Attention-Span Injustice

Mrs. Gillmore's last post was incredibly relevant to my week. I assigned a story from the textbook (which is one that has to be covered; it wasn't a particular choice of mine) about Apartheid. I was shocked and dismayed to find my students had never heard of it. The kids were bored, uninterested, and some were even angry with me for making them read such "boring" material. I tried to explain to them the injustice of Apartheid. I might as well have been speaking Greek.

I started thinking about how I was presenting my information. On Thursday I came in with Multiple Intelligence and Learning Styles tests. I told the students I knew they were brilliant, but I wanted to see what kind of brilliant they were. This, and a recommendation from a friend who grew up in rural Arkansas (since I grew up in what might as well have been another country) seemed to break the ice. After breaking them up into learning styles groups, I began a worksheet on stereotypes. None of them knew what a stereotype was.

I finally got the idea of Apartheid across by asking the students how they would like it if some rich people came from somewhere else and told them that they no longer owned their farms and took away all of their independence and rights. They definitely got fired up by this, telling me exactly what they would do to those people. When I asked what they would do if there were too many of these people, or if they were armed, or they threatened to hurt the students' families, I saw the wheels turning. I am not claiming that they immediately became enthralled by the history of Apartheid or enraged as I am over the injustice, but they were listening. They actually tried.

Even though it took all week, this was a victory for me. Now that I know the students' learning styles and what they find interesting, I assigned an activity I think they will find more fun for this week: role-play.

Discipline of Desks

Please read the following poem and contemplate on the meaning of this expression:  "discipline of desks":

Outing


Out the back past buses
out a gate
we crossed a dry field
chatting in twos and threes
then poked and scratched
along the thick wood's edge.

Three girls giggled with their heads together,
whispering about the smell of leaves.

By the ball field
the sticker bushes parted,
shallow ruts
led beneath the trees
up the hill.
We gathered wild roses, black-eyed susans,
ferns and thistles
lavender
and burrs.

Boys scrambled recklessly ahead.
Some stood like paintings of explorers,
one foot set firm atop a mound of dirt.

Stopping still, we listened for the cheeping
of crickets and the clicking of a leaf.
falling through leaves
--not the click of pencils
no locker slams
or voices in the hall.
We dreaded leaving,
imagined hours on the sun-dappled hillside
watching the leaf showers, counting saplings,
watching birds chase-dance through light and shade.
with the smell
of heated dust.

Time between bells
with the discipline
of desks.
-David Burk, English Journal, March 1992


To be honest, I had never quite placed such a connotation on the meaning of school desks.  Maybe because I have always enjoyed school?  Maybe because I am not really the "outdoor type"?  Give me a book any day!

The desk, though, is a discipline tool. A cage.  "Sit down."  "No one out of their seats."  "You do not have permission to get out of your seat."  And the directives go on...and on...and on....

Then, we line the desks in rows...military style, further discouraging conversation, a tool which we hope the students have mastered, especially after attending thirteen years of this institution we label as an education in America.

But my students sit at tables.  My desks are arranged in lit circle format.  Is this better?  ANSWER:  What do the students DO at these tables?

• As I write this, I am picturing my classes over the last couple of days, where I had them working in groups, but guess who still did too much of the talking?
• As I write this, I am thinking of too many students who looked bored.  Bored!  Really?  I spent a lot, let me repeat....A LOT of time preparing that lesson!  Being bored in my class is not part of the legacy as a teacher that I want to leave behind.

Now picture this,  a classroom in our building that has tables with NO chairs.  Why?  According to that teacher, they work at the computer stations and then use the tables to confer...without sitting down.  Without the discipline of the desk.

This leads me to my next personal challenge as a teacher:  to increase the amount of inquiry within all my classes within each of students and between the brains sitting in those desks.  Ooopss...just transformed that desk into a neuron-growing machine!  "Our minds thrive upon the driving process of inquiry--our striving to find and figure out what seems strange, unusual, or novel." ...from John Barell's Developing More Curious Minds.

The Theory of the Iceburg...according to Hemingway:  "If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water." - Death in the Afternoon, Scribner's, 1932, Chap. 16, 192. (Source)

My proposal: 

• Teach one eighth of the time.
• Students inquire 7/8's of the time.

Okay..seriously?  Those numbers make me a bit nervous.  That GOLD person inside me is going to have to practice being quiet!
Goals:

1. Students become engaged in group inquiry projects.
2. Culminate this nine-week unit with a Socratic Seminar.
3. More and more open-ended questions.  Then....
4. More wait time.
5. No...wait...wait for it....give them time to think...

 NOTE to Student Interns in Methods for Secondary English 2011:

• Plan...begin right now...to Never Work Harder Than Your Students.
• That's right...do as I encourage, not as I have taught in my 20+ years of teaching!
• I have you to thank for the inspiration for this post, for as I was pondering on our next class, I came across the above poem.  So...thank you! 

Not sure that I will ever look at a desk in the same way!
_______________________________________

Poem retrieved from Poems by Adolescents and Adults, "School Life,"  Chapter 5, pp 108-109.

Another movie reference...

Teaching at the high school level always makes me think of The Breakfast Club. It is so funny to me that from the very first day in a classroom you can get a fairly accurate idea of who is who. You can identify the "jocks," the "smart kids," and the "class clowns," but the first and easiest ones to identify are the behavior problems. This is not to say that these students will necessarily fit into only one of these categories, or that they will never move from one group to another. It does mean that by making these quick, admittedly stereotypical, divisions you can focus on the students who you know will need more academic help than others as well as those students who will have behavior problems.

My first week in the classroom I recognized a student as fitting into both of these groups. After reading a sample of his writing I assumed that he was an average student. His writing was not amazing, but was on par with most of the students in his class; however as I spent more time in the classroom I realized that his behavior was less than desirable. For example, when class work is assigned I often walk by his desk long after the assignment has been given and realize that his paper is completely blank. He is tardy almost everyday and always has some excuse for leaving the room during class. As if this were not bad enough, he often distracts those around him from their work as well. The worst part is that he seems to be almost completely apathetic. He could care less whether or not he passes an assignment.

One day when I asked him why he never did any work, he said that he can not comprehend anything he reads. While I believe him, I can't help but feel that a large part of his problem is his lack of effort. While there are many strategies that could help him better comprehend what he reads, none of them will help him if he does not employ them. Yet at the same time, is it all his fault. I believe the answer is no. When teacher after teacher gives up on a student's ability to learn, how can we expect that student to believe in his or her own ability to learn? That self fulfilling prophesy gets us every time.

The most frustrating part of this story is that this student is currently being tested for placement in special education classes. This student transferred into the district in the eighth grade. What does it say about our public school system that a student can get to the tenth grade and reside in two different school districts (both for fairly long periods of time) before someone realizes that they are struggling?

Delivery

I had my first observed the lesson the other day, and I am noticing a trend. The more I prepare, and the better my lesson plans are, the worse my delivery is, and the less I am able to stick to the plan. I prepared a really thorough lesson for my first observation of the year, and when my teacher came to observe, I found myself more nervous than I usually am when I "wing it" and kind of unsure. The students had studied, were extra respectful and attentive, and did a wonderful job of showing how "on the ball" they were. I have never been prouder of a group of students I have taught. Unlike the last time I had a lesson I felt like I flubbed, this time it was not the students. (Last time they were just not on the same page as me. This time, if they weren't, they jumped to my page-- they were ever eager to keep up with me.) I over-planned the lesson and ended up having to cut out a few things, and forgot a few things in my harried state.

What I want to understand is, why, when I am so prepared and have such a clear idea of how things will go, do things always go much less smoothly than when I just plan an idea of what I will do so that I can see where the kids take it? I want to prepare good, strong lesson plans and deliver them effectively in the classroom. Is this counter-productive to my teaching style?

One of my favorite movies from childhood is The Pagemaster. In case you haven't seen it, the movie tells the story of Richard Tyler (Macaulay Culkin), an odd young boy who is practically afraid of his own shadow. This causes strain between Richard and his parents, who just want their son to be normal. While running an errand for his dad Richard gets caught in a thunderstorm and, fearing the lightening, takes refuge in a library. In the library Richard meets the quirky librarian, Mr. Dewey (Christopher Lloyd). This meeting is one of my favorite scenes of all time. In this scene Mr. Dewey gives Richard a library card, saying, "Richard Tyler, consider this your passport to the wonderful and quite unpredictable world of books." Of course the movie has the predictable Hollywood ending (Richard gains some courage and discovers the value of reading), but the Mr. Dewey's quote has always been what resonated with me.

During the first week of school Mrs. Taylor planned a "genre scavenger hunt" in the library. The activity had several purposes: to introduce the students to a variety of genres, to help them pick a book for their first book project, and to familiarize them with the school library. I was so excited about this activity when Mrs. Taylor told me about it, but seeing it in action was much not near as exciting as I had expected it to be. It seemed that none of these students had ever actually checked a book out from the library, and further more, none of them knew how it worked, nor were they interested in figuring it out! No one had ever given them their "passport." Then, third period (a 10th grade Pre-AP class) rolled around. Although this class seemed more interested than the regular English 10 classes did, there was still a lot of apathy.

I was so disappointed...until I saw something that really restored my faith. Students are only allowed to check out one book at a time. One of the students in the Pre-AP class approached the librarian's desk with two books in hand. At first she looked at him kind of quizzically, then a look of understanding overtook her. She looked at the student and said, "Oh, I know you'll finish both of those in time to return them." After that I knew I had to talk to this kid. Talking to him on the way back to the classroom, I realized that at the age of 16 he has read more than I have at the age of 21. This includes more of the classics (including Shakespeare...yuck!). From that moment on, I have always referred to him as The Pagemaster in my mind. This experience also helped me decide that one of my goals for the year, and in my future career, is to instill a love of reading in my students. I want to be Mr. Dewey.

(On another note, one of my students discovered this week that my last name fits perfectly into the Oscar Mayer jingle. I can only hope that I don't have to hear "Oh I wish I was a Niemeyer wiener" for the rest of the year...)