An email from Anthony, a grade 8 (for non-Yanks, that’s 13-14 year-olds) teacher at my school. Anthony is so curious about web 2.0 in education that he enrolled in a Masters in Educational Technology program at some university I’ll spare the embarrassment by leaving unnamed.
This is from an email he just sent me responding to my link-share of NECC’s webcast page. Print it and put it in all your colleagues’ mail boxes at work. It’s funny, sad, and powerful in its own way:
Thanks for the link Clay. I’ve decided to suspend my Master’s work for now so that I can put more attention into the learning and assimilating all of these new tools into my classroom teaching. When considering I was paying $2,000 to be taught how to create slides in PowerPoint and use of Microsoft Excel I said forget it. There is plenty of professional development available online to learn from as well as a host of people who can teach me things and with whom I can have discussions.
Just thought I’d share. Anybody know Master’s Programs (preferably distance) that aren’t stuck in Powerpoint?
And now I have to run, because I have homework for my own for-pay “professional development” course. I just got a B+ for two poetry lesson plans incorporating iLife to engage students in exploring poems. Teacher told me I it would have been a higher grade if I’d included an analytic essay in the assignment, instead of a collaborative film exploring two sonnets.
If I thought it would help, I’d send her a link to the Mabry Middle School video in which a student says, “We learn so much more making films than we do if we just write a paper.”
But like Anthony, I’m just going to do my homework, get my 20th century B+’s for 21st century lesson plans, collect the certificate that labels me competent for $500, and focus on “learning and assimilating these new tools” by doing my authentic homework right here on this blog.
Reader feedback, though it doesn’t give me a nice alphanumeric grade with each comment, still teaches me so much more.
Comments on those poetry lessons, by the way, really are welcome. I ran out of gas at the end of them, and am sure some of you could improve them.
If you want, you can add a grade too.
So I’m curious…
Were you given some sort of rubric prior to pulling together this lesson plan indicating what was expected? (So that you know what constitutes a B+?)
What background knowledge were you expected to have in order to create this lesson? (In other words, were you taught something about constructing a lesson plan?)
What feedback were you given and did that feedback help you to understand how you could improve the lesson plan/your work?
Hi D,
Rubric? No. (I’ll be generous on this one and say I have to be on top of my game to have a rubric for every assignment, though. Ideas to improve me here?)
Background knowledge? Read the AP manual about the AP Lit expectations.
Feedback? I needed to assign a written response: “a written response, a tough verbal grappling with the poem (maybe you could do this in the form of their writing a critical analysis of their films?) is essential. Sometimes the tough written analysis is as empowering as the earlier activities….”
The irony is, the lesson has students first draw the poem, then write about what they discovered by drawing on a forum, then write responses to two others on the forum who found different things, then film video-conferences where they discuss the whole exploration in groups and any major differences of interpretation.
Reading, drawing, writing, talking, writing some more. But because it’s a forum, and informal, this doesn’t seem to qualify as a “tough verbal grappling.”
I think the problem with many English teachers is that they forget that they like writing literary analysis essays, but that students generally don’t.
So teacher and I just have different pedagogical values. I don’t know who’s right, or if that’s even the right question. I just know I don’t want to teach the “hidden curriculum” that poetry is made for writing formal essays. That’s blasphemy, in my book.
D, your last question: Did my “teacher’s” feedback help? I know this sounds arrogant, but it didn’t. I wrote her back with a copy/paste of all the elements of the lessons that include “tough verbal grappling” in modes different than the sit-alone essay for teacher.
And I pointed out that in my lesson plan itself, I stated that essays would come later, after this attempt to instill simple (but sophisticated) aesthetic enjoyment of poetry.
Clay,
Perhaps your instructor did not get a feel for the amount and quality of critical thinking that your lesson plan demanded. Could you have the students do a short series of videos (rather than one), showing how their understanding deepens as they brainstorm and further explore the text? Maybe you could have them read the poem “cold” then re-read the same poem again after completing the assignments, accompanied by a discussion of why and how their interpretation changed.
Just a note from my past: when I was in college, we had a group that met to discuss song lyrics (in the golden age of protest). For some kids, music is their real link to poetry and a great jumping off point for conversations about imagery, rhythm, etc.
It’s unfortunate that a technology literate person like you has to justify using modern information fluency tools to someone – a graduate-level teacher – who should be requiring the inclusion of such tools!
Hi D,
Strangely enough, I did sequence the film in stages along the scaffold – videoconferences in small groups captured at the end of each stage – to capture that progression.
I’d love it if you’d go to the lesson and give it a look. Imagine other classrooms filming their own responses along the way, uploading them to Jumpcut or whatever, and making “international readers” mashups from students in different countries or locales….
Two more things, Diane: I hear you on lyrics! And, to be fair to the workshop teacher, she does a good job with her traditional assignments. I’m enjoying the class, warts and all. But it is a shame that she’s guarded toward the new possibilities (which I gather from the tenor of her general reactions to anything 2.0).
One MORE thing
The interesting thing about all of this is how silly a grade seems period. Granted, I’m 45, so it’s especially absurd in my context. But still, do students feel the same thing when they get my random numbers, even if I do give feedback?
Hi Clay,
I went through the onine masters in ed tech program at Pepperdine and wrote a bit about it here.
You can also get a feel for it from one of the founders of that program, Dr. Gary Stager if you look through his website.
There was no teaching powerpoint, I can assure you!
You need to get a copy of “Improving Student Achievement One Teacher at a Time” by Jane E. Pollock and if you really want to read about grading check out the most recent book by Robert Marzano “Classroom Assessment and Grading That Work.” I’m thinking I read someplace about the effects of grades alone on improving achievement. As an adult, yes, those grades really have no impact on our lives. I remember my youngest daughter coming home from school one day with a 93 on an essay she’d written. The only comment on the page had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the paper. When she asked the teacher the next day how he had decided that the paper was a 93 he had no justification to offer. I’m thinking it might have just been his favorite number for the day or something.
She knew right then and there what to expect from that teacher and knew that if she just played along that she was going to do just fine in that class. No real learning going on there huh?
Thanks for that, Sylvia, and for those, Diane.
Thanks Sylvia for your suggestion of Pepperdine University. If anyone else has any additional suggestions of good graduate colleges to attend for the purpose of integrating technology in the classroom, could you please post them?