Teacher-centered = learner-centered

I think that our learning institutions need to be teacher-centered.

Don't freak out. I don't mean that they need to be this kind of teacher-centered:

I just think that, in order for teachers to be able to successfully give the students the reins, in order to be on their A-game every day, in order to be the sort of facilitators that we strive to be, we're going to need a little more support and a heckuva lot less work. 

If we were in an ideal world, we could scrap the traditional school model all together and this might become a non-issue, but that's not going to happen any time soon. So while there is still the traditional role of teacher in a classroom of (way too many) learners, we could use a little help. Because we are burnt out and stretched thin. Please. The kids deserve it.

Poetry for People

My Spanish III students needed something a little different. When I found poetryforpeople.net, I knew that I'd found an answer.

So the kids took pictures with our cameras (loaned to us via Literacy Through Photography) and submitted them to Ben Rimes' cooperative poetry blog, poetryforpeople.net.

Then we wrote poems based on other people's photography. Ben was gracious enough to allow us to submit our work in Spanish. It's true, the Spanish isn't perfect but they were creative and required some serious manipulation of the TL.

Here is Michael's haiku about a photograph of buildings and Destiny's haiku about a photograph of blueberries:

To our great surprise, Ben chose to post three of our photographs, two noted here with red stars, on to the main page of the blog! Now other people are writing about our photography. So exciting!

I am very appreciative for this unique opportunity. Head on over to poetryforpeople.net and get your students writing, too!

Grades just don't make the grade

I've been fighting a lot with grades recently. I find it unlikely that a student is able to separate him/herself from her work and say "That paper received a D, but that is a reflection of my effort on the paper and not me as a person." In actuality, my students see the D, flip out, and give up. I've had a redo policy since the very first day of class and still, they throw in the towel instead of working harder.

Fixed versus growth mindset

I've come up with just three theoretical solutions:

1. We MUST help our students (and ourselves!) change from the fixed mindset to a growth mindset. We're not going to get anywhere in relationships, jobs, personal goals, etc unless we learn to accept setbacks as an opportunity instead of an insuperable restraint. 

2. We've got to give our kids something that THEY want to work on. It's true, we all have to do things in life that we don't particularly enjoy but that's not a good enough reason to make students suffer through years of unpleasant activities. The point is to teach them to learn and help them like it. Let's be real, they're not going to remember the year that Tariq ibn-Ziyad conquered Spain (711 AD) and frankly, they don't need to. If some one wants to know when the Moors conquered the Iberian peninsula, they'll just go to Wikipedia anyway. 

3. In the majority of cases, grades are hierarchical, demeaning and ineffective. They are also quite possibly the single largest motivator in our students everyday lives. Even if it is the student's parent that is pushing them, the parent sees their growth in terms of numbers (or letters, as the case may be). They are not inspired to gain knowledge or skills for the joy of learning, but instead they do so with the hopes of being placed favorably in a scale that generally values output over effort. 

So I think that it's clear that I don't find grades a favorable way to rate student improvement. How, then, can I function in a system that lives by them? I'm not allowed to give all my students 100% and I don't really think that that would be the most effective (mis)use of grades, anyway. 

What ways have you found to use grades to your students' learning advantage?

Author's postscript:

After I wrote this I wanted to do a wee bit more reading on alternative perspectives of grading. Moral of the story is I am writing nothing new, so why aren't we doing something about it? Anyways, more resources here:

-- The Free Child project is all about students advocating for alternative assessment. Here is their post "The End of Grades" containing many interesting links and examples of grade-free schools.

-- You might also consider Joe Bower's website or twitter which is alllll about changing assessment.

-- This Freakonomics entry lays out the problematic nuances of the question "Do grades determine success?"

-- Alfie Kohn talks about this a good bit. Here's an interview with him that focuses on the effects of grades on learning.

I found this entry by Nathan Gilmour on the Christian Humanist blog to be an interesting philosophical view of grading. This specific passage is looking at the ethics of cheating in the traditional grading system through the lens of Plato's definition of democracy. 

Grammar is not gross

I have come to a rather large obstacle with my heritage Spanish speakers. We respect each other, we enjoy our time together, they are open to new experiences in the classroom. However I cannot figure out how to successfully reinforce proper advanced grammar, good spelling and accent use for the life of me. This is an especially painful point for me for two reasons.
1. I LOVE GRAMMAR. All those rules are just so cool and make sense and Spanish is so lovely in that way.
2.  Their poor spelling and continual anglicisms make them look far less fluent than they are. In spoken speech, they can run circles around me. But put a book in their hands or ask them to write a formal letter and their comprehension and writing is years below their grade.

What do I do?
First and foremost, I ask your advice. Anything you might have to offer would be so very appreciated. Please add any ideas in this Google Doc. It doesn't just have to be for Spanish learners. Any technique is welcome, although I do prefer not to go the drill and kill route.

Here is a basic list of things that I have tried. I'll be honest, it seems like their spelling and accentuation are getting worse.
1. We read a lot. Things like The Hunger Games, People magazine in Spanish, the news, etc.
2. We have free journaling daily.
3. There is a list of approximately 30 words that are our "It words," things like "he hablado" instead of "e avlado" and "más" instead of "mas." We've had it since the third week of school. They still don't know it despite repeated testing, grade consequences, textual reinforcement, competitive memorizing activities, etc.
4. I have taught "traditional" grammar lessons.
5. They have taught each other grammar lessons.
6. We have repeated and reinforced old grammar lessons.
7. I've taught them college-level phonetics and dialectology in order to help them better understand the use of various letters.
8. I've gotten angry.
9. I've let it slide.
10. I've graded meticulously to show each potential improvement.
11. Everything in my class can be redone. Everything. So if they receive a poor grade for bad spelling, they can rewrite it for full credit.

Clearly, I'm at wit's end. I very much look forward to reading your advice and I cannot wait to convince my students that good grammar is not gross.

Slam Poetry Resources

The following is an email regarding the implementation of slam poetry from dear friend (and fellow teacher) Stephanie Nudleman. I am so appreciative that she was willing to share her resources and knowledge.


Here are a bunch of attached resources, including an amazing document from the Young Chicago Writers.  Read it, love it, take stuff from it.  Every other document is something I made myself, so steal those and modify them for your own kids.


Poems I've used for high school slamxamples:


Blue Blanket - Andrea Gibson
Bi-Racial Hair - Zora 
POW - Alicia Keys
Pretty - Katie Makkai
Grandmother - Mayda del Valle (Article from Washington Post w. review and poem)
Awkward Scars - Robbie Q Telfer
Totally Like Whatever You Know - Taylor Mali


And my goodness use all of these, because I know these amazing people:  http://www.wbez.org/ltab.
Listen to "Egypt" and cry your face off.


There are a ton more.  Those are just the ones I thought of off the top of my head.


Specific directions:


I started class every day with a quick speech exercise.  It was usually a tongue twister on the board that the students had to say three times fast (correctly!) to be marked present.  Then, one day I wrote "blah" ten times on the white board, passed out a different tone notecard for each student, put all of the options for the tone words on the board, and had the students say "blah" ten times and had the other students guess which tone the student was portraying.  To make it easier, you can use the sentence "i notice people staring at me everywhere i go" one day and then do the Blah exercise a few days later.  We eventually did the same exercise -- with the tone notecards -- for expression through body language and facial expression.  Some of those exercises, and a bunch I didn't use but considered using, are gathered in this "hodgepodge of speech exercises" document.


Also, the day we opened with "what is slam poetry," I had them start class by writing a response to a prompt on the board that said, "if you could say one sentence to the entire world, what would you say?"  This was before we discussed what slam is and does and watched a few videos.  I very much entwined both viewing and writing slam poetry throughout the unit.  I think I had them watch a slam poem every other day.


Enjoy.


Other documents written by Stephanie. I apologize that Google Docs has messed up her formatting.


How to write a SLAM poem 

A hint to Stephanie/SLAM vocab taken from the Speed, emphasis, facial expression and tone activity :

·       Speed:  How quickly should your poem be read?

·       Emphasis:  Which words should be said louder or softer?

·       Facial Expression:  What emotion should your face show?

·       Tone:  What tone should you use when performing?

Student assessment rubric and self-evaluation worksheet. 

The power of social media and our students

A student of mine asked me to share this with you.

This video describes the horrible actions of Josephy Kony. http://vimeo.com/37119711 It is a very important issue, without question, and I am proud that she has decided to take it upon herself to help spread the word.

The fact that she came upon this information also reiterates the power of social media, especially in the lives of our youth. When I asked her how she found it, she said, " I got home today logged onto tumblr and it was all over the place."


The student can be contacted at http://itsjustemely.deviantart.com/.

The concept of self, Part 1: analyzing Spanish-speaking artists and self-portraits

I am lucky enough to teach Spanish to 8th/9th grade heritage Spanish speakers. While it does mean that most textbooks are absolutely worthless to us, it also means that we get to study any material that strikes our fancy... as long as we do it in Spanish. 

This time, my goal with was to define the idea of "self" and work towards describing ourselves through word and image. Given that students this age find themselves to be an important issue, it had special resonance with our class.

We started by asking the following question: Does the image of the person have to be in his/her portrait in order for it to be a self-portrait? Most students felt that, yes, the image of the portrait-ee must be in the portrait.

Then we started looking at portraits by famous Spanish-speaking artists.

In Velazquez's "Las Meninas" there are clearly multiple subjects and a story. However, it also contains the artist... so is it a self-portrait or not?

(We fought about it for a few minutes and then moved on.)

Then we moved on to Goya. I was curious what he was trying to tell us through this picture. We also talked about the role of the viewer -- what is the viewer doing here? Where are we in the scene? Does Goya know we're there? What does his face tell us?
And, of course, we talked about if the purpose of this work was to be a self-portrait, or if the author had some other intention.

(They didn't think that it was meant to be a self-portrait, by the way. Do you?)

I decided that we were ready to go a little farther.



 When I showed them this Dali, there were a lot of titters at first. And then they were just plain curious. Kids got up and gathered around the projection, questioning what the symbols meant, why the dog was there, is he underwater?, I swear that's la Virgen, Profe!, etc.

This time, we went in deep, questioning the goal of a self-portrait. The students decided that:
- the purpose of a self-portrait is to express the individual that the portrait is about.
- a self-portrait expresses things that are important, emotions, or ideas that represent the person
- a self-portrait includes the person itself in the image.

This is all happening in rapid-fire Spanglish. I'll be honest, we didn't know all the technical words that we needed, in either English or Spanish. But everyone had something to say, and the vast majority was taking place -- without second thought -- in beautiful Spanish.

Botero's "First Communion"

At this point, I just changed the slide and let them discuss amongst themselves. The majority of the discussion revolved around religion and the winged creatures above the subject's shoulder. They also made it clear that they could not decide if it was a self-portrait or not until they knew if the artist's intention was to paint himself. I decided not to tell them that the title of the painting is "Self-Portrait on the Day of My First Communion."






The turning point in our discussion came with this image, provided through the London Telegraph, of Gabriel Orozco's "Yielding Stone."

After much conversation, some students decided that this work was in fact a self-portrait, given that it had traveled and documented the artist's actions, because Orozco lives in New York City, and because it weighs as much as he did. Other students, however, felt that it was not a self-portrait. Orozco did not title it a self-portrait and he is not in the ball and we do not know what he looks like after seeing this piece.

I was happy for the divergence in opinion. I decided that they would be ready to write after one last piece.

Although they were intrigued, I think that they had reached their saturation point. After a set of jumping-jacks, we all sat down to answer our original question: Does a person's own image have to be in his/her self-portrait in order for it to be considered a self-portrait?

The responses that I received were truly exceptional. (I did this activity in early October, not even two full months into school).

This student had never spoken to me before.

"...the definition of a portrait is something that represents you. So, a self-portrait is something that the person drew that represents him/her self. ... If the person believes that this work of art represents them then it is a self-portrait. It doesn't matter if others don't think it is..."