My big question this morning: how do we teach, and learn, to think critically?
Not the surface-level fluff–but the hard questions, the wrestling with the trifecta of intellectual stagnation: cognitive dissonance, justification, and rationalization?
Do we need heroes/heroines?
What would happen…if…we…didn’t?
What if…we were good to each other, did no harm, and made our classrooms, lecture halls, and online spaces engaged and safe places to discuss questions and seek ideas and answers?
Consider and read this thread: keep track and curate the narratives you teach: by every figure, do a character study. We need to face and review the decisions of the past and reconcile and come to terms with our future.
Example: what if Ruth Hopkins didn’t follow this path? Discuss the narrative of Lincoln’s heroism and his great, grave flaws?
155 years ago today, the largest mass execution in U.S. history took place under the orders of Abraham Lincoln. On Dec 26, 1862, the day after Christmas, 38 Dakota warriors were hanged in Mankato, MN. #Dakota38pic.twitter.com/N8gSmbZwUG
This feels very big to me right now, and scary, but this is the gift I want to give my students most of all: the courage to question, and draw their own conclusions, and then have the mindfulness and mental flexibility to adjust those conclusions if necessity demands.
Last week I attended a professional development meeting with George Couros, author of the Innovator’s Mindset. I jotted tons of Couros’ quotes in my notebook, all important to the kind of teacher I keep striving to become:
“How do you cultivate questions of curiosity and not compliance?”
“Data driven is the stupidest term in education.”
“Your childhood is not their childhood. Nostalgia is what gets us stuck.”
“Relationships matter! Nobody in this room is as interesting as YouTube. If you are all about the content, you are already irrelevant.”
“You need to make the positives so loud that the negatives are hard to hear.”
“Would you want to spend the whole day learning in your own classroom?”
“Every day is where your legacy is created.”
Once I got over my fleeting envy at her having the opportunity to hear George Couros speak, the overwhelming sense of luck and joy that someone captured these thoughts and framed them in a way that speaks to me, and encourage me to be better–forgive myself of missteps and be better. Every day.
The only one I may disagree with is the nostalgia piece. It requires more nuance. A few years ago students started a Flashback Friday, where they asked me questions about my child-teenage hood, and I answered as honestly as possible. Agreeably, getting bogged down in nostalgia isn’t healthy for anyone. I’ve often said nostalgia is a heckuva drug. It’s the Mirror of Erised. But a relevant story in the context of a teachable moment is not the same as nostalgia. Just yesterday I explained why there are the terms “cc” and “bcc” on emails.
And yes, I do try to make my classroom one I want to be in. I heard the phrase ‘dogfooding” years ago, and took it to heart: basically, eat your own product. Yesterday I was frustrated with one class because they could not stop side talking. I told them what they were learning (about Outlook email–poor little future borgs, as my cohort member from WABS/STEM, told me) wasn’t the most exciting, but they had to listen and follow along step by step. That may be the hardest thing about computer instruction, and I’ve been very honest with them. Everyone in that class is all over the map, and sometimes we just have to keep in step.
Today I’ll take with me these words, and try to do better. And laugh to myself about the data-driven line.
Aziz Ansari recently put himself on an internet diet, and maybe the rest of us should follow suit.
I bought the full-meal deal from Freedom a year ago, and it’s been buggy ever since, and the customer support is confusing, but I’ll keep trying. I’ve tried to limit myself: making jewelry again, just reading (though it is on an i-pad/Kindle), and doing other things…but it’s been tough. All I’ve succeeded in doing is making a mess. This next week I’ll focus on finishing up the computer technology curriculum and nailing down the first few weeks of ELA. My schedule next year will be a bit different, and I’m trying to be flexibly- proactive. (Whatever that means!) It was time I went through my own digital hoarding and pulled out some of the best articles/ideas.
One can, indeed, Google context about a topic. How deep down the rabbit hole should we go?
I get the statement: it’s intended to be for Depth of Knowledge Level One Yes/No kinds of questions, Costas’ level one knowledge, bottom rung of Bloom’s. However — these days the strata of misinformation abounds, and even yes/no questions can result in horrific results. And these days, it is life and death.
I needed my help from my friend Sharon to help ME get some context for this post, and she came to the rescue:
I tried a little experiment, suggested by my husband. I Googled “What are vaccines?” and “Are vaccines good for you?” both level one questions that should result in facts or a yes/no.
Here is what I got with this first search statement:
(Note: most results are sound.)
Here is with search terms my husband tried:
This is when we start going to CrazyTown.
Questions, even with yes or no answers, can be inherently biased. People seek the answers their cognitive dissonance and biases want. “Google” Benghazi, Alex Jones, Pizzagate, etc. Heck, look up “president handshakes.” No, never mind. Don’t.
Google does its best to filter and promote factual information with its complicated algorithms and data. But Fake News is a violent, dangerous issue. I wish we could go back a decade at least when we could, with reasonable critical thinking skills, discern fact from opinion/fiction.
Here is something Sharon and I can fix, so look for a Part II. In the meantime
Use DOK questions first to create an understanding and close reading of Google results. That way, when students are told to “Google it,” they must come away with a minimum of three credible sources.
Close Reading:
Look at top searches
Look at the date published
Look at the publisher and media format: is it a credible news source? Blog? Credible Youtube channel or ‘just some dude?’
Look at links and pingbacks
Know how search engines work
Tap into the best Social Studies teachers you know — make sure any lesson on search engines include conversations about primary, secondary, and tertiary documentation and artifacts.
Call upon the best ELA teachers you know to discuss point of view, perspective, fact, opinion, and truth
Call upon the best Science teachers you know to help promote scientific research and how bias creeps in.
Call upon your best Math teachers to discuss proving factual knowledge and a variety of algorithmic paths.
Oh, and never forget Electives, PE & Health to talk about false and factual information that spreads on the internet. The arts and the curated effect of beautiful and lasting resources on the Internet for one and all.
So yes, don’t spend a lot of time teaching if it can be Googled. But teaching how Google works is teaching time well spent.
Oh, and I found this, and of course, can find its origins:
So folks didn’t know that NPR’s annual reading of the Declaration of Indepence was just that: a reminder of what our nation is founded upon, what were the reasons for the Revolutionary War, and throwing over a tyrannous ruler.
Here is the first draft of potential discussions, lessons, etc.
For summer, between walks and mini extensional crisis, I shall produce a series of posts designed to curate some of the key and critical ideas.
First up: Fake News.
A few weeks ago, I fell trap to a fake news story. As my husband says, the amygdala is the boss. Wait.The Amygdala is the Boss.My amygdala took over, after the daily onslaught of anxiety-dipped 31-flavors of horrors froze my brain, and I posted a story (about a hate crime that may or may not had taken place) and a friend (whom I frequently joust with regarding politics) called me out on it. Imagine my embarrassment. However, our unwavering vigilance needs reinforcement, what with the take-over of multiple news outlets spouting the same thing, the news is no longer journalism but continued, biased rhetoric.
The Resources and Lessons:
Possible teaching point:
Gathering credible, verifiable information is critical in making decisions, including life or death decisions. Understanding how writers and sources manipulate readers into believing falsehoods and lies are critical to survival. In order to know the difference between truth, facts, and opinions, and fake news from credible journalism, many factors must be understood and analyzed.
Find four news stories, two fake or questionable, and two from a reputable site.
Review Fact, Opinion, and Truth.
Discuss how fake news uses all three to bolster their credibility.
Use the Fact, Opinion, and Truth annotation/note document. Change the left column into the articles you’re using.
Have teams of students challenge each other with fake and credible news stories and determine which ones are which.
Students find important articles and discuss why people want to believe them. What is the nature of these beliefs? Fear? Cultural? Monetary? Then – have students write credible journalism to counter the fake.
Make it matter: students need to be able to share what conspiracy theories they think might be real and do the research.
This will be a long post: I am retracing my steps on the creation of a unit. TL:DR: Zombies and survival themes are great for 8th-grade students. E-mail me if you want resources or have questions.
One of my teammates Nate had a fantastic idea for argumentative work:
Zombies.
With the help of my teammates Nate, Sabrina, and the Notice & Note social media site, especially Beth Crawford, we unleashed zombies. Trying to put together a unit without common planning or time to meet (each of us is in different phases in life: I could work on units all weekend, and I did over mid-winter break, but it’s better to collaborate with trustworthy, competent folks). We did the best we could, and it needs tweaking and refinement, but out of the box—not too shabby!
I put the call out to Notice and Note and received many great ideas. Beth Crawford followed up with Google docs resources, etc. Some things had to be left behind, and some were added without assessment concepts nailed down. But then again, when you’re dealing with flesh-melting concepts, it’s hard to nail anything down.
Took pics after Zombie Tag and created a Walking Dead look using Snapseed.
Rationale: students would discover their own personality traits, both figurative and literal, that add positive benefits for working with other partners. The goal was to have them create a personality inventory and share their strengths and advantages with others.
What worked: students like knowing where they fell on a quasi- Meyers-Briggs scale and gamer’s quiz.
What needs to be better: more time, and more explanation on how their inventory works with other personalities, or what pitfalls they might encounter. Critically thinking about attributes is one of the most difficult things to do.
Partner: pare down to fifteen items out of the twenty: You know you’ve succeeded when a group of kids argues about duct tape versus rope for twenty minutes.
Rationale: coming up with important items in times of scarcity for survival, and perhaps how to plan ahead (we are in earthquake territory, after all)
Rationale: having students curate their resources for research using an annotated bibliography would help them understand the importance of discerning and critiquing articles closely and carefully.
What worked: It served the purpose of getting kids to read, and by golly, they did really try: not sure how many I have turned in, but I know many of them were engaged in this. As soon as I re-introduced it as a “playlist” of a topic, the lightbulbs went off!
What could be better: more time to read articles together, and more focus on truth, opinion and fact lessons.
This is a poster my friend Sharon Clarke and I put together on our collective wisdom:
Sharon is the best.
Integration:
ELA: Argumentative Unit/Critical Thinking
PE/Health: How does disease spread? How much would your backpack weigh? Could you run with that weight?
Social Studies: how are civilizations created, and how do they fall? (Article about CDC funding being cut helped with this discussion.)
What worked about integration: we barely scratched the surface. Maybe next year we can get the whole school involved.
Writing: the partner teams had to write a collaborative ‘end of world’ scenario. This writing will appear on their shared PowerPoint.
What worked: they got this, mostly.
What could be better: More time. (Seeing a trend here?) Students didn’t have time to fully craft their POV points in the story: the plan was to have them create a story together, and then write a first-person narrative on what they were doing when everything fell apart, and how they eventually met up and survived. Students who love role-play and writing jumped right on this: students who are not quite patched-in with their own creativity didn’t. But as all good growth mindset conversations end: YET.
8. Zombie Partner Shared PowerPoint: The partner created a shared PowerPoint with many of these pieces. One aspect was the “film” slide: add any multimedia possible that goes along with survival or zombies, or film themselves. Some kids used their webcams and shot pics/videos, others found videos on YouTube, etc.
9. Article Links samples:
Here are some articles, etc. I gathered so students could choose for their annotated bibliography:
Years ago I read The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I didn’t have anyone to share my thoughts about it with, until later a friend casually mentioned she hated it. It never occurred to me until that moment that someone I loved wouldn’t love the book, too, or at least find some worthwhile metaphor. Those little moments, when we don’t connect with someone we love, are odd…but it happens. Life would be unbearably boring if we all thought and believed the same things. The thing that nags at me, though, is when we realize someone we love believes or has a different opinion, we often awkwardly dismiss the moment, and don’t ask their point of view or perspective. It’s like we’re trying to be polite and not come off as challenging or argumentative. (Because especially us ladies…oh boy do we ever get in a pickle when we state our opinions…)
But these are not discussions about literary preferences, or who prefers microbrews to martinis. Some have a chemical hatred of cilantro, while others find its presence the only thing that matters. (I am the latter.) This is about something that cuts, and has cut us all, much more deeply, and perhaps left some scars. There is no denying in our nation’s point in history we are in deep, deep trouble, and not necessarily all because of who’s in office. We hate each other now, and if we don’t hate, we are suspicious to a terrifying degree.
If corrective facts only make matters worse, what can we do to convince people of the error of their beliefs? From my experience, 1. keep emotions out of the exchange, 2. discuss, don’t attack (no ad hominem and no ad Hitlerum), 3. listen carefully and try to articulate the other position accurately, 4. show respect, 5. acknowledge that you understand why someone might hold that opinion, and 6. try to show how changing facts does not necessarily mean changing worldviews. These strategies may not always work to change people’s minds, but now that the nation has just been put through a political fact-check wringer, they may help reduce unnecessary divisiveness.
Numbers 1 and 2 are where the wheels came off my bus, so to speak. And, in fairness, I am wondering if I’m now experiencing my own media saturation, or “availability bias,” jumping at every shadow — because there are so many now–
Rothschild blamed politicians for overstating the terrorist risk. Media saturation is also to blame. Having ready access to images of every atrocity known to mankind makes us prone to what behavioral scientists call “availability bias,” the tendency to give weight to what comes to mind most easily. The blanket coverage of the Sept. 11th attacks successfully seared the images of terrorism on our brains; shootings, which happen every day and—with the exception of a few mass shootings—are largely ignored, have less of an effect.
We are all jumping at shadows, but unfortunately, many of those shadows have weapons.
It is one thing when strangers have unfounded beliefs, but a whole ‘another issue when it’s a relative or close friend.
And that is when I lost my stuff.Calling Obama a “fascist” is so distorted and wrong– and I had the painful anagnorisis** that not only was my relative living in some distortion field that so many of his race, gender, background, and beliefs led him to.
“‘Hope and Change’ is over.” ***
Taking a pause here: I stand by the Politifact article:
It does what I wish all students and citizens would do: take a step-by-step analysis and provide CONTEXT AND COUNTERARGUMENTS. Yes, big all-caps. Without context no discussion is possible.
In this entire post, there is one nugget I want my relative, and others, to take away–and this is discourse 101.
Do your own damn homework.
That means:
Analyze the facts, truths, and opinions in a piece. Facts are quantifiable data: truths are personal beliefs, and opinions are positions. Sometimes truths and opinions can get a little muddy. Anecdotal evidence is not facts.
Annotate the sources and statements, and find three credible resources that support and refute the claims. And consider: how is it being supported? To what gain? And how is it being refuted, a “because I told you so?” statement or other findings?
A credible resource: finding and curating credible resources does not mean that the source can’t be argued or debated. It can be an opinion piece that uses data and facts to support claims. Often reading what is NOT there is the critical piece.
Part III
About this time I turned off notifications, so I didn’t see his comments asking if I had read the EO: in truth, I had read some of the highlights from various news sources, including his preferred sources.
As acting attorney general, Ms. Yates picked the fight of her life on Monday when she ordered the Justice Department not to defend President Trump’s executive order blocking refugees and restricting immigration to the United States. Ms. Yates became convinced, based on the president’s own statements, that he had intended to unlawfully single out Muslims, senior officials said.
“We have comments from the president about what this is supposed to do,” Ms. Yates said in one meeting on Monday, according to two people involved in the discussions. She later added, “The intent was clear from the face of it.”
And here is John Green, who somehow manages to do the smart, calm thing, and provide a piece about this EO:
Little, little men, with little little hands are capable of changing who we are, who we want to be, and all the laws of the land may not be able to stop them.
Part IV
What is my conclusion in all this? Am I feeling more heartsick and discouraged, or calmer, with clarity? Yes, the latter. I am not going to engage in these pointless battles. If the person on the other end wants to reach clarity and purpose, understand that we can disagree, but have to do so with facts and strong listening skills. (My “grow up” comment does not fit this category.)
So yes, that is the president’s press secretary rationalizing why it was important to our national security and safety to handcuff a five-year-old. Most of the things happening now come from their own mouths, on tape. They can try to gaslight us all they want, but we are not the same 20th century generation– we are far worse, and far better. It’s about understanding the onslaught of information, and not allowing their lies to stand. It isn’t fake news. If anyone wonders why most Americans are fighting so hard to end his time in office before he and his ilk destroy the Constitution, maybe you’ll join us, too, once you see for yourself.
But I won’t hold my breath: I’ll breathe and keep working to make things right.
*Not sure how The Daily Beast stacks up. To research later.
