by meehanf I have been thinking about food alot lately. You could blame it on Thanksgiving but it has been on my mind for much longer. We started a family garden a couple of years ago and that started a shift toward paying more attention to what we eat. Right now I am reading Fast Food Nation which although slightly dated is a really interesting take on how American eating patterns have influenced our culture. Then to top it off my pastor preached about the concept of the table today and immediately after much of the same things were said by Michael Doyle on his blog (to summarize them both, every living thing depends on the death of other living things to survive). But what has been going through my mind lately is how enjoyable food and eating is. Steak, mashed potatoes, apple cider, dark chocolate, fresh fruit, I could go on and on. We have to eat or we would die, but it doesn’t have to be such a great experience. Food could be like gas in our cars and have no flavor or worse taste bad. But no we have tons of choices of foods and flavors. Breathing is necessary too, but we rarely even notice it. Mostly only when the air is bad or we are out of breath. Breathing is not usually enjoyable. But food is enjoyable. It is required at parties, celebrations, and holidays around the world. Each culture has specific foods for certain seasons and celebrations. So I know from my viewpoint that it is no accident that the body function of re-fueling is such an important part of being human. So I am thankful for my Creator making such simple daily rituals to be so pleasing. I will leave you with a link to Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo which says better than I how much of life revolves around food.

I lost a war this past week. My partner and I designed a PBL unit around the driving question "…cuz MD?" for a unit on the Spanish American War. We plan on having students each tell small parts of the war by creating short Common Craft style videos. At first students were hooked trying to figure out what "MD" was. But after they did our project seemed "destined" to failure. We have found that when students have a good basic background on a topic such as WWII or 9/11 that they do a good job on inquiry. When the topic is more difficult students tend to focus on basic "what" questions instead of deeper "how" or "why." On top of that they can not even ask good "what" questions unless we lead them to the topics. This is logical when they lack background knowledge, so we end up creating fairly structured activities to "guide" them. In the past if we do not do this they miss many important concepts on their own. So this past week we created a number of structured assignments to "help" students. We created an activity where they compared Howard Zinn’s description of the Spanish American War with a more traditional approach from the Library of Congress. They were supposed to make a Venn Diagram comparing the similarities and differences of the texts. Students struggled with the reading level and with how Zinn’s writing was not structured like a normal textbook. They had not read Zinn before and could not recognize the "big story" that he was telling of the struggle of women, labor, and minorities as a counter to big business and government. This was the first time we have asked them to compare texts like this. Our selections were too long, too unfamiliar, and the task was too unstructured for the first time attempting it. The next day we had students analyze the poem "White Man’s Burden" (not an easy read). Again this was the first time that we have looked at poetry this year and we mostly asked them to do it on their own. Students were not curious or engaged. They were bored. We were looking at primary sources that were not easy reads and students gave up because they had no buy in in the project. They called us out on it on Friday. (The irony was I was proudly wearing my new shirt for the first time.) They called it irrelevant,  "busy work," and "worksheets." They called it "vomiting up information." They said they saw no point in what we were doing. They were struggling and frustrated. It hurt because it was true. One student reminded me of promises I had made in the past not to teach like this and gave examples of better learning that we had done in the past. Once students find their voice you can’t take it away from them. I listened and did not immediately respond. That alone is really difficult for me. I processed and talked to my partner. We recognized mistakes we made in not showing students the relationship between the assignments and the essential questions. We apologized and explained the connections to the class. We went through the essential questions with the class and checked off the ones that we had addressed. It was also clear that students have a good understanding of the key concept of Manifest Destiny after the week’s activities. We communicated the objectives more clearly to them and it ended on a good note. Students left feeling less frustrated. Problem solved. But it hasn’t really resolved for me. I was boring. I sucked. I have to do better. This represents my deepest struggle with teaching to the standards. I am not happy with this project and never have been. I am teaching it because I have to for the standards. I recognize the lack of relevance to students but was unable to come up with a way to make it matter to them. We have no authentic audience for the videos and choose them because we thought they would be fun for the students around this boring topic to them.  This tension between what I have to teach and what students want to learn has been the biggest internal struggle for me this year. To be continued…

Last week I lost a war. This week I was determined to do better. The first thing I did this weekend was to actually complete the Venn Diagram assignment myself. I realized many weaknesses of it including poor design and poor choice of texts. I should have created structure before the assignment to help them understand the texts before asking them to compare them. The Library of Congress also did not really address the topics in the way that I wanted. So Monday morning I apologized again for the assignment and told students I was not grading it. I explained my intentions and goals of what I had hoped to accomplish and acknowledged how the assignment failed in its execution. I introduced a new challenging read related to the essential questions, but in this task did not ask them to do anything extra with the text, just understand it.The rest of the week students chose a part of the story of the Spanish American War to tell and started developing materials for their videos. Students like this better, but it would be a stretch to say that very many of them are excited about the project. Your Choice from marfis75 My larger solution is coming at the end of the project. We are planning the next project on the Cold War. I created a Project Briefcase with the standards and the topics of emphasis: McCarthyism  Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam. My temporary Driving Question is "How do you all want to study this?" I have not planned how we will do this project, the audience, or what our final product will be. There will be no fancy entry event. Students are going to help design this project from day one on what they want it to be. I have given lip-service to this idea before but it is time to put my money where my mouth is: student designed projects. #winning The one thing that we are planning for this project is a detailed simulation of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We feel this is worthwhile because the students have asked us multiple times including last week to do more simulations. Also it is taking a ton of time to research and set up on our part so there is no way that we can wait to start putting it together. We are looking at this next project as a pilot for turning over our entire curriculum to the students. We have some concerns but it is time for students to take control of their own learning.

One of my students, Torreyion, was so excited about his chemistry project that he asked me to post it on my blog. So here is a pic of some models that he made and the cool effects of the camera that he got:

I have been thinking alot about the conversation I am leading at Educon, #standardizethat and got involved in  an expanded discussion on Twitter about standards and curriculum. I was asked what open curriculum would look like. I have borrowed my ideas from too many places to mention including unschooling,  Postman, my own students, and my own children. So here goes my version of what a school with an open curriculum might look like. At the crossroads by Timtom.ch First of all, the schedule would change. There would be no grades, sorting by age groups, bells, or set schedule. Students would work in a large room with different adult content experts in the room. The ratio of students to teachers should not exceed 25:1. Students would choose the topics and projects that they want to explore and would sign up to at least one adult to report their progress to. Projects would be encouraged to be cross-curricular and deep. Most projects would center on social studies and science as a general topic with ELA and math skills being addressed as they "naturally come up." Students would research their topics and teachers would help develop their search skills and expose them to multiple forms of literature and multi-media to learn from. Students would publish their results in many different formats addressing writing and media skills. Students would work in groups and present their learning to each other improving their collaboration and communication skills. Students would not be entirely left up to their own as far as what they study. Teachers would play an essential role by exposing students to interesting topics in ways such as field trips (which could be as simple as a walk outside to observe nature), experiments, museum like exhibits of interesting objects, compelling art including primary source photos, and interesting problems to solve. Current events would also drive curriculum. News events would be talked about and lead to explorations by students. Students would choose which of these demonstrations to partake in and which of them to pursue deeper. The other essential role of teachers would be to help students make connections of their passions to new areas of curriculum. As content experts teachers would use student interests to guide students both to cross-subject area connections and to connections within subject areas. An important continuation of what good teachers already do is knowing their students. Teachers would spend lots of time getting to know students as individuals so that they can share relevant learning ideas with them. Students would not be without structure or requirements. Ideally students themselves would build the structure and requirements themselves. One essential theme of the school would be that you must be learning at all times. Learning would be defined with the students but would be very open-ended. Students would also be required to make and accomplish their own goals about what they learn. Students would also be required to present their learning. This could take many forms but would include both written and verbal forms. This also means that students will be sharing with each other their passionate learning so that they are constantly being exposed to new ideas outside of their personal interests. Aloe by Genista For example I have a couple of students who are very interested in botany. They are bright, but literally do as little as possible in every class except science, because they find no relevance in it. In an open curriculum they would be free to study biology at a college level. As social studies expert, I would expand their interests by tying invasive species to the Columbian Exchange. Regulations around plants would lead to many government topics (legalizing marijuana, etc). Statistics would come up all of the time. They could also study the history of plants and medicine, especially Native Americans (one of these students is building his own wigwam at home in his free time). This would lead to topics such as western expansion, Manifest Destiny, racism, genocide, etc. The social studies topics we would address would be abundant, but we might not "hit every state standard." The difference is that the students would care about the curriculum because it is theirs and would engage and remember it. This example is just one pair of students. Imagine how diverse the curriculum would be when you add in all of the students’ interests. Without even trying topics that my current students are very passionate about include: immigration, gay rights, genetics, computer programming, art, poetry, women’s rights, depression, mental illness, and theater. I am sure that the other content teachers see even more interests that I miss. I am not saying that open curriculum will fix every education problem or that it would reach every child. But I do think it would be superior to most schools today. I am also sure that it would have to change and adapt over time and be different in different communities. Also I think students would have to be trained into it. Students who have been in traditional schools would drowned if just dumped into it. They would need to be gradually released to wean themselves from teacher dependence to independence. I also fully admit that some kids would waste time and choose not to learn. But doesn’t that happen already all the time? I believe this would encourage the most learning from the most students and that the passion of authentic learning would spread to include reluctant students. What’s missing from this vision of a school? (Oh, don’t say assessment and grades because those are missing on purpose. I am interested in learning, not comparing students)

by steven n fettig I want to play devil’s advocate to my own post about open curriculum. So a short story from my younger days. In college I was required to take a basic philosophy class. Most students took it freshman year. I knew that it was going to be a "pie in the sky" class that I would hate. So I avoided it and saved it until my last year. I finally signed up for a once a week three hour class that I knew would be so painful. The class started and I loved it. I have always loved math, logic, and arguing deep questions. In other words everything that the class was about. I seriously considered getting a minor in philosophy but I was too close to being done and did not want to stay in school any longer (later I considered going to grad school in philosophy). So hopefully my point is clear. If I had never been forced to study philosophy I may never have been exposed to a great field that I find very interesting. (on the other hand I was forced to take a music appreciation course of classical music that I hated. The reason may very well have been the skill of the teacher). So my question is should learning every be forced on a learner? If so when? What content is so important that learners should be coerced to learn it. If not, how do we ensure that learners in an open system are exposed to varied and critical content for being a successful citizen?

Today was supposed to be the launch of our school’s greatest project ever including field trips to local factories. Unfortunately weather got involved and we had massive closings (our school buses in students from 20 different local districts) and our busing canceled the trip on us. We ended up with about 25% of our student body showing up so what should we do? Well when you are given lemons you make…bubble wrap! On the way to work I heard that today is national bubble wrap appreciation day. So we took the protocols learned from Chad Sansing’s Flying Schools Educon session and adapted them to this "special" day. Students went through the design process creating new applications for bubble wrap.   They made boats that really float   Clothing  Bow ties are cool! Animal Clothing Gun target with paint in it that "pops" out when it is hit. A steering wheel that you can pop when you are stressed.  If you didn’t catch the reference this came from The Reichenbach Fall.  All in all it turned into a good introduction to design thinking. We have a long ways to go in particular in the area of improving on our original ideas but it was a good first step and I look forward to implementing this kind of thinking into future projects.

My favorite session at Educon was session 5. You won’t find this title in program, but this is a snapshot of a great conversation that I had with Rob Grecko. He asked me: "What are you willing to get fired for? Poor test scores vs. refusing to teach scripted curriculum?" Photo Credit: muffytyrone via Compfight cc We all make compromises and do things that we may philosophically disagree with at times to work in a system called a school, district, or whatever. If we are always backtracking to obey district mandates it is a slippery slope. Where do we draw the line? When is enough, enough? But I also have an addiction to food, clothing, and shelter (hat tip to Ron Houtman)  that my wife and children share. I need my job to live and I was raised to respect and obey authority figures. I think a not so subtle belief of my religious upbringing was that they have all of the answered figured out and everyone else is wrong, which very quickly leads to listen to their authoritative voice and don’t question it. If you know me, you know that I have shed the "don’t ask questions part" but in truth I am a complicated mixture of rule follower and rebel and don’t even know how to classify myself. So the driving question haunts me because the truth is I am not willing to lose my family income for what I believe is the best for students. The truth is also though that I am not in a position where I have to make that choice. But let’s try an experiment in empathy. What if you WERE met by your administrator tomorrow and handed a scripted test prep curriculum and told that you had to use it the rest of the year and that your students had to reach a certain level on the state test or you would be fired.  Which risk would you choose? Teach the test prep curriculum and hope you don’t get fired from low scores or ignore the scripted curriculum in favor of meaningful student-based inquiry and risk getting fired for disobeying orders. Which risk has the better payoff? Which risk helps students? What are YOU willing to get fired for?

Watched part of Meet the Robinsons this week. This clip is a great example of what we mean by failure being an important part of learning.  

I am debating in my mind an assumption of social studies teachers everywhere and I know it’s in the Common Core: having students interpret primary source documents. Just to be clear this is one of those rough drafts of my thoughts kind of posts. What that means is critique my ideas like crazy but don’t hold me to any position I might take here because I am not taking a stance that primary sources shouldn’t be taught. I am asking why we do and if we have good reasons. I probably need to differentiate between types of primary source materials. Photos, art, movies, images of time period objects, seem like great primary sources to use to help students comprehend a time period. I am really thinking about text-based primary sources that are often written at a very high vocabulary level and use obscure words. Analyzing primary sources of many types is the primary job of historians. Most of our students will not grow up to be historians. I am thinking about primary sources in much the same way that I think about the quadratic formula in algebra: important to mathematicians but not very practical to the rest of us. So future historians need to know how to read and interpret primary sources documents but do all students?  Is it our job to teach the skills one needs to be a professional historian or is it our job to expose students to the patterns of history and to teach them to think critically? This week we spent a day exploring the Triangle Waistshirt Factory Fire. We watched this short clip from the history channel: This is a historical re-enactment of the tragic fire that includes many important details to the context of the situation and why it is important historically. Afterward students gave correct and thoughtful answers in a discussion about what happened, the results, and why it still matters today. We could have read historical accounts from journals of survivors, looked at newspaper articles the next day, etc. Some of my students would have really engaged with that. The truth is though that I have many reluctant readers who would probably just stare at the documents, bored and never engage because of difficult vocabulary, complex, sentence structures, and old English words. If a video gives the same content that a primary source does, but in a more interesting format, and leads to a deep level of understanding and solid discussion, what is the advantage of using the primary source? Is it being a "literacy snob" to value primary sources over other forms of literacy? Some teachers will argue that the critical thinking skills and interpretation skills learned through analyzing primary source documents are important for all students.  Again I think that we can teach those skills without using primary source materials necessarily. My goal in my classes is to challenge students to become thoughtful citizens. Are we forcing a "skill" on students that is not relevant to them and actually makes the subject boring to students?

Although I teach in a project based learning and standards based grading school, the standards are not always a part of the final product, but are assessed along the way as they are foundational knowledge for it.  So it seems I still end up having students writing short essays to explain the standards for most assessments. I was looking for some ways to shake this up so students did not just have to write for every assessment. Here are two ideas that I came up with. The first was to have students create a short presentation of primary source images. Then students screencasted themselves explaining why they chose the images and how the pictures explained the standard. The second was for students to sketch pictures to explain the standard. I have been thinking about visuals lately especially after meeting Amanda Lyons at Educon and seeing her great visual notes (check our her blog Visuals for Change). I showed them RSA Animate ‘s site and some of their videos as an example of images supporting someone’s thoughts. (If you want to make real RSA style videos check out this post from Paul Bogush.) Amanda Lyons Community Mural at Educon  Since I wanted this to be quick and easy for assessment I just asked the students to draw their pictures and then either write some sentences next to them explaining the drawings or come explain their sketches to me verbally. I wanted the process to be simple since I was more interested in their visual thoughts than I was in creating a video. How do you encourage visual thinking in your classroom? What are alternative ways of assessment that you use to keep it fresh?

Photo Credit: Omar Eduardo via Compfight cc I feel like our school has done a few things right that really improve it. One thing we do that I feel is very powerful is team teaching. I teach with a partner in an integrated social studies/ELA class. I so value working with another teacher and I could list many advantages to it, but the one I want to focus on for this post is the huge advantage for new teachers. This year we hired four new teachers as we are a new school adding another class of 100 students each year. Three of them are first year teachers. Also last year one of our original teachers was a first year teacher. So my partner and I team teach a group of 50 students. The science and math teachers work by themselves half of the time and team teach the other half. Team teaching allows the new teacher to get their feet wet in the classroom without having to be alone with organizing a classroom, preparing content, discipline, and a host of other things. It allows the new teacher to learn from a master teacher over time and plan together. Team teaching is like a paid internship for the new teacher as they are never by themselves. I also think it stretches and grows the mentor teacher too. From an administration point of view it does not have to cost any extra money because it can be the same teacher to student ratio just with the larger classes. The one problem many schools might have is the space to have these large classrooms, but other than that I think it is a simple yet powerful apprentice model. I think this model of team teaching could be a huge positive change in schools. It would help with retention of young teachers, bring energy to established teachers, and help build skills and confidence in new teachers. I can say I absolutely would have improved greatly as a young teacher if I would of had this opportunity.

Painting for people in nursing homes Students just finished our first school wide project: Revolution Garden. This project combined 9th and 10th graders in their four cores looking at the Industrial Revolution to answer the driving question: "How will you Revolutionize the World?" Students studied the history of industrialization and its effects. They then picked a local, modern problem to work with a community partner on a solution. Students had to submit a grant proposal and present a showcase of their ideas. Students were competing for real money donated by our county United Way. We created a different schedule for the three weeks of this project giving students "team time" to work on their project besides the related standards that they were studying in their core classes. Part of the students’ requirements was to find their own community partner. It was exciting for them to make calls and emails and get responses, sometimes in the middle of class. Many of the students had prepared professional posters and presentations for the showcase. We talked about how they needed a "hook" to get visitors to come to their booth. Students brainstormed props to to attract the community to check out their idea. Some students used food and others printed 3D models of their prototypes. I think this was a great learning moment for them to be both creative and marketable. Papaya Bars The showcase was a huge success with many wonderful ideas. Our county ISD has a grant writer who came and she wants to pursue federal grants for many of the projects. We also had the city Chamber of Commerce group come through and built some great relationships with local businesses. 3D prototype We had six projects receive funds to continue their projects. Their concepts included: A children’s book on recycling to be published and donated to local elementaries Healthy fruit smoothies to be sold at our school Bio luminescent plants (yes they have a geneticist working with them who says it is possible) Delicious papaya bars containing healthy enzymes A website that correlates donations to state senators to their voting records A microchip to be installed in things like jump ropes to be implemented into video games. Microchip for video games Nurdle Research This project was our most ambitious as a school as it crossed grade levels and classes and had us creating new schedules and home rooms for student teams. It also was very open-ended for students but very relevant by focusing on current problems and involving the community. I think this kind of project motivates students because of the relevant choice given them. Once again when given the chance our students blew us away with their ideas!

Simulations of the stock market have been around for decades usually focusing on understanding how stocks work and used in an economics or personal finance class or to teach fractions. I wanted to create a short (1 day) simulation of the famous 1929 Stock Market Crash. The goal of this simulation is to get students to feel the lure of over investing when the stock market grows at a fast, unrealistic rate and then to see how fast they can lose it all when the market drops. I wanted them to feel excited about investing and making money so that they would go all in and then crash when the market lowered. I used this with 10th graders in an American Studies class. There were a couple of bugs with my formulas and designs that I have fixed (you can’t have a good program without some field testing). Here is the spreadsheet and here is the DOW Average inputs that I used. Rather than try to explain it all here I made a screencast tutorial for how to use it with your class. 1929 Stock Market Crash Simulation by Mike Kaechele is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. A few other hints are to take it slow at first but don’t take too long explaining it. The best way for students to figure it out is to just start playing it. After a few rounds, stop and ask the class who is making the most money and then have students share strategies. All it takes is for a couple of students to figure out that they can make tons of money buying on margin to get the class excited. Be sure to ask how many are still making money after the market crashes. I like to show them the graph that I have linked in the DOW Average Inputs and lead a discussion about the history. The quotes are also priceless and show that economists believed that they had solved the boom/bust cycle of capitalism  It should lead to the question of "Why did the stock market crash?" and that is when I turn them loose on research. This simulation could also be a good entry event. PS: If you try this simulation drop me a comment and let me know how it went with your students.

This past winter I had the privilege to attend and lead a conversation at Educon at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia. As I assume everyone already knows, it is a wonderful conference full of deep conversations with wonderful educators from around the U.S. and Canada. It absolutely met my high expectations and it was great to meet so many online friends face-to-face for the first time. I teach at Kent Innovation High, a New Tech Network Problem Based Learning High School that is similar in philosophy to SLA. We have decided that Educon is too rich of an experience to be limited to the East Coast. A parent and a student that went with me to Educon met with Chris Lehmann and Diana Laufenberg about modeling a conference after Educon at our school. They were very gracious and generous in sharing with us how they set up and run Educon. So without further adieu we are excited to introduce NovaNow, the Time to Innovate is Now! September 27-28, 2013 at Kent Innovation High in Grand Rapids, Michigan. NovaNow is a conference for educators of all kinds to share their best ideas, plans, and dreams about learning. It is also a place where thoughtful questioning and critiques are encouraged. Presentations are not given, but rather conversations are led around learning. Photo Credit: A Deeper Blue via Compfight cc Located in the Midwest between Chicago and Detroit, this conference will coincide with the world class public art show ArtPrize, named one of the five festivals in the world that you won’t want to miss by Time Magazine. So stay Saturday night and enjoy the outdoor art on Sunday. Check out the conference site to register or even better yet put in a submission to lead a conversation.  Follow #NovaNow on Twitter to hear more news about the conference. We look forward to you joining us this fall!

We started a new project today on racism and African-American Civil Rights. I thought I would share the process of our entry event. First without any explanation we watched this story on Youtube. Part 1 Part 2 We then had a discussion about them and how racism still exists "in parts of the United States." My students also pointed out that it depends on "where you are, especially in the south." Next students took the White/Black preference test from Harvard. This test measures whether you have a preference for European Americans or African Americans. I am not sure how accurate it actually is, but that alone led to a rich discussion afterwards. We did talk about the philosophical basis of the test and whether or not students thought it was valid. Either way we agreed that it was possible to have biases at times without realizing it. The final step to our entry event was for students to view this slideshow. We have just finished a project on the Great Depression and looked at many primary source photographs. We have been talking about doing the work of a historian and looking for clues to history from the pictures. Students were engaged with the pictures and it turned out that for those who noticed the date on the photograph that a quick Google search brought them to an article about them. When we talked about them as a class most students were very surprised to learn that the "parade" was in Grand Rapids, our city. Many students did not realize the KKK was active in Michigan or even in the north. Others were surprised that there were women members and that their faces were showing. Some students expressed concern that they had never been taught about this before. The progression of these activities drew students into the topic and we definitely had them hooked. Now we moved into sharing our Driving Questions and had students generate Essential Questions (this is what we call "Need to Knows"). We are finishing the year with a theme on rights so we have a theme question on top of the Driving Questions. Also to frame the question: "Who is an American?" I used a couple of quotes to give them some context. Here is a screenshot of the Google Doc. The top part in green is our state standards. Students each take a line underneath and add their own questions generated from both the state standards and the entry events. We have not shared with students yet, but their final product will be a web page on a local Civil Rights place/event. We then hope to make a walking tour of Grand Rapids Civil Rights places with QR codes that link to their webpages. We are excited for students to leave this project with a lasting impression that racism is part of the history of the North and Grand Rapids in particular. We also want students to realize that racism is still among us but that they can make a difference in sharing with others the great progress that has been made in the past.

Photo Credit: SezzRS via Compfight cc What do you do when students choose to fail?

I want my students to talk about racism. What it is. Does it still exist? What does it look like? I want them to discuss stereotypes and prejudice. I want them to debate whether affirmative action is still necessary. I want them to discuss what to do about illegal immigration and to analyze "white privilege." But I don’t want them to just argue from viewpoints that they already hold mostly based on their family and community background. I have students from rural, urban, and suburban neighborhoods. Some live in areas with virtually no diversity while others live in places with virtually no Caucasians( a different kind of no diversity). I want students to bring their life experiences to the conversation, but that alone is not enough. We are in the middle of a project on Civil Rights focusing on the African American perspective. We have not talked about the previously mentioned questions. My students are not ready yet. Many of my white students do not understand the sacrifices made to end segregation by thousands of regular people. Segregation did not end just because MLK gave a speech in DC one day. Many people were abused and many people died in the struggle for equality. My white students need to understand the seriousness of the abuses and the commitment to the struggle. Many of my minority students also do not know the history of the Civil Rights movement. They have spent too many years learning about "dead white guys." They know about Dr. King and Rosa Parks, but they didn’t know this. They don’t know about Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois, Malcolm X, Bayard Rustin, or the hundreds of students that were Freedom Riders. Minority students are empowered when they read about how people of their race stood up and claimed their right to a "seat at the American table." This is why I teach history. Once all of my students appreciate the struggle for freedom and equality in America, then we will discuss all the current issues of our day. We have worked hard not to turn this project into white guilt but rather a celebration of the everyday heroes who stood up for their inalienable rights. We do not ignore the atrocities of our past but use them to understand how legal equality does not automatically mean actual equality. I want all of my students to be empathetic, compassionate citizens who will shape their part of the world for real equality. We haven’t talked about racism yet because we are not quite ready. But we will…

We talked about racism this week. We have been building up to this moment, waiting until students had been exposed to the struggles and successes of the Civil Rights Movement. I went into class with a plan. We started off by looking at the frisking of Forest Whitaker by The Good, Racist People. We then talked about racism in our society. I was building up for a discussion on topics such as Trayvon Martin and whether or not affirmative action is still needed. But that is not where students took the discussion. My plan got sidetracked. They started sharing personal stories of discrimination. We heard from students with mixed races in their families and how their own family members treated then differently. We heard from students who themselves had been discriminated against by strangers. Students were vulnerable and shared private personal things. One girl had a boy break up with her when he found out she was Jewish. Another student shared how his deaf parents were called "retarded" just because they can not speak clearly. Other students shared the struggles of siblings with Downs Syndrome being treated as stupid and called names. One boy shared his struggles with ADHD and how he has been picked on for being immature because of things that he can not control. One student shared how she was kicked out of her church youth group when they found out she was LGBT. She had to find a new church to go to that would accept her. We never got to the topics that I had planned. It was the best class ever. Students felt safe enough to share some of the most painful moments in their life and not be judged. I felt blessed just to listen as I walked around the room handing the microphone from one student to another. Things didn’t go as I had planned; they went way better. I am thankful for students who will talk about the real stuff in their life. I am thankful to be part of a school that supports them. Discrimination may never end in this country but I feel confident that these students will lead us into a better future where we will see it continually decrease.

Lifted from http://www.danbirlew.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/ender1.jpg An edited conversation between the Queen Hive of the Buggers and the Fathertrees of the piggies about how humans are different from them in Xenocide, the third book in the Ender’s Game series. <They’re so hungry for answers, these humans. They have so many questions….They want to know why, why, why. Or how. …> (Queen Hive) <They like to understand everything. But so do we, you know.> (Fathertrees) <Yes, you’d like to think you’re just like the humans, wouldn’t you? But you’re not like Ender. Not like the humans. He has to know the cause of everything, he has to make a story about everything and we don’t know any stories. We know memories…We don’t even care why, the way these humans do. We find out as much as we need to know to accomplish something, but they always want to know more than they need to know. After they get something to work, they’re still hungry to know why it works and why the cause of its working works.> (Queen Hive) …<We know about their dreaming.> (Fathertrees) <They’re practicing. They’re doing it all the time. Coming up with stories. Making connections. Making sense out of nonsense.> (Queen Hive) <What good is it, when it means nothing.> (Fathertrees) <That’s just it. They have a hunger we know nothing about. The hunger for answers. The hunger for making sense. The hunger for stories.> (Queen Hive) <We have stories.> (Fathertrees) <You remember deeds. They make up deeds. They change what their stories mean. They transform things so that the same memory can mean a thousand different things. Even from their dreams, sometimes they make up out of that randomness something that illuminates everything. Not one human being has anything like the kind of mind you have. The kind we have. Nothing as powerful. And their lives are so short, they die so fast. but in their century or so they come up with ten thousand meanings for every one that we discover… But in Ender’s mind, madness. Thousands of competing contradictory impossible visions that make no sense at all because they can’t all fit together but they do fit together, he makes them fit together, this way today, that way tomorrow, as they’re needed. As if he can make a new idea-machine inside his head for every new problem he faces. As if he conceives of a new universe to live in, every hour a new one, often hopelessly wrong and he ends up making mistakes and bad judgments, but sometimes so perfectly right that it opens things up like a miracle and I look through his eyes and see the world his new way and it changes everything. Madness and then illumination  We knew everything there was to know before we met these humans, before we built our connection with Ender’s mind. Now we discover that there are so many ways of knowing the same things that we’ll never find them all.> (Queen Hive) I think this is a pretty good explanation of what it means to be human. In these lines I see learning through trial and error, curiosity, questioning, exploring, longing for purpose and meaning, and the importance of stories. Are stories a part of your students’ lives? Your classroom? Does your class resemble this at all?

I am having some cognitive dissonance when I watch Glen Beck If you don’t want to watch it all Glen Beck has three problems with the Common Core Poor curriculum Loss of states’ rights Data mining By the way the video is full of misrepresentations and I am not going to try and point them all out. I think he definitely misrepresents the curriculum of the CC and how it is "forced on homeschoolers." I also have no problem with the alternate math methods he shows. But while I disagree with many of his points and feel that he is not pointing an accurate picture of the CC, I find myself equally against the CC but for these three reasons. Narrow curriculum Loss of district/school/community/students’ rights Conflict of interests of the powers behind it. What I don’t like about any national curriculum is that it takes away the choice from teachers and students to study what they choose to study. I find it to be too sterile and prescriptive for what individual students need in their lives. I believe it is arrogant for anyone to determine here is what "every student needs to learn to be successful." So really my first two items are the same complaint that education should be negotiated locally between the community and schools including room for individual student passions. Strange Bedfellows http://blogs.r.ftdata.co.uk/beyond-brics/files/2012/06/bedfellows.jpg I know that the CC is not the same as standardized testing, but since the testing will be driven by the CC and all school funding based off from agreeing to this I believe that it is impossible to separate the two. Funding is the real power that the federal government is using to manipulate states into agreeing to CC and the testing that goes with it. The fact that there are testing companies all mixed up in this is a major problem for me. I actually agree with Glenn Beck about the involvement of the Gates Foundation and the danger of data mining. So while I don’t agree with the rhetoric of the #stopcommoncore movement on how terrible the CC curriculum is (I don’t think it is perfect either), I do find myself agreeing with them that I think CC is a continued part of the federal government standardizing schools and hindering passionate, personalized learning. So does that make us allies? PS: For more detailed deconstruction of problems of the CC check out Paul Bogush’s blog.

Derek is a clerk at the gas station closest to my house. I patronize it for gas and food items weekly. I am not a patient person and going to the store is an errand that needs to be accomplished as quickly as possible. The experience should be efficient and routine: I walk in grab a gallon of milk checking to make sure it has the best date on it. Set in on the counter and grab my card. "Do you have a rewards card?" "No," as I slide my card through the reader. "Debit or credit?" "Credit" as I wait for the transaction to go through. "Do you want a receipt?" "No." "Have a nice day." or some other meaningless greeting as I am already heading toward the door in less than two minutes from the time I entered. When I get in my car if the same song is still on the radio I know that it was the perfect experience for the task driven person that I am. The first time Derek ran my transaction was different. While I waited for the card to go through he said "Free high five?" while holding up his hand. I declined. He continued undeterred, "fist bump?" pointing his fist toward me. "No thanks," smiling but still too uncomfortable making contact with a stranger. "Elbows?" as he held out his arm towards me. I politely refused, but left feeling happy and truly appreciating his enthusiasm in what most people consider a boring job. Every time I buy milk I find myself hoping Derek is working. I am still in a hurry, but I do give him "knuckles" now. I also have noticed that some of the other clerks are friendlier and seems like his enthusiasm has rubbed off on them. How many people look forward to seeing a store clerk? I have a student who gives me high fives sometimes. She asks for them. Just for fun and it is her way of being cheerful. I have started giving them out to other students. It is a simple act, but they like it. As the year winds down I find myself nagging some students to stay on task or finish work that they need to get done to earn credit. It is for their own good I tell myself, but it is not effective. It makes interactions with me unpleasant. This week I am going to give more high fives and encourage students to get stuff done in a positive way. Like me, some students might say "no thanks" the first time, but I will keep it up to encourage them to finish strong and bring a smile to their face. This video also influenced me in regards to this post. It is worth ten minutes of your time if you haven’t seen it. THIS IS WATER - By David Foster Wallace from The Glossary on Vimeo.

Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear. Orson Scott Card in Children of the Mind p.354 Really enjoying the end of the year with this group of students who I have looped with for a second year. There is something very powerful in that. Today we gave the students silly topics to practice mini-debates so they could get the hang of debating and see how difficult it is. One group did not like the topic of "Monster vs. Red Bull" that we gave them and instead wanted to do "Kaechele vs. Holly" (my teaching partner). It ended up being pretty hilarious and is just one example of the relationships we both have with them. It’s not part of the common core, but I bet more students will remember that debate than the ones that they do on immigration next week. I will take happy over famous any day.

Dan Meyer put together the slides and talk from Uri Treisman at NCTM 2013. This is a very detailed critique of education bashing (particularly math) in this country that shows poverty and place are major factors in test results. I highly, highly recommend viewing it. Go watch it and come back photo credit: _Untitled-1 via photopin cc I am left struggling with a few thoughts. He convincingly shows that the United States is a leader in the world in math when looking at upper and middle class students. Poor students lag behind depending on their location in the United States.  Poor and minority students still have too large of achievement gap to the wealthy but have made large gains in the past twenty years. What has caused these gains? What are we doing right? He does not explain why Texas and Massachusetts are more successful than states such as Alabama? What are they doing right? Do the testing gains that he demonstrates mean an increase in mathematical knowledge in the U.S. or better test prep strategies being taught to students? Agreeing that education in the U.S. is not as bad as portrayed by ed reformers and the media, but also questioning what parts need to be improved especially in lower socio-economic schools? How to reconcile the belief that schools need to teach more mathematical thinking than just algorithms with the test score gains? With the Campbell’s Law example, Treisman warns of the negative effects of high stakes testing on teachers and students. Is that inconsistent with using the data from these tests to make his points about math levels in the U.S.? My biggest ethical/moral/logical question for myself is am I being a hypocrite by criticizing national, high stakes testing on the one hand; while on the other hand using testing data such as presented here to show that U.S. is not universally behind the world. In other words, is it logically flawed to point out based on testing data that the major education issue is disparity based on parent income, while at the same time rejecting these tests as inaccurate, one day snapshots that do not accurately represent students’ abilities/ These are some of the thoughts rattling around in my brain right now. Anyone got some answers for me?