This Is Not News

My daughter’s old enough that her school calendar syncs up with the high school calendar. Which means that just as I am trying to get my students to the finish line of the marking period and catch up with all of the paperwork that goes with it, my daughter has her end of marking period projects to do. And thus my wife and I spent at least half an hour last night soaking papers in tea in order to create an aged effect for a scrapbook project. (I’m not knocking the project, I think it helped my daughter think about the characters in the story she had read. It’s just that usually when I pour tea on a document, the immediate response is “Oh crap!”)

The schedule crunch is not always fun, but I will say that as my daughter gets older and closer and closer to the age of the students I teach, a couple things happen. One, my gray hair expands exponentially. Two, I find myself looking at more things simultaneously from the eyes of a teacher and of a parent. And I think those two perspectives, together, help me in each role. For another project, my daughter had to build a model solar home with some partners. Meanwhile, in my world history class, my students wanted to make models of the castles they designed on paper. Seeing what my daughter had to do helped me think through the practicalities of such a project – and made me realize that not every student would probably be excited by those practicalities, so I created alternate assignments for students who would feel more comfortable that way. (This also helped me avoid bankrupting myself to get supplies, which is helpful in my roles of husband and person-trying-not-to-faint-when-I-pay-the-credit-card-bill.) And as I’ve talked to my daughter’s teachers, who have been very supportive and helpful as she makes the adjustment to middle school, I get a reneed empathy for the students and parents who are making their own adjustments to high school.

Teaching and parenting are both tough jobs. It’s nice when they work together to help me get better at both.

So this year in World History I decided to go with a combined thematic/chronological structure. I organized the whole year around the theme of power, and then split it into five units:

1. Defining Power: Who Has It Today, and how Do They Use it?
2. History of Military Power
3. History of Economic Power
4. History of Cultural Power
5. History of Political Power

Right now I’m about 2/3 through the Military Power unit, and it’s given me cause to think about what, precisely, I think a contemporary citizen needs to know about military history. I’m trying to stay away from specific battles and dates. I know a lot of them, and I have to look a bunch more of them up. But when I look at the world today I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about Antietam or the Battle of New Orleans or even things like Lexington and Concord. I think about general themes, lessons learned, bridges burned, and so on. So here’s what I’ve been talking to the kids about, or what I plan to talk about:

• Greek/Persian War: To discuss the roles of the citizen soldier (hoplites) and naval power.
• Punic Wars: To introduce how Rome gained so much territory, and to help set up the discussion of Rome’s transformation in the cultural and political units to come.
• Castles and Medieval Warfare: To help students think about the relationship between military and economic power and to set up certain technological transformations.
• Gunpowder and the Chinese: To continue the theme of technological innovation in war and to discuss what was going on in Asia.
• Samurai in Japan and the Tokugawa Shogunate: To further develop the thread on gunpowder/technology.
• Ottoman Empire: Still working on this, but I wanted to start moving from the East toward the West and help students visualize the territory of Southwest Asia, Eastern Europe, and North Africa.
• Spanish Conquests: To introduce the age of colonialization, to conclude the thread on gunpowder by showing a conflict in which one side has it and another doesn’t.
• Rebellions: Rebellions in India, Haiti, U.S., Mexico help establish the era of European empires and the tactics they used. (This is where I am now.)
• Alliances and World War I: To discuss how diplomacy can set the stage for war and introduce modern trench warfare.
• World War II: To show the blitzkrieg as a response to trench warfare, introduce the importance of air power, the scale of global conflict, and atomic weaponry.
• Cold War: To show the effect of atomic technology on the major powers, changing the nature of conflict between powers.
• Terrorism and Modern War: To return to the present and sum up how the preceding events brought us to where we are.

I’m still working some of this out – I want to incorporate more on the western African empires like the Mali and Songhai, for example. But I think there’s a couple of decent narrative arcs here to help students think through things, and opportunities to discuss the nature of war and conflict. For example, i find that my ninth graders are often very surprised by the idea of rules of engagement, international law and the Geneva Conventions. Talking about hoplites and samurai helps introduce that idea that warriors did not always think in terms of total war, and allows us to bring that conversation forward to the present. I think that’s the kind of military history that helps ground modern citizenship, but I know there’ still work to do on pulling the threads together – and finding some threads I missed.

To that end, I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments, on Twitter, or elsewhere.

There are some days that I really ought to know better.

If you follow the news in Philadelphia, you know that over the last 36 hours the top story has basically been nightmare fodder for any teacher and parent. So while I was making my rounds today checking work, a couple of students diverted themselves from their assignment by talking to each other about the latest on the story.

Now, this may be a sign I have some things to work on in classroom management, but I usually don’t mind a little off topic chatter if there’s also some productive work going on. I mean, as adults, we shoot the breeze while we’re trying to be productive all the time, then we get down to business. But today I just really needed to not hear the story relived and rehashed. So I asked the folks to please not talk about that topic because I would prefer not to hear about it.

Bless their hearts, my students looked out for me. But as a result the following dialogue ensued:

STUDENT IN ROW 2: Begins to talk about story.

STUDENT IN ROW 1: Hey, remember, Dr. Dave doesn’t want us to talk about that story!

STUDENT IN ROW 3: Don’t talk about which story? This story?

STUDENT IN ROW 2: Dr. Dave doesn’t want us to talk about it!

STUDENT IN ROW 4: What story are we talking about?

We got back on track and had a good class. But I gotta remember not to set off any future Abbott and Costello routines when I’m in a touchy mood.

As a junior in high school, I took the AP class in American History. We did a lot of reading, a lot of discussing, a fair amount of writing . . . I’ll be honest, 20 years and a ton of books since then have made it hard for me to remember what I learned about history from that particular class.

What I do remember is my teacher telling us that on the multiple choice part of the AP exam, if we had to take a wild guess on a question, we should go with C, since supposedly that was the correct answer more often than other letters. (If I’m remembering this right, B came a close second.)

Now, I don’t blame my teacher for telling us this. We had a goal – get college credit and possibly save a lot of money or have the chance to take another course we liked – and we had a task to complete to achieve the goal – pass this test. He was providing us with information that would help us complete the task and achieve the goal. That wasn’t ALL he did by any means. He was a great teacher, a role model back then and even more so now. And in the system that we were in, he was looking out for us.

But every minute he spent telling us about picking option C was a moment that we weren’t discussing history or how to think about events.

Every moment that someone spent studying the patterns in multiple choice tests was a moment not spent researching or thinking about some other problem.

Every bit of mental energy that I have used storing and recalling that fact is a bit of energy I have not put into my family, or my work, or even remembering what I’m supposed to get at the grocery store.

Instead of the test being an observation of what occurred when you were learning whatever you were learning, the test becomes the subject in its own right. Instead of revealing, it distorts.

I just finished reading Christopher Hayes’ Twilight of the Elites, where he describes the entrance test that determines admission to one of the most hypercompetitive high schools in New York City. Sixth graders take this test. And there are New York parents who spend thousands of dollars on test prep programs to prepare their kids for this test.

Multiple this by schools high schools all over the country, raise it to the power of college and grad school admissions tests, and throw in AP, professional certification, and whatever other tests you want. Besides the massive inequality that this creates, think of where all that energy could have gone. Think of what it could have built, instead of creating a set of numbers on a test report.

In the Ethical Issues class that I teach, I have a mix of grade levels. When I started the class four years ago, it was all 12th graders, and I tried to mix discussions of current events with some of the philosophical ideas that I teach in my intro college classes. I started using Mark Rowlands’ book, Sci-Phi, which I have also used in the college classes. The book does a nice job of combining discussions of action movies, philosophical concepts, and conversational language, but it’s still a pretty dense read. But since I figured that most of these 12th graders would be facing texts like that in just a year’s time, it was worth the investment to try to hep the students work through it. The second year I taught the class it was a mixture of 10th and 12th graders. I started getting a little more concerned about the text, and I started getting the feeling that the students weren’t getting much from the experience of reading it. In the third year, I started getting 9th graders in the class as well, and that’s when I pulled back from the text completely. I took the general ideas that I had tried to tech the previous years, and created a “List of isms” for the students to review, discuss, and use when we talk about current events and ethical problems. I think it’s been working well – simplifying my approach is actually giving us opportunities for greater depth in using the concepts.

This week I gave the students some time to work on a project of their choosing, with the guideline that they should create something to explain at least one of “the isms.” A group decided to create a rap explaining concepts like dualism and egoism, and after a couple of days of rehearsing, they performed it for the class. In that moment, my students made something cool happen in the classroom. I’m proud of them, and I’ll be honest, I’m proud of myself, because I don’t know if that moment would have been possible during my first year in the high school classroom. I still have a lot of growing to do, to make moments like that happen more frequently and for more people. But when something cool happens, it’s worth savoring the experience.

I am completely unmotivated by my students’ standardized test scores. When someone tells me I need to do something as a teacher to bring up the scores, my first thought is, “Why?” I’m happy if test scores go up anyway, sure, but it’s not a reason for me to do what I do. So when the conversation turns to motivating me by stressing the need to raise the scores, I realize I need to create my own motivation for doing what I do.

I’m fortunate that my students help me do that on a daily basis with their thoughts, their comments, their questions, even their friendly “Hey Dr. Dave!”s in the hallways.

But then I wonder, if my students don’t care about what I think they should care about, how many of them will find their own motivation?

Once again I look to my experience as a teacher to find answers on how my students are thinking and responding to the system . . . and I tend to find as many questions as I do solutions, if not more.

So I’ve been interested in the idea of the “flipped” classroom and using podcasts to help students review material. I don’t think I’m ready to go for the full flip idea, where I assign students to watch a video that introduces content and then we use/discuss that content in class. But I think it could be a really useful review tool. So I decided to try to create a video that would review key terms from the beginning of World History.

Here’s the result, if you’re interested.

This was my first time doing this, so I expect I’ll find ways to change the process. But here’s how I did it.

I wrote a script in Google Docs, which you can find here.

Then I used Photoshop to create a series of 36 images, using a 16:9 aspect ratio and a resolution that would work at 720p. I used Google to find the images, and finding pictures that were of high quality was a little more challenging than I expected. But I found enough that I liked. Then I cropped them in Photoshop and copied them all into one master Photoshop document, where I could use layers to just show the parts I wanted for each part of the video. I saved each version as a JPG file. Having the Photoshop document came in handy when I spotted an error later and had to go do a correction.

I copied the 36 images into iMovie on my MacBook . . . I have an old version, but it works well enough. I read my script into GarageBand and created a podcast file that I could copy into iMovie. From there I just had to adjust the length of time that each picture appeared on the screen and add some transitions. Alex helped me, so we got to have some bonding time over the video editor.

From there I had to finalize the iMovie and then upload it to YouTube. I think I’m also going to make a MPEG-4 version that I can host here on the Notnews server for students to download. But that will probably be tomorrow’s task.

Will I keep doing this? I’m going to do at least one more, and then get feedback from my students. I enjoyed making it, but it did take several hours of writing and image-creating to do. Like I said, there ought to be some ways I can streamline that down the road.

Trying to find time when I have a clear head and enough focus to write is getting to seem like a pipe dream. Let me see if I can get the habit rolling again.

Nope.

OK, cheap joke aside, I just spent half an hour looking at the screen and reading a couple of articles to try to get my brain in gear and hope that a post would sneak up on me. I’m thinking right now about the way my day today intersected with technology. It opened up some possibilities, but it also created some obstacles. I’m not sure I have the balance quite right.

In World History we’re trying to practice historical thinking by creating autobiographical videos. I think this has the potential to be a really powerful project, and give the students a chance to really create something genuine. If things play out well, I’d even like to have an assembly for all the ninth graders where students who want to can show off their work. It’s a project I never could have done when I was in high school. But to make it work, the students have to get some practice using iMovie on the Mac, and while it’s a decent program, there’s definitely a learning curve. I’m still working my way through it in a lot of places. So I spend a lot of the day putting out little tech support fires and making sure the laptops have enough battery life. As a result I don’t have as much time to spend working with the students on the actual content. Now, I tried to plan for that by spending 2-3 days with the students writing their scripts before we got to production, but I think a lot of the students are doing a lot of revising-as-they-work, so it’s something I need to keep an eye on. I also need to make sure I plan for some more moviemaking projects later in the year so that the students can use and build on the skills they learn with this one.

Meanwhile, during my prep, I was helping some seniors print out an essay that was due in their English class. But that wound up taking up time as I helped one student convert a Works format document into Word. (Would someone please explain why Word for Mac doesn’t come with a converter for that?) I wound up having to find, download, and install NeoOffice to get the file open. It was still probably faster than using a typewriter, but man, arguing with file formats in 2012 feels like I’m reliving the days of Betamax. (There’s a reference that’ll earn me five more minutes of explaining things . . .)

This isn’t a whine . . . I think that time spent helping students navigate some of these tech hurdles has its own value in forging a connection with the students. But it is something I try to keep in mind when I start getting a little TOO adventurous in dreaming up new projects.

OK, I feel better about having written now. Time to go back to New Yorker discussions of polling data and reviews of the new Kindle.

I started my first year as a full-time high school teacher in 2009, 20 years after I started my first year as a high school student. So I guess this is the year I’m supposed to graduate. Not that I expect to go anywhere, but it is a year that I expect to make some major progress in getting better as a teacher. I’m going into this year looking to break away from the structure and format of a textbook-driven curriculum, to meet with my students where their knowledge and interests are and build a better understanding of our world. I didn’t always hit the goals I set last year, but I learned a lot of things and I’m ready to do it again.

As I’m typing this I’m having a conversation with my high school newspaper adviser on Facebook. I’m reminded yet again that I wouldn’t be who I am without my teachers, and that their effect on me continues long after I have left their classrooms. I’ve been lucky enough to continue to talk to some of them and express my gratitude. Others I have lost contact with because of time, distance, retirements, and (sadly) death. But I’m thankful for what they did, and I’m determined to honor what they gave to me by giving all I can to my school community.

For all of the hassle, the paperwork, the frustration, the disrespect, and everything else that drives me mad about education in America today, it’s an honor to be part of that community. Let the circle begin again.

I will be in a new classroom this year – same school, same classes to teach, but I’m moving three floors down. I saw the new room for the first time today. I don’t have a desk (yet). I’m actually wondering if I can make that a feature. Looking at my desk right now, I don’t always make the best use of that space. So maybe not having it would force me to change some habits.

I also have very little usable chalkboard space. I do have a smartboard that I’ll spend some time getting to know. I’m trying to think about how that could make for a different kind of classroom dynamic. I might use a lot of giant post it sheets to be able to show charts or make illustrations on the fly.

I will be looking forward to breathing much less chalk dust.

It also looks like there’s a textbook shortage at the moment. Trying to think of how I can use that as an opportunity. Maybe combined with the smart board, I can make more use of current events, news videos, and so on.

It’ll be interesting, that’s for sure. I’m counting on this year being a shakeup year. Looks like the environment is providing me with the opportunity.