Problems Waiting for Solutions

Some problems don’t have answers...yet. But I’m a firm believer that in education, much of the innovative progress we make comes from first identifying a problem that results in a shift of our philosophical stance on the issue.

Here’s an example to illustrate what I mean.

I have a problem teaching literature.  I have decided that I am opposed to most quizzes and tests used to measure students’ reading comprehension. The way we have traditionally attempted to check student reading is problematic, and I am not okay with it. I’ve been pondering my stance on this for a while and made up my mind last week after a conversation with a few 10th grade students.

In a Spanish classroom I happened to visit, I met a young woman; let’s call her Fred for the sake of anonymity. I noticed that Fred had a copy of Charles Dickens’s often-reviled-by-high-school-students novel A Tale of Two Cities among her possessions and that this particular copy had a bookmark situated about two-thirds of the way through the book. Endeavoring to offer some hope and encouragement to this sophomore, I remarked, “I see that you’re on the home stretch of the book. Impressive!”

Fred looked a bit confused and then examined her book more closely. “I guess I am,” she replied, with a bit of pleased surprise in her voice.

“How are you enjoying it?” I queried.

“You know,” she said, “it’s not so bad. It’s actually getting a little easier and more interesting. I kind of like it.”

I commended her on her hard work and made some chitchat about the book. Our conversation was overheard by another female student sitting at a nearby table. Let’s call her Buddy. Buddy interrupted us to boast loudly, “I haven’t read any of that book.”

We looked at her in surprise that she was so delighted by her admission. “And,” Buddy continued, “I made 100 on both of the quizzes over the book just by reading Sparknotes!”

Fred frowned, looked down at her book, and said quietly, “I made an 80 on my quizzes.”

I tried to buoy her spirits by reminding her of how much she has grown as a reader who can handle challenging texts, but I could see that Fred was a little disappointed at the amount of effort she had expended for a payoff less impressive than that of Buddy, her corner-cutting classmate.

That, I decided, is what is wrong with reading quizzes. If some students are not rewarded for reading while others achieve success without doing the very thing the quizzes are intended to measure, something is not right. The students’ teachers have  reinforced the idea that having the right answer--however you come by it--is more important than developing reading skills.

The obvious solution (we’ve all done it) is for teachers to read Sparknotes themselves and construct a quiz or test that is Sparknote-proof. That way, students who take shortcuts won’t be rewarded. The problem with that, though, is that students like Fred who are conscientiously reading (and struggling because Dickens is hard) may still have difficulty answering the new, super-specific questions. This solution reinforces the belief that the important thing about reading a book is to pay attention to and memorize trivial details--the color of the beggar’s scarf, the speaker of a fairly unmemorable quotation, the name of the footman who brings in the letter.

We want to reward the readers and trap those who don’t, but our efforts still punish and reward the wrong things. We seek accountability, but we can’t always be certain that our results measure what we think we are measuring.

So I have decided that I am officially opposed to such quizzes.

The problem is that I don’t have other options readily available to me. Although I know what I don’t believe in, I don’t exactly know what to do instead. What I do have is a list of criteria for the solution I seek:

• I want to be able to reward Fred for her hard work, perseverance, and growth.
• I want Buddy to want to be more like Fred by actually reading the book so she, too, can grow in her reading abilities.
• I want my assessments and grades to align with the goals of the unit and the lessons I am teaching to help students reach those goals.
• I want to motivate all my students to read, to challenge themselves, to gain confidence, and to take risks academically.
• I want it to be okay to struggle in my classroom and not always be punished for it.
• I do not want to be the teacher who is constantly in “gotcha” mode.
• I want students to see the worth of reading rather than dread it.

My list of criteria will help me figure out a solution that works. Perhaps I will decide that I just need to get over the whole “hold their feet to the fire” mentality and quit giving comprehension checks altogether. Maybe I will change the nature of my comprehension checks to a format that allows students to explain what they do understand instead of asking them to recall facts I think they ought to remember. I could also direct my efforts to creating a classroom environment which encourages students to engage with the content in such an exciting, authentic way that they want to read so they can be a part of what’s going on.

Ideally, I can find some colleagues who are wrestling with the same problem and start some meaningful, solution-oriented dialogue to come up with innovative solutions. In a world that is changing as swiftly as ours, it’s a shame to hold on so tightly to the traditions of the past and continually think inside the box.

I suspect that you can identify some significant problems of your own, problems without easy solutions that warrant further exploration. What is going on that you are not okay with? Maybe these problems are at a campus level: engaging certain populations of students; keeping kids in class and out of the halls; rampant absenteeism; student apathy; ineffective homework practices, inequity in enrollment in advanced classes, cell phone use spiraling out of control. They may also be problems particular to an academic team or unique to you as a teacher.

I encourage you to take some time to identify a problem, explore its scope, identify criteria for an acceptable solution, and then find some people who will engage with you in some extreme visioning. Maybe you could even bring students into the decision-making process; after all, they’re the consumers here.

And if you want to help me brainstorm ways to solve my anti-reading-quiz dilemma, let me know. I welcome the opportunity to dream big with you.

The Power of Stories

Stories stick. We remember them. Stories in the classroom can be powerful learning tools.

I still recall Mrs. Marshall, my elementary school music teacher, telling us the tale of Mr. Do and Mr. Mi, who lived on the same street with an empty lot between their houses.

I remember a terrible and lengthy joke/story Mr. Holpp, my seventh-grade Life Science teacher, told us when we were learning about parasites. It involved a curious cure for a patient’s tapeworm and had the punchline, spoken by the tapeworm itself, “Where’s the pickle?” More importantly, it helped me learn understand and remember the concept of operant conditioning.

I’ll never forget my grandma’s story of her first date with my grandpa, a memorable blind date that ended with my grandfather, wearing a white suit stained with watermelon juice, sitting on the steps in front of Grandma’s house and ripping up the photo he had been carrying in his wallet of his now-ex girlfriend. Though this story was not told in a classroom, it was clearly a part of the curriculum of life as my grandma taught me about the love, humor,  and dedication that characterized their life together through much of the 20th century.

When teachers learn to harness the power of effective storytelling, they unleash a mighty instructional tool. For several reasons, a story judiciously used can pack an educational wallop.

As I stated earlier, stories are memorable. They can be used to make a complex abstract concept come to life. I once watched Ashley Ogal at Carpenter Middle School describe to her students two weddings in which she served as a bridesmaid. One was a fancy affair with a plated dinner and a deejay at a swanky hotel; the other was a more casual backyard celebration with a picnic buffet and music from an homemade iPod playlist blaring from home stereo speakers. Ashley described each wedding reception to her seventh graders and concluded her story by saying that both events, though different, were wonderful in their own ways. She then connected the story to the concept of voice in writing. While it’s okay in some situations, she explained, to write in a style akin to “Y’all get up and dance now,” sometimes it’s more appropriate to adopt the voice of the deejay: “Ladies and gentlemen, please direct your attention to the dance floor as the newlywed couple shares their first dance.” I feel reasonably certain that her students will understand the difference between formal and informal voice forevermore after hearing this memorable story.

Not only is storytelling an excellent way to make a point stick, stories also build community in your classroom. When teachers share a story from their own lives, they share a piece of themselves. A story of a lesson learned, a past struggle, or an embarrassing gaffe can not only provide some guidance to students, but it can also make the storyteller a little more human in the eyes of the listeners. When my students embarked on online research, I liked to tell them about “the old days” when you had to get your mom to take you to the Richardson Public Library (they had more magazines than Plano), where you had to use the paperback Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature to identify articles of interest, fill out a piece of paper to request the magazine, wait by the window while some librarian fetched it, pray that no one before you had ripped the pages out of the magazine, read the article, and determine whether it was worth spending your precious dime-a-page to copy at the Xerox machine. The point of my story was that the Internet now practically delivers the text of millions of magazines and newspapers to them; however, the researcher now has to work that much harder to make sure that what is delivered is worth using. Sharing the hardships of my past life as a high school researcher amused my students while helping them understand why I feel so strongly about the importance of vigilance in online research.

Perhaps the most powerful use of stories in the classroom is to build up the number of stories your students have in their own libraries of experience. When I share my story with you, my story becomes your story. And the more stories you have to tell, the more you understand about the world. I may not have been alive during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, but because I attended the school district’s annual tribute event in January honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and heard the stories of struggles and triumphs that took place in our own city told by people who were there, I have stories to tell about the courage of those who paved the way for others. When a college classmate who has transitioned from female to male told me at Homecoming several years ago about his difficulties with airport security screenings, access to public restrooms, and rejection by his family, I gained some stories to help me understand and appreciate the struggles of transgender people in our society today. His stories put a personal face on something that had previously been only a news headline to me. This was someone I have known for over 20 years, and when he smiled while telling me that he can now, for the first time ever, stand to have a mirror in his house because it finally reflects back who he really is, his story changed me. And because he shared his story with me, I can now share it with others.

English teachers have long known what research has now confirmed: reading literary fiction improves people’s empathy. Whether we read them or have them told to us, the stories and experiences of others make us better people. We owe it to our students to expose them to many stories so they can choose which ones will shape their own understandings of the world around them.

All of this talk about stories comes with one caveat: teachers must be purposeful about how and when they insert stories into their instruction. Stories without a purpose are a waste of time. Stories with too much detail or with meandering plotlines confuse students. Overly complicated stories lose students’ focus and interest. Stories without an introduction and summative explanation often cause students to miss the point.

I invite you to take a moment to think about the stories from your own life or the ones you’ve collected over your life that you can add to your personal library of stories to use in the classroom. Be on the lookout always for new stories to enhance your collection. Choose wisely, though. As the Witch in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods pointed out, “Careful before you say, ‘Listen to me.’ Children will listen.”  

Reptiles of the Mind

In my younger days, I thought Brussels sprouts were icky, loved Big Macs, and believed that wearing a neon blue t-shirt with acid-washed jeans was a smart fashion choice. Now that I have discovered the virtues of roasting Brussels sprouts with olive oil and sea salt, have seen the nutritional info on McDonald's signature burger, and have reviewed photographs from my high school days, I have rethought my previous beliefs, and I feel pretty good about my current opinions.

Changing one’s mind gets a bad rap these days. In the world of politics, for instance, candidates are vilified for changing their stances. A politician who cast a vote in support of an issue decades ago and votes against it today receives a lambasting from the voting public and media for flip-floppery. Congresspeople on both sides of the aisle dig their heels in and refuse to cross party lines, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that might cause any reasonable person to revise his or her original opinion. We have become a nation of extremely opinionated individuals who intend to stick to their opinions and never budge.  

The 18th century British poet William Blake penned one of my favorite quotations: “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.” In college when I first read Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, I was drawn to this quotation partly because it contained a wildly descriptive simile but mostly because it embodied what I saw as a clarification of the point of education.

An educated person never stops growing. Constantly seeking new ideas and other perspectives, a learner continues to refine his or her views and ideas about the world. Each new viewpoint or piece of knowledge shapes the learner in some way. The learner considers the new input, measures it against his or her prior understanding, and decides how to integrate it into the whole--to reject it, to accept it, to alter his or her understanding. Sometimes, when presented with compelling new evidence, a learner even changes his or her opinion.

In contrast, the person who has stopped learning doesn’t consider other views or compelling evidence and thus remains fixed in thought, belief, and practice. That person, as Blake concluded, “is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.” That can’t be good, can it?

I think about how this factors into my own journey as an educator. Looking back at what I believed during my fledgling years, I’m glad to have had exposure to new research and theory that has helped shape my practice. Some of the elements I considered vital components of my English classroom back in the 90s--grammar worksheets, study packets, comprehension questions, teacher-provided vocabulary lists, multiple-choice tests to assess comprehension--would not be found there today. Each new piece of information I take in and every conversation with a fellow educator shapes my own philosophy of teaching.

To ward off reptiles of the mind in our students, teachers must reinforce the importance of learning as a growth experience. We must continually challenge them to question their own thinking. We must dare them to form opinions for themselves and not look to their peers for constant approval. We must encourage mental flexibility, not rigidity. We must help them learn to read and listen to understand and to write to be understood. We must model an openness to new ideas that don’t always echo our own. We must make it noble to admit, "I once held this opinion, but now that I've considered some new perspectives and data, I have changed my mind."

One of my favorite AVID strategies for encouraging this type of thinking is Philosophical Chairs. In a nutshell, Philosophical Chairs is a form of whole-class debate. Students read a text or pair of texts that provides information or ideas that could be used to support both sides of a controversial issue. Typically, students mark the text and then quick-write to clarify their opinions on the topic. Then, they move to chairs placed on either side of the room to indicate what position they plan to support in the debate. Sides alternate speaking, offering supports for their side (ideally, going back to the text) or responding to comments of their opponents. Here’s the kicker, though. If a student is swayed by the other side’s arguments, that student can relocate to the other side or to a non-debating neutral zone to physically indicate that his or her stance has changed. As students listen to one another and discuss, they deepen their own understandings of the issue, and, as ought to happen in an intellectual discussion, they sometimes change their ways of thinking.

Using strategies like Philosophical Chairs is an excellent way to model the kinds of behaviors appropriate for intellectual discourse and disagreement in an academic setting. Mudslinging, name calling, and personal attacks are forbidden. When cool heads and open minds prevail, people listen, learn, and grow.

Educators are tasked with one of the biggest and most important jobs in the world: creating a citizenry who will not only survive but will thrive in a rapidly changing world and will shape the future for the betterment of all. Reptiles of the mind have no place in an environment where such essential work is taking place. We must continue to think and grow so our students will do the same.