Category: Reform in Education

Towards Shared Planning in Team-Based Instruction



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As far as team-based instruction
goes, I have one main recommendation: I think that the team must find a way
to share their curricular plans in as much detail, in as much advance,
and as regularly as possible. Teachers rarely get into the specifics
of their teaching/learning goals and methods when they work individually. If
at all, such sharing would happen at the department level; it likely happens
with new teachers. But I think in most cases it tapers off, particularly as
teachers become busy managing and organizing their workload. I’d be interested
to hear from those who have worked on teams. Does lesson planning go differently
when a team is charged with the task? Does the team plan themes and goals together?
Specific goals and methods?

For example, consider how a team meeting would go if the English teacher led
off by saying something like, "In teaching Othello, I will lead
the children through an exploration of the notion of ‘women as property’…"
What if the teacher then proceeded to quote lines and share specific lesson
plans and activities on how this issue will be investigated by the students
in her English class? Such groundwork might lead to insights and possibilities
not necessarily possible if individuals planned in the traditional, isolated
way. Might not, in such a collaborative environment, the social studies teacher
get an idea for a unit on gender in different cultures or across the ages? Or
for a unit on notions of monogamy? Or any of the themes…. What if the team
decided on having each member take turns to bring to the fore the ways that
an agreed-upon theme plays out in his or her subject matter? The crucial part
is that the group members all share what their angle in is–so
that every teacher might make references day-in day-out to the various "radiations"
or "spokes" all protruding from (or to) the "hub" of the
theme. It’s unlikely, however, that there is shared ownership of the curriculum
and methods across the most teams, as they actually exist in the real, hectic
world of school teaching. It ‘s unlikely in our posited example–the interdisciplinary
team teaching Othello–that everyone on the team has read Othello….

But consider the possibilities if the Othello brainstorming were shared,
and the planning were consensus based. Consider, for instance, if the group
decided the shared focus was to be on the theme of "manipulation."
Possibilities blossom … in the individual minds of the experts, all supported
by the group dialogue, all differentiated by members’ specialized disciplinary
lenses. The math teacher steps up and asserts: So much of math, which involves
simply shifting numbers and variables from one side of the equation to the other,
is simply the legal, premeditated, deliberate practice of manipulation–taking
what Iago does and stripping it of its moral charge (its negative moral
charge, says the mathematician with a devilish grin)–and getting away with
what you can get away with–because the symbol system at hand allows for (some
would say encourages) such processes–all to the end of securing some
advantage. The language of jealousy (or any human emotion or experience) in
this sense is not all that different from the language of algebra. So many wonderful
lesson plans about manipulation could help children exercise symbolic, linguistic
prowess. But first, you, as teacher, would have to strip the term of its pejorative
sense, and come to appreciate it almost as an art form. Iago’s performance looks
quite different in those terms. Have the class cull examples of manipulation.
Have them engage in one-upsmanship. The prize goes to the best tale of manipulation!
Create a portfolio of nominees of "The Iago Achievement Award." OR!
Shifting things around, what if you had the kids in math class take a "Show
Your Work" episode, and retell it in terms of the morality
of human manipulation? Go Shakespearean on that quadratic equation. Talk about
the scheming of subtracting an entity from your side (protagonist), the left
side, so that your "opposite," the right side (antagonist), had to
do exactly the same thing, lest the equality of the equal sign, that which may
not be compromised, the beloved parallel shafts in eternal balance and beloved
by all (even that right side), should lose its balance and collapse into itself
and in that collapse, threaten that greater collapse, for where might balance
ever be found again, if equality itself was to be made unequal…?

Now this all seems heady stuff, but I have to say–from my recent experience
working nightly with my freshman daughter on her algebra that it was a major
stumbling block getting her to understand the notion of manipulation for manipulation’s
sake that is at the root of so much of algebraic prowess (not to mention Iago’s
highly stylized machinations). She would say, whenever I tried to get her to
"play" with an equation, to manipulate it (according to rule) this
way or that way, she would say with a roll of her eyes, "What’s the point?"
Since she couldn’t see the outcome, she couldn’t take the leap simply to engage
in algebraic maneuvers right there at her disposal. Over and over I pleaded:
So many of the good results of the Solved Problem stem from
the sheer willingness–and ability–to manipulate like expressions simply for
the sake of manipulating them. To know that "5-2" and the number "3"
are exactly the same thing, and that the one can be substituted for the other….

Anyway…anyway…

I think the power of a team approach is unleashed when all the teachers involved
are able to make regular references to what is going on in the other
classes. I am convinced that the value of a team approach does not lie in the
"lessons" per se; it lies in having the teachers all on the same page.
But to make this happen, you really need to insist that your team gets to the
specifics of its curriculum. Every teacher must somehow be
willing to take the leap to be conversant in every discipline. To some
extent. That’s where the potential of the "in-class connecting reference"
lies…. If approached in the right way, this "bringing up to speed"
of one another could be highly collaborative–or it could be divisive and threatening.
I don’t think, however, teams should just assume that the issue is solved or
not an issue–simply because you’re all colleagues and professionals. The most
damaging attitude is the one whereby individuals, out of collegial respect or
personal fears about their competence in other disciplines, leave interdiscipliary
planning to each expert. That’s not collaboration! Just as I think kids in the
classroom have to be taught explicitly how to collaborate, I think teachers
need to be taught (or to teach themselves) how to be teammates. What if there
were some formal team-building activity that oriented everyone to the vision
of interconnected planning and instruction?

I anticipate that one rejoinder is going to be, "Who has the time for
this kind of shared planning?" But anything worth doing is worth doing
well. In this sense, the costs of such an approach are analogous to the costs
of integrating technology in your teaching. To do it right involves excessive
costs; it can take over. But after you let it take over, you’re in a different
place, and you begin to glimpse possibilities you haven’t seen before. And with
the other rewards comes a new, heightened efficiency–and the freeing up of
time in unexpected ways. But this whole process would take lots of administrative
support so that such planning meetings might be continued and supported over
extended periods of time. For I would emphasize that in the shared planning
model the advance planning (before the semester) is not nearly as important
as the day-to-day, in-process team interaction as the lessons are being taught.
The day-to-day activity ideas flow from the in-process brainstorming and discussions
of the team.

So in a nutshell, here is my formula:

  1. Get the team to share specifics of their curricular plans. Be formal about
    this. Assign each team member one day to bring the group up to speed on his/her
    upcoming lessons, goals, activities.
  2. Come to some agreement as a team on the theme of each chunk of time.
  3. Find some way to keep the focus on team meetings during the semester,
    rather than just before the semester. Find some way to achieve agreement
    on the structure of the meetings; so often teachers need to de-pressurize,
    so there are powerful lures just to vent and short-circuit real thinking in
    team meetings. It can be a lot of work to have the kind of curricular-sharing
    meetings I’m talking about, so I think the group needs to be strategic about
    protecting the productivity of the day-to-day, in-process meetings.

Finally, I would simply say that the kind of collegial discussion I have sketched
here does happen and has happened since the creation of the
first school at the very dawn of collegiality. I’ve seen it in various schools
where the faculty members do talk to each other. So I’m not proposing
anything new. But I don’t think the "institutions" of school and professional
life support these practices. People engage in them because they are
professional and dedicated and intelligent, and they see what is needed to make
something work. The question I’m getting at is how can we reform professional
structures to be more "friendly" to the kinds of interactions and
collaborations that are needed to make innovations like team approaches work
in the way they need to work to tap into their potential?


Avatars of the Word and Disintegrating Educations



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Our book club read Avatars of the Word by James O’Donnell, a classicist/techie/vice-provost,
who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

Near the end of Avatars, O’Donnell made some points about the future of
higher education. Although I’ve found myself nodding in agreement through much
of the book, I took a little issue with some of his ideas about how we should
reform our teaching-learning practices. In particular, he mentions the need
for learning experiences in colleges to be relevant to or modeled on the kind
of experiences students will have as adults in the world: "the traditional
classroom is among other things a place for rehearsing behaviors of use in later
life" (185).


I do agree with this notion, but my encounter of it here has led me to a somewhat
tendentious quarrel with it, along these lines: Might we, through
such thinking, be overly fitting the purposes of college to the (superficial)
purposes of society? Might not one argue that, rather than provide
direct preparation, or “training,” for adult life, college should instead provide a
countering or corrective influence to adult life?

I’m thinking of an individual who has, in fact, made such an argument. That
person (no surprise here to those who know me) is Kenneth Burke, who in his
1955 essay, "Linguistic Approach to Problems in Education," describes
the purpose of education as a kind of "preparatory withdrawal" from
life in order to equip us for life. Burke’s notion stands as a kind
of counter-statement to O’Donnell’s view: Education should function, Burke implies,
as a thing unlike life (thus the withdrawal) that helps gird you for
the struggles of life (thus the "preparation"). We go to college to
experience something different than the kinds of things and ideas we
will experience as adults. In this view, college provides not only a "broader
context" to adult experiences but also functions as an antidote to them–a
"counter-statement" to the assertions, or pressures of life. College
might equip us for life by stimulating our imaginations to think in grooves
very different from those that are etched by the pragmatic purposes of career
and social involvement. This value of college, Burke suggests, might be connected
with experiences of mortification, humility, appreciation–I think he even calls
it the "fear of God," though in a very secular sense. So what of it?
What do we think of this notion of college as a place set aside to scare us,
make us tentative, slow us down in our assertiveness?

More than anything, Burke seems to be promoting a cult of "interfence,"
as a type of protection against the efficiency of easy certainties. This is
an ironic approach to education–education as a kind of systematic complication
of our knowledge rather than mere confirmation, expansion, or application of
it. There is another Burkean context that come to mind–his essay on Thomas
Mann and Andre Gide in Counter-Statement. There Burke is talking about
the writer’s "art," but the points apply readily to concepts of "education."

Burke’s celebration of the perverse conscientiousness of Mann’s heroes and
the decadent irony of Gide’s anti-heroes points to a curricular ideal in a would-be
school of "preparatory withdrawal." Gide’s approach to irony, for
instance, helps us to break the spell of the "adult world" and its
ready-made reality. Burke quotes Gide, whose autobiography speculates on the
creation of "a whole civilization gratuitously different from our own"
(103):

I thought of writing the imaginary history of a people,
a nation, with wars, revolutions, changes of administration, typical happenings….
I wanted to invent heroes, sovereigns, statesmen, artists, an artistic tradition,
an apocryphal literature, explaining and criticizing movements, recounting
the evolution of forms, quoting fragments of masterpieces…. And all to what
purpose? To prove that the history of man could have been different—our
habits, morals, customs, tastes, judgments, standards of beauty could have
all been different—and yet the humanity of mankind would remain the
same. (103)

From Mann’s conscientious attitude of "containment," we get a "sympathy
with the abyss," an orientation quite inefficient for "rehearsing
behaviors of use in later life." Or to put it more positively, what of
the notion of college as a type of a "magic mountain" experience?
One goes to the magic mountain to experience routines and purposes of a very
different pace, style, and quality than those afforded by the hustle-bustle,
work-a-day world.

College as a "magic mountain" may be a traditional idea, and one
might even cite conventional notions of higher education’s role to promote independent,
critical thinking. But Burke’s notions of "preparatory withdrawal,"
inefficiency, and irony imply a goal of discomfort for education more
than anything else. In summing up his analysis of Mann and Gide, Burke asks
a question that for me functions as a first principle for an educational program:
"Irony, novelty, experimentalism, vacillation, the cult of conflict—are
not these men trying to make us at home in indecision, are they not trying to
humanize the state of doubt?"

Anyway, what of this notion of college as a "magic mountain"–a place
to which we withdraw, so that we might gain the (often ironic) resources
to encounter (or simply counter) the shaping forces of the world? O’Donnell’s
statement (that I have pulled out of context for my own purposes) made me think
of all this–most of all, the quote below from the conclusion of the Thomas
Mann and Andre Gide chapter. Just change the word "art" with "education":

…society might well be benefited by the corrective
of a disintegrating art [EDUCATION], which converts each simplicity into a
complexity, which ruins the possibility of ready hierarchies, which concerns
itself with the problematical, the experimental, and thus by implication works
corrosively upon those expansionistic certainties preparing the way for our
social cataclysms. An art [EDUCATION] may be of value purely through preventing
a society from becoming too assertively, too hopelessly, itself. (105)


E-Portfolios, PRC, and Beyond . . .



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At a meeting on Friday, October 8, 2004–the final meeting of the SOE E-Portfolio
Review Committee (PRC) of 2003-2004–I discovered that a new School of Education E-Portfolio
Committee would continue the work that the PRC had begun last year.

I feel that the decision to create a standing committee in the School is a
progressive and necessary move for responsible implementation of a new portfolio
system, particularly an electronic portfolio. However, I grow worried that many
of the initiatives of the PRC might be dropped or left unfinished or lost somehow
in the transition.

I wonder how it is best to share ideas on e-portfolios with my colleagues?
The issue can lead to strong or disinterested reactions. But I think most people
are concerned, since the system we use will have a profound effect on students
and faculty alike.

When we left for summer break, our committee had gone pretty far into fleshing
out a particular e-portfolio model. Our model was predicated on developing Web
literacy in students, providing students a means of control of content, growing
the portfolio artifacts out of course work, putting the responsibility of portfolio
development and maintenance on students, developing some "standards"
for documenting standards, and investigating/developing an assessment system
based on the "Baylor
model." When we left for summer vacation, I had sketched an end-of-year
agenda-brainstorm-type of list for our work to get to the next level. This was
just one-person’s take on the task ahead. But as I re-read it now, several months
later (it’s quoted, in blue, and may be read by clicking the “Read more” link below), I think
the issues might make for some good discussion.

Here’s hoping. Below I’ve pasted in the memo I wrote in May, as our committee
began to turn its attention to developing an "implementation plan":

Here’s what I wanted to suggest at today’s meeting: Maybe
we should form some sub-committees to work on various components of an implementation
plan?

Here are seven or so things I can think of that an implementation
plan might address:

  1. Develop all the explanatory materials
    students will need. I think we need to develop written guides (in a printed
    and online handbook) that address the following areas:

    • Why are students required to develop E-Portfolios
      (possible answers: for "mirror,
      map, sonnet      ," student/institutional assessment, building programmatic
      coherence for students, technological fluency, reflection on growth, showcasing
      of learning, employment advantages, etc.)?
    • What is a standards-based portfolio (and perhaps
      how it is different from past portfolio models students may have heard
      about)?
    • What constitutes the meeting of an indicator?
    • How many indicators need to be met for each standard?
    • How do students find tech support?
    • How do students find online support?
    • What is a Conceptual Framework and why is it
      important (and what is our CF)?
    • From where will artifacts for the E-Portfolio
      come?
    • Why is the required E-Portfolio considered a
      "minimum threshold" document (additional requirements may come
      from the major, individual instructors in SOE or disciplinary courses,
      or students themselves)?
    • What are the acceptable (and encouraged) use
      policies for Web accounts (the primary use is to support the E-Portfolio;
      but an important use is to form a digital archive of materials that might
      be of use later; students need to be taught to SAVE EVERYTHING).
    • E-Portfolio as a Web site–what are the issues,
      concerns, resources, possibilities, limitations?

I would be happy to work on these documents this summer–preferably
with others, so the approach is comprehensive and balanced.

  1. Develop a specific portfolio assessment
    strategy     (what else besides having the artifacts assessed in
    the context of courses? Will the "Baylor
    model    " assessment system be enough for tracking successful completion
    of the E-Portfolio?)
  2. Should there be a specific "Conceptual
    Framework" assignment    ? (Who grades it? Advisor?) Should
    this assignment serve are the "Reflective Introduction" to the E-Portfolio?
    Should the CF assignment be a kind of "exit" assignment made in
    the POT course–to be assessed at a later time?
  3. What do we need to do with faculty this summer and
    fall to build support for the new portfolio?
  4. What is the Advisor’s role?
  5. How can we develop a strategic plan for Getting
    the Word Out in Fall, 2004    . (I think there are all kinds of
    inventive ways we might pilot and promote the new E-Portfolio.
  6. Other practical details:

    • Set-up of the student support office
      (room, equipment, student workers, budget, etc.).
    • Recruitment of student tutors.
    • Software license permission
      to copy and distribute Netscape and SmartFTP.
    • Recruitment of faculty to teach
      POT 200/400.

In sum, there’s nothing really new here…but I’m beginning
to think we need to hit the ground a bit with the practical matters. I think
we need the summer, though….

So that’s where we were at the end of spring. We decided in May that we all
needed some time away from the intensities. So we stepped aside briefly; fall
came; and now the passing of the torch to the new committee. I wish the committee
all the best, but I do wish to share with them and others a concern that I would
be disingenuous not to mention. For I have heard rumors the the PRC’s
Web literacy model of e-portfolio may be replaced by a proprietary assessment
system–LiveText, in particular. I definitely think LiveText will bring some
advantages–but at a cost–a double cost to students. I think Helen Barrett
excellently articulates the financial costs, but she only indirectly suggests
the "literacy cost" that a "paste-in" or database-driven
system would have. But I think her review is well worth reading by all SOE faculty
who are contemplating using the system (click
here to read her review).

Anyway, I hope there might be some interested discussion in the SOE on this
topic, and I hope I might partake in some of that. If you who are reading this
entry wants to respond, you can do so by filling out the "Comment" form
directly below. Join on in….


Email Colloquy on the Teacher You Want To Be



Below is an email exchange
between an alum and me on the topic of “becoming the teacher you want/have to
be…”

The alum writes:

i’m dying here!!! i’m dying here!!!

my 10th period is the class from hell!!!
so far there isn’t much learning going on. mostly it’s
trying to keep some control. they’re
savages!!! LOLOLOLOLOL

ok…here’s what’s really bothering me, and i know you
two will understand. i have to teach them how to write
a paragraph. they (the higher up people;) seem to
believe that if you can teach them how to write a
paragraph (in isolation) they will know how to write a
paper. they (the students) keep asking me, “how many
sentences does it have to be?” and i am under orders
to tell them it’s 8-10 sentences.

i’m not only getting it from school, it’s happening at
home too. my daughter, gwen, asked me,”how many
paragraphs in a narrative?” what? i said, a narrative
is a story…you need enough to tell the story. her
friend adrianna said, “no, it’s 3 paragraphs. i
remember because i got an A on my narrative and it was
3 paragraphs long.”

all my freshmen were required to write an expository
“paragraph” on the issues that cause teens stress.
well, most wrote a “paper” on teens and stress. I
don’t think they understand it’s just a part of a
bigger picture. they set these kids up…they confuse
the hell out of them. right now i have to “learn” how
to write a paragraph “the right way” so i can teach
it.

i feel like i’m lying to these kids…i’m turning into
the kind of teacher i don’t want to be…i’m not a
“change agent,” angelo. i want to keep my job…but i
know that if they would let me teach writing, real
writing, the kids would be better writers. but i also
know that i have to teach them to write for the
test. (the school will have it’s own writing test, and
they will continue to test writing on ACT tests.)
i’m becoming what i detest…i’m ready to just start
passing out dittos in my 10th period…they aren’t
learning anything anyway!!!

guys, send me some words of advice/encouragement…
i wish they’d let me be me. at least i’m better at
that than being what i’m fearful of becoming.

your friend,
****

who didn’t tell her story in 8-10 sentence
paragraphs…or did she?…LOL

[My Response:]

Writing on the run…as always
(Angelo still has…shhh!…one more syllabus to write for tomorrow)….



My only suggestion vis à
vis the tension here between the teacher you want to be and the teacher
they are forcing you to be is…hmmm….can you do both? Can you teach
the kids the real way and the phony way? Can you teach the artificial
forms that the Powers are enforcing, and then just explain to the kids
that those forms are just VERSIONS of narrative or paragraphs…? There
are others as well? Can you illustrate some of the other versions? You
could tell a few spontaneous stories and then break their “form” apart
for the class. You can talk about the process you went through to
create the story. What led you to your choices–rather than getting to
the number 8 (sentences) or 3 (paragraphs) or whatever. You could also
bring into class a stack of writing–narratives of all kinds and
lengths–and you could do a quick scan of some of the features. Make
sure a few of them are short enough so that you could share them in
their entirety with the class. As a group you could infer a list of
criteria for narratives. You could round off the whole exercise with
Garrison Keillor’s anatomy of a narrative. Good stories, Keillor says,
all have FIVE ELEMENTS: mystery, wealth, family relations, sex, and
religion. And he gloats that he has one in 12 words: “‘God,’ said the
banker’s daughter, ‘I’m pregnant; I wonder who it was?'”



Of course you can’t do all this in
one class period, so why don’t you tell the class that from here on out
THAT is your “agenda” as a group (to use Meg’s wonderful word)–to
figure out some of the many versions of narrative, of paragraphs, of
forms. You could do worse as an English teacher.



The bottom line is that
ANYONE who can do “real” narrative can do the phony, school-type in
their sleep. Thus, if you do a good job with the real, you’re home free
with keeping your job. So yes, teach them the phony school type, but do
it with a wink. It’s actually not a bad exercise. But as a bigger
agenda, set a yearlong, class-community-wide agenda for figuring out
what makes a good narrative, what makes a good paragraph… It’s a
grand mission! And the cheap forms of a bureaucratic pedagogy can’t
touch it or harm it…. If anything, a good teacher can use this very
problem to help kids get “meta” about writing and language–getting
students to think about choices and purposes and effects, in ways good
writers always have, if even only intuitively…



I know you’re worried about time.
But the good thing is this: You have ALL YEAR to do the real thing, and
as for the phony stuff–that can be done really quickly. A lot of the
stuff you do in life with a wink can be done really quickly, I find,
but that’s another story. But seriously, if you and your kids are
living the life, as Burke so strikingly puts it, of “linguistic
quizzicality”–full of wonder, amazement, surprise–and sometimes
skepticism, distrust, and disgust–at the powers of language–well, the
kids will learn narratives and paragraphs….(in 8, 9, and sometimes
even 10 sentences…)



You know my next question:
May I use your wonderful story in my blog and share it with my classes?
:)



Keep us posted! And good
luck with the savages of 10th period…(now THAT sounds like a
story…). :) Your friend and sympathizer from the calm of the Ivory
Tower, Angelo


[The Alum’s Response:]

i understand…i do. what you say is wonderful and true. (that rhymes;) but it’s not that simple…or maybe it is and i’m just losing focus about what’s really important. i find myself doing things that i’ve been against from the start of my educational career, without realizing i’m doing it. for example: i’m doing book shares with the students instead of having
them do book reports. now i know…i know…my goal
is to get them to enjoy reading. today in class, i
told a student that tomorrow he better bring in a novel,
instead of bringing the TRL magazine he was
reading that day, thinking about the “book share” assignment. he just looked at me and said, “why can’t we read what we want?” my heart just stopped. i grabbed
his face and said, “you’re absolutely right. i don’t
know what i was thinking. you read whatever you like.”
this horrible transition seems to be taking over
without my being fully aware of it. ANGELO, OF COURSE
THEY CAN READ WHATEVER THEY WANT!!!!

i keep losing focus…

there’s just so much that needs to be
done!! save me from myself!!!

****

[My Response:]

I can see the care in your eyes as you
told your student, yes, he could read what he wants…  But dear friend, I fear
you’re reacting with a tinge of that guilt that all teachers, parents, and responsible
adults feel now and then–particularly when we’re looking out for the child’s
welfare.  I think you have to hold the line on the TRL magazine! 
It’s just me, and you know that this one voice of mine will ultimately be contradicted
by another voice lurking beneath (in TW this week we’re reading that schizo
Covino…), but…BALANCE is the key (said he, in a shout so loud so as to lose
his footing and fall back…).  Reading is so much like a eating–so lifegiving
and pleasurable it is–and there is such a need for a balanced diet for both….



If your daughter kept eating Cheetos day
and night (like someone else’s daughter I know…), and you approached her and
asked her to eat her vegetables….  Would you respond similarly to her
indignant response of “why can’t you just let me eat what I want?”  :)  
All said with a smile…but, the point is, sometimes the teachers DOES
have to be directive…and structure things…  The structures just have
to be the right ones (and I know YOU know what the right ones are…your administration,
I’d say, DOES NOT (or maybe is not yet confident in you (and not just you personally; 
I’m sensing that common condition out there of  “teacher-proofing” instruction…more
later…)).