Think Like a Teacher

I just read a thought-provoking article on course blogging by Sarah Hurlburt, a college professor of foreign languages and literature. Her analysis of the issues swirling around setting up and evaluating the success of a classroom social blogosphere are dead on. It makes me sense a hollowness in attempting any use of web 2.0 without a strong basis in pedagogy and analysis of the intricate relationships defined and created by each tool. These tools really do require rethinking. We aren’t just shaping the soft clay of learning into differently-shaped vessels. When we use these tools, we throw the clay into a communal lump and let everyone have at it at once. And if no one ever even told us about the foibles of clay in the first place (cracks easily if not dried the right way, requires glaze to hold liquids, etc.), we as teachers are likely to end up with a useless –though possible pretty – BLOB. We at TeachersFirst (especially the Edge team) can review tools and place them in a context familiar to teachers and students, but we risk missing the point entirely in doing so.

Perhaps the real power of some tools lies outside of any known classroom context. And the classroom context one teacher knows is different from that another knows. The chemistry teacher is not a writing teacher. So, as Hurlburt points implies, the chem teacher would not know the pedagogy of writing that an English teacher or Writers’ Project fellow might find intuitive.

Blogs were tacitly tossed aside as “passé“  by many attending NECC this year, even though blogging was the hottest topic in 2006. I do not believe that this was because wikis or Second Life are so much better. I personally believe that writing is so high-level a constellation of processes that many never “get it.”  And many are intimidated by it. And if you don’t “get” writing, you’ll never be able to create a successful, authentically social blogging community.

Hurlburt’s analysis is from a post-secondary context. What if we took blogging down to the little ones where writing process is less encumbered by self-consciousness? If  ever there were an opportunity to build an extended writers’ response group, this would be it. Start with a bunch of third graders (they might have some keyboarding skills), and let them customize their blogs (Hurlburt is right about the personalization!). learn about response and revision as social creative processes, and build a supportive mini-blogosphere. I can’t think of a better way to lead kids into seeing the tools as extensions of themselves , helping them learn positive ways to interact in virtual spaces, and building their vocabulary about language and message before they venture into collaboration on a wiki or other, more complex social tool. (Of course, we’ll have to get the school to stop blocking blog tools…)

I suspect that those who learned to blog at age 8 would never stop. And wouldn’t that be a dream world: people able to express themselves instead of hitting each other? They might even be able to form a beautiful sculpture out of all that messy clay. I can dream. can’t I?

As teachers, we sometimes forget how large a public window opens into our lives. The Washington Post today tells tales of intrepid teachers in the Washington suburbs who apparently think frosted web-glass obcures all public view of their web presence. Wrong. I wonder, though: Is it wrong to provide a consciously open window, even to keep it crystal-clear on purpose?

Thinking about any web presence requires the same approach as your bathroom blind:

• If I keep it open, who will see?
• If I do reveal something, it implies that I want it to be seen by anyone.
• Is there a good reason to share?
• What others will inadvertently see it?

As a lifelong teacher, however, I ask one more:

• What can I teach this way that I cannot teach any other way?

My first decision would be to post a “See next window” sign on the outside of the bathroom blind, directing people, instead,  to a slightly-less-voyeuresque view of my living room. Now, I ask:

• What can I teach from my web “living room” that I cannot teach any other way?

I can teach that I am an art quilter and a writer, a side of me that splashes into  view immediately on the walls and in this blog window. My visual-spatial students and colleagues ask: how does this connect with what she does all day? Should I connect art  and/or writing into what I do all day?

I can teach that books  and TV can share a space in my life. Can they in YOUR life?

I can teach that family is at the center, and a dog closeby. My students and colleagues ask themselves what forms the center of their world.

I can teach that teaching and work sometimes make me tired (is that me on the couch, asleep?). The voyeurs ask: What is it that drives her to work so hard? What drives me?

I can teach that nothing is finished, even the space for the imaginary fireplace still down the list on our “ten year plan.” They ask: What am I willing to wait for? Are time and imagination as important as the final, tangible item?

I can teach that I don’t mind being honest and human, but that I will always try to present my best. A little dust is OK, though.

I even wash the windows (inside and out) occasionally. My windows are frames for viewing both ways, and I welcome the voyeurs. I have thought about what I will show them. I hope other teachers will do the same.

Why frost the glass when we can shed such light?

When I read a piece of good writing, it sings. The feeling is much like the chill up my spine on hearing a perfect choral performance or that sense that a dive or gymnastics performance just IS a perfect 10 — even before the scores show on screen. You just know. There is a sound a guitar makes–I believe called harmonics– that is beyond the earthly, normal, and delightful plucking or strum. That’s what GOOD writing is. It does not happen often. It stops me and says, “Did you hear that?”

Rewind–replay in slo-mo. Yes, I DID hear that, and it is just as good the second time around.

I worry about web2.0 desensitizing us so we no longer can hear writing that sings. Even worse, I worry about the sound simply being drowned out. It is marvelous that everyone has the opportunity to create that perfect piece, and ironically sad that no one will likely even know it is there. The ease of tools makes one wonder about craft. Web2.0 may be the equivalent of the introduction of the power tools into sculpture. With artistic creation so simple and so much faster, are we losing anything?

I am an art quilter. I celebrate the heritage of hundreds of years of women’s quilts as the underpinnings  (sorry—pun) of my work, but I also deny them in pushing the medium, cutting through it, redefining its edges into non-edges and its techniques away from a rigid 10-stitch-per-inch standard.

I don’t think writing should be subject to such a standard, either, but I will be truly sad if we can no longer hear it when it sings. Is there a way to tag a blog post that sings?