Wella, wella, wella, boom.
It has been one of the busiest term beginnings I think I’ve ever experienced. I’m still standing. And I do feel things leveling off. The biggest challenge has been my Eng1p class.
So, the ipads are in. we got em.
everything’s ready to go. admin’s nervous because of how portable they are. admins don’t like laptops for the same reason.
I hope I will be able to get away with the kids roaming the building, the neighbourhood with them…
how do we begin?
how should I presume?
I’ve started a spreadsheet of the apps I want to use, including costs- most are free- and ranking in order of priority.
we need, we really need to develop a class ipad code of conduct. and this has to be developed together.
… more thinking
so now that I’ve got my generative theme, the real challenge begins. I have to figure out just what we’re going to be doing with it. The questions we explore will come from the kids, but I need to have a plan for the activities they will complete in order to answer those questions, and to frame their answers into concrete action.
Plus, I do have to meet those skills objectives laid out by the curriculum, and that’s not a bad thing.
I also need to make sure this thing doesn’t fly away in a mish mash of process. I don’t want to wake out of a dream at mid-term and realize that I haven’t actualy asked the kids to write anything. I don’t imagine that would really happen. But I could certainly see forgetting to create opportunities forr some objectives to be met.
and oh, yea, I still have to create a course outline that lists all the assignments we’re going to do in advance. And this has to be submitted for admin approval.
I thought I might start by going to one of the old course outlines, listing the different assignments that were done, and then plonking them into a schedule that might work from what I imagine would happen as we probe, leaving the topics blank for now. Just to give me a quick feeling of solidity. But looking at them just got me depressed.
So, I’m going to try it the other way around.
I’ve decided I’m going to brainstorm a list of every activity I *want* to do with the class. Then I’ll look to see what skills and objectives are being met by those, and fill in whatever blanks need to be filled.
I usually find that when I do this, I end up fulfilling all of the objectives and then some.
But I did have a teacher dream last night where I was showing “maru” videos to this class, and one of the students whispered to another, “all she does is show youtube videos in class.” So I’m clearly having some concerns about rigour 
So, I am “cheating” slightly, in my Freirean plans. One of the main ideas in Freirean pedagogy is that learning should be structured about the exploration of “generative themes,” ”iconic representations that have a powerful emotional impact in the daily lives of learners.” These themes are represented usually by a word that has emotional and intellectual resonance for the learner. The way that I am cheating is that I am choosing this word in advance. The recommended procedure is to first do an ethnography of the students, and their live inside and outside the school, and through dialogue, listen for the words that get them energized.
Well, yes. And I understand the reasoning for this. It’s so that I don’t impose my themes on them- so that learning is truly situated in their world, and their lived reality.
I’m going to suggest that I’ve already done a fair bit of ethnography, having taught this level of student at this school last year. I don’t think their lived reality will have changed all that much. Plus, I think my word is a winner.
It’s technology.
Here’s a description of what a generative theme should embody:
The most important criterion for the choice of a word by the team is that it must have the capacity to confront the social, cultural, and political reality in which the people live. The word must suggest and mean something important for the people. The word must provide both mental and emotional stimulation for the learners.
See, I think that right away, technology will be a buzzy thing in this class. We will have the ipads. No other English class will. This raises questions already about power and priviledge. Their own relationship to technology will do so as well. Probe a little deeper as we investigate the use of technology around the school and we may quite easily fall into discussions about surveillance and control. Actually, I don’t see how we could fail to. Bringing it back to home, discussions about how we use tech in the classroom and with each other might generate interesting questions regarding privacy, emotional boundaries, social power, gender… and on and on it goes…
I am beginning to develop the curriculum for the ipad project in earnest, and I’m delighted to say that I’m made some headway, and feel less at sea.
I am seeking to structure a grade 9 applied course according to Freirean pedagogy, following as much as possible the models he advocated: problem posing education, and developing true critical literacy. I have wanted to do this for a long time, but felt constrained by the institutional and practical realities of my teaching practice. One of the main tenets of Freirean pedagogy is that the content of learning be developed by teacher and learner. It is difficult, impossible? to do this when you have to order your materials beforehand, or work with the materials that are available, when you have to achieve consensus with 2-4 other teachers about texts, assignments, goals, before meeting your students, when you have to develop a course outline that decides all of this before you even begin.
And yet, the Ontario English Curriculum offers an opportunity to implement a freirean model, in that it is a skills-based curriculum. There are no prescribed texts, only recommendations of genres. And, in fact, many of the required skills support critical pedagogical concerns. The new emphasis on metacognition could be put to some powerful uses.
Two events have helped me overcome the other difficulties.
1) We applied for and successfully earned a grant in order to purchase a class set of ipad2s. An ipad in the hands of every student, every day, means that at all times, each student will have the ability to take pictures, record audio, publish in multimedia format, collaborate, and annotate. We are also timetabled to be in one of the wireless classrooms in the building. This means that we have access to a nearly infinite number of texts, print and otherwise, which opens up great possibilities for student driven inquiry.
2) During out district review this year, one of the questions posed by the Board was, “To what degree is student participation in your classes a sign of engagement or compliance.” (or words to that effect.) I’m still amazed that we are being encouraged to think of such things, and I want to ask about its provenance… But the fact that this idea is a board concern gives some additional weight to my project.
3) The grade 9 applied class is running as a single section in each semester. This means the teachers have more flexibility to respond to the issues and urgencies of the students in front of them.
It now remains for me to develop the plan, gather the tools, train myself, and get some sense of how this thing is going to work.
so.
I am teaching a combined college/university level writer’s craft course this year. This is partially the result of my proposing that we offer college level writer’s craft course at the school. The curriculum is part of the provincial ministry document, but it is rarely offered. (In fact, I don’t know of any high school in which it is currently offered, and I would very much like to know). Course registration was small, as it often is for a new course, and I am also new to the school- these things tend to build by word of mouth and prior course experience. So we decided to run it as a combined course with the university level course.
At first, I thought, ha, easy-peasy. I know just how to make this distinction. University level courses tend to have a more academic, theoretical focus and approach- college level courses tend to be more hands-on, pratical and applied. However, creative writing is very much an applied course. You learn as you do. But there’s also a required analytical and metacritical/reflective component in the course, at both levels. In fact, going through the ministry course documents line by line, I was able to discover a difference of only three sentences between the university level and college level course.
ahem.
There’s a part of me that wants to offer the same course to both, to offer them the same tasks, and hold them to the same standards of performance. But there are problems with this.
Grade 12 University level courses are weighty capital. You need 6 of these in order to apply for University, and it’s on the basis of these marks that you are initially considered for acceptance. I think that the students in the course on both sides would feel betrayed if the same work, same course yielded them different opportunities, and tangibly different material, social, economic consequences.
If the University level course isn’t siginificantly different from the College level one, what’s to stop the college level students from attempting to do this work, and get a University credit for it? Would they be able to? And what would be the consequences of this?
Even though the redesign, renaming, attempted reconceptualization of the curriculum fought against this in theory, in practice the streams divid students hierarchically according to perceived scholastic ability. If a students has been in the applied/college stream for four years, she is likely to see herself as “less able” than her university peers, and I would suspect that, given the same tasks, no matter how nurturing the environment, she would feel intimidated, and less confident in her ability.
So. The question remains, how do we differentiate these courses, in a way that is equitable, and challenging to both groups of students?
There’s another side to this, that I cannot help bearing in mind- the antipathy of many writers towards academic creative writing programs, or indeed towards the academy as a whole. The relationship between these entities has often been an uneasy one.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I do have a plan. But I’m curious to know if others have ideas or have dealt with similar issues before or if anyone can point be in the direction of some writing/thinking that might inform what I do here.
All quotations taken from An Unquiet Pedagogy, Eleanor Kutz & Hephzibah Roskelly, Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1991
All learning is related to theory making. As people learn, they ask questions to which they actively seek answers; they generate informal models of how the world works and test these models against the data of their ongoing experience with the world. THey revise the model as new experiences conflict with it, and they’re able to revise because they theorize about possibilities and categories. Conscious learners reflect on this process- on how they’re learning- and their learning is active and constructive, not passive. (19)
The teacher’s role must be to encourage the learner’s thinking about and acting upon the world, his engagement in a process of generating new understanding. (35)
The child’s development of thought and language is not just an individual but a social process, with the individual embedded in a society and culture from the first. … Even our thoughts, then, are conversation. (39)
been a long time, yes.
been a long year.
my reflective/theorizing/course building candle has been re-lit, so here I go back again.
I have two major questions to consider this month as I prepare for the year. One involves the major revision of the curriculum of the grade 9 applied course, assisted by the presence of a class set of Ipads. Yes, for the first time in my teaching life, I will be in a classroom with a 1-1 ratio of student to “computer,” and the Ipad itself is creating new ways of learning and interacting, so there’s a lot to think about and dream about.
But my main concern is to revise the curriculum according to Freirean pedagogical principals, to seriously get away from the “banking” model of education, which having the ipads makes so much easier. I mean, the knowledge is literally in their hands. The challenge is to base the course on student-driven inquiry. I have incorporated some of these ideas into my practice before, but never to the extent that I would like.
The question can also be phrased this way: “To what extent are students participating in the class because they are compliant or because they are engaged.” Remarkably, this was a question posed to us during our district review. I am interested in the board’s interest in this question. Quite frankly, I am surprised by the board asking this question. Pleasantly, of course. And I wonder about its provenance.
So, I am re-reading Kutz and Roskelly’s An Unquiet Pedagogy, which I should probably read every year or every two years anyhow, to remind myself of certain questions I want to always be asking of myself as I teach.
The first chapter mostly finds me nodding my head off in response, and I want to record a few statements here, to return to as sign-posts.
But one question which arose- the authors suggest that a double entry notebook would be a useful thing for teachers to keep as they journal about their practice, so that they can “question their questions,” reflect upon the assumptions embedded in their observations, and what they construct as problems in the classroom.
And I wondered… is there somewhere someone who has designed a wordpress theme that might support a double entry blog?
Or is there an annotation tool built in to a wordpress theme?
Or should I just use Diigo?
I don’t really know where to begin with this one.
So I’ll start with the text.
It’s taken a while for authors, publishers and libraries to catch up to the fact that there’s a new entity called: “the teenager.” For a long time, libraries offered “Children’s Sections” and “adult sections.” What’s a teen to do? They don’t want to identify as either. I actually remember very distinctly the crisis I experienced as a teen reader. I had outgrown children’s fantasy lit. And I still wanted to escape. Adult Lit offered me horrifying realities I wasn’t emotionally ready for, though my intellect wanted a challenge.
So a whole new genre emerged: books classified as Young Adult. And publishing enterprises to support them. And sections in the library for their very own.
And let me just say, the Ontario Library Association is a fine body of folk. Librarians, generally, are awesome people. You want to find the most progressive people in a school, go to the librarian. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. This is the Information Revolution, after all. The quakes hit their turf first.
The OLA began a reading program, where young people would adjudicate a group of 10 shortlisted novels. (Actually, it’s broader than that. Here’s the full scoop.). At the high school level, we implement the “white pine” program. 10 Canadian authored novels that might appeal to high school students.
So, the library at my school and the White Pine club asked for staff volunteers to preview the books on offer, and the direction I was given was to be on the look out for “anything offensive.” And the book they gave me? Swim the Fly.
I read the synopsis on the cover: “Three adolescent boys with a single goal: see a real live naked girl. The result? Razor-sharp, rapid-fire, and raunchy, of course. And beyond hilarious.”
And I’m to be on the look-out for anything offensive? This could be interesting.
So I take it home. And I go to a café to read. And within short order I am laughing right out loud. And shocked! This book speaks to the reality of what it means to be an adolescent boy with no holds barred. I haven’t seen such honesty and humour since the masturbation lesson onWeeds. So… what am I to be on the look out for, exactly?
I talk to our librarian, who is both warm and cool, and she says that the TDSB has approved all the books for the White Pine series. She just wants to know what’s on offer so they can be prepared. “Besides, they probably won’t understand a lot of what’s being talked about.”
Uhmmm… Wooooops! Too late. (though I’m seriously relieved about that TDSB approval thing). Cause I’ve already read aloud from chapter 1 to my grade 9 applied class, and when I noticed that they weren’t laughing like I thought they might, I took delicate, sensitive pains to explain what the older brother meant when he was teasing the protagonist about using a “spanky hanky.”
And my grade 9s are HOOKED. They love this book so much- they want to know how they can read more, NOW! One of them, who is both an avid reader, and a romantic fool, can’t wait for me to drop these morsels. So he actually goes, after school to join the White Pine club, so he can read this book .
Cut to yesterday. We’ve spent the morning working on our class novel. So I tell them that for silent reading, since we’ve spent the whole period reading and reflecting, we can watch the end of the movie they were watching when I was away. There is a distinct lack of enthusiasm. One of the more entitles kids, asks, “uhmm… can you read to us from that book instead?” I survey the class. “Would you like me to read from Swim Fly instead”
The response is unanimous, and strong.
Unless you’ve taught a class of grade 9 applied students, you really don’t know the force of that request.
And they were well-rewarded. I read them a chapter that involved boys dressing up as girls, sneaking into a community center girls’ locker room, and a dire, disgusting, bowel event because of an unfortunate switch between protein powder and laxative. HUGE drama. And excellent writing. The class responded to the great similes as I did, laughing outloud in the café. This is Judge Appatow narrative, with John Irving styles.
But all of that is setting and exposition for this teacher narrative.
A bit more setting and exposition.
My grade 9 applied students are volubly homophobic. And yes, a few of them protest too much. But I don’t blame those few. They may be fighting for their lives. They nearly passed out when we watched Shakespeare in Love, because of all the gender-switching, even though the narrative is heteronormative.
I had been thinking about requesting at an ACL meeting whether we can institute a practice that if a student calls someone a “fag” that they can immediately be sent to the office, on the ground that it constitutes a “verbal assault.” (One of the grounds for immediate office referrak). I’d been getting the feeling that it was less safe to be out at this school than at my former school, which is saying something.
So. Today.
The kid who joined the White Pine group runs into class just at the edge of the bell, to tell me that he has finished the book, and that he thinks I’ll like the ending. Enter U. U enters our social sphere and wants to know what’s so exciting. The reader kid says, ” I just finished that book. You wouldn’t get it. You don’t like reading.” (note: this kid is no geek. he has social capital in reserves. And the tone wasn’t critical- it was just honest.)
In response, U calls the reader kid a “Fa…”
He stops himself short. But I was right there. And this was not his first homophobic comment. I have others in writing. So I send him to the office. And my report reads:
“Student calls another student a Fag because he finished reading a book.”
This is a HUGE risk on my part.
I KNOW it’s the right thing to do. For literacy. For human rights. For everything.
But I don’t know who is going to receive it. And I rarely send a kid to the office when there’s been no warning. Actually, I rarely send kids to the office.
So, we go on with our day. Mind you, it’s Friday. It’s just after lunch. It’s grade 9 applied.
I had planned to give them some brief instruction and then watch the end of the movie they’d been willing to trade for the book on a day with greater energy.
While we’re doing this, U comes back from this office, and asks for the book, Swim Fly, the one with all the raunchy stuff in it. He says he’s to bring this back to the office.
Fuck.
I am fucked.
I try to remember that the TDSB has approved this book.
But I also think about the complexities here.
This kid has been told he’s not supposed to swear. (There are “swear words” in this book.)
This kid has also been told he’s not supposed to call someone a fag.
How is he to know that these things aren’t at all equal?
Especially since I’ve given him no framework?
This kid is also Muslim. Maybe he’s going to argue that he’s been offended about the content of this book…
A Christian could also argue the same…
Can someone please make an awesome flash video about this?
So he takes the book and goes back to the office.
And I’m thinking, “this is the beginning of a very longgggg story for me of parents and lawsuits and….”
One of my other more sentient, observant student asks me, “Is he going to bring the book back???” Because he wants so very much to hear how the story goes.
So we start watching the movie… and it’s over in two minutes.
Now what? I have back-up, but it’s technology based. And the tech fails.
So, I get the kids to glue a schedule into their journals. This takes up about 15 minutes, because it takes them that long to do that on a Friday.
And in the middle of this, U. comes back with the book, and no particular instruction from admin.
I’ve got 25 minutes left with a group of kids who have very little self-regulatory control. But they LOVE this book.
So, I figure, Fuck it. We’ll read the book.
Damned be my career if I can survive these next 25 minutes.
So I start reading. And F, who cannot sit still for 5 minutes at a time (I’ve actually timed it) to do work, watches me, and listens, spell-bound, for 15 minutes solid.
We take 5 minutes to clean up, and I send them on their way. The next group comes in, and I push the reprimand I anticipate from my mind.
So I go to the VP at the end of the day, because I assume there will be fall-out, follow up.
And I say to him sheepishly, “aren’t you glad you hired me?” cause he was one of the one’s who interviewed me.
But he tells me that when U. came in with his note, he told him, “I don’t know which of these things is more upsetting, the fact that you use the word “fag” as criticism, or the fact that you think that reading a book is something to be criticized.”
And he told the student that he wanted him to read this book for himself and come back to see him with a report on Monday. And at this, U said that the book was too long for him to finish by then. And THAT’S why he came to my class to fetch the book for the VP to look at. So, the VP, being a reasonable sort, told the kid to finish the book over the break, and come back to him with a report.
And I warned the VP that the book was raunchy, and complex. And he laughed and said that as chance would have it, he had been taking a break in the library the evening before while he was waiting for an event to start, and had grabbed that very book at random, so he knew just how raunchy it was.
I needed to record this, because there have been so few times in my life when everything in education conspired towards the good, and the reasonable, and the artistic, and the just. I’m still shaking my head.
So, it’s obviously been a very long time since I posted here. I think I had burned out for a very long time.
The environment at my old school had become intolerantly toxic, and I think I was expending all my energy trying to make sure that I didn’t take out my frustrations on my students. And I also think I was feeling profoundly depressed, largely because of the anger I felt.
Even through the summer, I felt a profound malaise. Although I knew I was going to a different place, I just couldn’t rouse myself. So I just took things day by day. And let myself heal.
And now, I am in such a different place. I had no idea how bad things were until I found myself in this place where things are so good. I had forgotten what it was like to be respected and valued in my job.
I don’t even know how to begin to catalogue the differences… I’d been meaning to record them from day one, because I suspect I’ve already got used to them.
Everyone I talk to in my working day is pleasant and courteous and helpful. Everyone.
During the first week, members of the admin popped by my classrooms and the office to check in and see how things were going, to offer support. If I see them in the office or the hallways, they always ask me how I am. If I have a question, I can always get a quick answer from them, because they all use e-mail.
I can teach with my door open. (no disruptions in the hallway)
The bookroom is organized by course. And it IS organized. There are no rooms with piles of chaotic junk.
Course Outlines and materials are all available online on the school network folders.
EVERYONE communicates similar expectations.
At the end of the first week, we had a staff social, and the admin socialized with the staff, and this was not awkward but welcome. These are people you can talk to, and actually have a conversation. A good conversation in fact.
The hall monitors are vigilant and personable. I feel as though we are on the same team.
There are a gazillion activities happening in the school every day, but they don’t interfere with classroom activities.
We have already had a recognition assembly for students demonstrating good character, (one of my grade 9′s was recognized), and the jazz band played and there was cake. It actually felt like a party.
The student success team developed a list of 25 students designated for a special mentorship program, and I saw listed there the students about whom I was concerned, 4 of whom were in grade 9. How did they already know???
The student success ACLs also sent an e-mail to the teachers of the student about whom I am most concerned, to begin to develop a plan to support him. Immediately, I feel relieved to know that I am not working alone to help him.
And my department! My department is so fucking smart! And so fun! And so bad-ass! And so good!
And soooo EASY TO WORK WITH.
And they dress up for hallowe’en.
And wear ironic t-shirts.
I feel so goddamn lucky.
