Tag: Observations

Do Creations Have Rights?

I enjoy going to the movies, and I don’t need my movies to be filmed in revolutionary ways or have unusually deep plot lines.  When it comes down to it I really want to be entertained for a few hours.  Recently I’ve noticed a current flowing through movies set in the not too distant future: Do things we create have inherent rights?

The first movie I remember having this theme was made in the 1980s, Short Circuit.  I loved this movie because not only did a robot get made, but somehow a lightning strike rendered him alive and apparently gave Johnny 5 a personality.  I’m no computer scientist, but I’m not sure a lightning strike would give a robot the ability to think, feel, and show emotion to humans.  The basic premise was that Johnny 5 wanted to stay alive by whatever means necessary.  At first he was a happy-go-lucky robot without a care in the world.  By the end of the movie he was actively fighting “the man” to keep himself alive.  I remember thinking as a child watching this movie that this was so ridiculous and that there would never be a day where computers would be able to think…guess I was wrong.

There have been other movies that have similar plot lines in some ways like Chappie and Wall-e, but I recently saw a movie that brings this issue to life for me in a way that I never thought about…

I’ve always loved the movie Jurassic Park, but for some reason I never thought we would get to a place in my lifetime that people would be splicing genes together to create new species.  I went and saw Jurassic World recently and it brought the issue of whether creations have rights.  At this point in the Jurassic series, there are people in the corporation that would like to turn some of the dinosaurs into weapons of war.  When they are questioned by other management/ownership level employees, one character makes the comment that, ” we created them, they have no rights.”  Other movies have attempted to bring up similar situations, but this one really stuck with me and made me think.

Seeing that I teach history, it got me thinking of historical situations that were similar to this.  Too often we focus on what we are doing in the moment without thinking about what may have happened in the past and how it can inform the present.  I came up with two parallels:

  • Slavery – Immediately my US History teacher brain went back to colonial slavery (although any slavery works for this).  We chose a group of people that only had a limited ability to fight back and we forced them to work for us.  This is similar only in so much as we took the inherent rights of all people that our European forefathers outlines for us in the English Bill of Rights and our US forefathers outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Were they of a different race?  Sure.  But they were still human beings that we subjugated and forced to do our bidding.  I think we can all look back and see why slavery is wrong, right?
  • Children – I’m not going to to claim to have the answers to this, but let’s just say that there are all kinds of debates going on about how much control parents have over their children.  It starts with the heated debate over abortion, and there are passionate arguments on both sides.  Moving forward a little bit, there are children who have divorced their parents…which seems weird to me.  I’ve even had arguments with my students in class about what rights children have.  There are a lot of hazy gray areas in the area of children and rights.  I’m not sure this helps do anything but muddy the waters on our current debate.

Reflecting a little bit on the history of rights and creation/subjugation, I would say that we need to think long and hard about the moral ramifications of creation.  If you neglect your child (or your pets even) you are considered a criminal.  Do those penalties follow us if we create a computer that learns, but we neglect it?  We are quickly moving from an age where we need to move away from the question of “can I create this?” and toward the questions of “should I create this?” and “what are the potential problems with creating this?”  Not that we’ll be able to predict everything, but we should at least try.

To Textbook or Not to Textbook

The state of Texas has decided that this is the year that Social Studies gets to purchase new textbooks.  And why shouldn’t they, it’s only been twelve years since the last textbook adoption for Social Studies.  As a brief aside, think about that for a moment…what in your life has been around for more than twelve years.  Twelve years ago I had just graduated from college, unmarried, and wondering what I was going to do with my life.  All that is beside the point though.  As I sat in a meeting listening to different textbook publishers extolling the virtues of their product and subtly bashing the other publishers, I began to realize that maybe publishers have gone beyond the requirements for a textbook.

First of all, textbook publishers seem to think that all teachers have no brain and would like for someone to do their jobs for them.  All of the publishers we looked at had pre-made lesson plans designed to cover all the TEKS we need to cover.  While I appreciate all the time spent on all the lesson plans, I’ll never use any of them.  I’d also like to survey all teachers and see how many would plan on using any of these lesson plans except in extreme scenarios.  I’m not saying that there are zero scenarios where these would be useful, but I’m saying they should be the exception, not the rule.  If districts see it beneficial for a teacher to use textbook curriculum rather than design lessons to meet the needs of their students, why even bother certifying teachers in the first place?

Second, every publisher hyped up their outside partnerships with other content specific experts, but do I need that?  Publishers attempted to sell us that documentaries, foldables, mind-maps, animations, visuals, primary sources, and audio content were top of the line and that only they have access to them.  In reality, little to none of the content was designed specifically for their textbook from these outside agencies.  I can access almost all of the useful material without buying the textbook because it was made for other purposes and was copied and pasted into the textbooks.  I could at least make the argument that the textbooks could be more useful and cost a lot less for the districts if they left out all these partnerships and concentrated on their textbook.

The main benefit I saw with the publishers is that they are making the long, slow transition into the digital age.  Publishers, by nature, prefer print media, but the rest of the world prefers digital media.  All the publishers we looked at had some sort of online component that could be used on either a computer or smart phone.  Some of the publishers did it better than others, but all attempted digital content.  Until 100% of students have access to the internet at home, textbooks will be necessary, but at least they are starting the transition.

Textbooks are not the devil.  I choose not to use them in my classroom as much as the publishers would like, but I do see benefits of textbooks in the classroom.  I wonder if publishers assume too many teachers need their bloated offerings to do their job.  I also wonder if all this bloat is “necessary” or ” trying to make districts feel good about their purchase”.

A New Beginning

This summer has been summarized by change.  I’m changing schools, school districts, and subjects taught.  The thing I’m most excited about is that I’m going to be closer to home.  My commute wasn’t awful, but now I’ll work about ten minutes away from where I live.  This is going to allow me to work with kids in my community and hopefully allow me to bring about change for the good in my area of Denton.  I was so sad to say goodbye to Coppell, but it was a move that I had been thinking and praying about for a long time.

The other main change that I’ve been thinking a lot about is leaving the G/T classroom for a district that does not have a specifically gifted history classroom.  In my new district they have Pre-AP as their only distinctive grouping.  I’m not going to start a debate for one and against another because that’s not productive at all.  The change is stirring up philosophical questions for me like, “is separating gifted kids what is best for everyone?”, “what is the best way to break up students into leveled groups?”, and “how will my teaching need to change given my new context?”  I’m not sure that I have answers to any of these questions, but I’ll be wrestling with them throughout the next few school years for sure.

Choices, choices

This school year I’ve really been trying new things and being intentional about a few specific things.  I’m really finding some interesting things  about middle school age kids and their learning abilities and habits.  By far the most interesting thing I’ve learned about students has been in the area of voice and choice.  If nothing else from this year, I’ll always opt for student choice because of the change I’ve seen in student attitudes toward work.

I had read many articles and studies that talk about increasing student engagement and achievement in the classroom.  Recently I’d heard a lot about the idea of increasing choice as something that would increase both.  I decided that it couldn’t hurt, so I decided to try it a few times across both of my grades that I teach.  With my sixth graders I noticed that the students seemed more energetic and excited when given the opportunity to choose from assignments that both show the same knowledge and skills in different ways.  I decided to kick it up a notch and started using different learning styles and ways of communicating knowledge and what I noticed was that the kids did not complain as much (which is relative) and were being more creative in the things that they turned in.  When I combined that with the ability to work in collaborative groups my sixth grade classes are buzzing with active learning.

The more difficult class, or so I thought, was my 7th grade classes.  The majority of these classes had me the previous year, so I figured they would be more set in their ways when it came to the work they turned in.  What I found was that similar tendencies happened with them even despite their comfort level with me.  I did find that I needed to tweak my wording just a little bit to encourage creative and out of the box thinking.

Overall, I think that voice and choice over the course of the fall semester was a huge success.  It is also so simple ti incorporate into my class that I see no reason to take it off of my lesson plans.  I highly recommend trying it out in class.

Students Grading Themselves

When my principal came to me at the end of the year last year telling me about the ROLE classroom and how she would like me to attempt it (with some other teachers) one of the things that made me leery was the idea of students assessing their learning for the grading period and giving themselves a grade with my assistance.  I have now gone through this process with all the students in my class for the second grading period and I think that I have come to some decent conclusions.

First I think that students are more honest with you than you would think.  My first grading period I was shocked at how many students were well thought out in their evaluation of themselves without much guidance in how to do so from me.  Unfortunately for my students, since it was also my first time through the process I was still learning how to coach them up.  This second marking period I added a Google Form for them to fill out beforehand that allowed them to process how they did this grading period and set some ideas of what their goals for the upcoming weeks will be and what their grade should be.  The kids did even better with some prompting than they did when we began for the first time.  I would say that 90% of my kids had a grade that I would have given them myself.  The other 10% took a little bit of conversation to help them understand why their grade was either too high or too low.  In the end, I reminded them that the grade is not important to me at all, I just want them to have an accurate representation of their growth this grading period.

Be careful with your prompting of children.  I found that my kids had many of the same goals and usually they had to do with any prompting that I gave them to help them think through their growth.  We finished a PBL late in the grading period and with that came a ton of different ways that my students could grow themselves for next time.  When I reminded them to think through this on their Google Form, they all gravitated to one of a few basic skills for their goals.  My hope was for them was to use my suggestions as a way to brainstorm specific skills each student needed to work on, but what I got was the path of least resistance.

The only other thing that I’m noticing with this process is that it takes time.  For my classes, it’s taken me between two and three full class periods (of 50 minutes) to get a grade for every student.  I have been asked a few times if I thought this was worth it, and I can legitimately say that I think this classroom experience is growing my students in ways that I could not have even planned.  It was not evident in the first few weeks of trying, but the further in the school year we go the more convinced I am that this way of teaching is revolutionizing my classroom.  I’m excited by where my classroom is heading and look forward to see where it is going to head in the future.

Presentation Fatigue

This last week was the first round of presentations for my classes.  I go into this first round every year hoping that the kids will come into middle school with and innate ability to present information that they have learned.  I show them previous presentations that have wowed me and point them to some of our eighth graders to help them with their technique.  Without fail, there are always a few groups here and there that do an unexpectedly good job presenting for whatever reason, but realistically no group of students is any better than the rest at presenting.

It frustrates me too because our eighth graders are so good at presenting by the time they leave.  I can’t help but wonder if the teachers are doing something in different ways that I’m not or if it truly is more about the age of the children.  I don’t want to believe that 6th graders cannot physically or mentally handle presenting and just need practice, but the more I have students present the more I think that’s the case.  If anyone out there has any suggestions  please let me know you’re experiences because I almost feel like I’m getting down on myself.

Stop and Ask Why

I got the opportunity a couple of years ago to become the department head of the history department of my middle school.  I knew this was going to be a challenge from the day I took it over, but I always thought that it couldn’t be too challenging.  I guess I never stopped to think about how the people in my department could make me stop and ask why I’m doing things.

Very recently I’ve started to get challenged on some basic things that I took for granted.  For instance, this year we opted to not issue every student a history textbook.  We did this for a number of reasons, the main one being that we thought that we needed to use the textbook as a resource and not a crutch.  My principal and I both thought that history from a textbook is a boring way to be force fed history.  Some of my department disagreed, but went along with it.  For the most part this school year it hasn’t been an issue, but this week I feel like I’m starting to get more resistance.  I’ve gotten challenged in meetings and it has been referenced in our department meetings.  Usually, this wouldn’t have bothered me very much, but I was absolutely exhausted on Friday and it seemed to linger with me.

All of today I reflected on the situation and I had to ask myself why I’ve chosen some things that I have.  I think my assumption was that my department all thought the same as I did about these topics, but when they didn’t I had to go back to the drawing board.  What I settled on was that we’re doing the things we are in the history department because my principal and I think it is what’s best for the kids at my middle school.  Period.  All I want is for the kids that walk through this school to be taught by the best educators possible.  I think some people in my department get scared when they see test scores.  My focus is not the test scores, it’s making the teaching in my department to be the best it possibly can be.  I have to remind myself that often or I start to waffle on what needs to happen.

Student Conferences – Round 1

This week was the end of our first marking period.  Most of the time this would mean that I was frantically uploading all the last minute grades for the students and ensuring that there were comments and citizenship grades.  This time, however, was marked by me sitting down with every student in all my classes and talking about their grades and setting goals for the second marking period.

The first thing I learned while I was meeting with students is that it takes a lot longer than I predicted.  I left room for the last three days of the marking period figuring that I would take two days to get it done, but giving myself some room just in case.  What I found was that it took me approximately 5 minutes per child for my sixth graders and between 5 and 10 minutes per seventh graders.  I think this has to do with the fact that I know my seventh graders better because they were in my class last year and we have more goals to set and things to discuss.  When you multiply that out, that is a lot of time being taken up conferencing with students, but I’m really looking forward to seeing the change in students this next marking period and the conversations that happen at the end of it.

The second thing I learned was that most students were pretty honest with their level of work and effort over the course of the marking period.  I would say that the students that did the best this marking period were often the hardest on themselves.  It was a great opportunity for me to remind them of all the awesome, creative things I’ve seen from them this marking period.  I only had one or two students that were way outside the range I would have given them as a grade.  For those students I reminded them of their effort and level of work and they revamped the score they gave themselves on their own.  I was shocked at how honest my sixth and seventh graders were.

My next iteration of student conferences will include some sort of google form or written assignment that has my kids think through the process of negotiating a grade and advocating for themselves.  I think my kids have the ability to think through their growth as a student and reflect on their output for a marking period.  If I can combine this while developing their ability to argue a position about their grade for a marking period I think it is time well spent.  I also would like to have a spreadsheet with all the feedback I’ve given to the student over the course of the marking period.  Our online grade book has some great features, but one that I still would like to see is the ability to print out the comments I’ve given the students over the course of the first few weeks of school.

These are minor inconveniences when compared to the potential revolution in the teacher/student relationship.  I’m so excited by the conversations I’ll be able to have with every one of my students in a few short weeks and I’ll continue to post my thoughts and reactions to this ROLE Reversal process.

Shark Week: A Case Study in Education

It’s that time of year again, when the Discovery Channel has their week of programming known as Shark Week.  As a boy, I can remember being glued to the television watching program after program about something that intimidated me so much.  I am so scared of sharks, that I really don’t like swimming in the ocean and I used to be scared  in the deep end of the pool.  That being said I still tune in every year to see the new programming that is basically the same thing over and over.  Then I ran into this article about Shark Week and it struck me that it informs millions of viewers each year about marine biology and most of those people probably aren’t interested in science at all outside of this week.  What can we learn from Shark Week as teachers?

There is Emotional Attachment

There are two types of people that watch Shark Week, the shark conservationists and the people that want to watch people or animals getting eaten.  We all know people will rally to a cause like saving a species, especially when it is being harvested in huge numbers.  Discovery Channel is not the only group that has taken on this topic, but they do a pretty good job of making this issue with shark populations.  I wouldn’t say that this is the forefront of their shark coverage, but they do promote shark conservation on some level to a huge audience.  The there is the sadistic side of humanity that is really only watching to see blood in the water.  These are the same people (like myself) that watched Nick Wallenda walk across the Grand Canyon just to see if there was a chance he would fall.  There is something about watching an animal that chances are most will never come into contact with ripping apart fake seals, whales, boats, etc.  The funniest part about watching for this reason is most of the action in Shark Week is directed toward inanimate objects or is allusions or dramatic reenactments of actual events.

What if we could illicit these types of feelings on a daily basis in our classrooms?  The number one question I get in class relates to how concepts or ideas apply to kid’s lives.  Can we create emotion in our methods of teaching that would create meaning for kids?  Is it possible to conjure up such strong emotions in a classroom on a consistent basis?

It Brings Together All Kinds

Between the conservation of sharks and the bloodlust of shark programming, a variety of people are brought together for a single week.  A huge percentage of people I run into are excited about the beginning of Shark Week from all parts of society.  Old friends from high school on Facebook, peers on Twitter, and children I’ve talked with at church have all mentioned Shark Week without any prompting from me.  Imagine the conversations that could be started with such a common bond.  Background, political beliefs, economic background, and even race all are minimized when the topic of Shark Week is brought up.

Is it possible for me to teach concepts in class in such a way that it brings together all types of kids?  Is it possible that there are inherent topics that are so provocative that children are so interested that little else matters?  Is there a way to tap into such topics without renting a national TV station for a week every year?

The Information is Reliable

Outside of a few random programs trying to find new information about a species, most of the information is repeated hundreds of times in a given Shark Week.  It’s a wonder that after this many years we still want to watch the same basic show premise hour after hour in repetition.  In reality, there are very few new shows every year, and this year they are adding a live program to end the day, which is not necessarily scientific in nature.  With all this boring content, what we do find is that the information presented is repeatable, which is huge when it comes to scientific experiments.  Multiple sources are all drawing similar conclusions about a topic, which is a huge desire in data collection and research.

This makes me reflect on my preparation for class as well as my students collecting of data.  Do I do a good job of checking the sources of some of my material or do I trust that the textbook is providing me all the answers I need?  Am I challenging my students to find multiple research sources that say similar things before presenting it as facts?  Do I look at things in a scientific way, or do I shoot from the hip sometimes?

Conclusion

I hope that when a student leaves my history classroom they are as passionate about Texas History as many people are about Shark Week.  Hopefully, as I continue to feed my nerdy desire to know more about sharks, I’ll continue to glean new ideas and ways of thinking about teaching through an expert like Shark Week.  Whatever they started all those years ago has become a universally recognized phenomena that masterfully teaches all types of people about marine biology.  Hopefully, one day, all education can do a job as wonderful.

Reflecting on Blended Learning

One of the many things teaching related that I’ve run across is the Middle School Matters website and podcast.  Being a middle school teacher it made sense for me to learn as much as I can about the middle school mindset as well as learn from others in the trenches.  As I was listening to their latest podcast (show 249), the guys brought up the idea that sometimes we are looking for the one classroom model to teach all students at all times.  They brought up that maybe the idea of blended learning (defined as using teacher driven learning, student driven learning, flipped classroom, etc. where it fits best in the curriculum) is what we need to look at an not focus on only one model.

I’ve always struggled with models of teaching because none seem to fit my classroom just right.  Currently, our school is really pushing PBL in the classroom, and I’m helping pilot some ROLE strategies in the classroom this year.  Others in our district are pushing the SEM model, flipped classrooms, or are emphasizing STEM.  It’s easy to see great teachers using a certain model and think to yourself “I need to try that”.  I think it’s folly though to change the bent of your classroom year after year just to find that the outcomes don’t quite work for you and try again with something different.  Maybe the greatest skill we as teachers can learn is how to use the strengths and weaknesses of all the different methods of teaching combined with intimate knowledge of each of our students to cater each unit to maximize learning and produce based on that knowledge.

If that’s the case, this still doesn’t give us any room to sit back and relax as a teacher.  It means we need to be actively looking for teaching models that we haven’t tried.  We should be scouring professional development opportunities and take advantage of our colleagues with varying backgrounds to expand your knowledge as a teacher.  We should constantly be innovating and learning.  We should take risks, just like we ask our students to take risks in class.  We should relish the chance to get new technology in our student’s hands even if it doesn’t go too well the first time.  The more we push ourselves as teachers, the more we are able to push our students in the classroom.