Establishing tone

I believe information literacy is the responsibility of all content teachers.  The following piece is a bit about how I tend to kick off a new year, and how to easily aim at info literacy from very early on.  As I have said here before, I do not like to go shy into the new school year.  Our students are learning from us every second of every day.  The real question then is what are they learning.  As the lead learners in the classroom, this is under our control.

With this in mind, it is my goal to have my students leave the room on that first day with a few things spinning around in their heads like…

1.  “Wow. This class is active.  I was working with ideas and classmates the entire period.”

2.  “This guy means business.  He is infectiously passionate and serious about this class, and yet has room for humor within all of the intensity.”

3.  “He seems to have a longview for us in the class.  I can tell he has plans for us and cares that we are “in” as much as he is.”

4.  “I might be headed for a music major in college next year, and this will likely be my last formal science course, but I am actually thinking this class might be built with people like me (as well as the biology geeks) in mind.”

5.  “I had better get used to sharing my learning.  This class is open.  I will certainly have to step out of my comfort zone a little on this one.”

6.  “Not sure how I feel about construc…. whatever he called it…  but if it means I won’t have to sit while he talks all period, then I’m for it.”

I obviously believe in creating the ultimate mental model, and then working from there with my planning framed by those ideals.  This year we started the school year with built-in early release days and short periods.  Last Wednesday was our first full period of instruction.  I just don’t believe that on that first day you can just go gently into your course.  It is my philosophy to swing hard from day one.

So how can you teach your students who you are, what to expect, what you stand for, what and how they’ll be learning during the year…  all in one day?  As usual, I’m still debriefing the success of this one lesson, but I do believe that all of this is possible.  Stick with me on this one.  Here in a bit, I’ll ask you to help me assess some of this by scanning through the pages of online student writing about this lesson.  Here’s a small sample as a preview:

I believe this type of learning is important… the activity split up our class in two sections making each side work together in a very short amount of time. This helps build chemistry between everyone in our class which I believe is very important since we’ll be around each other for a whole year. It was also important, because it made all of us think and learn about a topic we most likely hadn’t heard anything about. Science has a lot to do with the unknown and I believe this issue on shark cartilage really challenged us on something we had no clue about. We had to work to decide whether or not the shark cartilage was effective and for that matter whether or not the information we were given was reliable.” ~Kerstyn Bolton

Day one

I don’t do stand-alone “ice breakers” any longer.  That’s not a criticism of those who do, but in my thinking that says to the students:  “we had to construct a special event outside of our normal work in this class in order to talk to and learn about one another.”  I design my first day to be authentic collaboration and sharing among students where classmates must rely on one another to complete a content-related task, or solve a content-related problem.

My learning goals for the day were rather broad.  It was day one.  They were as follows:   1. Setting classroom tone.  2. Building the foundation of a learning environment.  3. Proving the concrete, daily value of science.  4. Team-building.  5.  Evaluating and debating a scientific assertion in the field of medicine.  6.  Establishing an academic spirit for our first online work at Principles of Biology.

Shark cartilage?

So, to trim down a rather complex story…  We divided into two large groups (10 students each side) to examine the idea that shark cartilage supplements can be used as a safe and effective treatment for some types of cancer.  This is fringe alternative-medicine stuff.  There is a ton of web chatter on both sides of this issue.  Though the medical community is rather aligned on this issue, as with any “natural” treatment, there are many proponents on the fringes.  The data found on the web is, in short, a big area of gray to most people.

The information on this issue is all over the board.  There are a few freely accessible journal articles on the web, there are terribly crackpot e-commerce sites, and there are hundreds of examples in the gray area between the two.  Because I had to have a brisk pace to finish in one period, I constructed two packets… one for each group.  One group of ten got a packet full of public websites representing the “for” side of using shark cartilage supplements as a treatment for cancer.  The other group of ten were given a packet representing sites that represented the “against” side of the issue.

With no formal instruction on argument nor debate, the students were led through a protocol to digest the content of the packet in short order and prepare a speedy argument aligned with their given viewpoint.  I led them through a series of skimming, compiling, active reading, and sharing tasks to help them build structure for an argument in about 20 minutes.  Considering this was a group of ten working with a subject they knew nothing about, that is saying something.  The action was fast and furious.  Frankly, they ended up engaging in a better debate than I had even anticipated.  Battles over sources cited and inherent biases came out without being prompted.

“I LOVED learning like this because I think it gave everyone a chance to teach everyone else.” ~Hannah Rush

Ultimately, they were to take their thoughts from the day and reflect on both the content learning as well as the process of the day’s learning events.  To me, I never go a day without sharing the strategic purpose for that particular event.  If I don’t have a best-practice reason for doing what I’m doing the way I’m doing it…   then I (and they by default) would quite possibly be wasting time.  This keeps us all on our toes and makes the “game of school” completely transparent within my class.

So let’s see where the rubber meets to road on this one.  If you haven’t been tempted to click through to the discussion thread on this already, please do so now.  I think you’ll be pleasantly impressed by the willingness to dive head first into this one and really discuss the issues.  As of this morning, there are seven pages of student discourse.  I think you’ll appreciate this look into how students approach the task of reflecting deeply over their learning in this class.

“I really thought what you said about “You learn only 10% of what you read, but you learn 95% of what you teach” was very interesting…  …This makes our activity in class so much more exciting to me! I remember a lot of what my section said about shark cartilage and that’s because I had to, because my team needed me…” ~Kerstyn Bolton

My LMS can beat up your LMS

Not only should information literacy not be an add-on, nor should your Library Media Specialist.  At Benton, we are undergoing a true paradigm shift in library media services.  By hiring Melissa Corey, we have in the span of a summer updated our services to bring the library’s digital tendrils into every classroom in our building.  Last year, the physical space of our library was scrapped for a full redo to bring it up to date as a learning space for 2010.  This year, we have the personnel to put the plan into action.

As this lesson was unfolding, I realized that I was setting up our new Library Media Specialist to fly in the next period, cape and all, to deliver the way to a more rigorous online research process.  What I didn’t know is how personalized this service would be.  Boy-  were we in for a surprise.  For starters, here is the slide show she used to help deliver our learning for the day:

Thanks

The goal in baseball is to just get by. Finishing the ninth inning with one more run than your opponent lands you with a win, and in the right game- a title. The goal in teaching should be quite different.*

Swing for the fences
Teach like you have something to prove. Because, in fact, you do. When a new year begins, you have a ton to prove to your students- and in a very short time. If inside the four walls of your room on that first week -it feels like a classroom- then you will have your work cut out for you even more than you would have otherwise.

Ask Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink) how quickly your students will size you up on that first day.
The only thing you have that, say -an interviewee for a job doesn’t- is about 179 more days with your captive audience to make amends. New teachers should hear loud and clear that with integrity and persistence you really can make up for a rocky start over time. In my opinion, the “first day” gurus such as Harry Wong, overlook this fact.

Rookie season
A teacher who has never stood in front of a group of high school students can be pretty intimidated with everything that must go off without a hitch on those first days. I have seen this several times during these last three years as an instructional coach. I mean seriously… look at this. You are pulling down a whopping thirty grand for mastering that in addition to everything else NCLB throws your way. Even the word mastering can be frustrating here. As a teacher, you won’t make a penny more or less whether you nail it, or fail it. It is one of those sad realities of the profession. Perhaps Mr. Duncan will have a thing or two to say about that. One thing we do know for sure is that he never had to spend a day worrying about that first week. For all of his extensive experience administrating schools, he’s never actually been a classroom teacher.

So how do you do just that -swing for the fences- in a classroom? Step one: care. Care about all of it, and care about it deeply. If you try to pull down something in that first week that you don’t deeply care about, then you will derail the train at the station. Your students don’t care so much that you are deeply knowledgeable about science yourself. They also do not care that you may be steeped in all of the latest instructional strategies… though this will certainly help. What they really care about is whether or not you do. I mean, I’m not a big fan of street mimes, but I’m also not about to walk by someone that committed without a kind smile lighting up my face. Bottom line- if you don’t care deeply about your mission, and it is a noble one, you might want to think about trying to get out of that contract before it is too late. Yes, I’m serious.

Is it worth swinging at?
Since you’re still reading, you can likely pass muster on step one. Step two is far easier. Step two is to identify something deep to begin with. Pick something that might typically be thought of as culminating. Don’t lay out all of the vector-physics wisdom involved with every step of arm wrestling. Beat a kid at arm wrestling… or lose… it matters little here. What does matter is that your students get a glimpse of what the end looks like. What are the culminating processes, skills, and concepts you want your kids to leave your room with in May? Pick one. Start with that. The natural world is an interesting, puzzling, or beautiful thing to all humans at some level. Where is the beauty in your subject? Where is the mystery? Where is the debate? Don’t wait until Spring to drop the really good stuff on a bunch of chronically bored kids. Don’t do that.

I know, I know… “but what about the pacing guide?” The pacing guide is a very well-intentioned piece of accountability hardware. I get it. It is all about making sure a teacher doesn’t stay with the “leaf unit” -insert other easy favorite here- all semester long. It is also about making a daunting management task a bit more manageable for a school’s administrators. I’d personally rather see a school hire a VP in charge of curriculum & instruction than to lay out anal pacing guides that make teachers feel unable to innovate with sequencing, alternate approaches, etc. I’m starting to believe that no amount of well-intentioned talk about how the pacing guide isn’t your boss will change that. Teachers are generally people who will do as they are asked. If it is in writing, hey- it’s in writing. If you had a knowledgeable VP in charge of C&I in a building, they could have real bi-directional conversations with teachers on a very regular basis about how they are going about the business of delivering the curriculum to students. This would have to be an administrator freed from the overwhelming glut of management of discipline duties a VP job normally comes with. Of course, you could argue that a strategy like this could just be trading one evil for another potential evil, and you’d probably be right in many cases.

Rethink your role
OK, back to the plan. Simply show kids where you are going. If you introduce them to atomic structure yet again to begin the year, you are asking for it. I’m not saying not to do it… just do it next week. Take week one to show them why any of those gruesome details might matter at a later date. Allow me to switch the metaphor. Essentially speaking, if your classroom were a restaurant, you might think of it as assuming the role of host or maitre d’ as opposed to the chef. Control the atmosphere. Greet them at the door, lead them to their table, introduce the menu, highlight the really good stuff, even bring the ingredients to the table… but then leave the cooking to them. I didn’t say walk away. Stay. Help out when you’re really needed. Hey- you’ve cooked a steak once or twice before, they haven’t. But let it be their steak. Don’t cook it for them. Small variations make a meal interesting, but a truly burned steak is a shame. Right?

Biology: the study of life
“What is life?” -sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? It is a typical question-led topic found in the introductory chapter of almost any Biology text. Tons of folks probably lead off with some analytic version of this lesson already. This year, like many in the past eighteen, I kicked things off in Principles of Biology by stirring up a bit of classroom discourse concerning a definition of “life.” No- I’m not talking about the one where we review a litany of characteristics like growth, metabolism, ability to reproduce, etc. Like most things, those fall dead flat without a rich context. If you’re just there for the diploma, you don’t care what a cell is or isn’t at this point. I like to ask that very same question from a more comprehensive vantage point that has relevance to all students by the time they are sitting in my class as a junior or senior.

I like to start this period with a short reading directly from “One Minute Readings: Issues in Science, Technology, and Society” by Richard Brinckerhoff. This is one of the few inspiring resources I have obtained via a textbook company in the past eighteen years. Check it out: at the time of writing this little essay, you can even score a copy for 37 cents. What are you waiting for? Check for the sample reading I have at Scribd. I wouldn’t normally re-type this much of a work like this, but since it is currently out of print and out of stock (new) most places, perhaps this will drum a small bit of interest. This book has 80 readings similar to that one. All were very current in 1992. Of course now you can only use about 40% of them straight-up. But really, you should use the others as inspiration to find your own sources and write your own questions.

The Emeril report
Here’s what I did this time around. I passed out the attached sheet while taking roll with explicit instructions for a silent, solo read. After reading, I asked my students to scribble their current thoughts onto a scrap of paper -scribbles that no one else would see. While trolling through the students seated at tables, (want a visual of the space?) I waited for a good moment to stop them for the next step. Now let me say that if your words, as well as your non-verbals, have done an adequate job of making students feel like they can speak up, then look out. This one can be amazing. Let me also say this… if you really are 22, and feel that you aren’t ready to facilitate a large group discussion that can get spirited from time to time, then might be something to observe the first time.

That being said drag this one out if you are up for it. As long as you don’t see yourself (or anyone else in the classroom) as having the “answer” to complex issues such as this, you are probably fine as long as you require people to simply be nice to one another. I have honestly had not a single issue with this lesson that transpired out of the classroom in any negative way. On the other hand, I have heard tons of thank you’s over the years for “allowing us to discuss such real things,” or for “treating us like what we say matters,” etc. Just stay on top of things with a gentle hand, and I think you’ll like the results of this one.

I usually end up reading the entire text to the class myself, aloud, as an expert reader. Of course, with this distilled little piece of text, you will end up stopping every other line and asking for input, asking for someone who can speak to the opposite viewpoint, and largely allowing the discussion to bend and twist to the needs of your kids. I also tend to follow this wonderful little quote that resides in my “stickies” file on the Mac:

“It should be the chief aim of a university professor to exhibit himself in his own true character — that is, as an ignorant man thinking, actively utilizing his small share of knowledge.” ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Be a facilitator, not an authority figure. That is a good rule of thumb in general. It makes you a real authority when you choose to actually play that role. But in the context of this lesson, it is honestly required to in order to keep the phone lines quiet in the days after the lesson. In the end, it doesn’t matter what you think. It really doesn’t. If you take the tack of an authority on any viewpoint in this lesson, you will likely deal with a kickback you don’t want.

So this year, I developed what I think is an ideal forum for the final stage of this lesson. I had already set up a classroom learning network on the Ning platform. Before class I created the discussion forum topic for student responses. I wouldn’t see them again for two days. So I asked them to visit the site in that time, and post a reflection based on the reading, our discussion, their overall reaction, their reaction to one specific element, the response they didn’t feel like verbalizing in class, whatever… their choice. I wanted a forum thread that would not only reflect the discussion of that one class period, but one that would also extend the discussion beyond the classroom. Check it out. I think you’ll see that we didn’t answer many things, but we sure engaged a few folks in the questions.

You’ll have to judge for yourself on how this worked for us. Keep in mind that this was the first online work they had ever done for a high school class… ever. That variable certainly changes the discussion in some interesting ways. I am open to discuss any of the other variables of this class in general, our curriculum, details of the setting, etc. The devil in all classroom adventures is in the details.

Let’s be real. I played baseball for years. I know that there are certain situations where squeezing a run in the first inning is appropriate. There are certain educational situations where scoring a small but easy victory early on is preferable as well. However, in my experience, more often than not I tend to step to the plate with any new concept ready swing really hard at least three times. That bravado is even more pronounced at the beginning of the school year. Hey if I strike out in the first, at least they’ll know what kind of a team they’ll be facing for the next eight innings…

Artwork thanks:

Is this post about Twitter?

No.  But I did find this site originally from a random tweet David Warlick (@dwarlick) chirped onto the Twitterverse a week or so ago.  It has idled alone in its own browser tab until now.  It is one of those things I have been meaning to share here -particularly with my literary and social studies types-  for some time.  Speaking of Twitter, I have been finding it to be quite interesting as of late.  It seems as though I have hit some magical confluence between the number of people I follow and the professional alignment of the crowd… or something.  In fact, my comment(s) to this very entertaining post by David Jakes contain quite the thumb-typed error.  Perhaps you should check it out.

I have a pile of local folks on Twitter with whom I frequently share.  However, I also follow a fair number of more “distant” folks there who wouldn’t recognize me at point blank range.  I also recently found this Google document which attempts to help educators find like minded folks to connect to.  When I finally get a few minutes to play with this spreadsheet, Twitter might just be even more fun.  I have been meaning to say something about this loved/hated service, and now might be as good as any.  By now, I think I’ll now go back and change the section heading for these first two paragraphs.

Then what is it really about?

Sorry to derail my own post with a blather on microblogging.  Perhaps this post is the first concrete proof of what the little blue birdie is doing to my brain.  My real reason for the original link is to highlight an amazingly in-depth analysis.  Martin Krzywinski’s Lexical Analysis of 2008 Presidential and Vice-Presidential Debates is quite a study in detail.  This page will likely appeal to anyone with a curiosity toward communication, human speech, or even scientific methodology in general.  My assistant principal (who was an outstanding chemistry instructor a few years back) and I had a brief geek-fest in first looking over this study.

Personally, I love throwing out divergent studies in my Dual-Credit Biology class to capture the attention of a literary sub-population of the class.  Since the first unit of the course concerns the “nature of science”, we needn’t spend 100% of our efforts within the field of biology-  just my personal bias.  This year in particular, I have made an attempt to highlight solid examples of scientific thinking in all realms of life.  A large percentage of the 24 students in my class will not move on to study biology, or any other field of natural science beyond high school.  It is these individuals I am paying particular and focused attention to this year.  Real scientific processing can happen beyond bees, trees and DNA, and it is one of my goals to drive that point home.

The “real” message?

I won’t even begin to trot out the number of “Aha’s”, inferences, and questions I generated while reading through this lexical analysis.  However, doing so instantly made me think of using this work as a “primary document” in some sort of “Three Story Intellect“-type breakdown.  On a side note, it frustrates me to see that this learning strategy, is rarely attributed to Robin Fogarty when posted online.  I suppose I’ll have to post my own (properly attributed) revision of this in the near future.  *tweet*

To me, it is quite interesting to see how similar large parcels of human speech really are.  I would have thought there were larger differences in parts of speech, etc.  However, the more I think about it, sentence construction by intelligent individuals (or really well-coached individuals) probably is more or less stable.  Now word choice is a different matter altogether.  The analysis of word clouds here is inspiring.  I have several colleagues who have recently taken to the visualization power of word clouds.  The problem is, few of us really know how to use them to their potential.  I thought I might… and then I saw this website.  I am excited to learn more.  This is a great resource for inspiration.

Tweet the vote:

Sorry about filling your screen with errant links today.  There are only a few days left before the election.  Fit in this little gem where appropriate before then.  Can you summarize this treatise in 140 characters or less?  If so, send out a tweet!

Artwork thanks:

Mundee, Laura. “Umm…hello?.” Flickr. 24 Mar 2007. 27 Oct 2008

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/bookgrl/432821035/in/photostream/>.

Antunes, Vitor. “Snake’s Mouth.” Flickr. 25 June 2007. 27 Oct 2008

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/janeladeimagens/624765887/>.