Flip over and smell the coffee

Salman Khan, guru of the "flipped classroom"

If proof were needed that America is a temperamentally conservative nation, we need merely cite that when it comes to large-scale social institutions, such as education and health, we would far rather cling to an old system that we positively know is failing than try some new system which might fail, even though it might also work.  "Why even try?" we say.  "Since we clearly aren't doing this correctly now, Q.E.D., there is no possible solution and anything else we might try will fail."

So we cling to the 19th-century industrial factory model of school 40 years after most American businesses have dropped it.  Because we all experienced our pre-college education as tedious, dreary, pointless and mostly ineffectual, we believe either that all following generations must be similarly punished or that it is impossible to make early education engaging, valuable and "sticky" (that is, having lasting value throughout our lives.)

We worsen the problem by having our school districts led by educators who are forced to act as politicians defending the school system from the depredations of the mendacious hooligans we elect, which leaves them in a permanently crouching posture, trying to get noticed.  God forbid that the second most important thing government does (I will grant you that protecting our physical safety comes first) be done with intelligence, insight and the proper resources.  There is always a chance that a despised minority will attend public school and obtain some valuable tools in the perpetual conflict the overclass in the way that education can do.

Okay, I didn't reallly mean to get into this rant, but it does get me excited just how stupidly we do school and how we are unable to break the cycle of stupid even in the clear evidence of catastrophic failure.  But a few schools in Bergen County, New Jersey (where I live) are attempting one of the most workable and efficient of the proposed solutions I've heard since I began in the teaching racket.  Specifically, New Milford, Fort Lee and Northern Valley Regional are experimenting with the flipped classroom model which I first presented here in 2011.  And this idea only has become more mainstream with the advent of MOOCs.

Since I first wrote this, smart phones have become even more prevalent, and even in the inner city district in which I teach now, are all but universal.  Therefore, all materials for the flipped classroom, MUST BE AVAILABLE AS APPs on multiple platforms.  Most of my students do not have in-home access to high-speed internet on a computer.  They do, have these pocket computers, and those must be considered the primary delivery method of instruction for this system.  Which also means that visuals must be VERY LARGE and VERY CLEAR to compensate for these tiny screens.  No clusters of text or mathematical characters.

One of the great advantages pointed out by the linked article is the sheer time efficiency.  Students don't HAVE to take in the instructional videos at home.  Using their phones or tablets, they can view while traveling to sports events or between parents' homes, or while hanging out with friends.  (My students can listen to anything on headsets and absorb it while simultaneously tracking their friends' conversation.  Altekockers like me might not believe it, but I have observed that students can recall incidents and dialogue in detail from films in my media course even though they have been gabbing virtually all the time.  They were virtually born multi-tasking, whereas folks like me have had to try and learn it.)

Because the biggest downfall of our present system of education is sheer inefficiency from the student's point of view.  Sure, it's cheap and efficient from the state's point of view -- gather students in cheaply-built rectangular buildings in the largest aggregation possible and present them with uniform materials assessed with cheap-to-correct multiple choice and T-F tests.  But from the student's point of view, none of it makes sense.  We gather them at the times they are least likely to learn.  In high school, we randomly shuffle them from room to room from topic to topic for more time than it takes to absorb one new piece of data but less time than it takes to engage in and complete a genuinely valuable task.  Everyone hears the same thing at the same time and is subject to the same deadline for the same tasks.  And one is discouraged from using the fantastic communication and networking skills one is developing in one's "real" life.

I'd ask you to wake up but you won't remember anyway.

The sad truth is that high school, like college, is being run by interschool athletics.  The only reason anyone can give for high school to be from 8 to 3 is to allow time for athletics after school.  It has no other logic.  Dismissing students at 3, 3 or 4 hours before their parents return home puts them genuinely at risk.  Police will tell you the greatest number of arrests of school-age children is between 3 and 6.  Not hard to figure.

And worst of all, science uncontrovertibly demonstrates that these hours are BAD FOR LEARNING.  Does there need to be any other justification for changing a school practice?  The kids are asleep in class, and not just because they were up all night gaming and texting.  They're not designed to learn at 8 AM, and I wish the Christian conservatives would get on this issue, because our current school schedule is clearly in contravention of God's plan.  Sadly, I discover that this is not the first time I've discussed this here, but new data justifies repeating the point.  Our school schedules have no function except to facilitate team sports and keep budgets down.  They render positive damage upon learning and upon student safety.

I hope I live long enough to see this nation stop saying that children are important and start treating them that way.  Like by spending time and money on them, instead of empty rhetoric.

Annual reflection and setting new goals

I have never done this in public, but I think it's worth doing if only to publicly commit myself to some goals and raise my own level of accountability.  Now, as we approach the dawn of a new school year, it's time to lay out specific plans for improvement in my courses and my classroom.

Management Issues

Lateness - With only a 40-minute period, too much time is being lost to lateness.  Moreover, the problem got so bad late in the year with one course that it was hard to determine, even ten minutes after the bell, whether I had enough students to proceed with my plan or to shift course.  I would shift, and then the stragglers would show up.

One problem is that detention does not work.  It palpably does not work, because at the end of the year we still had dozens of students assigned to detention every day.  This is as effective as locking up drug addicts has been in fighting addiction in our country.  Yet we persist (in both cases).

I've spent some time this week reading everything I can find on the subject and it is all the same and it is all unhelpful, because the advice addresses individual aberrant cases of lateness, and a lot of attention is given to tracking and record-keeping.  I am fundamentally opposed to punishing myself for a student's misbehavior.  (That is one reason I don't have my own detention.  Another is that I am too involved in co-curricular activities to be able to drop what I'm doing and see a student after school.)

Phone calls home are school policy and I will, of course, comply.  But I don't believe in them, partly because we have so few reliable ways to communicate with our parents in a timely manner (will have to work on THAT this year) and because I teach seniors.  Parental disapproval and sanctions may be effective, but they are a poor preparation for the phase of life my students are about to begin.  They need to have their own discipline and their own habits in place, unless their parents are going to run their whole lives for them.

Clearly I need to move beyond sanctions.  Many of my colleagues (including many who should know) believe the lateness thing is cultural.  (Incidentally, that should not be viewed as racist.  Many European Mediterranean cultures do not value punctuality, and they are not generally oppressed minorities in this country.)  However, I need not investigate root causes or do some deep character education.  What I need to do is establish that whatever culture my students come from, when they enter my room, they enter MY CULTURE with my expectations.

So I need to be disciplined myself, start the class within a minute of the second bell, disregard who's there and not there, ignore late students when they enter (which I do anyway) and deal with lateness reporting issues later.  I will establish that I will mark absences at the top of the class and that unless they sign the latebook, it will go down as a cut, with the attendant consequences, which are out of my hands.  Hopefully, once it is clear that the class begins when it begins, the issue will diminish.  I only wish that I could flip my classroom so that the entrance was in the back of the room, but that is not practical for a number of reasons.  In any event, I will stop trying to use punishment and shame, and try and establish a social and cultural norm and set of expectations, at least within my own four walls.  Consistency.

This also supports a specifically educational imperative I want to press this year:  that, as we learn to write, we are writing in a specific and separate dialect called Standard Written English.  (Not Standard White English.)  SWE is not the way we speak every day.  It may not even coincide with formal speech.  It is a special, particular language which my students will be expected to use in college composition, and in most written communications other than to friends and family.  It is not a denigration of natural speech, but a commonly accepted and preferred alternate to it, and using it does not signal racism, but simply the employment of a Lingua Franca.

So in both punctuality and form of written expression, we have different expectations in the classroom than you have with family and friends.  Not superior, just different.

Phones - There is little or no support on the ground for a no-phones policy in class, although that is the stated written policy of the district.  Confiscation is not practical and could lead to liability problems, especially without support up the line.  Again, I must establish a cultural expectation, which I will reinforce with by distributing a copy of the page in the district handbook banning phones and having each student sign and acknowledge that.  I know that is no solution to anything, and is frequently an empty gesture, but perhaps it will be a signal that I intend to be consistent with that.  I must not let myself slip and lose heart about reminding students to get the phones out of my sight.  On the other hand, there will be times (I hope) when I will invite the students to use their smart phones in class, as a reminder that it is not that I am a Luddite, but that there is a time and place for everything, and that it is important to be present in the place where one is physically present, and to leave the cyberworld from time to time to be here now.  You know, all zen and stuff.

The Teaching of Literature  - I read an interesting piece this summer about the ascendancy of teaching literature over rhetoric in our high schools, which puts them out of joint with our colleges.  The fact is, I have never formally studied rhetoric, but as a former lawyer, I am familiar with and equipped to teach its application.  And as a reader, I am far more interested in journalism and other forms of non-fiction than I am in literature.

This comports with a district and building initiative to intensify the reading and analysis of short non-fiction on a regular basis.

So a couple of interlocking decisions.  I am not going to attempt to "teach" novels.  I will frame them and contextualize them at the outset.  Students will read them independently, using a schedule I provide as a rough guide.  I am still debating assessment of reading, whether to journal, quiz or other technique. From time to time, students will rotate in leading discussion, a process I will teach, building on what they learned junior year.  There will be the assessment of rote reading in a one-period timed test and a more important assessment in the form of a project which requires synthesis, as I have done historically since I began teaching.  The larger point is that our book of the moment should only occupy one or two days per week.  This leaves two days for writing and two days for everything else.

The Teaching of Writing AND Reading Non-Fiction  - This provides an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.  As mentioned, there is an initiative to stress non-fiction reading.  The plan as it stands right now, is to assign new non-fiction reading each Monday.  (Note to self -- because photocopying must be submitted in advance, must have non-fiction selected before leaving building on Thursday night.)  This can be in class, silently or aloud, partially in class and partially independently, etc. etc., depending on the specific task to be performed in connection with the reading -- analysis, rebuttal, extrapolation.  Then writing based on the writing can be assigned every other week, to be submitted electronically by Thursday.  I must then faithfully review and assess all writing over the weekend and return e-mail it before Monday.  On alternate weeks, students will be re-writing per my comments, to be submitted the following Thursday.  That is, one week write, next week rewrite.  After one semester, and with the use of projections and lecture-demonstrations, students will understand the edit and rewrite process well enough to do peer review, and start to incorporate those ideas about better style into their own drafting.

I have to brace myself to work harder this year and get better at seeing around corners.  At least this year, I've read most of my literature once already.  And the longform work must be interlaced with more short work.

Assessments - More of them, more at higher levels, more rapid marking and return of them.  Last year, my students rarely had the opportunity to benefit from comments.  That must change.

Advanced Placement -  I have ideas about re-formulating the Advanced Placement, starting with administering practice tests within the first week and regularly thereafter.  Earlier classes seem to have been completely sandbagged by the test, and there is no reason for that.  As high level as the class is, at some level it is all about the test at the end.  I am determined to have some 4s and 5s this year.  I will have more to say about this after next week, when I complete my mini-course on teaching AP.

Social Justice in Film  - Very charged up about this new elective.  I have always had trouble designing assessments for electives.  I am thinking of two principal modes at the moment -- having students blog about each film and having a rotating assignment of introducing and giving context to each film.  I will give the student a list of terms, names, etc. which are connected to the film and ask them to prepare 10 minutes for the class.  (Naturally, I will be prepared to back this up.)

Work Deadlines - This year I really want to walk the talk.  Keep deadlines myself and hold students to them.  I must start at the beginning of the year and not accept late homework at all, other than for excused absences.  I understand that students are allowed to re-take tests, but if they never hand in a paper assigned in lieu of a test, can they "re-do" that?  I am inclined to given them the 55 for a missing assessment and then assign something else, rather than give the impression that deadlines mean nothing, and that any work can be handed in at any time before the last day of the marking period.  That was just making me miserable.

I am hereby putting my DC and my principal on notice that my September gradebook may look very scary, but I am confident the situation will correct itself if I remain firm.

Use of the School Website  - As soon as possible, I am getting all my classes to the computer lab, show them my page, show them where their work is posted, give them the Twitter feeds and the Facebook page they can like in order to receive information about all the homework assignments.  It must be clear that if they are absent, excused or not, they are responsible not only for doing the work but for finding out what it is.  I must consistently refuse to answer questions about what the past work was except to direct them to the website.  They must learn that this is how most college courses operate.  The professor will not chase you and scarcely will talk to you about past assignments.  They must assume responsibility.

Apps - Speaking of the school website, I have it on reasonably good authority that a bright high-school level hacker/code monkey could write an app that makes our school website legible on a smart phone.  I would love to offer a prize for a student to do that for all the obvious reasons.  I also want to research free or cheap apps that help students manage their assignment calendars, not to mention college and scholarship application deadlines, which leads me to...

The War Room - I hope that Coach T and I can hold to Mr. Gregory to his agreement to commit Room 401 to be a War Room for college applications and scholarship applications.  Too much was compromised last year due to students not managing timelines.  We need to support that, to counsel students on their choices and to celebrate ALL THE ACCEPTANCES.  Last year, some got noticed and some didn't.  That's not right.  They are all a big deal, and we have to make them that way.  Which reminds of something else that needs to be different this year...

College Presentations during English instruction time  I need better advance notice of this, and they must be limited.  There have to be other times and places found to meet with seniors other than decimating a graduation requirement course.  Also, I'm putting my foot down on this specifically -- NO CLASS TIME AFFORDED TO FOR-PROFIT SCHOOLS.  We don't know what those schools are doing, what kind of financial problems they could create for our students, and they are off-mission for us.  Yes, some post-high-school education is the goal for all Newark Public School students, but AHHS is specifically a college prep school, and our message should be consistent.  Again, there must be other means, other times for the for-profit schools to reach our kids.

Well, that's all I can think of now.  There are a lot of details that are still fuzzy to me, such as the sequencing of my literature units (chronological order did not work), but this reflection was more about architecture than engineering.  Time for the latter later.

Now I've published this and you can all throw it in my weary and bedraggled face in June!

"I think it would be fun to run a newspaper"

A lot of electrons are being spilled today over the too-early death of Steve Jobs, and rightly so. We speak of his vision, imagination and energy. He is thought by many as representing the kind of innovation that serves as an engine of capitalism.

But I suspect that he wasn't primarily interested in pumping up the capitalist system, although he chose to be an entrepreneur, literally a garage band company. Judging from pictures of them from 1976, when they first introduced the Apple II, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak look as though they think it would be a lot of fun to mess around with computers, make some that everybody could afford and everybody could use, then stand back and see what happened.

There's a key line in Citizen Kane which explains why Kane's substitute parent, the banker Thatcher will never understand his ward. Kane surveys all the businesses he now owns thanks to the shrewd investments of his bank-parent and sees mines and factories and who-knows-what-else in that gallimaufrey. Buried deep in the list of enterprises is a small, shabby unprofitable operation in San Francisco, a fussy and fusty old newspaper. He grins with delight and says, "I think it would be fun to run a newspaper."

From that observation flow power and influence that would not likely have accrued to a mine operator or a stock manipulator. But Kane heard his own siren song and he went and from that his and many lives were forever changed.

Steve Jobs heard that song; not the song of increased productivity or bounding entrepreneurship, but good old-fashioned fun. Maybe more of us should follow that call and see what happens.

Interactivity is Authentic

If you've read much of this blog before, you'll know I am a strong advocate of Authentic Learning, having helped pilot a project to develop a community of educators sharing authentic learning design. But as an English teacher, some of the areas we stumble on in creating such designs are (a) ownership of the work; (b) working cooperatively; and (c) identifying or developing a real audience. Our solutions to these challenges can rude toward the crude, for example, in-class presentations of group projects. You have an audience, but it is not a real one. You may not have co-operative work, but parallel work. And who ever felt ownership of the experience of holding up a chart or a poster and talking about it?

Interactive fiction answers a lot of this. For people of my age, who came of age in the 1970s or early 1980s, you may remember these as text-based adventure games, which were infuriating to us old-school types because the rules and procedures are never set out in advance. You were endlessly lost in some cave trying to figure out how to go right or whether you should put down the candle in order to pick up the wand. And endless prompts as we endlessly tried to do the same thing over and over, despite ample proof that it didn't work. (Or anyway, that's what happened to me.)

But as you may have noticed, technology, especially computers and their programming have developed somewhat in the last 30 years or so. Those text adventures are now called interactive fiction, not least because (a) they are far more sophisticated and complex than they were and (b) they can be created by users, rather than merely existed in closed, pre-packaged forms. And they can be created by teams or groups of users. In short, text adventures have morphed into a quasi-literary activity, in which text can be as good or bad, cursory or detailed, reflective or aggressive as the creator or creators wish. And in the course of this development, interactive fiction is (a) owned by its creator(s); (b) mostly written cooperatively; and (c) is capable of developing a real audience, that is, the players who experience a story as a game, with alternate outcomes (which encourages repetition and re-exploration, a hallmark of good literature).

But our students have grown up completely in the era of interactivity, of the democratization of creativity. Stories told by a storyteller in only one way, as in novels and films, are but one way to experience a narrative, and probably becoming a minority taste. Our students have a natural feel for open-endedness, for the hope built into the idea that the end is not yet written, and that a story is not to be heard, but experienced and participated in. What I'm trying to say is that if you are over 45, this may require some mental adaptation, but I believe such an adaptation is not only advisable, but necessary.

The chances are that many of your students, especially the most imaginative and creative students are already doing this with your friends. You should ask who is participating in this, and what kinds of things they like and how they are interacting with their friends. You might want to scaffold your design with a pilot group, who can get you past your initial stumbles, presuming this is a new or new-ish area for you. (If it's not new to you, you really don't need to read this whole post -- just grab the link for Inform and begone with you!)

And, if like me, you're not sure where to begin among the competing aggregations of fiction, message boards and blogs, may I suggest a site and system called Inform, which was brought to my attention by a close friend who knows how enthusiastic yet clueless I can be about this kind of thing. Inform uses plain-language not just for the text that the players experience, but for the programming code. If you are a fogey like me, you need to adjust to thinking of narrative in terms of creating (or describing) an environment and setting rules by which the narrative will proceed. It's simply a matter of learning to turn over the some of the power of the storyteller over to the audience and relaxing one's grip over the order in which information is dispensed.

Obviously, this kind of writing is not going to yield a Harold Pinter or even a Dan Brown, whose craft is entirely based on the slow, calculated release of information in a particular order. On the other hand, many writers such as Cervantes, Dante and Raymond Carver and John Irving do not exert such tight-fisted control of the timeline.

Here is a video tutorial on some of the programming protocols and systems in Inform. You'll see they are fairly easy and intuitive

The challenge remains to incorporate this into our specified course of study. Of course, there are always ways and means to give encouragement, support and course credit to independent writing. But for the less naturally motivated student, interactive fiction can be used as an analytical tool, especially for those works which we teach with a strong focus on the temporal and geographical environment, such as The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, or To Kill A Mockingbird or The Kite Runner. The environmental aspects and the choices made by the persons in the story can be parsed out in a very precise manner so that the player can see to what extent the narrative is driven by environment and to what extent choice.

"Bold, persistent experimentation." If it's good enough for a US president facing the worst economic crisis in our history, it's good enough for me. Plus IF is bound to be a lot more fun than the National Recovery Act.

Teaching kids real math with computers

I don't know much about math or teaching it. But I like the idea of teaching mathematical thinking instead of calculation. I defer to Conrad Wolfram, an actual mathematician who is actually concerned with education.



So? What do you think?