Spotlighting Student Voices Using the Author's Chair

I finally attempted the “author’s chair” activity, something I had experienced at San Diego Area Writing Project. This protocol calls for students to take a seat in the front of the room to read a piece of their writing, typically a work in progress. I never had the nerve to try before. What if no one volunteered? What if students didn’t respond? What if students weren't interested in each others' ideas?

On this particular day, students had completed a mini-essay, a flash draft. I set up the room, explaining the process. I reminded folks about one of our “class agreements”: No apologies! What we write in class are first drafts, sloppy and scribbly, so there’s no need to say “I’m sorry".  I want students to be be okay with the natural imperfections of an early draft. I want them to develop the nerve they need to share works in progress. 

Feeling the Burn of Mentor Texts & Mea Culpas

Teachers should learn from students. This statement has become so axiomatic as to become cliche. Tired, even. And yet, it’s a home truth, one that I subscribe to because of my study of Paulo Freire and bell hooks On an intellectual, theoretical tip, I get it. Teacher-student. Student-teacher. Resolve the contradiction between those roles. 

A recent pair of episodes, however, hit me at an experiential, gut level. What happened in class taught me, in a new way, essential lessons. Students modeled how I can “practice what I preach in terms of the kind of person I want to be and the kind of writer I aspire to become. 

The Final Question: Fearless Teaching . . . and Pottery?

A few nights back, after first reading the final question of TeachThought's 30 day blog challenge, I experienced another episode of my recurring nightmare cycle: I'd just found out I had to go onstage to play my role in some drama production. But I hadn't even picked up the script or attended a single rehearsal. 

This kind of performance anxiety plays out in other nightmares: I show up to a Calculus final but realize I've missed every class. Or, I've been sent back to my undergraduate college because cause Admissions and Records figured out I didn't complete enough units to graduate. Or I've been assigned to teach a lecture course for a three-hundred student class that begins in an hour. Sometimes, these ordeals, or some twist on the theme, are distinct, focused on a single scenario. More often, variant horrors merge and mutate into each other, commingling into a piling heap of angst, sometimes leaving me just as tired as if I hadn't gone to bed. 

Makes sense. The final challenge question has to do with courage: What would I do (as a teacher) if I weren't afraid? 

When I first read the question, I drew a blank. Upon waking, I still wasn't clear what I'd do differently. But waking up exhausted from the nightmare, I realized I'd have so much more energy if I wasn't afraid. 

I don't appear afraid when I'm teaching. I walk tall, speak loudly, and like the think I have relatively strong command presence. 

But I often feel like I'm hiding behind a facade. Some days, the act is more convincing to me than at other times. It's as if I've performed myself into being, "acting-as-if".  At my worst, though, the nagging fear takes a toll. I still take risks as a teacher, regularly revising how I teach, changing up my strategies to meet student's needs and to remedy strategies that didn't work. 

So where does the energy go? How does my anxiety morph into a energy/time suck? Here are a few obvious ways I can name right now:  

1) The Impostor Syndrome! I'm waiting for someone to discover my duplicity - as if I made it all the way through dress rehearsal without cracking open the script, or got through my undergraduate program without taking nary a science course. I may not be frozen in paralysis, but the impostor syndrome slows me down, and not in a thoughtful, zen way. 

2) The Humblebrag:  I find myself slipping from sharing what I do in class with my colleagues to being competitive, boasting about my achievements rather than giving and receiving in a reciprocal fashion. A sure sign of insecurity. And all the posting I do on Facebook.. . . to what degree is it boasting to bolster my ego? Fishing for compliments  . . . an indoor and outdoor sport. 

3)  Second Guessing Myself: I did say that I do take risks, trying out new things, refining and  experimenting with lessons. But getting to that point often takes time, well beyond the time of thoughtful reflection. After giving it my best shot, I often spend a hefty chunk of time playing and replaying  "I should have . . . " and "I could have . . . " tapes in my head, an internal Greek chorus. More like the punishing furies.

I know I'm overstating my fears - but it is kind of fun exaggerating - taking control of them by putting them on paper. Writing-as-therapy. 

Yet, I still draw a blank as to what I'd actually do if I had more courage. For sure, I'd have more energy. Definitely more time.  Like what Margaret Cho says about battling low self-esteem. She hypothesizes what it'd be like to be fearless: "How much time would I have? It turns out [I'd] save about ninety seven minutes a week. I can take a pottery class!"

Here's to conserving energy and time so I can throw some pottery. 

Mutt Genres: How My Teaching Has Changed

The penultimate prompt for the reflective teacher blog challenge! Home stretch: "How have you changed as an educator since you first started?' I'll take this to question to mean "since I first started teaching". I'll save the question "since I started the blog challenge" for my 31st reflection. 

I've changed in so many ways. Most of those changes are less about doing a 180 degree reversal or flipping a switch from off to on. The changes have been gradual, processional. And I hope, ongoing.  

One big change is my ongoing transition from assigning "mutt genres" to designing "real world" genres. By mutt genre, I mean the kind of writing that only exists in first year (FY) college composition courses, that mutant mash of modes and patterns. The prompts for such assignments often  no where else except a classroom, devoid of context.

I can't think of anywhere else I'm asked to write or read a five-paragraph composition. Even if the topic or inspiration for an FY composition compels students, that formula evacuates any joy students may have felt discussing the book or topic. The format is stale, deadening, and demonstrates less about student voice than their ability to conform. Nor does the format allow us to assess students' ability to make choices beyond fitting square pegs into square holes, round pegs into round holes. 

Sure, I want students to be conscious of form, shape, and structure. But rather than providing a formula or template to follow, I'd rather have students learn to ask the questions about their purpose and their audience, questions that help them make intentional, deliberate choices about particular strategies they use, about the modes they select and manipulate.

Blogging serves that purpose - composing something actually meant for public consumption. I've also come up with scenarios, (semi) realistic situations where students have to compose something for an audience they can imagine, something that doesn't fit the five-paragraph format. I asked students to compose a two-page informative flier to teach incoming students the meaning and significance of "audience". Another prompt asks students to compose and annotate a web page that curates a particular grammar or composition skill. In another assignment, students compose a newsletter article for high school teachers that argues for using pop music to teach rhetoric appeals to apathetic students. 

These example assignments focus on particular content students must understand: audience, grammar, or appeals. Each composition has an authentic audience, and the writing has a purpose. The trick for me is to come up with a thoughtful self-evaluation or meta-commentary where students discuss how they approached the assignments, what deliberate choices they made. I want to know their decisions and intentions and for students to become conscious of those choices and deliberations. 

These assignments allow me to lead discussion about the use value of composition, its relevance and application. Ideally, these kinds of assignments engender more excitement (not a whole lot, but at least not the groans or glazed-over eyes that mutt genres tend to generate). Investment is often higher. And assessing their learning is much easier (and less painful) than slogging through mutt genre essays, compositions I used to assign . . . for far too long! 

Driving Force: Technology or Curriculum?

Day 28 of the Teach Thought Blogging Challenge asks, "Should technology drive curriculum, or vice versa?" Great question. With all the shiny toys that the digital world has to offer, I need to keep asking, "Am I being seduced by all the bells and whistles? Or does the technology actually facilitate student learning?"

In my case, instruction is writing. This means that whatever I do in class, whatever projects students undertake, the manifest objective should be about students publishing ideas worth sharing. When I'm at my best, I ask myself guiding questions: How does today's activity help with drafting and revising? How well does the exercise work toward developing student voices and perspectives? Is this project the most effective way for students to experience the burn of writing for a real audience? Those queries animate my lesson planning.

And when assessing student learning, I go back to the same kinds of question: How effective was that prompt at teaching persuasive writing? What from the project accounts facilitated students' voice? Did that exercise demonstrate to students the significance of rhetorical appeals From the start to finish, learning outcomes frame and book-end the process. 

That's what I understand now from reflection and practice (thanks, PLN!). This, coming from someone easily dazzled by software! I've traveled quite a bit of distance away from giving in to the allure of technology without considering curricular goals. I'm sure I'll always be in process, guided by the principle that technology is a tool, not the outcome. 

Weekends, Holidays, and Teaching

"That moment when you find yourself saying, "I need a longer weekend to get all this work done!" ‪#‎glamorousacademia‬ ‪#‎solidarity‬ - from the Facebook feed of a veteran

That was one of the first posts I read this Sunday morning between slurping my coffee an marking papers. I nodded, half out of agreement, the other to clear the cobwebs out of my head, cleanse my mental palate, before diving into next pile of papers to grade. 

So when I read today's question, "What role do weekends and holidays play in your teaching?", I harrumphed, "Weekends? You mean grading and prep hours? Holidays, the days I prep for the next day, month, or semester?" 

Professional Development: I spend a good of deal of time reading up on the articles I've saved over the week, catching up on posts from educational resources that I've compiled over the week. Occasionally I'll have some sort of formal program to attend - as I did yesterday and the Saturday prior. The weekends, then are partly about sharpening the saw. 

Grading/Prepping: Without the weekend, I'd be SO BEHIND. That's the life of a teacher. Luckily prepping is one of my favorite activities, so it's almost a luxury to have large blocks of time to plan lessons. As for grading, it's not about finishing. It's about keeping my head (scalp?) above water. The weekend, then, is about getting my job done. 

Recreation:This weekend was typical in that I reserved (or ended up) relaxing doing what I like. This weekend, that was about lolling about in bed watching Netflix. This weekend, I caught up on the new series How To Get Away With Murder, a Shonda Rhimes-tastic new series featuring Viola Davis as a lawyer and professor with a novel andragogical approach. I'm hooked. The weekend, then, is about decompressing. 

Relationship: The weekend is also one of the times where I do my damnedest to spend quality time with my husband. During the week, our schedules don't overlap much, but on the weekends, we have at least a couple of six or eight chunks of time we could do something special. This weekend, because of hot weather in San Diego and the fact we have no air-conditioning, we spent the night at at air-conditioned hotel. I admit I did do some school work in the hotel room, but for the most part, we had a nice little stay-cation. The weekend, then, is about grounding myself emotionally by keeping my relationship healthy. 

I see I need to be a bit more intentional about how I manage my time on the weekends. The to things I do to decompress are largely unplanned, and aren't really about a real outside interest. And with regards to time with my husband, I risk way too much when (not "if") I put work before him. Just as I set aside time for work, I need to protect time for decompressing, a formal avocation or hobby, and my relationship. That would be healthier, more balanced. This is the second blog post challenge from TeachThought that's got me thinking about balance. Perhaps its time do do more than reflect . . . 

My "Go To" Sites For Hints, Resources & Inspiration

I love books. Love them. But my schedule (and budget!) is such that I have to be strategic about committing to reading books or subscribing to journals. Sure, I can go to the library, but those visits typically happen only when I know exactly what I'm looking for, when I have a title or author in mind. But I frequently surf Internet, browsing resources as they were appetizers at a buffet. Who'm I kidding. I'm on the web a lot. Here are two social media sites and my latest "go-to" web page I consult when looking for quick tips or a bit of inspiration. 

Twitter: I use TweetDeck on my laptop, a Twitter app that lets me manage the different hashtags and tweeters I follow. It's like a regular Twitter, but with multiple channels I can see on a single screen, each channel devoted to a hashtag I follow. I have #SDWAP on my dashboard. And I follow plenty of teachers and educational bloggers: TeachThought, ReadWriteThink, Edutopia and Eduslam. I'm a newbie at Twitter, and I'm happy to say that my time online is so much more productive now that I "get it". 

Pinterest: This social media site makes my top three because I go to it for very focused searches, when I look for inspiration. When I find myself wanting to decompress or relax but don't want to feel like I'm wasting my time, I'll log on to Pinterest. My recent searches? Written fluency, rhetoric, composition, and inferences. The majority of the pins that I find are K-6, but I've been pleasantly surprised at how much there is to "steal" from my colleagues who teach elementary school. 

Teaching Naked: This is the companion website for Jose Bowen's book of the same name. I read his book for a professional development program last year and was blown away by Bowen's project, leveraging digital media and technology to make the most of our time in class. He is not talking about using technology in class. Instead, he urges educators to consider how to use tech outside the classroom (to deliver content, assign projects, assess learning) to free up class time for teachers to coach and facilitate students' learning. 

The provocative phrase has to do with teachers moving away from simply delivering content during class time and instead having us demonstrate to our students how we think and solve problems from our discipline. The teaching naked approach makes visible how we ask questions, solve problems, and otherwise apply the procedural knowledge of our fields - in front and beside our students, i.e., what flipped classrooms allow teachers to do. The site provides enough of a glimpse into what Bowen advocates to be useful even if you havn't read his book. His site makes the top three because I've been referring to his site a bit lately, refreshing my memory. 

Building Student/Teacher Collaboration

The first definition for collaboration that appeared when I clicked on Google was "to work with another person or group in order to achieve something". In the case of student/teacher collaboration, that "something" worth achieving is substantive, meaningful learning. The ideal collaboration between students and me would mean we share the same goals. Or our goals should overlap enough that we know that whatever we are doing is related to both our objectives. 

As the teacher, I am obligated  to meet certain learning objectives (read about my metaphor for teaching). I have to help students see the relevance of those objectives and particular lessons. I'm not saying students don't need to bring a sense of purpose to our classes. They do! Often, however, those purposes are quite general, based on limited experience with college, and quite different than what we as professors have. 

Clarifying how the learning objectives I'm assigned to teach may be important to the students' lives, academic or otherwise remains largely my responsibility. That relevance may not be readily apparent to students. This is particularly true of students, first-year and first-generation college students, who aren't familiar enough with the material nor the skills we teach to know how the assigned objectives are linked to their own goals and majors, which are often hazy and undecided for first-year students. 

The same holds true for the way we work together, that is, our different expectations about the roles students and teachers play in teaching and learning. 

I'm basically rehearsing the big point of Rebecca Cox's book The College Fear Factor. Cox uses anecdotes and research to show that students and professors expectations about learning do not match. At all. Many students expect professors to be a font of knowledge who will fill their brains with data, concepts, and information.  This makes the students primary job one of a recorder, someone waiting to be imprinted with knowledge, as in, "What's the right answer?" 

Professors, the ones I respect and do my best to emulate, certainly value the type of conceptual knowledge students expect to acquire. But we are also deeply invested in procedural knowledge. We'd like to be "guides-on-the-side" who facilitate students through the process of evaluating, manipulating, and applying that conceptual knowledge. This means we see ourselves not as sentient encyclopedias full of information. instead, we see ourselves as coaches. 

That's the distinction. Students may see professors as walking Wikipedias, brimming with discreet unit of knowledge, like cash, that can be exchanged and withdrawn as if from an ATM. We see ourselves as cognitive coaches, mentors who facilitate students' skill in addressing questions and issues from our particular disciplinary lenses. This disconnect between expectations frustrates collaboration. Crossed wires short circuit working together. Cox, in College Fear Factor, argues convincingly teachers must help students see and bridge that often jarring (shocking?) gap. This  especially applies to those of us who teach incoming first-year students, students adjusting to new culture. 

This notion of relevance isn't shared in one lecture or a discrete lesson. I can't simply "tell" students the relevance or explain significance of role-stress. It isn't a singular event. When I'm at my best, I design activities that iterate the relevance of what we are doing - without me relying on a single pronouncement or directive, hallmarks of the "empty vessel" concept of education. It's on me to facilitate, in multiple ways,  students' comprehension of the gap between what they expect about learning and what the professoriate expects. Those activities, hopefully, demonstrate the relevance, make the significance of what we are doing visible in ways that a handout or glib statement ("This isn't high school!") cannot express. 

So (as I write my way to knowing my point), the kind of collaboration I aim for rests on the shared understanding of two building blocks: the relevance of the learning objectives and the roles each of has to play make that happen. Effective eachers create the conditions for students to more easily see these foundations for collaboration. It's on teachers to make those gaps visible, to make transparent the value of the learning goals and the methods we use to get meet those objectives. In many ways, my job has just as much to do with acculturation as it does with my particular content/skill area. And I'm fine with that. It's what I signed up to do. 

The Positive Psychology Learning Trend

I am obsessed with what I will call the "positive psychology" learning trend. This is the umbrella term I use to group a related set of ideas about how people learn, theories that have to do with attitudes and mindsets. Here are a few of the sources that demonstrate what I mean by "positive psychology": 

• Carol Dweick's Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
• Skip Downing's On Course, particularly the section on "victim/creator mentality"
• Angela Maiers' Classroom Habitudes: Teaching Habits and Attitudes for the 21st Century
• Angela Duckworth's notion of "grit" (clip above) is great example of the postive psychology trend 

A quick Google or Youtube search will uncover a trove articles, inteviews, and clips about growth mindset and "grit". 

Luckily, my courses are skills based, i.e., how to read for content and craft, how to compose texts. So I can use the articles and youtube clips that increasingly inform how I teach as content students can read and respond to in writing. I typically have a content focus in my classes; one of my classes focuses on the Filipino Experience  and another is focused on the African American experience. But I've found many ways to incorporate positive psychology material into all my classes. I use one or two pieces at the beginning of the semester to set a "we can all learn" tone. Throughout the semester, I strategically introduce other pieces as the need arises.  

Beyond our Four Walls: Community Outreach

This semester, several of my assignment ask student to go beyond the boundaries of the classroom. I want my class to be a laboratory for producing something of worth for someone else, producing text for a real audience. 

I already have students publish blogs. A follow up assignment is for students to promote their blogs. I want them to feel the burn of looking for an audience - friends, families, members of other communities students may claim membership. Currently, students are doing a "hacked" version of the blog challenge I'm doing this month, to get into blogging and to gain confidence with their own voices. Later this semester, we will publish posts directly related to the content weare study.  I'm asking students to pick topics they can compose short narrative, expository, or even persuasive pieces that introduce those topics to their readers. 

My next growth step for the blogging project: figuring out a way to feature their blogs here on my own page. Coming soon! 

I'm also experimenting with two other projects. One is a community story-telling project. Here in San Diego, So Say We All is a non-profit literary and performing arts group. They promote and produce story telling and writing events. One program they organize is VAMP, a visual, audio/monologue performance showcase. Think The Moth, Snap Judgment, or other story telling program on NPR. VAMP puts out a call for stories on a broad them, selects the most "story telling worthy", helps the writers revise their work, and prepares them to deliver a multi-media monologue. One of my colleagues is spearheading bringing VAMP to our campus. We will solicit narratives (the theme is "Borders") from students and help them prepare their own monologue. Since students have to write a narrative essay for my class, I've hijacked the VAMP theme and am encouraging students to submit their work. 

The second project is working on public service announcements. One of my classes focuses on the topic of Filipino American community, so instead of simply learning about what's out there, I'm asking students to select an agency or group and produce a public service announcement to publicize that agency. Part of the process includes writing a proposal, an informative essay on their community agency/topic, a business-type timeline report, as well as and script and the evaluation/metacommentary. 

It's a big project. 

I'm anxious about all the different skill sets I'm asking students to learn and elements we'll have to juggle. But I am attracted to this as not only will students be "making" but they'll also have to produce authentic writing pieces in the service of doing something in and for the community. I am piloting this project with only one section, testing it out to see if I'd like to do it in all my sections. 

All these projects, from publishing blogs to telling stories to promoting an agency, helps me make the students work public in ways that term papers and traditional essays can't. I'm invested in creating opportunities where students not only showcase their work but also experiment with sharing their voices and knowledge outside the classroom. 

Personal Learning Network: A Work in Progress

I'm a bit embarrassed to say that I've never heard the acronym "PLN" until last year. It wasn't until I joined a book study group with San Diego chapter of the National Writing Project that someone introduced me to the term "professional/personal learning network". The term helped me name and appreciate the informal professional development activities I do. And, just as naming often does, I can intentionally look for more of the same situations - face-to-face and virtual - that enhance my teaching. 

The infographic above captures some of the things I do to keep up with professional development. I have always engaged in "hallway conversations", not fully appreciating how those informal meetings improve my teaching. Several of my colleagues should charge me billable hours for all the consultations they do for me. My peers recharge my batteries, providing feedback and support. Often my peers help me see what I'm missing, reminding me that I cannot see the entire picture. 

In terms of more formal, scheduled PLN activities, I've become an active member of the San Diego Area Writing Project (SDAWP) I am attended this past summer institute for K - 16 teachers. Each of the 20 or so participants did a teaching demo, and, if I'm lying, I'm dying, an element of each demo has found it's way into my teaching. Seeing the expertise and experiencing my peers demos' showed me how to improve my craft in ways I couldn't have predicted. SDAWP helps feel like part of a larger community of teachers and reduces the isolation that often comes with being a teacher. Just this weekend, this summer's fellows met for an informal reading group/reunion. We're studying Angela Maiers' Classroom Habitudes. How invigorating it was hearing how my peers from elementary, middle, and high schools, and community college adapt Maier's princiles into their curriculum.  And we've started our own FB group to support each other and share strategies. 

The internet has become a huge part of my PLN. The folks at SDAWP introduced me to Twitter, Pinterest, Te@chThought, Edudemic, Edutopia, and a host of teachers who tweet and blog. Many of the new and productive Ideas I've incorporated this last year come directly from social media. And many of the provocations and questions that I consider when planning lessons and approaching learning problems come from my social media networks. Where I formally  pooh-poohed Twitter and Pinterest, I am now a huge fan. Huge. Obssessive (see yesterday's post). 

This past year has been full of growth and reflection. My experience with calling what I already informally did serves as an important lesson: simply naming a practice, in this case, developing a PLN, can facilitate further growth. Now that I know what I'm actually doing (and wanting!) makes it easier to sustain and nurture these and other forms of professional development. 

Life out of Balance

Yin Yang Koi by Yurayah

Te@chThought poses this question for today's blog challenge: "Do you have other hobbies/interests that you bring into your classroom teaching? Explain."

This question makes me wonder where I am on the spectrum between "fully integrated" and "completely-out-of-balance." By fully integrated, I mean that my professional life and outside lives are seamless. Such integration means my interests and passions inside and outside classroom are mutually constitutive. Think "yin/yang". "Completely-out-of-balance" refers to living a life where teaching has become my whole life, such a big priority that I don't have an "outside life" to either bring into class, or not enough to sustain an identity that isn't directly related to teaching. 

Perhaps that's one of the perks/disadvantages of the profession. i can't listen to a song, watch a movie, or read a book without making some sort connection to a current lesson or a future unit. I can't not look at social media without mulling over how I can leverage what I'm seeing or doing applies to teaching. 

And because of the flexibility I have as a college instructor, I constantly modify and adapt lessons to my own interests, which largely have to do with what I studied in graduate school: minority discourse, American literature, multicultural literature, and social justice. Given my interests and my networks of "informants,"  not a day goes by without me seeing or reading something that I can't bring to the class. Indeed, I believe I have an obligation to keep making the case that the subjects we study in class are directly related to the world around us. So I am constantly sharing what I find in my daily gleanings of news and current events. 

Rereading what I've written, I must admit I currently lean toward the "out of balance" side of the scale. I do like that my "outside life" contributes greatly to my professional life, and vice versa. That's great. At the same time, I see that there's embarrassingly little I do outside of work for myself. And that's dangerous. I can't depend on work to fulfill all my needs. Not to mention the potential damage I do to my relationship with my husband. 

I need to commit to return to  activities and hobbies that give me joy, that meet other needs, needs that may be indirectly beneficial to my career, but not wholly chosen for their utility for work. Exercise was a biggie. Did that a lot last year. Reading science fiction - the "junkier" the better!  And I miss reading comic books, big time. Recommit to finishing Dexter, American Horror Story: Asylum,  and The Walking Dead episodes.Perhaps getting back into yoga. Yeah. There's a lot out there for me to do. I just need to make the commitment. 

Getting Started with Curation

This notion of curating student work is, I'm embarrassed to say, a new one for me. I teach at a community college, schlepping myself from one class to another. So I don't have wall or halls that I can use to post students work. But I am experimenting with curating because i see the value of doing so. The primary way I curate work is digitally. Here is a short list of what I'm using. 

Blogger: This is the third or four year of assigning students to create their own blogs. It's been highly evolutionary, meaning each semester has been quite different. I'm learning on the fly, but it has been highly rewarding to see students creating and publishing their work. Currently, I'm working on figuring out how to get students to publicize their blogs, to build an audience for their work. It's amazing how much harder students work when they know someone - other than me! - might read their work. 

Facebook/Twitter: Last semester, I started using private FB page as a vehicle to share questions and resources. This semester, I've started snapping random, unposed photos of students giving presentations, working in collaborative groups, or some other activity. While I'm not curating the actual work, we are documenting them working together, sharing and recording memories. I'm pleasantly surprised at how simply posting pictures of students invigorates the class. Now students are posting photos, too. We do the same on Twitter, too. Each of my sections has its own hashtag, for instance #bayanswc and #SWCENG115. Some students excel at commentary and "back channel" editorials that capture what's going on in the class. Others are developing a skill for joining these type of digtial conversations. As with Blogger, I'm still at the beginning of my learning curve. But I know enough to be excited about leveraging social media for educational purposes. 

Storify/Google Presentations: I discovered Storify last semester And I'm finally feel confident enough in my own Google Presentation skills to ask students to curate and produce materials that we use for assignments and display in class. I'm encouraged by how "making" gets students more invested in the lessons. I'm providing students authentic opportunities to write for real audiences. And the tools themselves, when I use them with intention, enhance the writing process. 

Reflecting on our Learning

I use a variety of techniques to get students to "think about their own thinking". Most are quick-writes where I ask a pointed question about what students make of a lesson or a unit. Sometimes I'll use exit slips. I lean heavily on weekly take-home journals that students complete over the weekend. I ask questions to compel students to reflect on how what we do in class relates to their “real lives” (as if school isn't real), what they make of the material, and how they experience their own learning. Here are a few sample questions:

After introducing the concept Rhetoric: In what ways does "rhetoric" apply to your everyday life? With any of your other classes? Your intended major? Your intended career? 

After two labs focused on learning Google apps: What are your thoughts and feelings about using Google slides and docs? How comfortable are you using this technology? What benefits do they possibly bring to your writing process? What risks and obstacles do they bring to your learning? Give examples from class, i.e., setting up your G-Drive, sharing slides, starting your Google.doc sharing.

After a particularly tough group-work session: Discuss one moment in class where someone said or did something that helped you understand the material better.  Or, write about a specific moment in class where you helped somebody with the material. What was that like?

After our first "Jigsaw" activity: What are your thoughts and feelings about the Jigsaw Protocol we did today?  How does discussing and sharing answers with your classmates compare with reading alone or listening to a lecture? What are the benefits of using the Jigsaw? What are the risks? What do we lose by doing the jigsaw? How can we make the process more effective?

I ask students to use writing to discover the relevance of the material we cover in class. I want them to consider the ways in which community and inter-dependence can help with learning. I want them to compare and contrast different methods we use in class so they can evaluate for themselves how they learn best.

In all cases, I’m not looking for an accurate or right/wrong of answer. My purpose is to help students develop a habit of introspection, specifically, a practice of reflection that relies on writing. I am, after all, a writing instructor!

Sometimes, I’ll preview the questions prior to assigning them for homework, letting them answer them in pairs or small groups. Other times, I’ll compose the prompts after class, tailoring the question to reflect on a particular moment in class,  and post them on our learning management system.

I’d like to make my questions stronger and a bit more varied. A quick peek at Pinterest, and look at the anchor chart I found for formulating different questions! I’m also looking carefully at reflective questions we are using in this blog challenge (the reason I’m writing this blog!) to see what I can adapt for my classes.  I like the creative ways these questions get me to think deeply about my own practice, my own habits of mind. I've already “hacked” three of the questions to use for my own students’ blog challenges (I stole that idea, too).  Perhaps I’ll feature a few of their blogs in a future post.

A Fine Balance: "Sis Boom Ba!"/"You Shall Not Pass!"

A pair of favorite similes about teachers comes from an article I read many years ago. Unfortunately, I can't remember the title, who wrote it, or where I read it. Mabye it was from a lecture. I probably have gotten the analogy mixed up. But my (false?) memory of the similes remains with me, reminding me of the flexibility effective teachers practice and the contradictory habits of mind we embrace. Here goes: 

A teacher is both a cheerleader and a gatekeeper. As a cheerleader, a good teacher is on the sidelines, encouraging students to give it all they've got. A cheerleader believes in the players, wanting each team member to succeed. So the cheerleader shouts, dances, and chants his support to help players/students stay pumped up, to help them believe in themselves. The players, not the game, is the cheerleader's priority.

A gatekeeper, on the other hand, is more concerned with standards. She protects the "discipline", determining who has mastered the content and skills of the particular field she is entrusted to safeguard. For the gatekeeper, maintaining the integrity of the disciplinary field ranks higher than the does any player's esteem or self-worth. My "field" is English, and I remember how my best teachers held super high standards, as they guarded the portals to the next level. Aren't the dreaded oral exams an intellectual manifestation of a gate? Think of Heimdall fiercely guarding the rainbow portal to Asgard. 

Yet my gate keepers also encouraged me - my own personal pep squad! My best teachers did both. 

Somehow (magically?), an effective teacher toggles back and forth between these often paradoxical roles: sometimes playing the cheerleader, others, the gatekeeper. Often within the space of a single heartbeat! Metaphorically we do the splits, execute complex tumbling runs and human pyramids, and cheer at the top of our lungs to encourage our students. At the same time, we are expected to maintain and enforce agreed upon standards. We must ensure that the students who pass through our classes have learned what they need to succeed at the next level. As gatekeepers, we "love" and protect our fields, just as my favorite professors did.  


The balance isn't a transcendent ratio, a stable fraction, or even some alchemical miracle. Rather, the balance between playing cheerleader and gatekeeper is dynamic, shifting and evolving with (and even within!) every class and for each student.  This half-remembered analogy helps me approach my profession, to be tactical about my technique.

If you remember reading this article, I'd appreciate the  reference. It'll be fun to read it after all these years. I wonder how far the interpretation I remember today veers from the author's original intent and meaning. 

Challenging Issue

Today's blog challenge question is "What do you think is the most challenging issue in education today?" For the first time on this blog challenge, I'm stumped. It's not that I don't think there are any challenges. It's just that I had never taken the time to reflection on those thoughts, much less articulate them. 

To help me figure out what to say,  I looked at some of the other teacher-bloggers' responses to this question. The one that caught my eye was the blog "Mrs. Gibbs Flips Algebra". Her post spoke to me and for me. Her words say so much of what I've felt about teaching and the sort of criticism we face as educators. So I'm going to stand on Mickie Gibbs'  shoulders and quote the passages that struck me. According to her, education faces two linked challenges:  

One is that decisions are being made for and about education by people who really have no idea what it's like to be in a classroom. Administrators and teachers are often asked to implement policies that are out of touch with reality. Being the dedicated professionals they are, they do the best they can to fulfill what is required of them - and often perform miracles in the process.

The second, related side of the challenge (as I see it) is that schools, administrators, and teachers are often judged harshly, also by those who really have no idea what it's like to be in a classroom. Everyone sees him/herself as an expert in education . . .  and therefore able to make sweeping criticisms of those trying their best to do the job they were trained to do.

Well said. Interestingly enough, Gibbs is herself paraphrasing another educator's blog. I know two blog posts doesn't make a trend. Yet it is encouraging to read that other educators - even just two - have similar opinions. And It only took two clicks to find the right image for this post.  These posts - Gibbs, her source, and the meme - validate my own nascent beliefs. Now articulated, I am better equipped to face this particular challenge. Many thanks to Mrs. Gibbs for helping me initiate my reflections on this important question.