence is bolstered from last year, where I, and others, were on the precipice of jumping from panic and not from pride. Reminding myself I am good at many things, still have a lot to learn, and some colleagues find my friendship and professional collaborations useful is valuable. It’s okay to own the good things about ourselves, even if others are actively trying to tear us down. We are on our own adventures, and everyone’s got stuff on their minds and weighing on their hearts.
I need to remind myself to be kind, be patient, and do good work, and see it through. My younger son is my focus now, and my students. Honoring their hard work and growth are my core beliefs, not a game.
John Spencer recently put a question out on Facebook and then wrote a post, Why Aren’t Schools Teaching This?, about his love of copywriting, and how useful and authentic it is to teach students about clear writing.
Well, perhaps for one glaringly obvious reason is subjecting teachers to the PD that relates only to instruction, and not careers or avocations. We grow out of touch with what the ‘real world’ looks like. John was surprised that one of my past incarnations was one of a copywriter. Yup, that gig, and a few other things:
Babysitter (start the timeline of work at age 9)
Busgirl at a Chinese-Mongolian barbecue
Pizza maker
Babysitter again.
Retail–department store x2 summers
Men’s haberdashery salesgirl and suit measurement taker-er
Housecleaner
Waitress (excelled)
Waitress again (fired for not cleaning salad area properly)
Pizza DELIVERY girl (eek)
Credit card company customer service phone representative
Secretary (not good)
Sales/marketing
Sales/copywriting
Secretary again (not good at all)
Back to the sales/copywriting company (happy)
Mom
Baby room painter
Jewelry maker
Back to retail…
Retail again…
Starbucks
Teacher (started around 41…)
Going for full disclosure here: we have sheltered/coddled/protected/promoted/encouraged/supported (choose your parenting judgment choice or style) our sons regarding working. We have never expected them to work a part-time job, and for myself, I am conflicted about that to some degree. (But I’m always conflicted about every decision I make, to be candid.) My husband and I both worked at early ages, learning responsibility, those soft skills everyone’s infatuated with these days, and encountered so many characters and kinds of bosses, leaders, supervisors, it’s enough to write a Dickens’ novel. When the focus is solely on school, the result may be more academia, and less hope for life after school. If the job of school is to help kids get jobs, it’s never really done that. The dubious HuffingtonPost posted an article, Seven Things They Should Teach in School, and I argue three of them are outdated.
Except for how to split up a check at a restaurant…
Did at any point in time during school did someone teach me how to do my taxes? No, of course not. But yet somehow between knowing good CPAs, and TurboTax, I can ‘adult’ this just fine. What school may have helped me with is knowing why it’s important to pay taxes, what my civic duties are, and how taxes support our nation’s defense, education, and other infrastructure considerations. (AND why I caucus/vote!) Did school teach me how to clear a table, be courteous to customers, and work fast? No, but my mom sure did. Did school teach me how to write copy for pharmaceutical marketing/trade show copy? Nope. Not that either. It taught me grammar, spelling, and organization. Heck, back in THOSE days this concept of audience and voice was not introduced. Sentence diagramming, though, I rocked at that.
I actually like are vegetables disgusting The.
I strayed from point: back to teachers, PD, and not making ‘real world’ connections. How about instead of learning new instructional strategies, we teachers have professionals lead our professional development? Folks who are in the ‘other’ working world come and provide seminars and how-to’s with hands-on learning about skills and crafts in their fields? We did some of that already at our school, a career day for students, and I learned so much from the woman who spoke, hosted in my classroom. Not sure the students got it, but it put me back to the year my dad came and spoke to me and my classmates in second grade. Recently the University of Washington medical school came to my middle school–but wow what a cool day that would have been for teachers, too!
We all know teaching provides multiple transferable skills, and how important it is for students to have mentors and know what the next steps might be. I guess my concluding notion is that schools should not try to cover every possible knowledge hole, that the act of thinking critically, being good decision makers, growing with integrity and grace are more than enough. And if you can add a few ‘real world’ strategies in the mix, it’s not more, it’s awesome.
Here are some things I’ve tried in the past:
“Ad agency” – from my copywriting days I created a lesson where students worked in small ‘ad agencies’ to create a dog food ad based on either logos, pathos, or ethos. Grand fun. (This was pre-Mad Men days, so no scotch and cigarrettes, thank you very much.)
Amendments in Action: mentioned in another post — find real world examples of our Amendments in action, being enjoyed, supported or challenged:
Field Journals: simple as this: make a field journal, walk outside to the gravel, field, etc. and draw sketches and label what you see or question.
Interviews: the best ones came from the year I had students interview a family member.
Movie making: documentaries and journalism
Yellow Fever unit: how do humans deal with an epidemic depending on culture, technology (medical/scientific knowledge) of its time?
I have more, but I believe we all do. If you begin to look through your instructional practices through the notion of ‘real world-ism’ we can all find the triple-threat of pragmatism, engagement, and creativity.
No lie: just spent 15 minutes trying to find an article I read about annotating that was so perfect, so clear and meaningful surely I bookmarked it, saved it, so it could be easily digitally retrieved upon demand. Nope. Can’t find it. My digital life is too messy, too cluttered to find anything easily. So, I’ll cut my losses and just post what I did find.
But this isn’t about my messiness; it’s about annotating as a means to curation. What are some tools to promote annotating media in order to create mentorship, ownership, and reach the ultimate rung on the taxonomy scale: creativity?
OH MY GOSH I FOUND IT! (See? If I just hung out in my bathrobe and drank cold coffee long enough, I knew I could conjure information!)
Obviously, Google has options, but until I can figure out how to share things and not have YoloSwag69 make a mess out of shared documents, I’ve shied away from those.
Here’s a Prezi I put together a few months ago. It could use an update.
There are many, too many to list, in terms of screencasts, annotations on screen, capturing, photography and text mash-ups, but I will always love WordSwag and Skitch:
Postscript: Been doing some research on apps that read aloud, or will help some of my struggling readers. If it’s tough to read, it’s tough to annotate.
Teachers complain about discuss the quality and quantity of professional development (PD) constantly: they seek for differentiation, wish it was more teacher-led as opposed to ‘sit and soak’ and other poor pedagogical methods, there’s no time for PD, there’s too much time taken up with PD, too hot, too cold, sun’s in my eyes, etc. We have instructional coaches, TOSAs, continuing credits, clock-hours (do other states have this concept?), team leaders, curriculum or department heads, district supervisors, outside resources; all manner of talent and authoritative voices providing a spectrum of instruction for the instructors.
But when teachers are given the opportunity to learn something new and they flat-out refuse to participate, what happens then?
Two examples came my way recently, (not naming names to protect the innocent, and not so innocent): in one district, the teachers work their daily shift and feel resentful when any professional development is offered (even with extra pay) off-hours. The district leader tried to bring a reading guru in for elementary school teachers, and the attendance was extremely poor. The second anecdote happened when a good friend tried to share an amazing lesson from a PSWP/NWP teacher/consultant. The morning of her share-out her allotted timeslot came after someone shared charts from Pinterest so they could track growth. The focus was simply tracking growth, no instruction. A huge component of teaching writing is showing and modeling to students a writing life, and how to craft this ‘writing life’ — which means–you write. The teachers wouldn’t write, huffed and puffed, and were as recalcitrant as many of their students.
What a shame.
Seriously.
Most of the teachers were so focused on the tracking of data they’ve lost complete sight about what good instruction is so they CAN GET THE GOOD DATA THEY WANT. Dang, did I just hit the all caps button–okay, okay– calm down. I’m fine. Deep breaths. Deeeeeep breaths…
I recently had the opportunity to share some solid, cross-curricular vocabulary instructional strategies with the staff (another reason I think my new admin rocks). I saw a need, asked my principal, and she green-lit my presentation. Now: timing. That’s the thing. It couldn’t be during a staff meeting because the necessary focus (and very useful and organized) needed for veterans and new staff trained for testing. This proved another opportunity for the veterans to share tips and knowledge about testing, so that was empowering. Since I wouldn’t have a (trapped) audience, I offered the staff two options: an afternoon session and a morning one. My principal sent out an email, too, and offered extra pay for those who attended. During the afternoon session, I had one colleague show up, but because it was just the two of us, we got a chance to explore further. The morning session an ELL paraeducator and a science teacher attended, and that also proved beneficial: the three staff members who attended clearly wanted to expand their knowledge, and the conversations were collaborative and we all learned from one another. They wanted to be there and took away vocabulary strategies for their content areas.
So what goes awry with PD? There may be multiple issues at play:
Purpose for instruction isn’t clear
Benefit to teachers’ time isn’t clear
Benefit to teachers’ content area isn’t differentiated or valued
Benefits to student learning aren’t clear
Tied in with data and mythological magic bullet approach (this will fix it!)
Is ‘just another program the district spent money on without consulting us/me’
My friend and I were marveling at one of our mutual mentors, and how she calmly controls a room full of unruly teachers, gains their engagement and curiosity, and gives practical, real-time instructional powerhouses of lessons. I find that PD that I’ve paid for, planned for, etc., also holds more value than some of the sweeping, generalized PD I’ve received ‘for free.’
And just as the issues for ‘bad PD’ are complex, the solutions are as well. Let me rethink that: maybe not. Go through the issues list and when planning for PD, if you can reflectively and honestly respond to those PD pitfalls, you’ve most likely done a pretty good job of coming up with something that folks want. I have found I can lessen the ‘shoot the messenger’ pain when I’m honest with my colleagues. Be honest with the PD–treat your colleagues and staff with respect, don’t ‘talk down to’ or treat them like students, even if you think they’re ‘acting that way.’ It’s tough to grow mindsets when the soil is toxic.*
Sometimes convincing ourselves (of fill in the blank) is the most challenging argument of all; we set rules and boundaries of fair play, and then (sometimes aggressively) expect others to abide. And one life occasion where this is grandly obvious is the activity of “group work.”
Let’s talk about the beast that is ‘group work.’ There are multiple lists of how to make group work run more smoothly, and whether we want to admit this horrible truth about adulthood to our young charges, a reality of most work environments. And like just about everything with a label, not all group work, project-based, problem-based, etc. endeavors is created equal. Four 13 years olds deciding how the XVIII Amendment altered their lives does not necessarily engage the intellect or free the senses. Rarely will the ONE IDEA TO RULE THEM ALL emerges when more than one person is in charge: the compromises and ‘go along’ attitudes vary on spectrums depending on a group member’s individual temperament. Does the student see themselves as the leader, the boss, or the bewildered head-nodder? And we all play our part in group work--think about any staff meeting or committee you’ve been on, and how much effectively and efficiently gets done. Not much. Perhaps it is the ‘getting done’ part —do we want the result the process or the product?
And yes, while introducing the group project we completed right before the break, I scared my students with the TALES OF THE OPEN CRYPT OFFICE SPACES, and kind of a quasi ‘all for one fails, one for all fails’ kind of tactic. Not very nice of me, but they forced my hand –listening and collaborating are skills I hold dear, and by this time in the year it was time to put those values to the test. And up to this point, group work was one area of deficiency. I do want them to achieve great things, and learning how to be heard and gain people’s trust and belief is part of that. But I also hold the individual studio/workshop time and process sacred. If I had to choose between creating in a vacuum, never sharing my work, or to listen to other people’s ideas in a group forever, that would be a special kind of hellish choice for me.
Perhaps it’s time to focus on the individual’s skill set in terms of their self-perception before going into a group project. In other words, each student reflects in an individual asset portfolio, thinking about their own perceptions of their role in a group project, their strengths, and their triggers. I can think of one student who is shining in cooking in her elective class, and gets the other students to follow directions and is a leader, while during the group work for the Amendments Project, she floundered and pointed fingers. My class work demands reading, and she struggles with this. Therefore, her sense of self-efficacy diminished per the demands of the tasks.
How Does Self-Perception Affect Performance?
Kids who see themselves as “good” students tend to trust their efforts. Because they believe in their ability to adapt and learn, these students have a high sense of “self-efficacy” (Ruddell and Unrau 2004). We can think of self-efficacy as a kind of faith in future results; it’s a student’s belief that, through personal effort, he or she can master new knowledge and skills. The idea of self-efficacy also reflects an understanding that academic competency is an acquired— not a natural— ability. Everyone can relate to the feeling of being a novice. We expect to make mistakes when learning to ride a bike, play soccer, or drive a car. However, some students don’t see the same learning curve when it comes to their academic work. They see themselves as “bad” students who have “always” struggled in school. Revealing the process of apprenticeship that all learning requires can reassure many frustrated students— and help them understand that the first step toward better performance is to see themselves as capable of achievement. Students who develop this strong sense of self-efficacy are, not surprisingly, more motivated to improve their reading and writing skills. Self-efficacy can be especially important for low-income and minority students. Research suggests that sustained effort over time, as reflected by high school GPA, is a more accurate predictor of college success than high-stakes assessments like the SAT— a test on which students with high socioeconomic status typically outperform students with low socioeconomic status (Geiser and Santelices 2007). Personal attributes such as motivation, discipline, and perseverance— in other words, a high sense of self-efficacy— can be even more important indicators of academic preparation than traditional aptitude tests. This means that students who consistently trust their efforts have a better chance of completing a college education.
Fletcher, Jennifer (2015-02-28). Teaching Arguments: Rhetorical Comprehension, Critique, and Response (Kindle Locations 4663-4677). Stenhouse Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Here are some of my tips about group work that I’ve learned the hard way:
Always balance a group portion with an individual one.
Allow them time to divvy up the tasks to allow for ownership. Make this process transparent.
Provide time for a group mission statement, resolution, or creed. Post it on the wall.
Create a template if necessary, but also, allow more advanced group work to lead toward medium agnosticism.
For middle school kids, they will be furious and resentful if one of their groupmates isn’t pulling her share. Welcome to life, kiddo. See #1, and let that be your response.
Consider the process over product: for the Amendment Project (details below), the target and success depended on more upon what they learned, and what they could teach me and each other than perfect spelling or presentation skills at the front of the room. (Big fan of the gallery-walk structure.)
The Amendment Project
As with any new unit of study, tweaks and adjustments are required.
Make sure to give space for their individual contributions (per the template)
Provide discussions/forums to allow for individual contributions
Be aware that many shared, collaborative tech tools let us down: PowerPoint on-line is still wonky and weird. One student was near tears because it deleted his final thoughts paragraph. I’m disappointed, too, because he is an articulate thinker and I always enjoy reading his insights.
There were many excellent exchanges and sharing of ideas that resulted from this project. One student looked up at me, shaking his head and said, “Mrs. Love…electoral college…” I know, young squire….I know. The other one happened when a student didn’t think the law about being a ‘natural born citizen’ was fair. I said well, it is what it is, basically, and then later, another member of his group respectfully said, “Mrs. Love, you’re right most of the time….” and I said, “But this time I’m not, right?” He said yes. Then we had one of the best discussions about ‘natural born citizens’ in the context of its time, and what it means now, and that laws are messy–and that’s the beauty. I could see a roomful of young men and women who would be amazing leaders of this nation, and I told them if this was their mission, to learn, be a scholar, understand law, and they could create amendments to suit their vision. Dangerous thinking? Absolutely. The key is teaching context, and any concept in a contexual framework of ‘then and now’ creates the liveliest and most engaging of humanities discourse.
Every single one of my students was successful with this project — every one. Every student contributed to the conversation, the work, and the process. They took the laws and considered them as relevant to their worlds today. I can’t ask for any greater self-efficacy than that.
