Check it

You can't just push away uncertainties; you have to push through them.

~Jeff Stanzler

14

14 hour day yesterday. Arriving at the high school at 7:00AM, doing the student teacher thing, and then staying through the end of parent/teacher conferences was a bit of a struggle. I wasn't told that my mentor is typically the last to finish his conferences, well past the allotted time. I guess it comes with the territory -- he teaches three AP classes and two history classes that students need to graduate. While sitting next to him and shuffling progress reports, I looked around the gymnasium and noticed that his queue was easily the longest. I attribute this to two things:

1. AP classes are hard, and many parents are concerned about their kids' grades
2. my mentor teacher scoffs at the "6 minute conference" rule.

Regarding the second point, I support his decision. You can't cut off a worried parent nor try to get through to a kid in front of his parents in 6 minutes. Let's face it, if it took just 6 minutes for students to be metacognitive about their behavior and study habits, a lot of students would not be failing. Sometimes I think that the teenage mind is in a chrysalis-like state. Their identities are still manifesting inside of some hard and crinkled cocoon. The problem is, it can be hard to get through to them because you somehow have to penetrate said cocoon. Also, that is the second reference to cocoons I have used on this blog. Happy Cocoon Day.

I was thankful to see the whole spectrum: the aggressive, "why-is-my-perfect-child-failing-your-class," "i-can-do-a-better-job-than-you" parent; the misbehaving kid who thinks he is hotter than magma, accompanied by his take-no-nonsense mother (My mentor really leaned into him. Best line: "What you do doesn't just reflect on you. When you do bad, you don't just make yourself look bad, you make your mom look bad, and everyone else who wants to see you succeed. You don't want to do that, do you?" SMOKED.); the conference where the kid is so worried about his grades and his parents' reactions that he bursts into tears; and the three minute chat with the parent of the kid with the highest grade in her class.

I hate to add another hat to the pile, but as a teacher it is completely necessary to be a diplomat. We need to be able to diffuse potentially volatile parents but still stand our ground and communicate that there are certain things that their child needs to comes to terms with before they can be successful. We need to have the savvy to convince a poor student to change his ways, cut the crap, but still inspire them to persevere. We need the empathy to build up the confidence of the kid who is failing, to make them understand that regardless of the letter grade they are receiving, we believe in them and know they can improve, as long as they keep trying.

Keep trying. My brother sent me this link the night before my fourteen-hour day, when I was up exceedingly late wracking my brain over just how I was going to teach about the Muslim caliphates. In a nutshell (or a cocoon, maybe), it's about how success often does not come without failure. The money line is at the end:

But despite their many advantages, Randolph isn’t yet convinced that the education they currently receive at Riverdale, or the support they receive at home, will provide them with the skills to negotiate the path toward the deeper success that Seligman and Peterson hold up as the ultimate product of good character: a happy, meaningful, productive life. Randolph wants his students to succeed, of course — it’s just that he believes that in order to do so, they first need to learn how to fail.

I can't tell you how much this struck me. Maybe because I understand the gravity of that lesson -- the first-hand experience of failure, and then, the process by which we dust ourselves off and find the necessary strength to rise above.

So I went in that day, ready to teach about the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, the qualities of a good empire, and the reason why empires fall. I made a handout. Also, I completely bombed it. It was awful. If you don't believe me, I recorded it. Yes, there is a video record of me failing to teach why empires fail. This lesson had many levels.

But I took that failure, and over the next two hours, tweaked the lesson, and come 4th hour, I was able to reach my teaching objective. The kids knew what I was trying to make them understand, and the best part about it was, I didn't tell them what I wanted them to know. They figured it out on their own.

It was weird then, talking to their parents later that day during conferences. Well, I actually didn't say anything. My mentor did all the talking. But if I did say something, I would have told my 4th hour students that the lesson today was the result of me failing. By failing, I was able to troubleshoot my weaknesses, and then go back and repair them. School -- heck, life in general -- ain't about succeeding. It's about improvement. We must measure our worth not by how high we go, but how far we have come.

And to my 1st hour students, I would have told them I'm sorry. And to read their textbook.

SES

I'm in EDUC 606 (Educational Psychology) and we're talking about SES. We were just asked if we knew what "SES" meant. I do:

I love the eternal relevance between education and Korean pop music.

Teaching my first lesson (and b-boying)

Taught a brief lesson for the first time today. I think I stressed about it entirely too much. My mentor had me teach a theme in Chapter 6 in his AP World History classes. I never really took a world history class, so to speak. I mean, Ive had classes that covered specific areas in the world, like Imperial China, and narratives of colonized peoples do provide insight into historical world events -- but not always in a popular manner. Therefore, I was slightly worried that these high schoolers would absolutely destroy me with their history knowledge. I spent much of my preparation reading whatever I could find on the topic at hand: Ancient Indian civilization.

I hope this isn't news to you when I say that India is freaking huge. Maybe not geographically, but their history and their people are hella deep. Not to say that other histories are not as deep, but I was supposed to figure out how to teach a succinct, 10-15 minute lesson on ancient India and all of its deepness. It was like standing at the edge of a chasm.

Luckily, I settled on a topic that I felt could be explored within my allotted time frame: the Varna system. Basically (and please do destroy me with your knowledge if any of this is inaccurate), the Varna system was a social order based on the Vedic religion, divided into strict classes. My focus question was "How did religion organize ancient Indian society?" The takeaway for my students was to understand how the Varna system set occupations to specific groups of people. A secondary objective was to teach the students how to make concept maps. I'm not a big fan of concept maps myself, but I have to admit it can be a useful study tool. This was relevant because they kind of have a test on this stuff on Thursday.

After reviewing the varnas, I related them to reincarnation and dharma. I then kind of jumped into doing concept maps as a way to organize all this information (my example above). Once I had explained the concept of the concept map, I assigned a concept map explaining ancient India's diversity. It was a little difficult for me to actually come out and say I was assigning something, like I was pulling the trigger on someone's grade.

I guess it went OK. I did it twice, but I have to admit that the first time around felt more natural. I had a plan on what I wanted to do, but for the most part, I freestyled. The second time around, I had a page of comments from my mentor teacher, as well as an appearance by my field instructor to handle. It was less freestyle. I wish I had remembered to push the "record" button during 1st hour, because I would have liked to go back and see the difference.

Regarding freestyle, I think I almost prefer seat-of-your-pants teaching. It's probably not as effective, the more structured 4th hour class' takeaway was that religion was used to control the populace by forcing them into duties and discouraging rebellion (I DID NOT PLAN FOR THAT). My preference for freestyle teaching most likely comes from B-boying and substitute teaching. Both require me to do things on the fly. You could even throw in being a radio DJ in there as well. I guess you could say that my career has consisted of not planning.

Yeah, I know. It's not good. Good planning means a lot of positive things, among them class coherence and classroom management. So I guess my question is, how do I plan a lesson well, while still allowing room for freestyle? Can I have both? Or am I hoping for a contradiction?

Good teaching? Or just dancing?

How to Make A Pot of Coffee

I tried to abstain from it. I thought I was stronger, thought I could find alternatives. I didn't want to be like everyone else, and didn't want to succumb to peer pressure. But I found that I am weak.

Teachers need coffee.

I am not naturally a morning person. The timestamps for most of these posts occur sometime between 1:00AM-4:00AM. Actually, as I read this, I guess I technically am a morning person -- a morning person in the sense that I stay up so late that I vanquish the night.

So when I stumbled in this morning on three hours of sleep, I broke down. In my moment of weakness, I had a cup of coffee. Correction: two cups of coffee. Lots of cream. Lots of sugar.

With my energy reserves safely replenished, I felt confident enough to continue with my day. However, my indulgence had a price. There was no more coffee left in the pot. I had drank too deeply and too greedily. I suddenly came to the realization that I had no idea how to create more precious caffeinated fluids. Visions of the terrible end of my placement flashed through my mind. Without coffee to fuel the teachers, the students took advantage of their weakness and staged a coup, and it was all my fault.

Luckily, a nice woman who worked in the counseling office came by, and I politely asked her to show me how to brew a new pot. For your convenience (and survival), this is what she told me:

How to make a pot of coffee:

1. Fill up the coffee pot with water. Pour it into the reservoir on top of the coffee maker.

2. Take out the coffee filter. Throw it away. Put a new one in

3. Put in 5 heaping scoops of sweet, sweet coffee grounds, on top of the filter. Put the thingy back into the coffee maker.

4. Turn on the coffee maker.

5. ???

6. PROFIT

Test

Today was my first staff development day as a student teacher. It went something like this:

I woke up at 5:30am to run five miles. This probably has nothing to do with student teaching. I enjoy running, and as the Fall semester starts up, I understand that I will have less and less time for things non-MAC related. I've also been told that there must be certain things that I should refuse to give up, activities or hobbies that I must maintain as a means of preserving my sanity. I'd like to believe running is one of those things. I've also been told to try and be optimistic.

I arrived at Thurston High School on time. I had visited twice in the past to interface with my mentor teacher, so there weren't any problems getting there. I was more or less ushered into the school cafeteria, where much of the day's agenda would be held. School cafeterias carry a large significance for me. They are the school's social proving grounds. Real life experience and "High School Musical" has taught me that population is segregated by lunch table. Popular kids sat at the popular table. Jocks sat with other jocks. Just as we are tracked academically, schools have a peculiar way of sorting us socially as well.

Being a student teacher, I was neither popular nor jock. I found myself latching onto a fellow MACer and meandering over to an empty table, surrounded by veteran teachers and other school officials engaged in their own conversations, sitting at their own tables. I was essentially a freshmen. The superintendent came over to me to introduce himself and welcome me to the district. I asked him if he could smell my fear. He said yes.

After a morning of speeches and an ACT practice test (I got one wrong), we broke off into our departments in order to incorporate more literacy practice into our summative assessments. In plain terms, we took passages out of the textbook and wrote three questions that would require students to practice reading strategies with course relevant content.

I want to relate how extremely difficult it is to write test questions. Before my hands-on experience, I thought that the hardest part about designing questions was applying Bloom's Taxonomy via Anderson and Krathwohl's theoretical framework. I was surprised to realize that requiring students to use higher order thinking when answering questions was not necessarily the most difficult part. That honor belongs to thinking up the answer options for multiple choice questions.

It's like this: ideally, we already know what the students should know, since we designed the curriculum. Sit-down tests are opportunities for students to confirm they know what they should know. Yet, the test questions and answer options must be chosen carefully. If the options make the correct answer too obvious, students are not being effectively tested. If the question and options are hard to understand or misleading, students may still answer incorrectly even if they can recall and transfer the knowledge being tested.

But that brings me to another point. After learning about the inconsistencies of standardized testing, I found it unsettling to learn that teachers are almost obligated to "teach to the test." As I mentioned earlier, I spent the morning writing and rewriting questions that simulated the questions found in the ACT. This Fall and Winter, I will be student teaching for a mentor teacher who teaches advanced placement courses -- courses literally made for the sake of doing well on a standardized test.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I understand that because so many advantages are born out of scoring high on standardized tests, it would undermine student success to NOT teach according to the test. However, as a teacher, how can we be instruments of reform if there is greater incentive for perpetuating inadequate systems of instruction and assessment?

Or maybe, this is as adequate as we can get?

I'll let you know in six months or so.

Hostage By Singularity

It is 2:18am and I'm finally starting this blog post. I swear, procrastination had nothing to do with it. I love blogging. It has been my truest and most trusted friend. When I am sad, frustrated, angry, or worried, I blog. I've learned that sometimes there are problems that you can't necessarily tell people about. Blogging (and journal writing in general), allows you to say exactly what is wrong, and through the process of naming your oppressor, you can gain insight on how to make things better.

Since this is a blog, and the name of this blog is "Record of Praxis" (whatever that means), I will name my oppressor for the sake of consistency:

BLOGGING, YOU ARE MY OPPRESSOR.

Yes, I did just say I love blogging. We are college buddies. We've had some great times together. However, the best part of our relationship is that it is completely natural. Easy, like Sunday morning. When blogging starts making demands, then the joy of it is gone. Obligation is the nemesis of recreation. Ask any game tester if they love their job. By making the maintenance of this blog a graded requirement, I feel like I am hunched over the keyboard with a gun to my head. I am not blogging for fun and therapy anymore; I am blogging for a credential.

But, wait. Suddenly, I am in a garden. It is a warm Spring day. I have long blonde hair and am wearing a frilly blue dress. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch something dash into the bushes to my right. I am young and curious, so I decide to investigate. I crawl headfirst into the rhododendrons and see what looks like a white rabbit, wearing a waistcoat and glancing anxiously at his pocketwatch (because only boy rabbits wear waistcoats, duh). His red eyes grow large as he realizes the time, and darts into a nearby hole in the ground. I approach the hole on my hands and knees, soiling my dress. I want to know where the white rabbit went. I want to see where this hole goes. I jump in:

TECHNOLOGY, YOU ARE MY OPPRESSOR.

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines oppression as "a sense of being weighed down in body or mind." Just as I am being oppressed by blogging, I am being oppressed by technology. In class, we talk about what it means to be a 21st Century learner and the necessity of incorporating technology into the classroom. We made Blogger and Twitter accounts. We submit our assignments via CTools. Laptops and video recorders are required for the MAC program. I have to register for classes via Wolverine Access. I fill out my financial aid forms online.

I can see the usefulness of technology in our daily lives. It makes things easier, and gives us ways, as educators, to improve upon our practice. But with so many forms of technology offering a multitude of functions and services, how can we decide which to use? Or do we just take them all?

Enter the singularity. You can clicky-click on the linky-link if you want to read more, but the "technological singularity" is basically the hypothesis that if technology reaches the point where it becomes more intelligent than humans, it will develop faster than human beings can understand. After this point, the future becomes impossible predict, because we cannot comprehend the capabilities of such technology. I used my computer to look up that succinct definition, because I had forgotten. YouTube teaches me how to do the dances for Korean pop songs. The explosion of technology in the past decade or so was unimaginable two decades ago, and we really have no idea what to do with all of it. The singularity is upon us.

This wouldn't be a problem if we practiced a little moderation, but we don't. We feel obligated to consume the latest gadget or widget or whatever they call it nowadays. We have twenty thingamabobs, but we don't care. It's no big deal. We want more. Our justification is that it can "make things easier," or that we are "keeping up with the times." But does maintaining all of those online accounts, worrying about identity theft, and affording all that hardware really make it easier? And if we are trying to keep up with the present, isn't your purchase going to be obsolete in six months anyway?

One of the basic rules of childhood is: "If you make a mess, clean it up." A fine mess I've made here. I argue that we are being oppressed by technology, so unless I want to get grounded, I had better come up with a solution, right?

I think that in order to make sense of the future of technology (and education, while we are at it), we need to look to the past. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire introduces the "banking" model of education: the learner is an empty bank account, and teachers deposit information into them, leading to the perpetuation of oppressive attitudes and practices. Freire rejects this model, which is a metaphor for traditional education, and claims that it results in dehumanization: the elimination of individuality, creativity, and compassion. In regards to technology, this is all true. Technology is willingly deposited into us, and we are getting dehumanized as a result. In order to combat this, we need to be more critical about what we consume, and remain conscious of how it is practical to society.

Education? Being critical of what we consume? Practical to society? Where have I heard those terms before?

With the advent of democracy and modern industrial conditions, it is impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions. To prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities; that his eye and ear and hand may be tools ready to command, that his judgment may be capable of grasping the conditions under which it has to work, and the executive forces be trained to act economically and efficiently. It is impossible to reach this sort of adjustment save as constant regard is had to the individual's own powers, tastes, and interests - say, that is, as education is continually converted into psychological terms. In sum, I believe that the individual who is to be educated is a social individual and that society is an organic union of individuals. If we eliminate the social factor from the child we are left only with an abstraction; if we eliminate the individual factor from society, we are left only with an inert and lifeless mass. Education, therefore, must begin with a psychological insight into the child's capacities, interests, and habits. It must be controlled at every point by reference to these same considerations. These powers, interests, and habits must be continually interpreted - we must know what they mean. They must be translated into terms of their social equivalents - into terms of what they are capable of in the way of social service.

- John Dewey

I feel better already.