Idea Control, Part 1

In the realm of writing instruction, if we have failed our students (if it can even be called a failure), it is not because we haven't prioritized writing--because we have. It is not because we haven't spent countless hours commenting on papers--because we have. Not because we haven't been diligent in our planning, our reflection, our assessments, our adjustments, our pep talks. Because we have. It is not even because we haven't modeled our own writing because we have been brave enough to do this time and time again.

Where we have potentially failed them is here: we have emphasized form/genre over substance.

We have to teach form. Of course, we must. There are expectations that we do so from our colleagues, college professors, the world of work, the world of writing. Though they resist at times, our students also have expectations that we teach them certain forms--the academic essay chief among them. I will never argue against the necessity of this.

 But what I will argue against is that we often distort writing for students when we emphasize form over idea. We start to lose writers here because they are now destabilized from what they intuitively know to be important, which is the idea, the point, the moral of the story.

Writing makes sense when it is in pursuit of clarity and depth of understanding. When we unravel the deeper significances of the topics that have chosen us, and perhaps even the ones that have been assigned to us. But when we say to them that the paramount mission of a writing assignment is not the idea, but the form, their natural writing and linguistic abilities and talents are suddenly invalidated. The process of writing no longer makes sense to them, and this often leads to temporary paralysis and worse, including a long term disdain for writing.

When students ask the wrong questions, we know that it is the result of what we, their teachers, have emphasized. How long should the paper be? How many paragraphs? How many sentences do I need in each paragraph? Do I need to use quotes? Do I need three body paragraphs? Do I need to use transition sentences at the end of every paragraph? Can I get an A if I write more than I have to? Do I need to have a Works Cited page? And on and on. And while the question to many of these might be "yes," these questions should never precede the more important questions that help them focus on the real work of writing which is the development and pursuit of an idea.

It's a paradigm shift for many students because their writing careers have been form-focused. And as such, their shifts toward more meaningful writing efforts will be filled with a lot of trepidation. They know how to trust in a form of writing because the form doesn't betray them. It is nice and tidy and usually undaunting.

Ask these students to write--to just write--without strict dictates of word length and sentence or paragraph requirements, and they balk, they grow wide-eyed, they grow fearful that they might do the assignment incorrectly. That they might be wrong.

The irony is that they have been doing it "wrong" all along. They have been writing what has amounted to rote, barely-inspired, and usually forgettable stuff. Why? They don't want to write it any more than we want to read it. They're worried more about trivial things than interpretation and revelation.  

The Solution
One way I help them shift their thinking about writing is to not mention form at all for the first few months of school. This unnerves many students, but it also sends the unequivocal message that I don't care about anything except really good ideas. I do not address questions of length, sentence requirements, or any other misguided and fear-based questions they are so apt to ask. I simply ask them to write, to share, to listen to each other read, to comment, to question, to read good mentor texts, to listen to and respond to my writing, to write more.

Simultaneously, we're working to build a community based on trust, respect, high-expectations, love, family.

And more than any modeling or mentor texts I provide, their own writing and the writing of their peers drives this revival of their voices. They rediscover the inherent power--and even joy--that writing provides. They begin thriving as writers in this new clarity and confidence.

And then something beautiful happens: they start asking questions that actually matter. I'm struggling to bridge the gap between these two driving themes; can you help me think about where they might intersect? Is it unreasonable to have multiple subplots in a short story? I have to write about this idea because I can't stop thinking about it, but do you think it would be appropriate for school? I'm not sure if this motif is working for me; what do you think? I have four different ideas for this piece; can we conference to help me sort through them? Do you think this is publishable?

They start expecting each other to bring their best to page, and they soon begin to feel once again that sense of authority and authorship they haven't felt perhaps since early elementary school when they wrote with abandon.

And to create writing that is this good, it has to be writing that transcends what they have previously generated. This means they have to bravely develop and explore what is core to all writing: ideas.  

Potluck
In my classes, I share with my students a metaphorical image of our Authors' Circle as a potluck where everyone brings potato salad. And while I've had some darn good potato salads in my life, if everyone brought potato salad, it would be one sorry shared meal.

I then share with them the image of our metaphorical (and sometimes actual!) potluck as being brilliantly diverse and delicious, with main dishes and sides and desserts that we cannot get enough of.

Of course, their pieces are their contributions to our potluck, and if they have been brave in the writing kitchen, if they have pushed themselves to create the best piece possible, when they read from their pieces, we can't get enough.

Thanks for reading,
Steve

You might be interested in this Related Article: Writing Control

Emphasizing and Assessing Student Agency

One of the truisms of teaching is that you get what you emphasize. As a teacher, if you want X, you emphasize X. If you want students to use dialogue in their narratives, you emphasize it. If you want them to show their work in math or science, you emphasize it. If you want them to verify the credibility of sources for a history project, you emphasize it.

With the movement toward personalized learning, student agency is increasingly entering our professional conversations. So, it follows that if we want students to move more toward agents of their own learning, they could probably benefit from a heightened metacognitive awareness of their agency.On most days, students rate their own student agency, but we routinely use this form for peer and teacher assessments as well. Some days, students are partnered up, and at the end of class they peer assess for agency.

Out of several definitions of student agency being used in the professional literature, our PLC began building our own understanding using this one from The Knewton Blog because of its clarity and action-oriented phrasing:

Student agency refers to the level of control, autonomy, and power that a student experiences in an educational situation. Student agency can be manifested in the choice of learning environment, subject matter, approach, and/or pace.
  

Aversion to Agency

 
Interestingly enough, most of our high school students find this an agreeable idea, but they are confounded or even resistant when it comes to actually taking charge of their learning. In short, it takes too much work to chart their own course. Add to that, they are genuinely concerned about deviating from what they've become accustomed to doing, which is working toward their teacher's goals and not their own.


We use a Google form (at right) to help students grow not only more knowledgeable about student agency, but also more comfortable in thinking about the role that agency plays in their learning. (Notice the more student-friendly agency definition we use on this form).

The data we gather from this form allows us to think tangibly about progress-or lack of progress--toward students taking increasing ownership of their learning.

We routinely sort the data on the Google Sheet (where the data from this form gets sent) to review with students the trends in their agency assessments.

Improvements we're thinking about incorporating are for each student to maintain their own Google form and own Google sheet and then have them share their sheet with us. This would shift the responsibility for this data to the students and would allow them to sort, work with ways to present the data, and I believe, would help them further heighten their awareness of their agency. A problem this would create is that peers and the teacher couldn't assess a student unless the form was shared with us, creating some issues with multiple documents (and for the teacher with one for each student per class). That said, students could hyperlink their agency assessment form to their green sheet, which would allow access as well as commentary.

 Like everything, this is a work in progress. But, we noticed significant shifts this year in student perceptions and awareness of their agency and its relationship to what we hope has been meaningful learning for them.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this topic. Please consider sharing this with others.

Update: I just read this very thorough article from Zahner History that could help streamline the information-sharing fix we want to incorporate.
  Thanks for reading,
Steve  


You might also be interested in these other posts about using Google Sheets: Seminar Assessment Using Google Sheets, Teacher To-Do List.

The Pedagogy of Grief

Last week a former student of mine was murdered. Only a little over a year removed from my classroom, his life was ended by a single bullet--a bullet discharged by a gun held by another teen who wanted my former student's designer belt.

A belt.
I'm angry.

Angry because of all the love that I and my fellow teachers threw his way during what was a challenging and trying freshman year. Ticked that it seems to have been all for naught.

Angry because it's senseless. Over a belt? I'd buy all the kids in the park that night whatever belt they wanted if that gun could just stay hidden.

Angry because he was going to be a good man. You could sense it, see it in his eyes, in his smile. If he could just make it there, to manhood.

Angry because he's going to be forgotten, isn't he? His story seems to already be slipping from our memories, lost in the strong current of more kids and more guns and more senselessness.

Angry because I got choked up teaching my university students last night. While reading the final pages of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, a paragraph from the end when he is describing his young friend's death, I couldn't shake the image of my former student lying on the cold grass of that park taking his last breaths. I couldn't stop imagining how his eyes must've been open and searching for some explanation that made some sense to him.

There I was in front of my students unable to proceed. The words wouldn't come. Something had risen up from somewhere deep inside of me and I felt paralyzed. Truth is, it was all I could do to not break down in front of them.

Maybe I should have. Maybe that would've made some sense. Here were twenty-five future teachers watching me succumb to my emotions. Peter, who is going to be a brilliant teacher, finished reading the last page for me because there was no way I could read those final lines. So, Peter, thank you for that.

After class, Angela, another student destined for an amazing career in her own classroom, asked about guilt--if I felt any in situations like this. I told her no.

I can't. I tried my best for him. We all did. I think I would feel profound guilt if I would've made him invisible through indifference, but we offered him the best we had; some days he accepted it, some days he didn't. But we never, ever gave up on him. Not once.

So, no--there is no guilt. Only anger.

My dear future teachers, I'm angry that people will try to somehow blame you for society's ills, for intimating that you're not trying hard enough to reach these troubled kids, for the fact that you will undoubtedly lose students who were dear to you through accident, illness, suicide.

And even murder.

I'm angry that one day, perhaps, you will decide to cut short your own classroom careers because the weights are sometimes too hard to bear. I'm angry that some of you may choose not to enter the profession because of the enormity and the seeming impossibility of the job.

Please don't. Please know that you are so vital to bringing sense to all this senselessness. Yes, you will carry weights. Many weights. But you will not carry them alone.

Peter will finish the book for you. Angela will ask a caring question. Justin will send an email. Jay will shake your hand. Shelby will read a news article to fill in the blanks you couldn't bear to read for yourself. Josh will offer his genuine sympathy.

We will never quit. Never.

Not on ourselves, not on our colleagues, not on our students--none of them. Not even the ones you know somehow are destined for an early grave. Especially not them.

Because that is the only thing that makes sense.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for helping me carry these weights.

Steve

Seminar Assessment Using Google Forms

 In a previous post (Trio Seminar), I outlined the near impossibility of hearing everything said in a seminar format in which more than one voice is talking. And, it is often vitally important that I make this tradeoff because higher levels of student engagement are worth the added challenge of assessing a wide-spread and multi-directional conversation.

While I often place myself dead center of the trio seminar circle, recording excerpts of conversation, visually documenting participation, collecting anecdotal evidence, I have no way of knowing--at least during this segment of the seminar--what depth of understanding and the frequency and range of contributions an individual is bringing to the discussion.

Google Forms to the Rescue (Again!)

A brief version used to collect quick peer assessments.

Because my students have access to Chromebooks, I am able to have them help me assess seminar contributions via a Google form.

Prior to using the form for peer assessment purposes, we calibrate our thinking about what high levels of performance in a seminar look like.

What is not displayed in the image is the pull-down list of names I use to have students select the name of who is being assessed. You could simply have a Name? text field instead, but I found that student misspellings, make data sorting difficult. Madison becomes Madeson becomes Madyson becomes Maddisson. The pull down list standardizes the data sorting and is well worth the effort to type in all the names. (This takes me no more than five minutes per class (and is a great job for a TA), and once done can be used over and over by making a copy of the Google form for the next seminar.)

During the seminar, both the students and I use the form to assess student performance, evidence of preparation, etc. And, once the seminar is complete, the students self-assess using the same form.

At the completion of the seminar, I can calculate student scores (with the data that is automatically sent to a Google Sheet), and review comments and contributions, to determine a student's seminar grade.

 Depending on the seminar goals (and time I have to do this), I will use a Google add-on (Save as Doc) to select the comments and scores for each student so that I post the link to their green sheet, which gives them the full range of the peer and teacher and self assessments from which they can formulate goals for growth in the next seminar.

If you have any questions, I'd be glad to help. Just send me a note.

Thanks for reading!
Steve

Performance Conversation To-Do List: A Google Forms solution

In a previous post I explained how we used the Performance Conversation (affectionately referred to as the Green Sheet) for the bulk of our work submissions and assessments. One of the most significant benefits of this forum that focuses on an oft-times extended conversation with the student about the assignment is that it creates an elevated desire for students to revise their work.

And while this is precisely what we want for a multitude of reasons, it does create a not-so-insignificant issue: keeping track of who needs what re-assessed.

Mr. M's Student To-Do List

Yes, from your Google Drive page you can see which students have recently updated their Green Sheets, but it gives you no indication of what precisely they updated. This is where another Google product can help solve the problem and shift the burden of notification and organization to the student.

Students, of course, do not need to individually notify me if they are submitting an assignment that is submitted on-time since my expectation is that I will be able to open their green sheet and find it hyperlinked and self-assessed. But, if they have been absent, if they need their work reassessed because they've revised, if they need a letter of recommendation, to send an email home, etc., they fill out the questions on the Google form. The form then sends the results to a Google sheet (my Student To-Do List), which I check regularly.

I proceed (usually) in order of submission which is date-stamped on the sheet.

And because the form sends the data to a spreadsheet, I'm able to sort by student name to track frequency of revisions, late work, number of letters of rec., etc.

This has helped me rid my desk of all those maddening scraps of paper and sticky notes that were the bane of my existence. 

Thanks for reading,
Steve

Performance Conversation: Changing the way work is submitted and assessed

"What we need," my wife, who is also an English teacher, said to me one day, "is a document where we could do everything: track student work, have students self-assess, provide feedback and assessments, and document standards growth." The next day, the Performance Conversation (a.k.a. the Green Sheet) was born.

The Green Sheet: as the year progresses, we add more rows for students to continue posting their work.

Because our district uses Chromebooks, Google docs tends to be our default for most things. The Green Sheet is no exception.


The Green Sheet is where students post all their work by hyperlinking it in column 2. For each assignment they are to fill out the Student Comments and Self-Assessments column. One of the strategies we often use to force/encourage self-assessment is to tell them that we will not grade their assignments until they are self-assessed.

But, we emphasize the proper name of this form even more than we do assessment of student work. Our hope was that this document would be a forum for student and teacher conversation about their work and their growth, and it has indeed become that. As you can see from the example below, students are quite eager to reflect in depth about their work, I think, because they know it is going to be read, because it is building upon their previous reflections which are often right above in a previous assignment's row, and because we have a genuine interest in seeing what the student thinks of his or her own work before we dive in to read/discuss/assess.

We all know the immense importance of conferencing with students--my wife and I are constantly conferencing with them--but even so, we can't get to everyone every day. The green sheet has helped fill this void. Students post works-in-progress and we are able to electronically-conference with them, thus freeing up some in-class time to work and conference with those students most in need.

Excerpt of a university-level Performance Conversation

Students are encouraged (and sometimes required if they are struggling a bit) to share their Performance Conversation with a parent/guardian, and we have had some parents take an active interest in their student's writing by joining in on the conversation in their Parent/Guardian column.

I also use the Green Sheet in the university courses I teach, and the college students like the flexibility it affords them, not to mention the ownership, accessibility, and the professor-student connections it fosters. Here is an in-use example from one of my recent college courses:
 
Over years, there have been a few changes and additions that I would encourage you to incorporate.

Because each kid needs their own copy of the document, you need to force them to make a copy. Google makes this really easy to do. When you get the shareable link, it'll look something like this:

 https://docs.google.com/documen/d/1PCY2XYoUvTvfJFsAP2ZriF6dnwBXRVGZFITwATzqTU/edit?usp=sharing 

If you delete everything highlighted in yellow and replace it with the word "copy" the students will be forced to make a copy of the document. They will then add their name to it before sharing it back to you.

It'll look like this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PCYe2XYoUvTvfJFsAP2ZriF6dnwBXRVGZFITwATzqTU/copy

(In fact, if you follow that link, you will be able to make your own copy of the example green sheet. Feel free to use it/change it however you'd like.)

Another addition is the "Important Updates" link we've added to the top, which is our way of broadcasting reminders and updates to students without having to open each student document and update.

I also use a Google Sheets document with one sheet per class as my Green Sheets Master List, where I have my class list and hyperlinks to each student's green sheet. This allows me to quickly navigate to student work.

While we believe that One Note might be a better vehicle for this document, our district's use of Chromebooks makes Google Docs a more sensible choice at least for the near future.

Please feel free to contact me if you have further questions about this. I look forward to conversing with you.

Thanks for reading,
Steve

You might be interested in this article which addresses how to get notified when students resubmit work.

Trio Seminar

One format that I've found to promote accountability as well as high levels of participation is the trio seminar. This one sort of came to me one day as I was struggling to get my senior English class to effectively-engage in the traditional whole-class seminar (you know, the one with everyone circled up and nervously starting at each other and dominated by three or four students!).

While I suspected that there were more students who had something of significance to contribute, they didn't have the courage to offer their ideas in this large circle, they were content to let others do the talking for them, or (and this one is most disheartening), they would--under pressure grade-wise to contribute something--offer a shallow observation that had most likely been floated ten or fifteen minutes before by another student.

So, one evening, I dreamed up this seating chart:

And here is how it works. All the tables are pushed against the classroom walls. Each of the squares represents a student chair. Each trio of chairs is numbered (Trio 1, Trio 2, Trio 3, etc.). The students walk in and find their name and trio number which I have projected on the screen. (A note on trio selections: sometimes they are randomly-selected, other times they are purposely-grouped.)

Depending on time of the year and goals for the seminar, either I or the students will generate discussion questions/topics. Students are numbered 1, 2, 3 in their trio groups, and they take turns leading three- to five-minute mini-discussions. I stand in the middle, clipboard in hand, and take notes as I listen in to the ten or eleven simultaneous conversations. While the seating chart above shows eight groupings, I've had as many as 14 in one of my larger classes.

The benefit of this simultaneous chatter is just that--at any given time, a third of the class is talking in a more intimate setting. They get a chance to test their ideas, build deeper understanding, learn from their trio partners--which helps not only helps them refine their thinking, thus improving the quality of their conversation, it emboldens them for the next, whole class round.

After fifteen or twenty minutes, all students turn their chairs so that we form a large whole-class circle and proceed in a more traditional Socratic seminar format. But, as I quickly discovered with that class of seniors, the level of engagement is immensely improved, as is the level of confidence, the contributions, and the number of contributors.

For these reasons and more, this is one of my favorite seminar formats.

For some thoughts on assessing the first segment when it is humanly impossible to hear everything, I have a few ideas to help. You can contact me or wait for an upcoming post on using Google forms for seminar data collection.

Thanks for reading,
Steve

For an idea about how to streamline seminar assessment, you might want to check out this post on using Google Docs for self-assessing, peer assessing, and teacher assessing seminars of any structure.

Writing Control

One of the most empowering things we can do for students is to allow them to make decisions about the course of their own learning. It instills a sense of ownership, increases engagement, and amplifies learning.
 

We know this.

Then why has so much of writing instruction been about removing decisions from students? We've told them in a variety of ways that they are incapable of making sound and effective decisions about their own writing, and then we chastise them for writing poorly and for not understanding the huge implications in their future academic and actual careers for not being able to write effectively.

Is there a solution to this? Yes, and it is something we're already experts at. When we teach kids to ride a bike, drive a car, dance, play an instrument, or dribble a basketball we're trying, ultimately, to teach them to control what they're doing. So, let's teach them to control what they're doing on the written page.

What "Real" Writers Do

If you look at what writers do, there are three areas they have to control if they're going to effectively communicate their ideas to their readers.

Whether it's a novel, a play, a poem, a scholarly article, an email, an essay, a letter, or a blog, these three areas need to be effectively controlled: Ideas. Structure. Style.
.
First and foremost, is control of ideas. It has to be, for without an idea, there is no reason to write. And this is how students naturally come to writing because they have ideas bursting forth. They are enthusiastic writers of fantastic things, and we reward them for this. But too soon, we alter their conceptions of their approach to writing by proposing to them that they need to consider structure first and foremost.

As a classic example, consider how we teach them to write essays (three- or five-paragraph). We begin by handing them an outline of the structure and ask them to fill it in section by section--or even line-by-line. The hollow equivalent of a paint-by-numbers picture that looks pretty from a distance, but that possesses no originality or evidence of transferable skill.

Structure is important, but only in service to an idea worth writing about.

All three areas are vitally, vitally important. Without an effective structure, meaning begins to unravel. Without style, the writing will be lifeless and unread. But without an idea, there is no impetus to write.

But they have to earn a grade, isn't that impetus enough? Yes, for some. And these few will write dutifully, and without any real commitment--and most significantly, without any sense of control or authority.

Author-ity

The word "author" has its roots in the word "authority." In all writing endeavors, we must instill this in our students. We must allow them to make decisions about their writing so that they can begin to assert themselves, begin to sense and develop a sense of control over their writing.

So they can become authorities and authors.

Thanks for reading,
Steve

Upcoming articles will detail the pedagogical implications for the three areas of writing control, beginning (of course!) with Control of Ideas.

Please leave a comment or ask a question. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

This Reminds Me of An Old Truck I Used To Have...

[Author's Note: This post was originally written for our school's technology newsletter, where as a technology pilot teacher, I was asked to comment on our very rocky shift to one-to-one devices that were more like one-and-done (as in one use and defective and unusable) devices. The most unfortunate thing is that our district administration and IT department had pursued every implementation aspect so professionally and thoughtfully, but this has been somewhat forgotten due to the horrible devices we received.]

I once had an old pickup that seemed to need something on it repaired every month. The thing used to eat fuel pumps like crazy, and for some reason kept throwing U-joints. During college, I used to drive from Cascade Park to downtown Portland where I was a graveyard shift guard at the Portland Building. That old truck of mine broke down on I-205 and I-84 more times than I’d like to remember. And since my shift started at 11pm, it was always dark--and usually raining--as I started walking the rest of the way. It got so bad that my dad bought me a AAA membership one year for Christmas. And while I might’ve considered pushing that truck off the 205 bridge more than once, I knew that with a little bit of wrenching I’d be back on the road (for at least a few weeks, anyway).

So much of our transition to these new devices felt like my college days, where I didn’t know if the old thing would start half the time. There was always that anxious few seconds where I inserted the key, started cranking the engine and feathering the gas pedal just so, hoping to hear those cylinders come to life. From, one period to another, we never knew if our new devices were going to lock up, glitch out, not connect to the wifi, start initiating some function test that would last half the period, randomly start updating, etc., etc.

Many times when the devices were malfunctioning, students would say, “Can’t we just use paper and pen?” I had to remind them that it was our job to get in and get our hands dirty, to run these things down the highway a bit and see what they were capable of doing--or of not doing--to try things out, to run into problems and figure out how to deal with them so other people didn’t have to. While there may be a few students who still cringe at the word “device,” by and large, the students were so flexible and understanding of their role in this early roll-out phase.

Though they might’ve been more reliable choices, I didn’t trade in my truck for a horse, or a sweet 1970s moped (you know, the kind with pedals like my crazy aunt had!). And while paper and pencil are certainly reliable technologies, they’re technologies that are falling into disuse in the world outside our schools. No matter how frustrated I got with that truck, and no matter how frustrated we got with the devices, it makes no sense to retreat to antiquated technologies.

I eventually traded up and got a new(er) truck, and it too had a few mechanical problems over the years. There is no perfect technological device (except the 1970s moped!), so we will keep facing problems, need tech support, get frustrated. But the alternative--no devices at all--would put us back to the decade before the typewriter was invented. And they didn’t have Starbucks back then, so that would be totally unacceptable.

Steve

Why High School Teachers Need to Go Back to Kindergarten

One of the most fundamental and compelling--as well as one of the most nebulous and challenging--shifts in education is the burgeoning approach referred to as personalized learning. Fundamental because this approach has been around for eons (think apprenticeships). Compelling because tapping into personal interests increases motivation through ownership.

But the personalized learning movement--at first glance--can appear quite daunting. It seems somewhat ill-defined at this point, and accompanied by the widespread adoption of one-to-one devices might be interpreted as an online free-for-all with little academic grounding. Add to that the expectations to now differentiate for each individual student, and climbing Mt. Everest backwards and blindfolded seems somehow more achievable.

What is often left out of any discussion of this movement are honest conversations about responsibility. One of the greatest ironies of education is that we have said, probably as long as such things as students and teachers have existed, "I wish insert-student-name-here would take more responsibility for his/her learning."

But, you see, it's not that they won't, more often the truth is that they can't. Why? Because we have not allowed them the gift of taking genuine responsibility for their learning. We haven't asked them what they wanted to learn; we have, instead, told them what they were going to learn. We have for a multitude of reasons spawned by a multitude of pressures, opted for conformity and uniformity and hoped that our students would somehow find enough motivation to elevate themselves to our preconceived notions of acceptable performance.

If we did grant them some freedoms in pursuit of assignment completion, they weren't choices that amounted to much responsibility.

Even if we did open the barn doors wide, we kept them corralled in a pen.

Write a paper of this length due by this date. But you can choose your own thesis.

Perform this experiment using this equipment. You can choose your partner.

Give a report on a famous figure of your own choosing. Presentations must contain 10 slides--one for each category--and cannot exceed 4 minutes.

Again, there are a numerous reasons (many quite legitimate) that this has been the case for far too long. But besides the work being more uniformly easier to grade, we have perhaps made our jobs more uniformly destructive for ourselves and for our students.

We get burnt out on work that the students don't seem to want to do and that we don't really want to grade. Students don't take ownership, nor do we, really. We shift the blame, point fingers at checked-out parents, the ills of too much screen time, and we may even resort to complaining about the lower grades not getting the kids ready.

Sure, those may all be true or not true at all. It doesn't really matter.

What matters is that if we want to do right by our students--and by ourselves--we focus on the following:

Trust--the students are going to trust that they won't be penalized for taking risks and for failing. Long-lasting, genuine, meaningful, powerful learning--heck, all significant advances--are built on taking risks, learning from failures, and having the gumption to try again. And we have to trust that this new paradigm is worth the release of our strict control. Compliance begets mediocrity, if that.

Responsibility--meaningful decisions should be shared between each student and the teacher for the trajectory of their learning. Our job is to provide our students a forum for growth--a sandbox, of sorts--where they are free to take charge of their learning, to discover, to dream, to experiment, to fail, to own their learning, and to thrive.

Sounds a lot like kindergarten, doesn't it? Those of us at the secondary level might want to do what we can to rekindle some of this magic.

Perhaps the biggest challenge won't be convincing ourselves or our students of the necessity of this paradigm shift, it'll be trying to convince our colleagues and our administrators. The answer and perhaps the antidote to this will not only be student performance that not only meets, but will most likely exceed standard, your classroom will be a place where you and your students are genuinely excited.

And if nothing else I've written is true, there is no denying the infectiousness of excitement.

How would your high school experience have been better if it were more like kindergarten? Please feel free to leave a comment.

Thanks for reading,
Steve

On the Shoulders of Giants

When I began my career over twenty years ago, there were names that permeated the landscape--my landscape, at least--of the teaching of English:

Atwell.
Rief.
Ramano.
Fletcher.

It was a time in which Mrs. Atwell urged us to place ourselves literally In the Middle of our students. But she did more than that. Through her intimate journey into her classroom, she forced us to start asking many hard questions of ourselves. 

Ultimately these questions led us to one fundamental answer: student empowerment.

Which is sort of ironic because at its very core, isn't education innately about just that? None of us invite in our students and aim to lessen them by the time they leave our classrooms. None of us. It's not who we are.

But--and please believe I still find myself doing this very thing more often than I would care to admit--I make far too many choices for my students when they could be asserting their own desires. And I think for too long our profession has embraced this because it is how we were taught. We stepped into our classrooms that were mirror images of all the classrooms we'd ever stepped foot in. We embraced the status quo.

Atwell and others, though, provided another way to think about strengthening our students by giving them agency. By having them, through meaningful choices, find their voices.

And those of you brave enough to combat the pushback from what was once considered fairly radical recognize how empowering, rewarding, meaningful this paradigm shift has been. Once students trust that we are sincere in our approach--that we want them taking risks, we want them to defy our expectations, we want them all pursuing that which inspires and intrigues them--they begin to own what we had once owned for them.

*   *   *

My career's success--whatever it is--is not only due to those mentioned who are widely-famous, but to those who are more locally-famous to me. Those teachers who were still smiling and learning and loving what they did thirty or even forty years in. They inspired me when I first started out, and I find myself trying to emulate them virtually every day.

If I can see a slightly different landscape, it is only because I am still firmly seated on their shoulders.

Steve
December 1, 2016