coComments related to davisfc50

Lately I've been into videos w

2007-10-26T02:59:34.815+02:00

Lately I've been into videos which demonstrate the value in rigorous though unsexy preparation. Exhibit A right there. 90% preparation. 10% execution.

Nice. Glad it helped. *makes

2007-10-26T02:57:56.965+02:00

Nice. Glad it helped. *makes mental note to up the rigor for his high school students*

Yeah, we're still working with

2007-10-10T04:44:23.619+02:00

Yeah, we're still working with him.

Great stuff. Thanks.

2007-09-30T03:28:11.991+02:00

Great stuff. Thanks.

First song was "My List," by T

2007-09-09T18:31:06.852+02:00

First song was "My List," by The Killers. Second was "Brother," by The Annuals. Both great. Thanks for the interest, everyone.

Reckon Todd & Steve win the bo

2007-07-16T23:18:52.273+02:00

Reckon Todd & Steve win the bonus points for catching the return of Prezbo. Steve gets an extra pat on the back for catching Max Fischer. You have to amuse yourself sometimes, you know? Todd's last question is worth addressing here, though the issue felt too specific when I wrote the post. Printers are dumb. Copiers are dumber. And when you use both, you've gotta eliminate the guesswork. So I took those photos into Photoshop and crushed out the grays. So now we're at lots of blacks and whites and very few midtones, which should reproduce fairly accurately. We'll see.

I say, "anyone need anything b

2007-07-16T08:19:36.054+02:00

I say, "anyone need anything before we begin?" No one says anything. I say, "clear off your desks." They do. I pass out the same test to everyone. Nineteen hands raise and nineteen kids ask me if they can take their concept checklists out and see what they don't have to take. I curse under my breath. They check their lists and then put an x through the concepts they don't have to take. This is strictly a note to themselves. I've got the number 5 in my gradebook beneath any test they don't have to take. It's nice. These assessments take, like, twenty minutes tops. Low stakes, low stress, high reward.

Nancy, you have any examples o

2007-07-16T05:11:07.733+02:00

Nancy, you have any examples of your work on the ol' Intertubes? Sounds like good design I'd like to see. Jackie, somewhere in the first week, no matter what the subject or the class, every teacher runs through her syllabus. Maybe there is some innovative syllabus work out there I'm unaware of but I kinda doubt it. The reality for student x is that in five or more classes she's gonna get a thick packet including (variously) school policies, class policies, school expected learning results, and state standards. The teacher will take a linear route through the material and straight from the sound of this dull starter's pistol, the student knows it's gonna be a year like every other. Which is fine if a student has enjoyed every other year, but for struggling math student y, she hasn't, and this isn't fine. Somewhere in my second year I realized this and then built a condensed syllabus. Not only that, I chopped out the important parts so students would have something to occupy themselves while I talked, revealed each portion individually, and took guesses. I hear rumor that some teachers develop class rules with the students during this time. I'm not sure I'm ready for that but I doknow that something different has to happen here, that as first impressions go, your standard syllabus experience ain't a great one. P.S. The field trip policy was school policy at my last school, my policy at this one. My students seems to understand the policy at this one but they forge my signature anyway. P.P.S. This presentation's gonna surface in a couple different forms around here, video probably last among them.

Thought I was done with this b

2007-06-25T05:27:21.653+02:00

Thought I was done with this but since you've put the ad hominem attacks on pause, I don't mind picking it up again. Our presuppositions are totally missing each other here, which makes debating the specifics as frustrating as you've experienced. You ask me what I'm doing to distract kids from t.v., as if t.v., by its very nature, were a trap I needed to coax kids away from. But I regard t.v., at its very nature, just like I do blogs, books, free speech, movies, music, and a free-standing block of marble: totally innocuous. Both personally and professionally, however rarely t.v. comes up, I push kids and friends towards shows that are interesting, thought-provoking, inspiring, and entertaining, shows that do more than just flatter their viewer, that do more than just pander to their viewer's presuppositions of the world, shows that breach the realm of art. (If we can describe books, music, movies, and sculpture as "art" but not t.v. then I'll need "art" defined for me.) Even more enthusiastically than that, though, I push kids towards moderation, towards a varied life which includes education, recreation,exercise, and, yeah, entertainment. From your comments, I gather you see t.v. standing opposite these goals (while, presumably, blogs, books, movies, and music do not). Or perhaps you think t.v. can achieve those goals but isn't worth the cost of all these students sitting on their barcaloungers watching hours of junk every day. You've also mentioned a dissatisfaction that t.v. isn't educational, which strikes me a bit like complaining that an apple isn't an orange. Anyway, our base suppositions are so far out of sync, our not finding common ground on this won't surprise me. At the very least, you've gotta know that my friends and I are e-mailing, positively abuzz over this issue. We're excited like I've rarely seen us by the vast potential of any medium to edify its audience. T.V., in particular, is undergoing an audience-driven renaissance (c.f. nuts campaign) . We all think this is an exciting time to be alive and the more communication mediums at the party the better.

Right, that makes sense. And

2007-06-22T19:41:27.248+02:00

Right, that makes sense. And if I ever have kids, I imagine the leash I lash around t.v. is going to be pretty tight, hopefully without affecting my ability to engage my kids on the matter. In the world but not of it. That sort of thing. The conversation here has since grown to include several other participants, with motivations and convictions varying. With my most recent comment, I wanted to suss out the underlying motivation for exterminating an entire medium (which seems to be Jim's position).

The moral equivalence I'm push

2007-06-22T03:21:54.137+02:00

The moral equivalence I'm pushing between blogs & books & music & t.v. -- all empty vessels to be filled with either garbage or gold -- is getting a loud *thbbt!* from the crowd. Clearly no one's buying it. So fine, let's try this another way. Just so I'm straight: we're all, like, lose t.v. because America (in general) and our students (in particular) waste too much time in front of it and what time they spend is pretty unedifying. Am I clear on that? That's the rationale? So what else do we get rid of? Movies? Summer blockbusters? Music that talks about killing cops? Violent video games? Bloggers who threaten other bloggers? Free speech? Who decides? You? Me? The government? Y'all don't seem to realize the slippery slope you're standing on, which would be merely provocative if you were my old college roommate and we were knocking back Blue Ribbons on adirondack chairs. But y'all are educators and you're burying your heads on one of the coolest opportunities we have to preach some moderation, to play a part in the redemption of corrupt forms. Y'all are taking yourselves out of the game and I've got only swells of pity for that.

Given its lousy reputation, I'

2007-06-20T05:58:36.910+02:00

Given its lousy reputation, I'm glad most of all that t.v. is getting any discussion at all. Just to clarify, what any teacher does in her home is outta my control and none of my business. Chris has the daughter thing going on and I'm not going to pretend to understand the ethical compromises one has to strike in that situation. But in the classroom, I worry about any teacher who just casts off t.v. as blithely as both Chris and Mrs. Durff do in their personal lives. When Mrs. Durff drops the double exclamation point after "I don't even own a tv," I read it exactly the same as: "I don't even own a DVD player!!" "I don't even own an iPod!!" "I don't even own a computer!!" Each of those spews out horrendous immoral crap. But one of our most basic charges as teachers is to help kids make sense of the world around them, which includes the media that engages them. The same discerning, wheat-and-chaff-separating stance we take towards blogs in the classroom must be identical to the one we take towards t.v. Anything less is hypocritical, I'm afraid. (Neither Chris nor Mrs. Durff have addressed their classroom stance towards t.v. so my accusations of hypocrisy kinda remain targetless at this point.)

I find it hard to turn away.

2007-06-18T02:24:09.708+02:00

I find it hard to turn away. This stuff is creeping up and, even if blogs (e.g.) don't replace teachers, they're going to become every bit the tool that the blackboard/whiteboard is now. I pay attention hoping to find some practical, classroom-oriented advice for assimilating. But too often it's like you say, "lots of generalizations about teachers whose enthusiasm about All Things 2.0 is more guarded than theirs." It's been good reading your contrarianism over at your blog. Your skepticism isn't universal. You haven't advocated for "nothing" or even accepted that the choice is one between "all" or "nothing." I wish I saw more of the same academic egalitarianism from bloggers who think we lecture too much.

Jackie & Christian, I took som

2007-06-14T06:42:07.945+02:00

Jackie & Christian, I took some heat awhile back for turning my blogroll into a boys club. Kim is the first girl blogger whose writing I've cottoned to closely enough to recommend. Not sure if you two are digging for some latent sexism or if I was just too obscure with my "xx chromosome" remark. Jonathan, I'm glad you stopped by. I think of you and TMAO when I think of fantastic teachers (by all available evidence) who haven't embraced blogs, wikis, and podcasts, and who don't deserve the shabby rep offered them by the School 2.0 crowd. Jeremy, first, I'd retract the "emblematic problem" remark if I could. If this was about one guy's commentary on some other guy's blog, I wouldn't have spent the time. This is larger. Still, your evenhanded tone here ("I just thought it was about sharing ideas." Nice.) is at odds with both your tone at Christian's blog and your subsequent disinclination to take up some curious, completely uninterrogative questions about your educational philosophy. You aren't pigheaded. On the evidence of that exchange,you were quick to ascribe pigheaded motivations to me, a teacher unconvinced by (but not ignorant of) your methods, and then too [fill in the blank; I don't want to presume your motives here] to answer some surface-scratching questions thereabout. (Thanks, by the way, for answering them now.) Christian, too much agreement there really to do much with. My only issue with your comment is semantic. If "School 2.0" simply means a two-way conversation between learners then, fine, I don't want to lump it into this pile I've created. But these terms are what we make of them and, for better or worse, it has been co-opted by a crowd of people that, in many places, are smug and self-righteous. This ogreification of one's idealogical opponents, this transmogrification of those who disagree with oneself into stupid caricatures isn't a phenomenon restricted to those indicted by this particular post. That vilification is an unfortunate tendency of any marginalized group. It just feels particular intense with The Crowd Formerly Called School 2.0, and particularly personal. The best analogue here is Christianity, a noun which like School 2.0 means vastly different things depending on whom you ask. I think that Christianity, by its strictest definition, has some great stuff that can irrevocably improve lives, but its most fervent practitioners have damaged themselves and others by demonizing the unbeliever and adopting an either/or turn/burn mentality. I don't like this tendency no matter what the ideology.

For whatever it's worth, a com

2007-06-14T00:30:20.079+02:00

For whatever it's worth, a commenter named "Jeremy" opened up that particular thread with a caustic assault, not just on a teacher's methodology, but on his motives for that methodology. Just lame. And hardly uncommon among School 2.0 types, who, from my experience, assume the most pigheaded motives for any teacher who hasn't leapt aboard the wikis, blogs, & podcasting train. So the swift rebuttal to your multi-point comment is that I wasn't talking about you. That other guy is the emblematic problem. His rhetorical technique sticks it good to teachers who couldn't care less what School 2.0 has to say and alienates those who do. That quick link was easily misconstrued, though, and for that, my apologies.

Jonathan: And I t

2007-05-30T00:23:24.549+02:00

Jonathan: And I think the relation to your description is this: that bottom hump often comes form kids feeling overwhelmed and just quitting. If you can find a way (and it sounds like you have) to keep them from quitting, you have a good shot at avoiding the lower hump. What I did was different, but to the same end.

My inverted bell curve hypothesis doesn't have a whole lot of scientific ground to stand on, I'll admit. It's a pseudo-science rationale for the strategy you're referencing. In a way I don't have the energy to prove, the way I assess is keeping more of these bottom decile kids from quitting. I mean, I've got a few kids rocking forty percents with a week and a half until finals who are convinced they're going to remediate and pass. Thing is, I'm pretty sure they can.

Sara, if you're game I'd love

2007-05-25T22:14:39.551+02:00

Sara, if you're game I'd love to spend more focused time getting you up and running. If these comment questions alone are doing it for you, then great. The only annoying part about the system is that you're now creating your own tests instead of using the textbook's. This invariably makes you a more reflective teacher, however, and anyway, once you've got a template, you can kind of keep rocking it forever and ever. I'm away from my work materials but I'll post that concept list soon. There are about forty for the year and keeping that manageable becomes an issue of crafting a full test question without over-stocking it. You don't want to waste your time and theirs assessing their ability to solve 2x = 6. (Though a textbook would.) You want to assess their ability to solve 5x - 7 = 14, which encompasses the shallower question, but you don't want to assess their ability to solve 5.1x - 7.3 = 14.7. You want your assessments to be so clear that scanning a student's concept scores gives a crystal clear picture of her understanding. (Something that a student's score on "Unit 6 Test" does not.) If she gets the decimalized problem wrong, for example, it wouldn't be clear from her concept score ifyou needed to remediate two-step equations or decimals. Continuing: I do one test a week. A one- or two-sided test with three questions a side. Even if we haven't covered anything I want to assess, I'll still give them a shot to demonstrate competency on old stuff, provided we've spent some time on openers or with review games covering that stuff. If it's been full charge ahead, there's no reason for me to expect a different score. A student can take as many shots as she wants to demonstrate competency though I only allow one attempt at an individual concept per day. For these impromptu re-takes (really, the lifeblood of the system) I just pull out a blank half-sheet of paper and scribble a question down. Again, way more work than the textbook assessments, but damn if you aren't real familiar with your content area and expectations after a year of this process.

Got it, Todd. My point with t

2007-05-25T21:31:08.046+02:00

Got it, Todd. My point with that list of risks students take towards greater understanding -- attending more, seeking more help, completing more homework -- is that each of them defers any serious material reward until later. Typically. Contingent on a teacher's grading scale, of course. Karen, I'm loathe to leap on one of our own, but it sounds like you've got this one figured out. Lots of hard-working students doing poorly, homework bearing little connection to assessment. New teacher? From my perspective, I hope a parent would call me first and ask me to explain the discrepancy between effort and grade. If I gave you the run-around or didn't seem like I knew what I was doing, I'd understand if you dropped a brief, Concerned Parent call to the office. Tough spot, though.

Greg, looking forward to your

2007-05-25T02:37:46.490+02:00

Greg, looking forward to your thoughts. Don't dally as long as I did, 'kay? Brian, whatever my temptation towards administration, your constant references to "the dark side" have kept my feet planted shoulder-width-apart in my classroom. Vicki, those paragraphs are just jampacked with good stuff. I'm an auto-didactic sort so it's always been frustrating when I couldn't just teach myself something. Teaching was so initially frustrating then because I just couldn't study up on the best way and time to pass out materials, transition between activities, start class, appear confident to become confident, etc etc etc etc etc, just too much to learn academically, apart from experience. Yeah, real insightful stuff you've got there.

From what you and another comm

2007-05-05T19:47:43.029+02:00

From what you and another commenter have described, a SmartBoard will be the next thing to jump my game up a notch. Also as you describe, though, I'm leery about hinging my practice on anything that is subject to administrator approval or supply availibility. I build everything off a laptop and projector, both of which I know I could procure pretty easily if I have to move. Dunno how much longer I can hold off the SmartBoard movement, though.

Tweb, good call on having them

2007-05-04T00:04:30.560+02:00

Tweb, good call on having them draw it on the board in advance of the finale. I project on a whiteboard also but I should've thought of that one. As for the TI motion sensors, those are fine machines. My credential advisor had one I used (in pretty much the exact same way you did) during my preservice year but, past that, they've been a memory. *sigh* A really nice memory.

Nah we're at, like, seven mayb

2007-05-03T23:31:49.266+02:00

Nah we're at, like, seven maybe. And I've got more trackbacks than people sending me mailing addresses. That'll be a challenge for me, but I'm up for it.

I tried to film bacteria but,

2007-05-03T22:02:05.265+02:00

I tried to film bacteria but, uh, that didn't work out so hot.

If you're a teacher, odds are

2007-05-01T05:33:23.786+02:00

If you're a teacher, odds are you dig learning, right? If you dig learning, odds are real small you only dig your own content area. Yet so many teachers get all territorial and insecure about their subjects, like student interest is a zero-sum system or something and they've gotta convince them that math/English/history is the only thing that matters in life, when I don't think any of us really believes that. So in order to keep the grind engaging, I don't hesitate to pull in my interests from across the board. When David Foster Wallace wrote his essay Consider the Lobster (pdf, sorry), a fantastic piece of non-fiction which taught me more than I knew about Maine and more than I ever wanted to know about the lobster trade, I read it to my classes. I was likewise obsessed, for a certain stretch, by the flags and currency of other countries. So while we were playing some basketball math -- get a problem right, shoot the ball -- I tossed a country's flag or its single denomination up on the projector, gave it equal weight with the math, and watched my kids go blue in the face guessing. As a matter of daily routine, I include a miscellaneous question in my openers. I have a list. I also play a two-minute clip of something interesting I found off Ticklebooth or Say No To Crack. Not for nothing, Esquire's current issue has a list of 60 Things Worth Shortening Your Life For. Some of the entries are too fascinating to keep to myself. That'll happen tomorrow or the next day. Nope, these aren't content-area standards and, yes, I could probably get a few more graphs in with all that time and, yes, I felt awkward when my principal walked in to find the venerable flag of Madagascar up on the board, but this is the stuff that keeps them coming back -- my enthusiasm for capital-L learning and my ability to deliver them a hit off the same pipe. (This is the point where I'm obliged to mention class management and how tightly it's gotta be wired in order to justify all of this fun.)

Right, it's this idea, totally

2007-05-01T00:32:34.178+02:00

Right, it's this idea, totally new to me as of this year, where any investment I make into engaging lessons, quality instruction, and fun, totally random interludes, doubles as investment into class management and attendance. When I make my class a place where my kids want to come, actually giving teeth to this idea that "it's a privilege to be here," then they show up in greater quantities and my discipline rarely extends past, "hey, take a few minutes outside," because they'd like to be inside. As you note, it's way more effective than any policy we can cook up. Bummer, it's also a lot harder.

Uh ... lessese ... we've got "

2007-04-26T15:13:06.145+02:00

Uh ... lessese ... we've got "High Road," by Fort Minor and "Hip Hop," by Dead Prez and "Apache" by the Incredible Bongo Band. That's in order.

Ah, there it is. Thanks, fell

2007-04-26T07:36:51.348+02:00

Ah, there it is. Thanks, fellas. Steve, you missed your calling. H., we oughtta set up a pun wiki and just get 'em out there.

I'm trying to imagine what tha

2007-04-26T03:57:42.981+02:00

I'm trying to imagine what that could mean but metaphor's a litttttle outside the math teacher's job description.

I know I sounded decisive befo

2007-03-19T07:22:29.640+01:00

I know I sounded decisive before and all, but for the flat learning curve you mention (and which C. Lehmann affirms), I'm going to poke at Moodle some. A lot of our faculty have been griping about the rather halfassed work our students put in on their senior exit portfolios. This Elgg export could be a good selling point. Thanks for the advice on my pitch.

Eric, thanks for bothering to

2007-03-15T08:05:16.007+01:00

Eric, thanks for bothering to refocus your recommendations vis-a-vis my wishlist. Brian, if I was the sort to foster wikis, your comment would be the first edit of the Best Practices for Teaching Teachers Wiki. Just a lot of good words there on how to approach any group with any sort of persuasive speech. It's worth noting here that my experience with 21st-Century Education has been largely frustrating, my reading weighted heavily on enthusiastic jargon and lightly on practical implementation. (Comments here excepted -- thanks a mil, team.) Part of this is the relative infancy of the technology but whatever the case, this presentation will be as you describe it. My skepticism and manic insistence that this be worth our time makes me somehow an ideal presenter. John, thanks for dropping such a detailed post. I find myself falling quickly out of my technological comfort level here, but I'd rather be inundated than dry. To anybody else with something to contribute, please do. You've gotta see this for the sound investment it is. Whatever presentation I put together will be fully remix- and remashable. I have no interest in keeping it. Moreover, if I can work up even a fraction of the enthusiasm y'all seem to possess, I'll ply my limited motion graphics skills towards a Machine Is Us/Ing Us / Google Master Plan - style video along the same lines.

Eric, thanks for the trove of

2007-03-15T02:59:28.548+01:00

Eric, thanks for the trove of leads you drop up there. Luckily, Friday is only my research day, not the presentation itself, which goes down a month after that. Same to you, Bing. Both you and Eric put the answer in a variety of sources and recommend that students drive my R&D. Which is a little scary, frankly, though my fear and the lack thereof on both of your parts is unsurprising. Your priority is the best, most effective, student-centric product. That's great. Unfortunately, at this point, the complexity of that solution means that only the most 21st-century committed teachers will jump aboard while the rest will have no trouble writing that solution off as too time-consuming and too classroom-specific to work for them. My priority is that every teacher find an accessible inroad for ferrying technology into their classrooms. Which means whatever web portal I end up rocking here has to be easy to access and update. And it should be, right? After some initial set-up, Wordpress just requires a log-in, from which jumping-off point I can do anything. I'm positive I could sell my faculty on Wordpress. I won't try, simply because I have no idea how to scale itto district-size. So our priorities are different. I'll put in any amount of initial configuration and set-up if it'll eradicate inevitable complaints that "this would take too much time" / "this would never work with my students." That might constrict my focus to one or two apps. That might mean students are merely the beta-testers rather than the developers. Those are both bummer losses, but such are the priorities.

Peter, we've got 80-something

2007-03-14T15:51:37.708+01:00

Peter, we've got 80-something teachers on staff. Chris, thanks for the links. I dig the vibe coming from Drupal's way even though I'm not exactly sure what it does or how it does it. (The Handbooks section has been intimidating me for a week.) I guess that's what Friday is for. Anybody else got anything else? I basically love Wordpress and would love a system that gave me and my students that kind of ease of publishing. If it was just me, I would simply set my students up as users on alg1.mrmeyer.com, but that system would be too complicated to scale school-wide.

I'd suspect Maxim magazine bef

2007-03-07T17:04:29.942+01:00

I'd suspect Maxim magazine before any religious text. Couldn't find anything, in any case. Rick, until now I hadn't blinked at the pairings at that end of the domain. I wonder if the only useful domain here is the mid-20s, the time when most dating actually happens.

Dave, next time I'm accused of

2007-03-02T08:01:30.226+01:00

Dave, next time I'm accused of rabblerousing, I'm gonna parry with "creating disequilibrium." Thanks for that, and for the rest of your comment. Anytime I try to shoehorn veteran teachers somewhere, you go and complicate things with your vitality & self-reflection. Mindy, I feel convinced that this is a strange time to be young and to teach. Perhaps it's always been that way in every job and I'm too self-obsessed to notice but there is something profoundly weird (and unique to teaching) about kids six years my junior calling me "Mr. Meyer" while I turn around and call people older than my parents by their first names. The gap feels extremely pronounced at the moment, with veteran teachers so assured in their instruction (deservedly so, in many cases) and younger teachers so frustrated by their [the veteran teachers'] inflexibility. I feel it, like you, and at the moment I'm trying to determine my threshold: how much professional alienation am I willing to cover before moving along? Here, seeing some light at the end of these career crises, I know my answer is: a lot. I wouldn't think to speak for you except you say, "I'm good at [teaching]," which is a strange sort of curse, I think. Teachers who know they've got a natural and studied facility for this very tricky job won't find a lot of happiness outside of education, I don't believe. You've tasted the crack. What can you do about that? So let's you and me and anyone else who wants in on this right here agree to a moratorium on drastic measures, on ultimatums. Let's stay put realizing that this is a strange time to be young and to teach. Let's stay and commit to excellence in one particular regard: let's become better teachers of teachers. I'm pretty sure that requires a separate credential, but there is a lot we can discuss here.

Lori, thanks for de-lurking.

2007-03-01T15:54:07.885+01:00

Lori, thanks for de-lurking. I realize my track record doesn't do me any favors here, but I'm not at all trying to increase the divide. This funk I'm in is a genuine reaction to what I perceive to be the general State of Things, though, understandably, not the state of things around here. You point out the Five for the Weekend feature as some sort of chink in my armor o' professionalism, but that, to me, is an example of the professionalism of caring. It's a reproducible measure that any teacher could implement. There's nothing mystical or aerie about it. And the more I reiterate my point the more I worry my intention seems to be to fully stifle those who want to write about their personal, philosophical, spiritual, and intangible reasons for teaching. Which, I'm not. I'm just feeling deflated by the generally meager turn-out of professionalism in real life and around here. I mean, you wouldn't believe how peppy I get when I read even a small paragraph like Chris' above, where I'm offered a new arrow for my quiver, a new technique to inform my profession, not a new emotional plea to inform my ethos. For whatever it's worth to you and others, this thread has picked me up quite a bit.

That's some scary-good teachin

2007-03-01T00:56:13.183+01:00

That's some scary-good teaching there, Eric. The Caring School of Thought says that you just have a huge reservoir of passion for your students that has ably supplied your class relationship for eight years. "If only we all cared as much as you do, we'd all have such a time in our classes." But I feel frustrated by the laziness of that inquiry as, I'm sure, does anyone who cares as much as you do but hasn't seen anywhere near the same results. I would tell anyone thinking about teaching that your affinity for your kids is an incalculable boon to your instruction, but by no means does it disqualify anyone who doesn't instinctively forge those connections with students. Because you can work at it. And, if we intensified our line of inquiry here, I'm sure we could pull a dozen techniques you instinctively use to produce a great classroom environment that anyone could have if only they worked at it. However, the current line of inquiry doesn't produce conversations like those.

Where to start: Bill, your fi

2007-02-28T18:03:28.877+01:00

Where to start: Bill, your first disagreement is noted. You may well be right. Absent any comprehensive survey here, my personal record is of near constant contact with in-real-life teachers who are disinterested in the professional, reproducible aspects of teaching and infatuated with the emotional feel-good side. (Possibly, I should add, because the professionalism just comes so naturally to other teachers.) This goes double for the blog'sphere, where I feel less vulnerable on this point. I'm glad you disagree, though. It makes me hopeful that there is a similarly-focused like-minded enclave of teachers out there I can sign on with. Marco, I won't disagree with a spectrum here, and I'd rather not promote a binary view of caring/professionalism, though my post doesn't do me any favors there. It's easy to spot the woe-is-me tone and note the irony: "heh, lookit, a martyr complaining about martyrs. Ain't that rich." I've copped to that irony elsewhere but I don't think a post which cites the dispiriting nature of martyrdom when you don't feel like a martyr, really qualifies the writer for your pot-calling-the-kettle-black treatment. The point that interestsme most, both in Marco's and in Bill's commentary, is the professionalism of caring, an identifier that so reeks of cheap compromise we've gotta define it fast. Bill does the job for me, "Students will do more work when they feel some kind of connection to the material or the teacher" Maybe it'll sound monstrous (or completely unsurprising) but I don't ... er, I didn't ... like the students I taught. When I first taught. I figured it didn't really matter if I was sharp, cynical, intimidated, and a bit alienating, but clearly I was wrong. So I started paying attention to the technique of caring, like waiting by the door, like asking personal questions in a friendly noninvasive way. It was wholly fake. I'm not expecting anything but disdain for this, but I cared strictly so that we could get down to business. In the intervening years, my misanthropy has dulled quite a bit, but I haven't lost touch with the fact that it was through professional, reproducible steps, that I pulled 150 kids (more or less) back into my teaching locus. I think those conversations are great and would do our PR a huge service by discussing caring in less gauzy, intangible terms. My point has always been that the blog'sphere ably promotes this gauzy, intangible feel-goodery but is a dry seed bed for discussion of the professionalism.Finally, Eric, in the specific, you're right. Any discussion of the best practices for the five-paragraph essay format would probably wait in line until we sort out whether we should teach it. Closer to my intention, though, is the universality of teaching. Class management techniques, graphic organizers, tech uses, parent relationships, and so forth. I would hate to miss the forest for the trees, debating the merits of this or that standards when there is so much to be said on the matter of how to teach anything. Perhaps you'd still disagree with that, but at least that's a better representation of my intentions.

Thanks for your thoughts here,

2007-02-27T01:47:28.206+01:00

Thanks for your thoughts here, Eric, and, especially, for raising a point I really wish I could've found a place for: this swing from professionalism towards passion/caring correlates directly with NCLB. It's a pretty facile thought exercise to imagine a world in which the government requires annual yearly self-esteem progress of every student and holds teachers accountable for instilling confidence and a sense of belonging in every child. The blogosphere would call for professionalism as loudly as they are now for passion and caring. We see both sides of that coin as overreactions. Like you, I'll cop to a necessary balance. But it's tough for me to content myself with a term like "passionate professional," accurate though it is, when the former attribute gets so much airplay around here and discussion of the latter seems easily scribbled into the margins. Anyway, thanks for keeping discourse high on both accounts.

Ah, I know 'em as "smart board

2007-02-20T16:45:40.078+01:00

Ah, I know 'em as "smart boards." My department head has one and it is, by all accounts, badass. PDF output particularly. My poor man's solution is to project directly to my dry-erase board allowing me to reclaim some of that spontanaeity. Students can come up and work problems out on blank graphs I've projected, etc. But, heh, I've found PDF output to be a little glitchy with these older dry-erase boards. Brian, what you've got there is called a trackback. Whenever you link up someone's else blog post in one of your own, Wordpress sends that little notice my way. I'll be posting a dozen-or-so lesson plans this week. You can glance at the slidedecks, decide if I'm all talk, and then if you still want to put me in touch with someone from your department, that'd be fun.

You're talking about square sl

2007-02-20T03:20:39.846+01:00

You're talking about square slates, individual dry-erase markers, and erasers, right? If that's what we're talking about, I used them my student teaching year and found myself failing IR#1 in just about every way. They take five minutes to pass out, five minutes to collect. In contrast to worksheets, every student has to work at a proscribed pace. Weaker students copied stronger ones so it's largest draw -- instantaneous assessment -- went lost on me. However I have heard of several teachers who just dominate the field with those things so there are probably solutions I haven't been willing to find. I'd like to try them again sometime since kids just kinda go berserk over the experience. Do you have any solutions? Assuming we're talking about the same thing, that is.

Whoops. With the direction ou

2007-02-15T10:09:05.598+01:00

Whoops. With the direction our conversation was taking, I totally forgot this post was about NCLB. At this point, I agree that NCLB isn't pushing students towards their enduring interests, but that isn't its point. To get frustratingly pedantic here, it's No Child Left Behind, not Every Child Pushed Ahead. I'd prefer not to get bogged down in that, but it's only fair to admit my concern these days is almost entirely for the kids reading six grades below their age, rather than their advanced counterparts. Another matter I won't bother too much with (except for this one mention) is that objections rhyming with "teaching to the test" and "taking apart an issue in depth" never really strike the nerve with me they're intended. I'm a beginning teacher who works like crazy to compensate for his inexperience. For my efforts at planning and class management, my kids consistently work a two-hour block period bell to bell while their counterparts in other classes line up at the door fifteen minutes early. No exaggeration. (That stuff has to get you conscientious administrators down, right?) Me, I get to hit the stuff I'm most excited about and cover the standards. I think we've been here before.I'm contending that the good teacher has nothing to worry about with NCLB. You contend it doesn't do anything to make teachers good. Fair, but I think that's, again, the inverse of NCLB's point. I am warming to the idea that NCLB ought to take a backseat in older classes, classes where the students already have a baseline skill set (ignoring for the moment the question of what that skill set is). When, then, does that happen? And in the preceding years can we puh-leeze take high-stakes tests (while constantly working to improve them and the standards they assess, of course)? Because without them, the Erin Gruwells (her movie doppelgangers, anyway) will trade classes for dance parties, the Prezbos will teach craps for six weeks straight, and first-year teachers named Dan Meyer will elect not to teach quadratics because it's a tough unit to teach. There was only one reason why I taught it the next year and -- I swear, Chris -- it rhymes with "NCLB." P.S. ROP = Regional Occupational Program. Woodshop, autoshop, etc.

I'm concerned about your last

2007-02-14T09:21:19.179+01:00

I'm concerned about your last comment. No matter how hard we work to make the Lit./Math experiences meaningful, a school dominated by the core subjects would be a dreary place, I suspect. I know you're right about that, but your first sentence, particularly with respect to math, just isn't correct. There's a fair correlation between musical/mathematical ability, but causality ... ? I mean, even if you wanted to embrace this holistic interconnectedness of everything, it gets really weird if we get into pottery (cylindrical integerals?) or photography (rule of thirds? proportions, I guess ... ) or floral arrangement (beats me).

Good point. I reckon the rati

2007-02-09T05:09:27.365+01:00

Good point. I reckon the ratio's validity depends on the teacher seeking new solutions to old problems, maintaining an open mind, and constantly evaluating her assumptions. The ratio's also reductive for other reasons. I mean, a good tech lesson -- particularly something ongoing like wiki updating -- requires a huge upfront investment in training, an investment that the ratio would find prohibitive. After a few weeks, though, the minutes expended variable would drop like a rock. I guess, what I'm saying is that, yeah, that xFactor of yours needs to carry a lot.