Phoenix, Blogging: Writing Beyond School

[Note on photo: I like the serendipity behind finding this photo by cobalt123 on Flickr. I found it tagged "Phoenix," because a) our school mascot is a phoenix, b) this conversation about blogging (below) marks a moment of "wings from the ashes"--at least potentially--for my student bloggers, and c) the photo looked, in thumbnail, like a low-angle shot of a flower blooming in a schoolyard, with the school-building far in the background. That commonest thing, that trivial fleck of life and near-weed in the schoolyard, opening itself to the light. It's a moment as mundane as they come, as unremarkable as our own daily wakening: eyes open, itches scratched, toothbrush, underwear, and off to the rest.

Unless it's noticed, anyway--really noticed. And seen, if we had but time, energy, and mental space, for the miracle it is. (I've always loved the the Taoist saying--ChuangTse, I think--that the greatest miracle of all "is that we are sitting here, talking.")

Anyway. When I clicked on the photo and viewed the full-sized photo, the surprise was more welcome and pregnant still.

It wasn't a flower at all: it was a palm tree, with a brilliant, cottony cloud "blooming" above and beyond it, backlit by dazzling azure; and the building? Not a school at all, but a hospital (though they look suggestively identical, don't they?).

And that "Phoenix" Flickr tag: why?

The hospital is in Phoenix, Arizona.

And what I like most: The photographer, "cobalt123," writes that this, his (her?) "best photo ever," was shot as he was leaving that sick-house for recovery time at home. And something, it felt to me, about his essence, at that point in his life (and I hope the sickness wasn't serious), compelled him to see, to notice, to stop the world. And to make time to compose that photo. The world called to Cobalt--like it calls to all of us--and Cobalt was awake enough, at that moment, to hear it.

Grass, tree, cloud, sky, hospital: all woven and fused, from both sides of the camera, by this conscious, alert, still healthy, awake-to-the-world Cobalt123. I'm sorry, but there is something that is to me mystical, in the most naturalistic way, about that moment.

I don't know Cobalt123, but I like him (her?). He just became a model to me, an emblem, even, of the very Phoenix, rising from the ashes of the classroom and flying "beyond school" and into real, authentic wonder, that I wanted a more literal Flickr image of. Between our young, "I don't have any ideas" students and Cobalt123 lies the very path to wonder I hope student blog-writing will take.

Imagine: Math, science, history, literature, art, music, sport, student: all woven and fused on a years-long path of wondering aloud by students, freed to take their own, written "snaphots," across years of blogging--on one space, one text, unbroken by departments, unviolated by "assignments."

(Now if we could just find a prettier verb and noun than this silly "blogging" and "blog." Because this wonder certainly deserves a better name.]

Barbara and Linzel (Linzel and I worked together in the past, and his lunchtime conversations were always, no exaggeration, highlights of my day. I miss him.) replied to the “Silver Bullet” post below with typically nutritious insights. So I’m going to foreground them, and my reply, here.

It’s Sunday. I spent about three hours this morning having a conversation with seven 15-17 year-olds on Skype, and another guy in his late 20s. We had a great talk about blogging, writing, school, and life. They happen, also, to be “students,” as the other adult and I also happen to be “teachers.”

Strangely, nine people of varying ages talking on laptops from the comfort of their own home–and schedules: no bells to decapitate thinking here–had a conversation that put every “schooly” “Socratic Seminar” I’ve ever seen to shame. Why? We were beyond school. We were people talking about how to make writing and learning as interesting as they could be, but for school.

In the higher sense, thanks to Skype (so strange), it was simply (but quietly) awesome. It put me in the frame of mind and voice I’m still afloat in now. I was in that afterglow when writing the reply below. Thanks, Barbara, Linzel, Chris, Blake, Eddie, Lindsay, Lynn, Kyong-Min. Thanks Jeff, Bing, Pat. Thanks everybody. It’s a good Sunday to be alive.

Anyway. Here it is–more conversation on saving blogging from teaching:

Barbara said…

This is where we start exploring pedagogy. I like the way you have thought this through and with a plan in place you have a chance to really capture the impact of your practice. I may go a different route but your model think aloud and think through will help me put a plan in place too. It will be interesting to watch this all develop and to explore the approaches adopted by each community.
The one thing that I believe is essential for most situations will be – One blog per student. We currently have one blog per student and one per class because we also use blogs for class scribes.

March 11, 2007 7:43 AM

linzel said…

I really like most of the guidelines. Its important to restrain the teachers from ‘killing’ the enjoyment. Although I do not use blogs personally [I'm a wiki guy - I've never been good at periodic journal writing - see scientist.wetpaint.com], I think the aspect of English only is a tad limiting. Surely there is a way to allow integration of science topics isn’t there? [or any other subject]. Perhaps special occasions may warrant blog entires about science issues that may be ‘graded’ on two sets of criteria – a science ‘ciorrectness’ scale and a ‘grammar’ scale? like many of us I’m thinking out loud.
??

Cheers

March 11, 2007 4:04 PM

Clay Burell said…

Barbara–

Please do tell about the “different route” you tease us with, you vamp (I’m a “good idea” vampire.)

Linzel–
I didn’t touch on this enough in my sketch on this post when I said only this:

it’s a four-year “writing workshop.” It encourages student construction of their own interdisciplinary meanings, the return of the parts to a student-synthesized whole.

So the idea, stated more fully, is for students to be assessed for how they re-constitute in their blogging the meaning of the whole world we so depressingly dismember in our schools. They write more from wonder and meaning-construction–the “What’s it all about, Alfie”–than from rehearsing the “correctness” of content.

I see your point about excluding all but English teachers. That’s not the idea, anyway, exactly. The idea is more for a sort of exploratory writing mentor to “assess” in its beautiful, classic, “sitting with” sense, the directions students independently take in the world of holistic, interdisciplinary “reading the world of self, of ideas, of connections”–coaches on the levels of finding and pursuing self-compelling questions, and writing about them effectively.

If those “exploratory writing mentors” are science teachers instead of English teachers, that’s fine indeed. Perhaps they should be. (The bugabear of which “class grade” this work applies to points to English, though, doesn’t it? grrrr…ading s&@)ks sometimes, doesn’t it?)

And there’s no reason all teachers couldn’t read whatever and whenever students write about their particular discipline. But really, to me, this is not about reading and assessing for correctness of disciplinary content as much as it is, again, mentoring a writerly comfort with testing ideas, questions, impulses, epiphanies.

The poet Keats famously got his “history” wrong when he wrote about “Cortes, / Silent, upon a peak in Darien” in “On First Reading Chapman’s Homer.”

But the poem itself is a wonder and timeless, despite the fact that Keats would have been docked a few points on his history test for saying “Cortes” instead of…gee, “Pizarro,” is it? Or some other inert name?

Back to your concern about exclusion of all content areas, though, I’ll repeat: students will be guided toward re-weaving the fabric of learning we’ve all unraveled into separate content threads. Galileo, astronomy, poetry, and the student in the center of it all, ideally writing for pleasure and discovery more than “demonstration of correct learning”–really, to be frank, learning to become a bit philosophical and alive to the miracle this all is, and show that coming-to-life in four years of writing towards it–that’s what we’re looking at.

The grammar, correctness, and assessment for more academic things we can still use traditional assessment for. Blogging is different.

This whole conversation started with a “Teacher Think-Aloud.” Our goal is for the learners to go through four sustained years of a very similar “wondering aloud”–and “wonder” is a wonderfully polyvalent word.

Am I making sense?

Actually, Chris Watson and three of his Hawaiian learners skyped with some of my own learners for about 3 hours this Sunday morning (in shifts), and we had this conversation. It’s like the young ones had never considered that the topics of the classroom could be worth wondering about. They seemed to see that, looked in a non-”schooly” way, they are very much so.

And this is the pilot class of ninth graders that will begin this 3.5 year blogging journey at our school.

Thanks so much, both, for your input.

I’ll edit and podcast the student voices as soon as I can.

C.

March 11, 2007 4:51 PM

1. On Classroom Blogging 3: Sucking It Dry: Teachers as Vampires
2. "Teachers as Blogging Vampires" and "Blogging as Conversation" Gone a Bit Surreal
3. Teacher Think-aloud on Student Blogging (a Fresh Start)
4. The "Blogging as Conversation" Conversation

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