Think Like a Teacher

What can I do to beat this, break this, or make people laugh?

When I taught gifted kids, their first approach when faced with a new technology tool, game, or toy was to beat it, break it, or make people laugh. I saw this reaction back in the day of early computer games we loaded from a 5 1/4 inch floppy disks. In the pre-PC days, my students — gifted or not –had the same reaction when faced with a special effects generator in the school’s black and white TV studio. (OK, now you can guess my age.) They wanted to make special effects that cut off heads or caused the TV monitors to go crazy.

Kids, especially middle school kids and older, will want to break, outsmart, or use any tech tool to make their friends laugh. We are missing a bet by not using this impulse to help them learn. There is a misconception, well debunked by Bill Ferriter, that technology itself is motivating. Ferriter is right. It isn’t motivating to ask kids to do what a tool is intended to do. It is motivating for kids to show their prowess in defeating it or molding it to their own purposes, preferably for an audience. The same social impulse makes them want to share on Facebook or YouTube. There may be some gender differences, but the stereotypes say what the boys break the girls will secretly redirect to their own purposes — giggling.

The makers movement challenges kids to MAKE things to fit a challenge. The gamification movement invites kids to create games to construct learning. I think we miss a bet by not asking kids to break things to meet a challenge. How can you use a tool of your choice to do something new and productive that it was NOT intended to do? What tool can you break to solve this unrelated problem? Give students the web full of  “tools,” and they will want to combine them or use them every way except as intended, especially middle and high schoolers. So let them.

Instead of  assigning kids tech tools to make a project using a specific tool, maybe we should simply allow them to break or “redirect” tools at will. The final rubric should certainly include curriculum accountability:  the result must show what they know about the prescribed curriculum. In the interest of teaching life skills and preserving our own jobs, we must include a requirement that the products have no more than a PG-13 rating (at least not in the version they submit for a grade). Share the rubric and any relevant acceptable use policy, but let students do it any way they want. Humor, even deviousness, can be a far greater motivator.  The teacher pleasers will ask for tools to be assigned, and that’s fine. The most able, most motivated,  and most creative will break something to make something. Isn’t that the innovation we want to build in our students?  The examples of “broken” or redirected  tools can serve to lure the timid into trying something a bit more adventurous themselves the next time.

One practical concern of this idea is that kids will take a long time to figure out the gimmicks and potential humor of the tools they choose. Let them do this on their own time. Schools have no walls, right?

Many years ago, I learned that comedy is far more difficult to write than drama. Parody, satire, and humor challenge the greatest minds. (I know how long it took to write a barely-adequate spoof of  “The Raven” last week!) If we can motivate kids to go above and beyond in their learning by following their impulse to break, trick, or make others laugh, we  have gone above and beyond our own curriculum. We have “mashed up” the student behaviors we can barely control with the curriculum we want students to master.  We have encouraged innovation. And we might even get a chance to laugh together.

‘Tis the season for the Raven. We have been watching our Google Analytics live as TeachersFirst’s Interactive Raven is hammered by traffic from around the world. I think it is kind of scary to think that we can “see” who is on the  TeachersFirst site minute by minute (their general location and numbers).

The Raven is such a haunting poem for many reasons, not the least of which is how easily it invites parody and poor imitation. So I offer an early trick or treat. Maybe you would like to invite your students to  spend some time with the Raven then try their own hands at a mimicking version related to a topic you teach.  Here is a sample. (Perhaps you can suggest a title?)

Once upon a blog post reading, logged in tabs I leave, unheeding
As the world of data miners raids my unattended store.
Clicking on, I set to shopping, then to Facebook briefly hopping
As the ads that came a-popping match my shopping cart and more
‘Tis coincidence I mutter, these enticing wares galore.
Random ads and nothing more.

Bored with browsing, I try tweeting hashtagged quips and ideas fleeting
While on Tweetdeck laughing, reading others’ pithy repertoire
Twitpics, links, from folks I follow, reweeting with praises hollow
Cheer each follower I add as I send new tweets by the score.
I’m so clever — here come more!

Bravely then I take to writing, links and articles a-citing,
A post acerbic — even biting – thoughts that none have thunk before.
Proudly dream of going viral, Technorati upward spiral
Wordiness and hubris gath’ring, will my reputation score?
Saved and tweeted. Whew, I mutter, hope my Clustrmap will soar.
I’m an optimization whore?

Insecure, I check my tags. Seems my footprint ever lags
I can find no way to raise my Google reputation score.
Googling myself, I then discover that my name has yet another
Whose accomplishments surpass my tweets and blog posts written heretofore
I must press my footprint deeper in the sand upon this shore!
Oops…that tab is for an online store.

As I click to close my Facebook, ads arising flaunt a new book:
“How to make your friends share photos, posts, and ‘like’ you more”
“See your face here!” it is screaming, but I am no longer beaming
As the monster Bigfoot prints the prideful sands upon my shore.
Haunted by my online clicks and logins I must shift to something more.
Clear the cache—clean out the store!

Logging out, I clear my history, some of which is quite a mystery
Can’t believe that I have ever clicked some things in there before
Cache is gone, and Chrome restarted, my old paths no longer charted
Yet the searches of my name still yield ten thousand eighty-four
Memberships and projects linger from a past so long before
Cast in sandstone on this shore.

Far from me, a sandstone sculptor shapes my name and gives it luster
Analytics, spiders weave my life and story more and more
All I want is to go shopping, from ideas to Pinterest hopping
Without carving data fields as Google keeps a hidden score
Let my thoughts for once be fleeting as they were in years before
Quoth the Google, “Nevermore.”

A Class Portrait from Germain's collection. Click for full collection.

We all have them: faded, posed pictures of ourselves as elementary students in a class picture. Neat lines, tall kids standing in the back, shorter ones seated in front holding the sign with the grade, teacher’s name, and school year. These class pictures sterilize what school is all about, replacing a portrait of learning with a portrait of students as furniture. The picture strips the culture and details that provide context and priorities for what happens in school. What does the classroom look like? What is on the board and on the floor? What is the visual routine of day to day learning in this place?

Julian Germain has an ongoing photo project taking classroom portraits around the world. Photos taken 2004-2011 are published in book form, but selected photos are also available online. The images are familiar, strange, haunting, and encouraging. I could spend an hour looking at each one and hypothesizing what the children’s lives are like,  how the teacher conducts class, and what they might be thinking as this portrait is being taken. I imagine the moment after the shutter goes off and the pose disintegrates into talk, motion, chaos. I hear the teacher (invisible in most pictures) calling for attention and redirecting kids to the lesson at hand.

I also hear what other kids (and teachers) would say when they see the portraits of unfamiliar classrooms. We can learn so much by observing small cultural details and the questions they raise.

“Look! There’s a dog in their room!”

“What’s that written on the board?”

“They have jeans like mine.”

“How many kids are in that class?”

“It’s all girls!”

“Why do they look so serious?”

The seriousness, I believe, is imposed by the photographer  as part of the photo session (how else could “structured play” look so unhappy?). Indeed, the ability of the photographer to influence the message through pose, composition, lighting, and more could spark a sophisticated media literacy discussion.

The other questions are open to observation, discussion, and discovery. These classroom portraits of learning are an invitation for the viewers themselves to learn. What better way to entice our students to dig into cross-cultural understanding than to share unfamiliar images of a very familiar place: the classroom. I’d love to set up a sharing project for classroom portraits. Here are some lesson ideas for using these images and/or extending the idea in creating your own portraits.

World cultures/Social Studies/World Languages: Use as an intro into cultural differences and awareness. Project an image and have students note what they see and what they think it could mean about life as a youth in that culture/location. Take it beyond just school. What else can they tell about society there? How could they research to find out whether their hypotheses are true? If this portrait shows what it is like to be a child/youth in ___, what would be important details to include in an image depicting life in our classroom? Consider actually TAKING that picture and sharing it on your class wiki or web page, possibly with annotations to explain why the class included  the items it did.

With younger students: how would you feel if this were your classroom? How might the children seen here feel if they came to our classroom? List ten things that are the same as our classroom and ten that appear different. How is different NOT “better” or “worse”?

Science (yes, science): Entice kids into scientific observation and the difference between observing , hypothesizing, and concluding by sharing an image as whole class practice. Extend it by having kids (groups?)  “report” observations and hypotheses based on another photo in the series.

A picture is worth a thousand lessons.

The annual announcement of the MacArthur Fellows this week generated the usual media blitz about a fresh batch of surprising, creative, and potentially influential people stashed in little-known pockets and corners. Dubbed, “genius” awards by the media, these grants recognize “individuals who show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future” and offer generous funds so recipients can continue their work with the greatest freedom and  flexibility.

The process by which MacArthur Fellows  are nominated and selected, contrary to what the media, guidance counselors, and tiger parents may say,  proves that accomplishment and recognition can happen to those who do not actively campaign for it or plan a deliberate path to a perfect pinnacle. These people are creative because it is their passion and their life, not their career goal. MacArthur is remarkably successful in keeping both nominators and nominees completely confidential. The rotating pool of nominators assures a never ending stream of potential candidates from an ever expanding (U.S.) world of possibilities. As nominators come and go, the process nears perfection like a mathematical function approaching its asymptote. There are no winners or losers because no one even knows who is in the game. The fellows are unaware of scrutiny until recognized, and that is an important part of the process. These are people who are chosen because they are likely to spread and share the brilliance of their light. And light can come from any angle and in any color or wavelength. The pool is blindingly large, but somehow MacArthur finds a prism to separate out the light of these individuals. Will they find them all? Not likely, but they will continue the quest with a process that mimics the “genius” of the winners.

It is time for MacArthur Teaching Fellowships. Grassroots efforts to change teaching today proffer exemplary new ways for students to grow and learn in this era of education reform. Most programs must struggle for funding or meet bureaucratic requirements to gain recognition and  continue their success. These efforts are institutional, however, and they at least have a process to try. They may be magnet schools or charters or university pilot programs. Yet we miss the isolated light of an individual teacher who shares surprising, creative light in unexpected classroom corners or even outside school walls. He/She may not be the principal’s shining star, suitable to be nominated as “teacher of the year.” He/She does not self-advocate and may actually be a thorn in the side of colleagues, an “odd duck” or a manic and disorganized genius. This is the teacher whose unusual ways or odd approach “show[s] exceptional creativity… and the prospect for still more in the future.”  A single, intuitive “genius” of a teacher may have discovered something that could spread a new light, perhaps engaging would-be drop-outs or highly gifted social outcasts. Or maybe he/she is a middle school math teacher whose students make poetry of Pythagorus or an English teacher whose students sculpt sentences at the town hall.

How would we ever find them? The same way MacArthur finds Fellows. A rotating pool of nominators adds letters of nomination on an ongoing basis. The process is silent and secretive, but finds them. We know “genius” creative teachers are out there, and they may never receive a pat on the back any other way.  But we could learn so much from them. With the generous, flexible fellowship funds to pursue their passions, who knows how many students could benefit.

Forget the Hollywood “inspired teacher” movies. I want to be inspired by the genius teachers. They are perhaps the ones who never intended to teach — or who could never imagine doing anything else. It does not matter to me what kind of prep they had or what happy meteor landing put them among our children. They are the light  that Departments of Education cannot see, the infrared to our “professional” eyes.

It’s a thought, anyway. Anybody want to fund it?