The Sticker Revolution

November 14, 2017June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 2 Comments

Several years ago, I had a sub who went a bit above and beyond. She not only took up whatever assignment I’d left for that day – she organized the papers and completion-graded them. In other words, she noted who’d finished and seemed to have taken the work seriously. She didn’t give them a number or a letter grade, of course – that would have been bold. But she did give each paper meeting her requirements a sticker.

I chuckled when I saw the papers the next day. Clearly this was someone more comfortable with elementary, maybe middle school. Nothing wrong with any of that, of course, but these were high school students. Pre-AP Freshmen. They were practically people. They weren’t going to be motivated by…

Holy Moses in a leaky basket, how they lost their minds when they saw the stickers. There was squealing from many of the girls, and almost genuine protest from some of the boys whose papers lacked the adhesive trolls or monkeys or whatever they were. I couldn’t believe it.

“Mr. Cereal! How come you never give us stickers? Don’t you love us? Do you not care if we do well?!?”

OK, they were partly kidding, but not entirely. Not even mostly. Many of them responded more powerfully than I could have ever imagined to the freakin’ stickers. Still… surely it was a fluke, right? A one-time thing? Kids are weird – you never know what’s gonna trigger them one day and mean nothing the next. I dismissed it as quickly as I had pet rocks and disco back in the day.

A week or two later I was at one of those Everything’s A Dollar So Stop Asking places with my wife, looking for who-knows-what, and I noticed several packages of the most obnoxious rainbow and puppy stickers. I grabbed them. Then some generic superheroes – not Marvel, not even DC, but some cheap knock-off assortment of colorful caped stereotypes. I spent less than ten dollars total, purely on a whim – what they heck, right?

The next reading quiz, students who scored a natural 100% (getting all the multiple choice questions right, not factoring in bonus points available from the more-involved short answer questions) received a sticker on their quiz next to the grade.

They loved it. It was almost embarrassing how quickly it escalated.

Students previously satisfied with 88% actually put in extra time to get stickers on their quizzes. A few kids who weren’t going to be getting 100% on their best day received them periodically for the largest jump in scores between quizzes or other nonsense. In short, it became a thing. I did it for years just because I found it amusing. Sometimes it seemed to actually change behavior, but over time it was mostly just stupid fun. The stickers weren’t driving the curriculum or anything – I wasn’t gamifying my flipped project-based #edtech lesson. They were a fluke that found traction.

I may have gotten a bit too excited and purchased way too many random, quirky packs of adhesive approval throughout the years. There were a few times I almost gave assignments just to use my cool new stickers! (Almost, I said. Stop judging me!)

Why am I telling you this?

We can professionally develop ourselves silly and memorize every Marzano text available-at-this-sponsored-link-please-buy-everything-I-get-a-percentage, and still sometimes it’s gonna be the weirdest, most random things that work – or at least work with some kids, in some situations, for some teachers, some of the time. When I’ve shared this with other educators, no one is surprised. Kids are weird like that, but of course teachers aren’t the most normal people in the world, either.

I suspect it was a type of unexpected approval, or a relationship-builder, maybe. I don’t really know for sure. And honestly, I didn’t entirely care – it was just something that worked for me, so I share it. Other teachers share what they do, also, and together we figure out what works most of the time. Some of us also lead workshops sharing ideas and strategies, much based on research and sound pedagogy, and some just based on experience and time. We can explain why some of it works, while some things just… do.

And then one day it didn’t.

I was bouncing through an introductory discussion with a new group of kids and someone shared a particularly pithy comment (I have no recollection what). I reacted with great approval and announced that THAT deserves a STICKER! as I marched back to my desk where I’d tucked them away for just such a joyous…

Nothing.

There was nothing.

I mean, I gave her the sticker. She said thanks, and looked a little confused. We kept going, and eventually I reacted to another thoughtful response with a second sticker. Then a third. Because when something’s not working, you have to do it more, faster, and with greater emphasis.

Still… nothing.

They were polite enough. The discussion went fine. The stickers just made no sense to them. Maybe it was my timing, or the context, or just a different group in a different state coming from different backgrounds. No biggie – we’ve found other ways to connect and learn and for me to push them to give a little more. I don’t need to understand what changed, precisely – although in hindsight I do wonder if I went a bit Bill Murray throwing snowballs in Groundhog Day and killed it. If I’m being honest, it had stopped working in conferences a couple of years earlier, but I’d kept doing it out of sheer momentum (and teachers tend to be overly polite about such things).

So, mild embarrassment I hadn’t caught on a bit more quickly, but no real harm and no lasting foul.

It never occurred to me to write a book about it, do a video series, start upping my lecture fee, or smother social media in derisive comments about teachers who don’t use stickers. I suppose I could have at least hit up Pearson or TEDx, but like I said, I’m just… slow that way. Plus, while the most casual perusal of my Twitter feed will easily dismiss any suspicions I might be carefully building a brand over here, I do have some shame. I may not get edu-famous (and yeah, I want to – who doesn’t?), it’s more important I be able to sleep at night.

Still, I could have shared it more vocally, I guess. There’s nothing more rewarding when you’re a relatively new teacher than stumbling across something that works – a lesson, a classroom management technique, even a book of stickers. And you should rejoice in those moments; they’re largely why we signed up. And I’m always happy to share. I have entire sections on each of my websites hoping there are folks who find them useful from time to time.

And one day they won’t work, or at least they won’t work the same way. That doesn’t mean I’ve failed, or that you’re doing it wrong. It just means that things change. The kids are different. You’re different. The context is ever-evolving and the exact dynamics maddeningly elusive. So we’ll find something else. You’ll try it another way. I’ll screw up a few times, feel like an idiot, then stumble into pedagogical brilliance once again.

Keep sharing those ideas. Keep going to those trainings – if you wish, I mean. Take in all useful ideas and figure out how to make them your own.

But don’t be afraid to follow your gut and do the illogical or unexpected thing, as long as it’s not unfair or in some way detrimental to your overall goals. And don’t be too proud to borrow from that irritating lady down the hall, or that coach who you won’t admit you feel smugly superior to in the classroom, or even from that weird sub who organized all of the papers and wrote completion grades on them.
It’s a tough enough gig even when it all works – no need to invent it all yourself or go it completely alone. Try stuff. Who knows what might happen?

And if you take a few risks and they turn out particularly well, I’ll even give you a sticker.

I have plenty left, believe me.

RELATED POST: My Teaching Philosophy

Facts-Only History

March 24, 2017June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

Good morning, class. Today begins the roughly three days we have allotted by our state-mandated curriculum to cover the causes, major events, and impact of the American Civil War.

Unlike past units in which I’ve sometimes been guilty of inflicting my personal opinions and interpretations on your instead of just teaching you history, I’ll be making every effort to present the facts and only the facts. Evaluation, analysis, synthesis, or conclusions are entirely up to you. We’ve practiced these skills through structured activities, and you already, no doubt, supplement my unwittingly biased and inadequate methods via long, meaningful discussions with your parents and/or clergy, as well as extensive research of your own. Hopefully that will mitigate some of the ongoing damage I’ve done as a bumbling, leftist, possibly atheistic public school educator out to destroy American values.

It’s not my job to teach you what to think, after all – just to present everything that’s ever happened anywhere in or to our great nation in more or less chronological order without prioritization or unnecessary commentary.

The 1850s: Countdown to Civil War

In 1850, the U.S. census showed a population of 23,191,876.

In 1840 – 17,063,353.

In 1830 – 12,866,020.

In 1820 – 9,638,453.

In 1810 – 7,239,881.

Rather than me inflict my personal interpretations on which elements of this growth were significant, I refer you to the U.S. Census Bureau for more details and to several biased-but-comprehensive overviews of U.S. History which you may read in order to make up your own mind.

On January 29, 1850, Henry Clay proposed the Compromise of 1850 to Congress. It was a collection of five bills he said would help prevent further conflict between the North and the South. Texas gave up its claims to New Mexico and other areas north of the Missouri Compromise line and the U.S. took over their remaining debts. California was admitted to the Union as a free state. Utah and New Mexico would enter the U.S. under the principal of ‘popular sovereignty’ – meaning the people in each would vote for whether or not to have slavery. The slave trade, but not slavery itself, was banned in the District of Columbia. A much tougher Fugitive Slave Act was enacted.

The North is generally perceived to have responded badly to the Fugitive Slave Act, which the South generally favored. I’ll refrain from elaborating further for fear I’d be injecting my own interpretations and biases into the matter. It’s not my job to tell you what to think, just to teach you history!

President Zachary Taylor died unexpectedly in July of 1850 of what seemed to be a stomach-related illness. Some suggested he may have been assassinated by pro-slavery southerners, and various theories have persisted into modern times. In 1991, Taylor’s body was exhumed and tests were done in an effort to determine whether or not he had, in fact, been poisoned. The science found no evidence of malicious behavior, but some question the results even today.

In an effort to avoid telling you what to believe, I’ll avoid further commentary, possibly having already said too much in favor of something as unsettled as medical science and wishing to give fair and equal treatment to every possible interpretation or theory related to this issue. You are encouraged to devote months of your life to researching the chemistry involved, the nature of the various organizations who’ve published opinions, and the history of Presidential assassination on your own in order to develop your own enlightened viewpoints free from my corrupting influence.

On July 10, 1850, Millard Fillmore was sworn into office as the 13th President of the United States. Neither expansionists nor slave-holders were generally happy with his publicly stated policies regarding slavery, although it would be wrong of me to try to speak for them or evaluate their reasoning.

On September 9, 1850, the Compromise of 1850 is passed – see previous elaboration, in which I’ve tried to be fair to all sides. I hope, by mentioning it again here I’m not unjustly suggesting it was more or less important than any other event, or that certain parts of it were good or bad or had any particular impact. Those sorts of discussions are best left to the family hearth.

On September 11, P.T. Barnum introduced Jenny Lind to American audiences. Often called the “Swedish Nightingale,” Lind was a soprano who performed in Sweden and across Europe before her wildly popular concert tour of America. She donated many of her earnings to charities, especially the endowment of free schools in Sweden. Some people think that sort of philanthropy is noble; others find it less so. Best we not consider such issues here. Or the role of the arts in influencing culture or character.

Too subjective.

While it is possible that Miss Lind’s singing success was unrelated to the outbreak of the Civil War nearly a decade later, it’s not my place to decide what events are or are not important; I’m paid to merely present the facts.

Then again, we’d better pick up the pace…

In May of 1851, the U.S. participated in the opening ceremony of the first World’s Fair in Hyde Park, London.

On August 22, 1851, a yacht named “America” won the first America’s Cup yach race, as things named “America” always should. This may have had an impact on different segments of the nation, or it may not have.

It would require an extensive study of available primary sources presenting various points of view in order to give a balanced interpretation regarding such an impact, or lack thereof. By my estimates that would require at least two weeks of class time, which the state-mandated curriculum does not allow. I will therefore abstain from projecting potentially slanted summaries of the nation’s reaction or speculating as to the impact or lack thereof this event may have had on the subsequent outbreak of war.

I fear we’re running short on time, so I’m going to condense a bit and hope you’re still getting enough to understand what caused the American Civil War.

November 1851 – Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is published in the United States, along with Nathanial Hawthorne’s House of Seven Gables. The painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware” is completed by German-American artist Emmanuel Leutze. These books and this painting are generally well-known, but every real American is entitled to their own opinion of their quality, their enjoyability, and what – if anything – each of them means or how they may or may not relate to the schisms leading to war.

December 1851 – The first Y.M.C.A. opens in Boston, Massachusetts. This arguably reflected changing values and social strategies in northern cities – if we were going to talk about values, I mean. Which we won’t. Because… school. So, um… the Village People recorded “Y.M.C.A.” in 1978 and it became a huge disco hit. If you’ve ever been to a live sporting event, you’ve heard this song and watched people do weird things with their arms which they seem to think are related to the song.

March 1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best-known book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is published. Stowe stated that she wrote this work of anti-slavery in response to the Fugitive Slave Act. It sold 300,000 copies in its first years of publication and is generally reputed to have had a huge impact in both North and South.

Many people think this book played a major role in the outbreak of war several years later. There’s also a story about Lincoln meeting Stowe and some things he may or may not have said. You should research all available information regarding this book and its impact in order to decide for yourself what role it may or may not have played and whether or not it’s a “good” book. Or ask your clergyman. Or clergyperson. Not that I’m suggesting there’s a god. Or that there’s not. I mean–

*sigh*

June 1852 – Henry Clay died. This was probably important in how Congress managed their affairs, but I don’t want to say for sure.

October 1852 – Daniel Webster died. This was also probably important, but again… trying to be neutral here.

November 1852 – Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, was elected President. Many things happened during his administration which could be interpreted a variety of ways…

1853 – America and Mexico signed the Gadsden Treaty. Vice President William King died. Arctic explorer Elisha Kane ventures farther north than any man has before.

1854 – Franklin Pierce was re-elected. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed and great conflict occurs, probably as a result, for reasons related to politics and slavery, but as a public school educator I don’t like to get involved in politics or controversial social issues, so… ask your parents, I guess.

1855 – William Lloyd Garrison published “Disunion!” in The Liberator and Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass. There are people who find both of these things signficant in different ways, so you might look into that. It’s complicated.

1856 – Henry Bessemer invented a process for mass production of steel. John Brown led raids against pro-slavery families in Kansas and five men were beheaded. He became a controversial figure about whom I have absolutely no insight or opinion because – controversy! (I could point you to some articles but we’re really running out of time here, so…)

1856 – James Buchanan was elected President.

1857 – The Supreme Court issued their decision in Dred –

Crap. We’ve got five minutes and we haven’t talked about Harper’s Ferry or the Election of 1860 or Abraham Lincoln. Then again, if we talk more about Lincoln than we have Pierce or Buchanan, that’s suggesting he was more important than they were, which is a political judgment as well as a value judgment. It favors one party’s ideology over the other, and…

I must apologize, class. Instead of just teaching you the facts, I seem to still be picking and choosing which parts of history to cover. I’ve injected way too many of my own ideas about which things matter and what they mean. I just couldn’t help myself when Uncle Tom’s Cabin came up; it was just so important—

Er… in my opinion. For reasons I should keep to myself, because others disagree.

Dammit.

I’ll try to do better tomorrow when we cover the Civil War in a day. I won’t leave anything out or inject my own biases about which battles, people, or ideas were right or wrong or which mattered more than others, or whether ending slavery was a good idea or the war was unpleasant. I’ll just teach you some history. That is, after all, my job – right?

RELATED POST: Fact-Free History

Fact-Free History

March 22, 2017June 27, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

There’s nothing more terrifying than finding out your district administrators have just returned from a conference somewhere, and they’re excited about something. You know because they suddenly smile too much, and now they want to come talk to your department or hold a special faculty meeting. It’s enough to ruin your entire 17-minute lunch period.

It’s not because their conferences are always in Vegas or Honolulu or Mount Olympus or some such thing, while teacher workshops are in Moore, or at the Pawhuska Technology and Training Center. No, what’s scary is that they come back all excited about some revolutionary new paradigm-shattering approach to teaching – usually a combination of common sense stuff you’ve been doing for years and a few colorful twists slathered in cutesy rhetoric. They’re sure you’ve never heard of it, and that you’ll be so excited for them to share it with you!

They’d never send you to these sorts of conferences, of course – they’re so far away and expensive, after all. But they think they’ve come upon the Pedagogical Holy Grail – the one which will replace last year’s Silver Classroom Bullet, which superseded the rather durable Brass Teaching Ring, that of course overthrew the Era of Learning Unobtanium (ELU).

So you wait.

The details vary from revolution to revolution, but the need to unendingly build on the ruins of whatever was going to save us all last year remains sadly the same. It drives the world of educational trainery like dilithium crystals power the Enterprise, or infantile narcissism fuels the President. The same few themes do come back around eventually, however, like the Merry-Go-Round of the Damned, and you learn to look for them. Dread them. Fight them. And yet, the very predictability in the process forms a dysfunctional sort of affection for them after a while.

My personal favorite is the Periodic Awakening of Fact-Free History.

It’s a Revelation built on a simple truth – one recently discovered by your building principal or curriculum manager or whoever sits before you, eating your bagels this particular Friday morning. “When we were in school,” they always begin, “History was all about memorizing facts – names, dates, places. So many facts.”

Their distress is evident. Damn those facts! And the memorizing of them? Barbaric! Cruel, even. We all pause and reflect on this travesty of our dark past.

“But history isn’t just names, dates, and places! It’s about… ideas! Causes and effects! Opinions and documents and different ways to interpret them! We shouldn’t be spending so much time on stuff kids could just look up on their phones!”

This point always requires the sharer to hold up their own phone momentarily, as if perhaps the rest of us were unfamiliar with this radical new device. The visual distraction helps blur their subconscious leap from “I hated my history teacher in high school” to “you all teach boring, stupid stuff and you’re ruining the future!”

You know where it’s going from there. It’s time to do more PBL (Project Based Learning). More STEALHAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts Literacy History Athletics Math). More opinions and less reality – because if we teach the way we were taught in the past we’ll create the future we dreaded in our former present! We’re preparing kids for jobs that don’t exist yet, so we need to light more fires and fill fewer buckets if we’re going to fail forward…

It’s a frightening proposition, this fact-free history – if for no other reason than how difficult it would be to insist that such a thing doesn’t actually prepare students to function in modern society. It might, actually – but that’s not a good thing.

It has traction because – like most powerful deceptions – it’s mixed with valuable truths, even if they’ve been shaken to the bottom during delivery… Cracker Jack prizes smudged by poison peanuts. We don’t need to memorize names and dates and stats in the manner of centuries gone by in order to be considered fairly enlightened; Google or some variation thereof seems to be here to stay. If Sherlock Holmes is correct and our minds hold a finite amount of information, like that flash drive stamped “Pawhuska TTC” you got for free at your last workshop, it’s probably not a good use of mental space to drill ourselves on who led Confederate forces at Chancellorsville, or chronologically list every Vice President and their state of origin.

On the other hand, it’s a shame to think any civilized young person would be set loose on the world without a pretty good idea of what the Civil War was, roughly when it occurred, and some of the major changes it brought about. It’s unforgiveable if we don’t at least try to ensure that same youth understands the three branches of government and has a general grasp of how each is supposed to work.

You know – facts.

As to the sacred teachings of whoever keynoted the Honolulu Retreat, it’s nearly impossible to make a passionate case for something social studies-ish without drawing on those anathematic details – names, dates, etc. “To what extent was slavery the cause of the Civil War?” is certainly a valid debate to have, and opens itself to a wide variety of approaches and responses. An effective argument in any direction, however, inevitably requires substantial background knowledge at one’s proverbial fingertips – a comfortable familiarity with the issue of slavery over the three centuries prior, the dozen or so precursors to the war occurring in the 1850s, the extant documents from various players indicating their values and viewpoints, etc.

Yes, those things can be “looked up.” No, one needn’t have memorized the details of the Kansas-Nebraska Act or know the precise origins of the “lost cause” mythology in the postbellum South. But neither can you start from scratch and throw something together after a few internet searches – at least not anything viable. Those names, dates, and stats so reviled in our collective memory are the grammar of history, the multiplication tables (or maybe even the numerals) of critiquing culture. They’re not the goal – they never have been. But they’re essential for reaching most worthy goals. They’re often precursors to even defining them.

And it’s even more essential that we emphasize data and details when addressing contemporary issues. I’m a believer in everyone being entitled to their own opinion, but I’d rather not cement my students’ ignorance by encouraging them to wax emphatic on topics about which they know little.

“How can the size and expense of the federal government be reduced without compromising our national security?”

“Should parents have more choice in where their children go to school?”

“Did the Russians interfere in our elections on behalf of the Trump campaign? Did Obama ‘tapp’ Trump’s tower?”

“Should businesses be allowed to refuse service to someone if they don’t approve of their lifestyle, their religion, their race, or their politics?”

If you’re sitting around having beer and burgers with friends, you can spout any opinion on any topic you wish – especially if you bought the beer. Anyone who knows me primarily through social media would never believe how receptive and balanced I can be when confronted with the most bizarre opinions or interpretations of current events from my students.

But if you’re in an academic setting, on academic time, pursuing academic goals, we should INSIST on statistics, data, experts, and records. We should at least TRY to be precise about names, dates, and other onerous “facts” before spewing our precious individuality about pretty much anything.

It won’t be perfect. My students are 15, and we’re rather limited as to time and resources. We’re not working on our doctoral theses this semester and none of them are writing books on trends in jurisprudence at the moment.

But we can at least model the process – we can acknowledge the ideal pursuit of better-expanded versions of our efforts and discuss how they might differ.

I’m not against “individual learning journeys,” and I’m certainly not suggesting we go back to the Trivial Pursuit version of American History, Drill-and-Kill Edition. My little darlings are all individuals with their own experiences, opinions, emotions, and ideals. Kumbaya!

It’s just that most of the stuff worth exploring in history happened to people with names, on dates, in places. It often happened in order. If we’re going to understand it – heck, if we’re going to learn from it, or improve it – we’ll need those pesky facts.

NEXT TIME: Facts-Only History

RELATED POST: Hole In The Wall Education

Hole In The Wall Education

March 4, 2017June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I’m a bad person.

I’m an idealist with little use for idealists. It’s not personal. I like those I actually know. But their articles, and books, and speeches make me want to break things and yell school-inappropriate yells.

I resent speakers and writers who build their reputations on explaining how amazing children are and could be if these damn teachers would just get out of the way. I’m sure they’re nice people, smarter and probably better traveled than myself. It’s just that what starts as a neat isolated experience becomes a TED Talk, then a doctrine, then a Pink Floyd cover band.

“Hey, teachers! Leave those kids alone!”

Don’t get me wrong – it’s just peachy keen swell that throwing a few computers in the middle of an impoverished village and making sure no teachers interfere practically guarantees a bunch of eight-year olds will master calculus, cure cancer, and reverse climate change. Here’s to the success of every one of those dusty darlings and even newer, bigger opportunities for them to challenge themselves AND the dominant paradigm. Seriously.

Variations of this theme abound on Twitter, the blogosphere, and administrators’ bookshelves. Hand any teenager an iPad and stop crushing his little spirit with your outdated ways and he’ll learn like the wind. Enough, you fiend – let them love learning!

But I don’t buy it. Not even a little.

I can’t point to research or books with provocative edu-titles. If you really want me to, I’ll try it – I’ll lock my students in my classroom with the two relatively outdated computers available there and come back in May to release them.

Maybe it would be better to do the entire building… eleven hundred freshmen set free to learn with a bank of Dells and no silly adults with their stifling expectations. Imagine the money saved on staff – and computers never take personal days or violate professional dress code!

Forgive me if I don’t anticipate an education revolution as a result.

My bet is something more akin to Lord of the Flies, although I could be WAY off – it could be more Hunger Games or Clockwork Orange-y. I’m not prescient; I’ve just met teenagers.

It probably doesn’t help that my students have so much else they could do instead of take a self-directed learning journey of personal discovery. The kids in the inspirational anecdotes don’t tend to have an Xboxes, smart phones, cable TV, malls, or meals which include protein.

Remember how entertained you now think you were as a kid with just a cardboard box and some Cheez Whiz for a whole afternoon? That was great, mostly because you had ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING ELSE TO DO. Teeter totters are awesome compared to staring at dirt; they lose some magic compared to Halo: The Arousing. It’s just all so relative. In the land of rotary dial, he with the Atari is king.

But only there.

I’m not unsympathetic. I get what these writers and speakers are going for. Most are trying to make the very valid point that when we try to cram kids’ heads full of 87-pages of curriculum standards compiled by committees and approved by states to be tested by bubbles, we are unlikely to either fill their buckets OR light their fires.

Our American spawn resist being cajoled into dronehood – which is largely what public ed does and is designed to do. We do try these days to at least beat them into more CURRENT drone models… it’s just that things in the real world keep changing so fast…

But… technology! ALL LEARNING CAN BE GRAND MATH AUTO!

I’m not against online coursework. I know for a fact that it serves a useful function for certain kinds of students in specific situations. But let’s keep a little perspective.

We’re swept up in the promise of ‘individualized pacing’, intense engagement, and infinite branches of exploration – like the Holodeck or those Divergent serums. One would think educational software must be on the verge of surpassing the major video gaming companies in terms of graphics, storylines, and immersion. (Watch out Elder Scrolls VII – here comes Bioshock Civics: How the Powers of the Executive Branch Have Evolved Commensurate to Expansions in Mass Media!)

It’s not. Remember that Oregon Trail game we were all so excited about a few decades ago? That’s still about as cutting edge as educational games have managed, and that’s not even what most virtual learning is attempting.

The vast majority of online coursework consists of reading short passages, watching videos, following a few links, then answering multiple choice questions. There may be a little writing. You work alone, and guess at the multiple choice questions as often as necessary to hit 75% or whatever before you move on.

This pedagogy is everything we’ve been fighting against since Horace Mann. Nothing wrong with utilizing textbooks or lectures or video, but a teacher whose class is driven by such things is unlikely to win a Bammy.

To be fair, the more cutting-edge programs let you email your teacher or make a few lame required posts to a ‘discussion group’ from time to time. Truly this is leaps and bounds beyond my foldables or a good Socratic circle, but Fallout: Populism it is not.

Most learning happens because teachers in rooms keep trying to figure out how to inspire, motivate, cajole, or trick their darlings into learning things the teacher thinks are important even though the 11-year old may not realize it just yet.

There are glaring problems with this system, some within the school’s control and many more without. The biggest problem with the current model is also the most substantial barrier to all this self-directed learning we keep hearing will save us all – state legislatures dictate most of what’s supposed to be “important” and decide how these things will be assessed.

But the absurdity of rigid state mandates doesn’t mean the logical solution is to eliminate all adult guidance regarding essential knowledge or skills. Crazy as it may sound, many good teachers are perfectly capable of finding balances based on the abilities and interests of their kids – some non-negotiables, because hopefully the certified professional knows a few things the pre-teen does not, and some choice for the child regarding what they pursue and how they pursue it.

And if that doesn’t work, we can go back to your plan. But I’m not cleaning up after the pig head on a stick.

{This post is a repeat from many long moons ago. I still mean it, though, or I wouldn’t have chosen it to repost. Duh.}

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Teach Like You

March 1, 2017June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I’m a fairly narcissistic fellow. I don’t mean to be, it’s just that I’m vain and self-absorbed. At least I have the skills, style, and cojones to make it work for me. I make no apologies; every rose has it’s – oh, are you still here? I hadn’t noticed.

There’ve been a slew of books and workshops in recent years promising to help you teach like a pirate, like a rockstar, like a hero… I received something rather spammy recently promising to help me become a more exciting presenter and unlock a fabulous career leading teacher workshops. Just call Robert in Wisconsin at ###-###-####!

I’m not knocking any of these books or workshops. I haven’t read or attended any of them, but I see happy teachers carrying on about them on Twitter and such… they sound great.

Except the one with Robert in Wisconsin. WTF, Bob?

It’s just that I don’t want to be a pirate, or a rockstar, or a hero. I want my kids to learn a little history, ask some better questions, and maybe learn to like reading a little. And I want to do it as… me.

I’m pretty entertaining, and I have a degree. That should buy me some leeway, yes?

Of course, you don’t need to buy books or go to conferences to hear how you should be doing everything differently. There are no shortage of researchers scolding us for forcing our kids to recite from their McGuffey’s Readers and practice multiplication tables on their chalk slates, or whatever it is they think we do.

Seriously, if I read one more heavily-footnoted interview with yet another person who’s discovered that worksheets have limited effectiveness and some people are boring when they lecture, I may become violent. Can we steer some of the funding for these redundant studies into something more useful – maybe fresh blue ink for the mimeograph machine or another History Channel Documentary on VHS?

They’re not all bad, of course. Many make some fascinating observations and connections. They challenge us to reconsider some of our assumptions about kids and how they learn, or ourselves and how we teach.

I’m a huge fan of rethinking what we do in our classrooms. I make a decent living leading workshops and peddling my teaching philosophy, sometimes for edu-entities and sometimes just as lil’ ol’ me. We should ABSOLUTELY step out of our comfort zones from time to time. It’s unforgiveable to plan our class time around what we have saved from LAST year rather than what might work best with THESE kids THIS year.

And there are some GREAT teacher books! That ‘Weird Teacher’ one and that ‘Zen‘ fellow and even one by a TFA teacher recounting her entire first year in the most IMPOSSIBLE situation. Occasionally I’m even inspired by something shared by state edu-staff, or my own district superiors. Turns out there are a bunch of really smart, experienced educators around who love helping the rest of us impact our evasive darlings.

Sometimes their ideas are better than mine. And sometimes research is right about stuff. I have much to learn about some of my students and how they think, feel, and perceive – so here’s to training, challenging, changing, and reviving.

BUT (and I have a big ‘BUT’)…

I hereby declare my official hostility towards anyone who gets paid to tell teachers they’re doing it wrong. I don’t care if they’re researchers, reformers, authors, or bloggers – kiss my class agenda, edu-snobs.

My ethical obligation to regularly seek better ways to reach more kids more deeply does NOT validate your desire to lecture me or talk down to me or my comrades. Quite honestly, if your research and ideas and pedagogy are THAT great, you wouldn’t need to be so condescending about it – we’d run to you hungry for more.

Which, by the way, is pretty much what many of you keep telling the rest of us about OUR teaching methods – that if we were doing it right, we wouldn’t have to work so hard to coerce and browbeat our darlings into cooperation. Like you’re trying to do to us.

You see, sharing ideas, stories, successes and failures, speculation and goals, are what professional development and collaboration and edu-blogging are all about. Maybe this time I’m at the front of the room and next time you’re showing us something your kids created, but at no point is it about being better, or smarter, or anyone ‘fixing’ anyone else.

Because at the end of the day, teaching is as much art as science. It’s as much educated guesswork as strategy. Given that you’re you and I’m me and that quirky new girl is the quirky new girl, consistency may be limited.

More significantly, my kids are my kids and your kids are yours. We may be in different rooms, different districts, or even different states, confronting different cultural variables, working with different resources, building on very different backgrounds and expectations… we’re lucky we ‘speak the same language’ at all.

When I’m in my classroom, my number one ethical and professional obligation has absolutely nothing to do with your studies, your strategies, and sure as hell not your tests – mandated or not. I’ll certainly consider the input of my department and my building leadership, but even those should take a back seat to what I think and feel and believe will be best for MY kids, today, right now.

And you have the same obligation.

I hope you play along in my workshops and that you consider my thinking, just as I appreciate yours. I hope you’re open enough to risk and change and stepping outside comfort zones to evolve as an educator and a professional, even when you’re getting by just fine already.

But when it’s go time, follow your gut. Do what you know is best for you kids, now and down the road. Do it however you think will best work for them, from you. Don’t think about your evaluations, your VAM, your scores on this or that assessment, or even your career. If there’s testing to consider, then consider it – but not at the expense of what your gut tells you is best for your students.

We’ve become SO comfortable doing things we know are bad for our kids because they’re ‘required’. Maybe we’re afraid, or maybe we simply hide behind what everyone else is doing. Is this such a rewarding career in terms of money, power, and glory, that we’ll sacrificing the very things that made it matter to begin with in order to keep it secure? Must be a helluva extra duty stipend.

Teach like a rockstar if that works for you – or like that Freedom Writers lady or Marzano or To Sir, With Love. Challenge yourself and those around you to evolve, to up our game, and to WIN THEM ALL somehow.

But don’t you dare do anything that doesn’t ring true in your gut because I told you to, or because it’s required. Don’t you dare dismiss your inner strategist because what you’re envisioning might be stupid, or doesn’t align with something official, or might get you into trouble.

We’re trying to save kids in an unsaveable world. We’re trying to do the impossible with the insufficient. I’m not sure how many ‘right’ ways there are to attempt such madness. I’m confident the ‘wrong’ way is to try to do it as someone else.

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NOTE: This is a slightly revamped rerun of previously posted material.

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