My faith restored...it worked!

Well, I want to thank the members of this week's #slowchatED for not letting me throw in the towel last night or this morning.  I had resolved at one point yesterday afternoon to realize that I was, once again, charging windmills, and just for the love of all that's holy STOP.  But some of you were eager to hear what happened.  Some of you encouraged me to stay the course.  And do you know what?

It worked.

They came to life.

They changed, and we had to shut the door to keep the toxins out and to keep the blessed, blessed energy in the room.

I started today's class reminding them about their homework.  "You mean how you told us to get a folder?" one child asked.  I turned to my desk and prepared for the worst.  My head, of its own volition, began slowly moving left to right as my back was turned to them as if to deny the reality I faced.  And then another spoke up.  "No. He means how he asked us to tell him how we want to learn...what was it we're learning." And then another, "Persuasive texts...or somethin'."

I turned back.  Some of them had paid attention.

After I acknowledged that my wish was for them to direct our learning, hands started to rise. One child made a rather mundane suggestion that we go to the computer lab and just look at some speeches that I could find for them before hand.  This just didn't feel student-centered enough. I called on a soft-spoken young man who suggested, "Couldn't we just, you know, try to persuade each other of something?" And then two young ladies at a table across the room raised their hands almost simultaneously.  They each wanted to beat the other one to suggest a group debate.  This turned, from another student's suggestion, into breaking the group of twenty-two kids into two groups of five and two groups of six and having one topic for the five-on-five debate and another for the six-on-six debate.  "But wait," one child said, "What is it we're debating?" The skepticism was palpable. He knew I was going to swoop in and steal this from them right about now.

Then a thought struck.  I rummaged for some index cards, sent my intern around the room to hand one to each child, and began explaining that each child needed to write down one controversial topic that we could debate.  After clarifying for these 7th graders that "abortion" was an example of a controversial topic (and, therefore, off the table, thank goodness), they began to write. Then we collected the cards, and I read out the topics. I asked them to try very hard to withhold emotional responses (laughter, snickering, groaning, etc.), as we were in the process of brainstorming and everything should, at this point, be considered.  Here is what they wrote:

• hunting whales
• speeding
• Are girls more mature than boys?
• argue for either the plaintiff or defendant in a mock trial
• dress code policy - specifically, tucking shirts in on campus
• year-round schooling 
• Should marijuana be legal?
• Are people separated into classes? Why are people thought of as lower or middle class? Does our school exist under a class structure based on money or status? (and she went on furthur to explicate this idea class structure in our society)
• why we should or should not have homework (four suggestions)
• gay rights (two suggestions)
• gun control (two suggestions)

And look...you're not even ready for this last one.  I know I wasn't.  And FOUR children suggested this. Of all the controversial topics available to them, in my classroom today, in this environment where I spent fifty minutes not having to tell anyone how to act, to be quiet, to pay attention, or any other disciplinary diatribes, four children suggested...

• SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT

How many of you are savoring the beauty and the irony of that as much as I did?  My God! They got it.  This was better.  This didn't suck!  School CAN BE IMPROVED, and we're experiencing the evidence of it right now.

Tonight I will construct a brief Google poll, and tomorrow, they will get to vote on topics.  We narrowed it down to the four with multiple nominations - homework, gay rights, gun control, and school improvement - and one student insisted we consider the class structure topic, and another wanted the drug debate to be included.  Those six will make the poll, and tomorrow we will narrow the field to two.

The structure of the debates themselves is a little up in the air at the moment. I'm not of a mind to force anyone to argue for a viewpoint with which they don't agree.  We'll see how it all shakes out tomorrow.  I know this, though, right now.  Tonight I will sleep the sleep of a satisfied educator for the first time in a long, long time.  These children refreshed my soul and my being and my optimism more than any Twitter chat or association conference ever has.  They gave me back my sea legs, and I feel grand.

Thank you, all, for your gentle prodding in response to last night's post.  Thank you for #slowchatED. Thank you for reminding me that my kids will only rise as high as I will let them and that when I rip the ceiling off the classroom, they will orbit planets we never knew existed.

I love being a teacher tonight.  Again.

My student engagement dilemma

Most of the Twitter chats in which I participate often seem to become a litany of platitudes decrying the brilliant things strong educators are doing to make their lives and the lives of their students more tolerable trapped as we all are within the mass production mill that American education has become. And that's great. We all walk away from the computer full of wonderful ideas and a sense of camaraderie that only occurs when one finds kindred spirits and remembers that one is not alone before returning to work among the morass of mediocrity that can usually be found poisoning the proverbial water cooler in teachers' lounges across the country. But tonight, I have no successes to share. Tonight, I am left feeling frustrated by the particular machine of which I am presently a part.

You see, yesterday, I decided to ask my students how they would like to see us tackle our upcoming topic - persuasive speech. It was near the end of the period, but I wanted to leave them with the thought in the hope that it would simmer overnight.  Today, I reminded of the assignment to reflect on possible ways that we could tackle the subject over the next week or so.

The kids looked at me like I had a third arm growing out of my forehead.

"You were serious?" one of them asked.

They were incredulous.  They couldn't believe that I was asking them to help me plan our course. And then the familiar fear set in. What does he want us to say? What is the right answer here? Shouldn't he be telling us what to do?  And then the anger. He is still the teacher, right?  Why should we have to do his job for him?

You see, I realized a long time ago that my students do not come to me with any exposure to the process of thinking for themselves.  They arrive at my doorstep having been spoonfed an "education" for more than seven years.  They have outgrown such childish exploits as creativity, exploration, discovery, independence, and faith that their minds are capable of anything valid.  Instead, they trust their brains to collect, know, remember, and at the appropriate time, regurgitate.  The fact that this chain of events is utterly fleeting is of little consequence to them.  At the end of the day, all that really matters to most of them are the following:

• grades - These are short-term constructs that constitute payment for short-term rote memorization and recitation
• attaboys - For the teacher-pleasers, especially, the completely damaging set of compliments - You're so smart! Perfect, honey! That's EXACTLY what I wanted! - These little bits are the very manna and ambrosia that get them through each day
• Standardized Assessment Performance - We've come to a point where mere passing is enough for the majority of kids. They've heard the outcries round the dinner table, but they are loathe to look stupid on the one day of the school year when the returns come in.

None of these trinkets, though, constitute anything to do with any kind of authentic LEARNING. These are the products of our mill, and they are worthless.  These are how we measure our students' progress, and this is how they in turn measure their own value.  When we remove these from the picture and place the learning in their hands, they become shiftless and uneasy, adrift in an unfamiliar sea.

I have come to realize that all of this is part and parcel of the spoon-feeding process.  When the majority of your tasks cross your desk in the form of worksheets, you have a set of clear instructions and a set of right and wrong answers. And if you don't feel like reading the instructions, you can raise your hand and ask the kindly schoolmarm for "clarification" at which point she will gather her spoons, chew up the directions, and dribble the bits into the childrens' beaks for them.

We give our students myriad opportunities to exercise their brains, but little to no opportunity to develop their minds. 

This is the root of the corporations' lament over the last several years.  This, too, is the root of the despair felt by professors in the nation's colleges and universities.  We do not teach them to think.  I want to make them feel empowered, but at times, it feels like giving the car keys to a drunkard.  But then, if I drive him home, I am guilty of the same enabling behaviors that have gotten him so drunk in the first place.

So I've made a decision.

Tomorrow, I will go into class and stand firm. Tomorrow, I will dunk thier heads in a barrel of water until sobriety sets in and they remember the days of their early youth when imagination reigned supreme, discovery was the sole method for learning everything, and they were like little gods in a world that seemed to be their oyster.  Tomorrow, I will concentrate on teaching them, again, to think.