Education From the Ground Up

I have once again received a very interesting query from a reader. The blog will be on hiatus until January 9, so you’ll have lots of time to think about it and respond! Jan Simpson would like to know: if you had to design an education system from scratch, how would you do it?

Here, in more detail, is his question.

It’s the present day, the year 2011. Everything is the way it is. However, there is no existing educational system whatsoever anywhere in the world. It is up to you to create a form of education for at least 500 teenagers between the ages of 15 and 20.

Here is my request: How would you go about creating a new educational system for those “students?” In other words, if you are the first person to create and establish the first educational system in the world, what would that look like?

Keep in mind, there isn’t any sort of education that had been created beforehand; you are the first person to wrap your mind around the basic principles of education and create a system or model where those principles can be taught and learned.

Feel free to post a brief response or a lengthy treatise in the comments section below. If you’d prefer to contact Jan directly with a long reply, you can click on his name at the beginning of this post to go to his Gravatar profile and find his contact details. However, I’m sure we’d all be interested to read your thoughts here, no matter how long or short they may be!

Have a great winter holiday. Eat lots of food! Go for long walks! Spend at least two days not thinking about teaching! And when you ARE thinking about teaching … well, if you’ve gotten behind on your Classroom as Microcosm reading and commenting, now would be a great time to get caught up.

See you in January, when I will will start the year with a recap of the top posts of 2011 and with a list of my favourite books of the year.

Image by Benito LeGrande

Posted on December 19, 2011December 19, 2011 by Siobhan Curious 12

Students Need To Know Why They’re In School

It seems that there are a lot of things students would change about school if they could. For example, MaplesAndMerriment thinks that students need a clearer understanding of why they are in school at all.

This is Post #4 in a 5-part series on what students think should change about school.

If I could change one thing about school, it would be motivation.

What I mean is that so often, we students lose sight of why we’re in school. It’s easy to say “because we have to be; because our parents are forcing us to,” even up to and through an undergraduate education. But I believe this is a terrible perspective on school and it’s a sure way to make the least out of our opportunities.

For some, school is a logical and important step on the road to a career, and nothing more. That’s fine! For others, school is a place to find oneself and to meet new people. Also fine! For some, school is the chance to learn about a wide variety of fascinating topics. Groovy! Others use school to dive into the things that they are passionate about, and to make their life work the work of learning. Rock on.

There’s a wide variety of ways in which we can use and appreciate our education. I may personally disagree with a few, but the only explanation that I really want to challenge students on is “I don’t know.” If you don’t know, why not sit down and think about it? Maybe it will give you a fresh insight or some much-needed motivation.

So, how could we change this issue of identifying student motivations in schools? I think it falls into the work of counselors and advisors. I admire both of these professions and I wish every school, at every level of education, could have a lower advisor-to-student ratio. It would be so helpful if each counseling session began with a discussion that promoted self-reflection in the student and asked the question: “Why are you here? What are your educational goals?” We students need to be reminded of this often. It’s easy to lose track and get bogged down by assignments and the semester schedule. But being asked to step back and look at the larger picture of our education could be extremely beneficial to individual students and to the education system as a whole.

Do you agree with MaplesAndMerriment? Is it true that students are unclear about their reasons for being in school? If so, how can we help them? Leave your thoughts below.

The final post in this series will appear tomorrow: According to Ruth, pushing everyone to go to university is making university less useful.

Previous posts in this series:

Yesterday’s post: Katy believes that we need to change our attitude toward grades.

Tuesday’s post: Aewl thinks college should be reserved for those who can pay for it.

Monday’s post: Emily thinks school is too easy.

Are you a student? What do you think should change about school? Go to this post to leave your thoughts, or write me a message.

Image by Eduardo Schafer

Posted on October 13, 2011October 13, 2011 by Siobhan Curious 8

Cold Call

Are you willing to put your students on the spot?

A reader, Damommachef, has asked me to discuss a problem that can arise with classroom dynamics: the Constant Commenter. She says, “Some kids want to constantly comment, but the smartest are often the quietest. How can we get them more involved? How do we subdue the chronic commenters?”

One solution is the cold call. We call on students randomly (or perhaps not so randomly, but it may appear random to them.) If students raise hands or call out, we say, “I’m cold calling for this one, so no volunteers.”

A few years ago, a Masters teacher of mine said that she never cold-calls students because when she was a student, the idea of being “picked on” without warning made her sick with anxiety. She never put her students through it because she hated it so much. At first I was puzzled by this – Really? You never ask students for answers unless they volunteer? – but I then realized that I rarely cold-call in its strict sense. I often call on students, but usually they’ve had a chance to prepare responses beforehand, often with a partner or group so they don’t bear sole responsibility for their answers.

I’ve been reading Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov (thanks to my friend Sarah for the recommendation!) and he believes in real, honest-to-God cold-calling, asking students to demonstrate in no uncertain terms that they are mastering the skills and content they’re being taught, at a nanosecond’s notice. This technique, he explains, has several benefits.

…it allows you to check for understanding effectively and systematically…increases speed both in terms of your pacing…and the rate at which you cover material…[and] allows you to distribute work more broadly around the room and signal to students not only that they are likely to be called on to participate…but that you want to know what they have to say.

Lemov also encourages teachers to use techniques like “No Opt Out,” in which a student who answers with “I don’t know” must eventually give a correct answer, and “Format Matters,” meaning that students need to respond in complete, grammatical sentences whenever possible. In Lemov’s world, there is no escape: you need to be present, engaged and ready to respond at any time.

I am more inclined to Lemov’s view than my former teacher’s. At the beginning of the semester, I use the excuse that I need to learn their names, and call on them randomly from the attendance list to answer questions. As time goes on, though, I find myself getting soft, and allowing a few eager students to dominate discussion. And, as I said, I rarely ask students to think on their feet – if they’re nervous, they can just read answers they’ve prepared with their group, although they may have to stretch themselves if I ask for further explanation.

I feel like I should do it more. I believe that if students know they can be called on at any time, they will be more engaged and feel more responsibility for the material. I’d like to create an atmosphere in which students feel that it’s safe to make errors, but that they at least have to take a stab at things, and that they need to be ready to do so at all times. But I don’t want students to sit stewing in fear, petrified that they may be asked to speak.

Do you cold-call in your classroom? If so, how do you make students fell okay with that? If not, why not? Does cold-calling improve the classroom dynamic, or is it a detriment? I want my students to rise to the demands cold-calling creates, but I don’t want to poison their learning with terror.

Image by Sigurd Decroos

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Siobhan Curious 40

The First Days of School: Then and Now

Today is the beginning of the new school year for me and my colleagues, and many of you will be getting back into the saddle in the next couple of weeks. As I prepare, my thoughts have returned to three of my past posts that still seem timely.

The first is called “Mean ‘Til Hallowe’een: Classroom Discipline and the First Day of the Semester.” I wrote this in 2007 and return to it at the beginning of every term. The question: does it help to be strict and unsmiling for the first few weeks?

Another is a commentary on one of my favourite books for educators: Harry and Rosemary Wong’s The First Days of School. If you have a week or so before you start teaching, run out and get your hands on this book and read it before classes begin. Even if you’ve already started, the book has many, many valuable insights about knowing yourself as a teacher and being the most effective teacher you can be.

Finally, I am returning to the teaching resolutions I made at the beginning of 2010, and I am renewing those resolutions for the coming semester. Do you have resolutions for this school year? I’d love to hear them.

Feel free to leave comments on the posts themselves, or to comment below. You can also visit my Facebook Page, “Like” it, and leave your thoughts there!

Image by Simona Jakov

Posted on August 22, 2011August 22, 2011 by Siobhan Curious 10

Does Reading Great Literature Make You A Better Person?

I love Laura Miller, the Books critic for Salon.com. However, in today’s Salon she’s making an argument that I’ve heard a lot and that I do not like.

She’s reviewing William Deresiewicz’s new book, A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship and the Things that Really Matter. I have not read this book – Miller’s review is the first I’ve heard of it – but it’s gone straight to my wish list. In it, according to Miller, Deresiewicz

explains how his long engagement with [Austen’s novels] helped convert him from a surly, preening grad student — “about as dumb, in all human things, as any 26-year-old has a right to be” and grandiosely convinced that anything other than “complex, difficult, sophisticated” modernist fiction was beneath him — into a decent, civilized man.

Miller is not convinced that the novels were responsible for Deresiewicz’s transformation. Her argument is basically this: lots of readers are bad people. In fact, everyone loves stories, but the world is still full of nastiness.

Some of the best-read people I know are thoroughgoing jerks, and some of the kindest and noblest verge on the illiterate…. There’s a theory…that fiction builds empathy, and therefore morality, by inviting us into the minds, hearts and experiences of others. This is what the British children’s book author Michael Morpurgo implied recently…when he claimed that “developing in young children a love of poems and stories” might someday render the human-rights organization Amnesty International obsolete. While I’m all for cultivating such tastes in children, I also don’t think the love of stories has to be taught. Most children are keenly interested in stories in all their forms. (Reading is a different matter.) They always have been. Yet there has always been a need for groups like Amnesty and it seems probable there always will be, no matter how many stories we pump into our youth.

I hear a lot of variations on this argument. “Joseph Goebbels loved literature.” “Sit in on a PhD literature class and see if you come away thinking that literature makes people more empathetic.” These statements strike me as identical to saying, “Broccoli isn’t good for you – people who eat lots of broccoli still get cancer.” That is: sure, literature doesn’t cure terminal meanness, arrogance, or psychopathy, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t improve many people. What’s more, a particular book may not turn me into a bodhisattva, but I still might be more compassionate, having read it, than I was before.

Do you buy the idea that literature teaches empathy, that books can make us better people? I still do, but maybe you can convince me otherwise.

Posted on June 1, 2011June 1, 2011 by Siobhan Curious 23

What Does Learning Look Like?

My “personal narrative” class is going great.

We started by reading Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle, and they seemed to like it. A lot. Most of them did the reading and participated actively in the group work, and after a little talk to them about “what to do if you HAVEN’T done the reading and CAN’T participate in the group work,” they mostly seemed to take responsibility and work together well. We looked at the elements of literary analysis, and for each class, each group was responsible for analyzing a different part of the memoir. When they got to the first in-class assignment (wherein they analyzed an unseen text using the elements we’d discussed), almost everyone did a good job.

Now we’ve started the second unit. They have each been assigned a memoir from a list of eight; I asked them to give me their top three choices from the list, and I tried to give them one of the books they chose. They are working with others who have read the same book, preparing a “book talk.” I have given them a list of ten possible “book talk” topics, including things like “important themes,” “historical, geographical and social context,” “what I loved about this book” and “what I learned from reading this book.” To practice preparing and presenting, they had to choose one of the topics and present on The Glass Castle. These practice orals were the best I’ve seen; with a few exceptions, they were thorough, engaging and on point.

Then I asked them to focus on their second book, to divvy up topics among their group members (each of the four or five group members should choose a different topic), and to each prepare a five-minute presentation on their topic (for a total of 20-25 minutes per group). The overall thrust of the “book talk” is to convince others in the class to choose the book for their third reading. (I am indebted to Nancie Atwell’s The Reading Zone for giving me the term “book talk” and for helping me as I constructed these assignments.)

After the “book talks,” students must write a report in which they tell me which book they’re going to choose from the list for their third reading, and why. They must write a paragraph about each of the seven books they saw presented and explain why they did or did not choose each one. In the end, each student must write a comparative literary analysis of his or her second and third readings.

They really seem to be having a good time. In their group discussions today, as they chose their individual topics and structured their group presentations, their level of engagement was the highest I think I’ve ever seen in a literature class. They were sparring, writing, drawing diagrams, asking questions of me and of each other. They all wrote tons of stuff on their worksheets and took lots of notes for themselves before handing the worksheets into me.

But here’s my question.

What are they learning?

I chose these activities because I thought they would be engaging. And there is method and motive to my madness, but I’m not sure I can trust it. So I’d like to hear your thoughts on this. What are my students learning from this process? And is it valuable? Is it what they should be learning in an English literature classroom?

Let me know what you think.

Image by Sergio Roberto Bichara

Posted on October 7, 2010October 7, 2010 by Siobhan Curious 11

Steven Pinker, Jezebel, Cathleen Schine and Others on the Value of Reading

In response to my recent posts on the value of reading (and teaching literature), I’ve been sent some terrific links that shed light on the topic.

BikeLizard over at my OpenSalon version of this blog mentioned a Jezebel article called “Page Rage: When Books Make Kids Hate Reading.” In it, the author grapples with the problem of kids not having enough choice about what they read in school. (The article only briefly references what seems to me to be the crux of this issue: if kids read something outside of what they are assigned in school – that is, if schools were not entirely responsible for most kids’ experience of reading – this problem would be much less dire.)

The Jezebel article in turn referrred me to this essay by Cathleen Schine (author of the novel The Three Weissmanns of Westport, which is #1 on my “To Read” list right now.) Schine’s essay does not support the Jezebel blogger’s point, in fact – it suggests, in a slightly tongue-in-cheek way, that being “turned off” literature in her adolescence planted the seeds for her adult re-discovery of reading and made it far more sublime.

Another friend made reference to some of Steven Pinker’s discussions of violence, including his assertion that the reading of literature leads us to develop a greater capacity for empathy, and that literate societies tend to be less violent than illiterate ones. Pinker makes brief reference to this theory in his TED talk on the myth of violence, but I suspect that there is a more detailed discussion of it in either The Blank Slate or The Stuff of Thought – can anyone point me in the right direction?

Image by Horton Group

Posted on March 3, 2010 by Siobhan Curious 2

The New Semester: 10 Resolutions

Classes start again in less than two weeks. (Primary, secondary and university teachers who are already back at work, I know what you’re thinking: “Shut up.” Believe me, I know how good I’ve got it.)

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. However, one theme that presents itself frequently in my Buddhist meditation practice and my yoga classes is that of “setting an intention.” Why am I doing this? What do I want from it? Where will I place my effort?

So before the kicks to the head begin, I thought I’d “set some intentions” for the semester. What am I going to focus on when the going gets rough?

1. I will work hard.

Teachers will look at #1 and say, “Like you’ll have a choice.” Fair enough. However, one of my greatest struggles is that I resist work and resent it. What will happen if I decide that I want to work hard? What if I look at every stack of papers and every test that needs to be prepared and I think, “Here’s another chance to work hard, just like I wanted”?

2. I will not count the days until the end of the semester.

I need to stop wishing my life away. I need to see my work life for what it is: the place where I learn and grow more than I do anywhere else.

3. I will approach my students as people, not problems.

Registration is in progress, and today I checked my student lists, which are about half complete. So far, two familiar names caused my heart to sink a little.

Am I going to walk in anticipating difficulties? Or am I going to walk in with the attitude that these students are complex, evolving beings who are bound to surprise me in one way or another? If I can truly be present with my students, I can help them more and they, in turn, can teach me something.

4. I will meditate. Every morning, if possible.

Meditation keeps me grounded and sane. It gives me perspective and helps me to stop working myself into a lather. I have an early schedule this semester – my classes often begin at 8 a.m. – and I prefer to meditate in the mornings, so it will be tricky. But even 10 minutes a day makes a big difference, so I need to work it in somehow.

5. I will take care of my body.

Exercise is the first thing to go when I get busy. I love my yoga classes, but I often skip them when there are too many other things on my plate. I also love to ski and to jog, and doing these things makes me feel better about everything. Besides, I’m getting married in September, and I’d like shopping for a dress to be something other than a continuous pounding of my self-esteem. So I need to exercise, if not every day (that might be asking too much), then at least as regularly as I can manage.

6. I will not forget about my friends.

I find it very difficult, during the semester, to maintain a social life outside of work. I’m too stressed to enjoy parties, and even scheduling coffee or dinner feels like a chore rather than a break. I need to change my perspective on this. My obligations to my work community are important, but so are my connections to my larger community. Spending time with friends gives me distance from whatever’s going on at work.

7. I will find enjoyment in even difficult or tedious tasks.

There are things about teaching that I hate. It is possible to hate them less by taking joy in small or big things.

I hate grading essays, but I do like playing with different coloured pens, Post-Its, rubber stamps and other stationery bits. I also enjoy methodical tasks like grading MLA formatting, where I don’t need to think, but can just turn on some fun music and check things off a checklist.

I hate dealing with conflict. However, a conflict with a student is an opportunity to examine myself more closely and learn something. If I’m stressed about dealing with a difficult person, I often reconnect with my meditation practice, do more exercise, write more blog posts, and generally invest in activities that help me work through the problem. Difficult people can be seen as “enemies” or as “gurus.” If I can stop fighting the problem and instead sink into it fully and be curious about it, I can actually take some pleasure in the process.

8. I will take care of my environment.

My offices, both at work and at home, need to be cleaned and reorganized. My apartment also needs to be thoroughly scrubbed – I’m actually considering hiring someone to do this. I detest cleaning, but I also detest living in grubby conditions. I need to set the world around me in order. It helps me feel better.

9. I will be grateful.

I have a great job and a great life. I need to actively remind myself of that, again and again.

I recently made a half-hearted attempt at a “gratitude journal.” Every evening, I made a list of ten things (or more) that had happened that day that I was grateful for. It was never difficult to come up with ten things; my list often extended to twenty items and beyond, and doing it made me feel great.

Last night, The Fiancé and I watched a segment of Dan Gilbert’s “This Emotional Life” in which he presents some of the techniques of “positive psychology.” Taking time each day to note down things that went well is one practice that positive psychology teaches. So it’s not just me – there’s some scientific backing for this. One way or another, it improves my outlook.

10. I will set an intention every morning.

There are going to be problems. Teaching is hard, and teaching well is especially hard, because it involves real engagement with real people, and real people are challenging. There will be days when my stomach will be knotted with dread from the moment I wake up. Setting an intention for the day – What do I want to learn? How will I set that learning in motion? – can untie that knot and allow it to blossom into useful energy.

In the evening I can then examine my intention and how it shaped my day. If I carried it out in some way, I can feel glad; if I avoided it altogether, I can feel glad that I have the insight to recognize that. Buddhists call this daily activity of setting and examining intentions “one at the beginning, one at the end.”

I need to post this list up somewhere, and add to it. A fifteen-week semester equals seventy-five school days. If I can engage in each day with mindfulness, curiosity and effort, instead of just allowing the days to happen to me, I may be able to love what I do all the time.

Even when I feel like punching someone. Which is bound to happen.

Image by Chutiporn Chaitachawong

Posted on January 7, 2010January 7, 2010 by Siobhan Curious 9

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Classroom as Microcosm

Siobhan Curious Says: Teachers are People Too

Classroom as Microcosm

Category: psychology

Top 10 Posts of 2011

Education From the Ground Up

Students Need To Know Why They’re In School

Cold Call

The First Days of School: Then and Now

Does Reading Great Literature Make You A Better Person?

Top 10 Posts of 2010

What Does Learning Look Like?

Steven Pinker, Jezebel, Cathleen Schine and Others on the Value of Reading

The New Semester: 10 Resolutions

Siobhan Curious Says: Teachers are People Too

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