Think Like a Teacher

Every once in a while, I have an amazing conversation with another teacher. Yesterday was one of the best ever. I have a colleague who teaches science and is dedicated, reflective, and far too self-critical. She is not a visual person. Listen to her talk, and you hear words like “data” and “application.”  Listen to me, and you hear “vivid” or “visually rich” or some sort of metaphor you can picture. We both love seeing kids learn, but we see it so differently.

We are both intrigued by infographics, she as the scientist and I as the artist. She calls them “data visualizations.”   I find that a mouthful. (Today I ran across this blog post on this very topic and chuckled aloud at how fitting it is to the two of us.)  Both of us want to help kids discover ways to critique and create infographics. We don’t just want kids to throw a quick copy/paste or slap a downloaded image together with a too much text or endless numbers in  large serif font, however. We want to see kids create meaning out of what they are learning.

As we conferred about how she might use infographics to scaffold learning in her biology classes and not simply as a culminating assessment, we talked for over an hour about the infographics, but we never approached it from the same orientation. We think as scientist and artist. Fortunately, each of us has great respect for the other approach, sometimes verging on awe. As we bounced ideas around for helping her kids get started and for a presentation proposal we are working on about this, I wondered why more teachers don’t try such a collaboration. Imagine if the artists (and I include writers) among us were to partner with the data people, the scientists. I can help her figure out an approach that will work with her artist students and help draw out (BAD pun!) visual analogies from her scientist students. She can help me see what my scientist/data loving students are looking for. Not only that, we can learn from each other to the benefit of our students. I even mused aloud that it would be very cool if schools facilitated such partnerships between teachers.  But we both paused, cringing to imagine if teachers were “forced” to talk to those on the other side of the worldview fence.

A few hours later, my colleague emailed me with a link from the National Writers Project, a project I know well as a fellow in a local affiliate. It was about helping kids visualize vocabulary.  My scientist colleague gets it. She knows that she is not a visual person, so she seeks out the advice of those with a visual approach either in person or via an online resource. Thus, I have the privilege of  enjoying eye-opening conversations with the scientist as we seek to fill the voids we know we have.

I have to wonder how much more effective we all would be as teachers if we ventured to form friendships or professional partnerships with other teachers who see the world differently. What can a physics teacher and a Spanish teacher learn from each other? Should the math teachers all eat lunch together without ever speaking to the art teacher? Even elementary teachers have very different preferred angles of view,  though they teach every subject. How can we encourage teachers to appreciate, celebrate, and learn from our different world views? I know our students would benefit.

There’s nothing like a trip through U.S. Customs to make you stop and think about what it means to be a citizen.  I wish every U.S. middle school student could experience it. If you pay attention, you cannot help but think very seriously about what your citizenship means.

First, you notice all the people in the “non-citizen” line, clutching passports of different colors and  packets of paperwork. No one acts like this is fun. All want to be sure to give the “right” answers to cross the magic line and pass through the security zone.

Then you look at the others in the “U.S. Citizens and Green Card Holders” line. We don’t look as if we’re having fun, either, but we bring certain assumptions to the line with us. We know we have a right to be there. We know we can (respectfully) ask questions about the process. We know that there is a process. We may feel ignorant that we aren’t really sure what that process is. But there is probably a web site where we could have read about it if we had taken the time.

We have the right to know, and we may or may not choose to exercise that right. We also have the responsibility to know.

As often happens, a related experience within 24 hours made me stop and think. I came across this post about a recent report on the need for civics education in the U.S. The recommendations include, of course, a suggestion that the schools be responsible for delivering standards-aligned civics curriculum with assessments. Specifically,  they recommend that we “hold schools and districts accountable for student civic learning achievement.” Hmm. Who is ultimately accountable? The school or the citizen?

A quote from the report’s accompanying message by Justice O’Connor and  former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton of Indiana really made me question the who and the what of citizenship:

“Each generation of Americans must be taught these basics [of our rights and responsibilities as citizens]. Families and parents have a key role to play, yet our schools remain the one universal experience we all have to gain civic knowledge and skills.”

I agree that schools are our one universal (though wildly diverse) experience.  I agree that civics, or citizenship as I prefer to call it, has been abandoned from curriculum during the NCLB era. We do need to bring it back into our schools. We do need to model it, talk about it, and show that it matters.

But isn’t the whole point that the individual has responsibility to continue to educate him/herself on issues long after leaving school, to question, to look at the other line at Customs, to ask our own children questions and watch the news together as we think aloud so children learn to think themselves? If we simply say.”Let the schools do it,” we will not have any better citizens. We should be saying, “Let every adult model citizenship, at school, at home, and in the line at Customs.” We should be demanding citizenship from our fellow adults, our coworkers, and the people in line with us at Customs or the grocery store. Declare that.

This morning NPR did a story on the Tribute Center Museum opened by 9/11 families across the street from Ground Zero and the thousands of artifacts shared there, found or donated to commemorate and make real the experience of that gut-wrenching day ten years ago. My hand involuntarily slaps over my mouth each time I hear stories of personal details: where were you and what did you see or hear on September 11, 2001?  Those of us who lived through it as adults, whether from 100 feet or 1000 miles away, still taste the cloud of ash in our minds and feel the urge to run or do something now. Somehow television images lined our nostrils with smoke as we watched. 9/11 went into the heart and lungs of every American.

The survivor-father in charge of the Tribute Center talks about a menu from Windows on the World restaurant and a boarding pass from one of the doomed flights that fluttered from the sky in the ash cloud and now are part of the museum. I stop my car to pry my hand from my mouth — again. There is such wisdom in this cloud.

This year’s first year teachers were in middle school. Today’s high school seniors were in second grade and likely were sheltered from the news until they got off the bus to find an adult glued to the tube, breathing distant ash. What are we doing to help today’s students touch the painful wisdom of this cloud?

We have a week until the tenth anniversary of Sept 11. If there were ever a time to stop following a curriculum map or forget about “eligible content,” this is it. [*Note to non-teachers: “eligible content” is the stuff The Tests are about.] Share the wisdom of this cloud. Share artifacts, share stories, tell your students to ask questions about 9/11 to everyone they know over age 25. Let them smell the smoke a bit.

What will you do with your class this week?

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To my regular readers: I will not be able to post as regularly for a couple of weeks, but I will resume soon. I hope  I can return with some new wisdom, as well.