Think Like a Teacher

Technology takes us too seriously.

April Fools Day takes us beyond comic relief to some interesting observations on technology and life. It all  started when I went to write an upcoming weekly Update for TeachersFirst and was not sure how to spell whoopee cushion. So… I Googled it. First, Google’s suggested offerings gave me a good laugh:

What is a whoopy cat, anyway? Alas, despite the lure of whoopie pie recipes, I stuck with my initial whoopy hypothesis. Lo and behold, Google again corrected me:

Showing results for whoopee cushion. Search instead for whoopy cushion

But the richness of whoopy cushions could not be greater! Not only can I only find  the ubiquitous wikipedia explanation; I also find Google Ad results galore. Did you know:

That whoopee cushions (the correct spelling) are apparently oriental?

That you can apparently get any size online?

That they have been around for over 50 years?

That there is something called PottyPutty (ewwww…).

That there is a best value whoopee cushion?

That Amazon places them under sports?

Wow, the things you learn about whoopee cushions from Google.

I look further:

There are images of whoopee cushions, videos of whoopee cushions, and — the ultimate in technology — a whoopee cushion widget!

As my husband chimes in:

No matter how sophisticated we get with technology, someone will teach it to make fart noises.

So, as April Fools’ Day approaches,  fear not. Google can help you find humor in the serious and take even the most frivolous gag seriously. There must be a lesson in 21st century literacy buried in here somewhere, but I think I just heard a fart noise from the back of a classroom.

Ok, my title is a bit of a stretch and certainly a distortion of logic. But Scientific American published a 60 second science podcast today about how puberty makes kids stupid. A study of brains in pubescent mice shows that puberty triggers a sort of interference by something called a GABA receptor that gets into the brain at puberty (in mice), preventing neurons from forming connections as they did when the mouse was not experiencing hormone rage. A slightly more elaborate explanation of the mouse study in the Science Magazine podcast (March 19) explains further that stress may actually improve learning during these dumbed-down days by overriding the GABA interference. So I muse:

If puberty inhibits brain function enough to prevent learning, do zits possibly prevent learning?

If we can interfere with the pubescent brainstall simply by adding a little stress, should we be stressing our teenagers more?

If puberty causes zits, will learning — which implies conquering puberty — cure them?

But isn’t stress supposed to CAUSE zits?

Or does stress cause puberty?

You have 60 seconds to generate the logic diagram for these arguments, separate fact from fiction, and report it with APA documentation…or simply get a zit. How’s that for stress-induced learning?

It must be Friday.

I am speechless. Those who know me are probably stunned that anything could silence this mouth. But the US DOE has done it to me and to millions of students, teachers, and minds with one stroke. They have eliminated funding for the National Writers Project (NWP) as part of the proposed Education budget. Carolyn Foote and Bud Hunt give the details, including Bud’s efforts to ascertain the rationale behind such a crazy decision. The story continues on their blogs, and I hope you will follow it as you scream via whatever medium works for you.

I am stunned at the notion that the NWP  might not have demonstrable impact on student achievement or might have to compete to prove its impact. The NWP’s impact is not only STUDENT achievement. It is discovery of adult voices for life. The NWP is the mental musical accompaniment that helps writers of all ages and stages find their voices, voices they will use to sing, speak, convince, debate, and contribute forever. Teachers who participate in the NWP go from classroom voices to real world voices. The NWP is not a school-specific approach to writing. The NWP makes writers.

The summer I spent in a NWP affiliate program drew me closer to articulating creative process and metacognition than anything I had ever experienced. I lived, survived, and thrived as I watched a kindergarten teacher next to me go from fear of writing to celebrating her voice among her peers and even in a wider world. The NWP makes writers who make writers who make writers. If there were ever a viral learning experience, the NWP is it.

Policy makers and education critics tout the strength of alternative teacher certification programs in bringing experienced practitioners from any given field into the classroom. The NWP makes those in the classroom into practitioners of writing, lifelong writers who continue to hone their craft as they live among other (younger) writers. The NWP allows teachers to learn among their students in a community of writers and to articulate the experience with more authority than a nuclear scientist who walks into a physics class. The NWP provides both the experience and the vocabulary to help each teacher start a writing garden. The NWP experience is viral. The NWP makes writers who make writers who make writers.

You are a blog reader. You are benefiting from the NWP.  Every student of every NWP teacher-participant benefits. And they go on to jobs where they can explain, argue, email, tweet — and perhaps stop to personally question word choice or paragraph substance as they live, survive, and thrive as writers in a world often bereft of deliberate word choice or thought about how we speak and write. Isn’t that the community of literate adults we want? The NWP makes writers who make writers who make writers.

Now it is your turn to write to someone about the NWP. If you never knew much about the NWP or are not sure if it has had an impact on you, ask. Ask your former English teacher, kindergarten teacher, or any adult whose writing you admire: did you ever have anything to do with anyone who had participated in the NWP? Did your teachers?  If we could trace the connections between writers we respect and contact with NWP, how many degrees of separation would there be? Maybe we should be asking that out loud. If I could reach out to the thousands of students I taught over the years, I would remind them: I was a fellow of a NWP affiliate. And they would conclude: The NWP makes writers who make writers who make writers. Pass it on.

I admire someone who is willing to change his/her mind. I don’t mean fickleness. I mean changing one’s mind as in thinking deeply, allowing ideas to steep and evolve, finally realizing that thoughtful deliberation has changed one’s intellectual travel plan. The New York Times today documents just such a “U-turn” by Diane Ravitch, educational historian and scholar. If I were giving a project-based learning grade to Dr. Ravitch, she would earn maximum points for process and extra credit for risk-taking. For a professional “scholar” to change her mind is the most risky and admirable way to model true learning we could ever hope to witness.

Whether or not you agree with Dr. Ravitch’s current positions, her intellectual process of intellectual evolution is exactly what we need in our young people and leaders both now and into the future. Perhaps it is the willingness to change one’s mind that has been most lacking in recent years as ed reform has heated up and we have worried about the very future of learning in a new century. If teachers, schools, parents, communities, and policy makers are not willing to change their minds through carefully deliberate process, we are mired.

I have no idea how we make mind-changing an accredited process, component of adequate yearly progress, or a measurable datapoint, but it must somehow be part of the process of 21st century learning. Forget the trendy century label. A mind is a wonderful thing to change, no matter what the century.