Tag Archives: education

English Teacher

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As a teacher who understands and champions the benefits of using new media, social networking, or for lack of a better word- technology in the classroom, I think I often lose sight of what it is I am actually teaching. With recruiting season fast approaching, I have found myself immersed in the painstaking task of marketing myself.

While updating my resume, highlighting my innovative skills, or writing cover letters stressing my ability to be adaptive, collaborative, and visionary, I noticed how little I was talking about my love of the subject I teach- Language Arts.

It seems there is very little room in modern job recruitment for simply talking about why one chose to teach the subject of their expertise. Perhaps, I have gone about selling my career all wrong. Perhaps, administrators are not looking to see that their teachers are able to work in dynamic collaborative environments for the purpose of improving student learning. Maybe they just want to read why a certain teacher loves literature or science, or whatever the case may be. Perhaps, the only thing they would like to hear us discuss is how we can transfer our love of Steinbeck or Fitzgerald to students who are, more and more rapidly, becoming disengaged from the written word.

It is conceivable that after all the talk about our philosophies, skills, and technological know how, we as teachers should sit back and reflect upon what it is that we love about the subjects we teach everyday.

There is something indescribable about the feeling of sitting in a comfortable place, highlighter in hand, reading a great book. That feeling of kinship, understanding and bonding that is formed between author and reader is the epitome of social networking. We spend so much time and energy discovering new tools to help connect our students to information and to each other, that we sometimes forget that truly understanding a great piece of literature, having the ability to deconstruct, analyze, and synthesis text, and finally being able to produce a carefully crafted critique of a work can be just as effective of a skill to have as say blogging.

The poster children for how not to teach a class in the new age of technological pedagogy is the old chalk and talk, lecture from the podium, teacher as expert, been teaching Macbeth the same way for twenty years, thinks he or she is a professor, English teacher.

While I have spent much of my career, arguing that this style of top-down, teacher centered teaching is ineffective, lately I have been thinking that maybe simply teaching students how to read effectively is the most important thing we can do as Language Arts teachers. If our job is to teach literature then perhaps we need nothing more that the text. Everything else sometimes seems to be nothing more than a dog-and-pony show designed to keep students entertained, but not actually focused on the work.

I entered teaching because I wanted to help young people understand the world around them, in hopes that they would feel obliged to contribute to its fate. I chose to teach English because I see art in general, and literature in particular, as the greatest tool humankind has produced to help us connect and communicate with each other.

Photo by nozomiiqel

Students may need to use blogs and other web based tools to share what they find, and connect with other students, but ultimately all they need is a good book and an inspirational teacher to guide them through it. Collaboration is great, but reading is often a very solitary act. Connection with a great piece of fiction needs only three things: author, reader, text. Everything else is secondary.

Reading over my resume and various cover letters, I am afraid that perhaps my devotion to technology is perhaps overshadowing my love of Language Arts. I am first and foremost a lover of books. My goal is to arouse this level of worship onto my students. I want students, parents, and administrators to know that I am not an IT teacher. I am a Language Arts teacher who realizes that the new web is a fantastic place for learning. I have chosen to use as many tools as I can to accomplish this task, but I am in no way convinced that technology is the only way.

I am not sure anyone feels this way. It feels like teachers are being forced into these dialectical relationships, where either you are an integrated teacher, or you are a dinosaur. I refuse to buy into this. As I try to show prospective employers why I am the best fit for the English teacher position, perhaps I need to find space in my CV to highlight these factors as well.

What do you think? Is your teaching sometimes overshadowed by the tools you use? Do you find yourself more excited by a new web application then say a Nabokov novel?

Learning 2.008

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I am sitting in an unconference session called “Echo Chamber.” To my right Brian Crosby scratches his hair as Clarence Fischer, who sits to my left, proposes that an echo chamber may sometimes be a good thing, a source of rejuvenation. I can’t seem to articulate what I find disconcerting about the echo chamber. David Warlick occasionally peaks out from behind his laptop and offers some insight. I am a bit star-struck, sitting in this room with just the four of us; a few teachers from ISB stroll in and make me feel more knowledgeable. I want to say that communities need to be occasionally shaken up and infiltrated to keep them up to date. I am stuck in limbo between feeling respect and admiration for these men and then contemplating the fact that if I know that I am just as good of a teacher as any of them, then why do I feel inadequate in their presence. This back and forth plays with my emotions, rendering me unable to get my point across.

Don’t get me wrong; I immensely respect these men along with all of the presenters at Learning 2.008. An hour before I was listening to Ewan McIntosh talk about how tech tools are not transformative. Pedagogy is transformative. I have skimmed Ewan’s blog for months, but not until I saw him speak did I truly understand where he is coming from. Later, I would listen to Alan Levine discuss the Horizon project, and later still take notes on a back channel as Julie Lindsay extolled the virtue of mobile devices.

If Learning 2.008 taught me anything it is that digital networks are nothing more than real human beings trying to figure it all out. I am not sure I can define what “it” is exactly, but that is part of what we are trying to do. We can read each others blogs, talk on Skype, or follow Tweets, but these tools will only paint an abstract picture of who we really are. No matter how easy the new web makes it for people to communicate and build networks, we still need that authentic human interaction. We still need to watch body language, pay attention to tone of voice, and make people laugh to really connect with other human beings. Thank goodness for that.

It was refreshing to see that we are more than blog posts, avatars, and @names. The participants of this conference, by their presence alone proved that we are a group of diverse educators determined to find better ways to learn. No one truly knows the secret answer, because there is no secret answer. We, and I say we with pride because I learned that I too have ideas to offer, are simply trying to find ways to educate children as best we can. Technology is not the answer. It really doesn’t have much to do with technology at all. It has to do with community and the sharing of knowledge and ideas! Technology is simply a way for sharing ideas.  The questions that kept resurfacing at every session I attended was- how can we convince teachers to use technology? I think we need to help teachers learn how they can become members of vibrant communities, so that they can teach their students to expand their social networks as well. This can be completely outside the scope of technology. Jennifer Jones says it best,

“Before we connect globally, we need to connect locally, whether we use technology, or just step outside.  I feel this is critical to change in our systems.”

Technology is just a tool that at this time in our evolution is the most appropriate for creating wide, far-reaching, cooperative communities that foster, promote, and encourage learning. This conference taught me that communities take time to build and that they must be unique for each member. Session after session, time spent out at dinner with twitter friends, and time spent chatting over food with fellow tech enthusiasts, taught me that my network is like a garden, in that it constantly needs to be tended.

When I first started blogging I wanted nothing more than a robust interactive audience. I wanted the largest number of people to read by posts. Like my students, I wanted to watch the little red globs infect my cluster map like a cancer. I constantly examined by statistics to see how many people had read what I wrote. I wished that the “big” names would read my work, realize my genius, and catapult me into the upper echelon of the educational blogosphere. In short, I felt that the quantity of readers would directly reflect the quality of my network. To return to the garden analogy, I wanted to transplant myself into a pre-made heirloom garden of specialized thriving plants. I was reading the names I had been told to read. I was following the people I was told to follow on Twitter. I had been sold a perfect network, and I thought that all I had to do was sit back and let the learning community sweep me away.

The conference taught me that, I can read well-known bloggers, I can even sit with them in a room and discuss the echo-chamber, but to truly feel the power of the network I have to plant my own garden and tend it religiously. It is not enough to simply use twitter to get to know someone, you need to meet them, and laugh over Chinese food, take a walk in Golden Gate park, share a cab. This conference proved that I don’t need to be connected to the network, or a network, but that it is more important that I build my own functioning network of like-minded teachers and students.

“Audiences drive by while communities drop in.”

As Clarence’s quote elucidates, I learned that it is not enough to simply copy and paste the nodes of a generic network and expect it to be fruitful. We must build communities. This takes time. This takes honesty and passion. This takes effort and patience. This takes dedication and hard work.

“You write where people care! Small passionate communities matter.”

I am sure hundreds of blog posts have already been written about what Learning 2.008 meant to the various participants. What do I have to say that is any different? What do I have to say that is relevant or meaningful in anyway? These are questions I often find myself asking myself as I blog. The longer I swim around educational blogs, the more I realize that I am not as intelligent as I like to think. People articulate their thoughts more effectively than me; people write better than me, people comment more insightfully than me. In short, I often feel that the network would be fine without my little musings in this tiny corner of the Internet, which I have etched out for myself.

So why do I bother? I may not have the credentials or the talent, but after talking with teachers from around the world at this conference, I realized that I do have some things to say that others want to hear. This is the beauty of the network. Day in and day out I am threading my own narrative and trying to somehow tie it to others. I am carefully and deliberately tending my garden.  Leaving Tweets about music and politics, never afraid to stand behind my ideas, using a raw and honest voice with an infectious enthusiasm, posting videos to youtube and photos to Flickr, I will keep sowing my seeds in my corner of the Web. Sometimes in a whisper, sometimes through a roar, I will wait patiently hoping that my tribe will find their way to my doorstep and together we will move forward.

Trust and Community

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I first met Lindsea in February of 2008. The details of our meeting can be found here, but I am quit certain Lindsea’s name isn’t new to anybody well versed in the Edublogosphere. She has become one of the Web 2.0 poster children.

Since our first online, meeting Lindsea and I have kept tabs on each other’s comings and goings through Twitter, our blogs, and Skype. We have had Skype chats about music; we exchanged Tweets about film quotes and song lyrics and coming events. In short Lindsea and I have become good friends. I feel I have more in common with her than most of the teachers I deal with on and off the Internet. I am not sure what that says about my maturity level or Lindsea’s for that matter, but I am certain that the future of education relies on crossing our generational boundaries and speaking about our future with young people as often as we can. We need to speak to them, not about them!

One day in May, I think it was, we both realized that we would both be in San Francisco in July. I am not sure about Lindsea, but for me, there was no question that we should meet. I have never officially taught Lindsea in a classroom, but after all the contact we have had online I feel as if I know her as well if not better than any “real-body” students in my charge.

After a few Tweets and phone calls, we arranged to meet at a coffee shop on Chestnut Street on July 11th. A nagging paranoia and fear of what could happen when a grown man meets a teenage girl he has “met” on the internet face-to-face. I could see the headlines now, “Straight A student and star of the Web 2.0 world accuses radical teacher of…”you fill in the blanks. Teenage girls have done stranger things.

How did I know this girl wouldn’t just mess with me and ruin my already precarious career with some bogus allegations? The Internet fear-mongerers work full-time to keep us weary.

I was driving over the golden Gate Gate Bridge on a perfect Northern California day blasting Sun Kil Moon when it hit me- I believe in human beings! I trust them, and because I trust them, I believe in the relationships I build with them, whether in person or online. If I truly have faith in 21st century learning and the new web, then I must trust that these tools, when used responsibly, will help maintain valuable and trustworthy networks. Any mistrust of this philosophy will only diminish the integrity of everything we are doing here. A network becomes a community when you have faith in its members and trust that they have communal goals in mind. You cannot achieve this level of confidence without a creation level of faith.

I will not get into the play-by-play of what we did and how it all felt. I will leave that for a future post or maybe Lindsea can pick-up on that. Instead I will paint a very abstract sketch of how it all went down: the two of us met, drove around the city, watched a drum circle near Hippy Hill in Golden Gate park, went shoe shopping, went to an herb store in The Mission, took in the view at Twin Peaks. We blasted music by local Hawaiian bands and Modest Mouse in the car driving through The Castro. We talked about- Adolescence, sustainability, education, music, Hunter S. Thompson, responsibility, hypocrisy, politics, capitalism, apathy and revolutions. I thought about how- I wish my daughter would grow up to be as wise as the young woman by my side, who hours before was reading Kurt Vonnegut. I wondered whether or not I could ever meet her mother and thank her for raising such an amazing young woman. I relished the thought that I have a group of young people who I am cultivating worldwide to aid in the revolution and how that is all I have ever wanted from teaching. I wondered why I didn’t have teachers like me when I was Lindsea’s age. I probably would have avoided a lot of confusion, but then again maybe it is in that confusion that I learned the most important lessons.

It was a good day.

After our meeting, we promised to write blog posts detailing every facet of our meeting, but as it so often happens, we both let life steer us towards other priorities, other projects. That is until last week, when we re-connected and had a chat on Skype. We recorded the hour-long talk and below you will find my first Podcast. Lindsea is also on a Monday deadline to post her Podcast. I am very curious to see what she found important to highlight and how she will view our talk.

This is my first Podcast, but I am sure it will not be my last. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire process. I hope that after listening to it, when people ask you to explain what you mean when you say 21st century learning, or web 2.0, you can guide them to this post. Tell them that Web 2.0 is about trust and community and collaboration and understanding the spaces between people and finding ways to close those spaces. The jargon may change, Web 2.0 just the latest buzzword, it is nothing more than a tool that help us learn to become more human and organic.

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Connector of Worlds

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Here is a comment I recently left on a post by Ken Caroll called, Is Teaching a Subversive Act?

Good to see you again Ken. I find your posts and subsequent conversations very thought provoking. They linger in my head for days as I try and work out my arguments. Perhaps it is because I think we differ on so many fundamental levels, that I find our correspondences so valuable. But this time around, I do not want to come with an attack or break down your argument point-by-point. I have read all the other comments, but still do not feel the need nor have the energy to address each one individually.

I just want to express my thoughts on the concept of teaching as a subversive act. But before I begin, I think it is important to define the word subversive:

a radical supporter of political or social revolution
intended to overthrow or undermine an established government

Yes and yes. I am guilty on both counts. As an artist, a father, and a member of the human race I am a radical supporter of political or social revolution, because the world I see in front of me is not the place I want my daughter to live. I am well read enough in history to see patterns leading to the state the world is in, and I feel it is important to alter those patterns. I advocate the overthrowing not only of most current governments, but the very fundamental principles on which they are based. I advocate a new world vision, not of radical violent Marxist revolution, but a more synergistic, organic vision. I feel the revolution of which I speak is still be concocted by the very youth we are discussing. I feel it is my job to show my students that another world is possible, that they have the power to shape it.

So where does the subversion come into play? I agree with you that preaching, sermonizing and converting students to any ideology has no place in a classroom. Students should be allowed to weigh ideas for themselves and make informed decisions. The problem, however, is that we are not playing on a level playing field. Much of what young people ingest these days, from their text books, media saturation, advertising, and even moral values and life priorities are dictated by an uber-aggressive money making machine known as the new privatizing global economy.

The winners make the rules, and so they begin to market our children from the day they are born and create a race of apathetic consumers. Is it subversive to teach children to love and share and create outside the box created by a global economic system that teaches them to compete and one that measures success and happiness only through wealth?

As teachers we are told to ignore this elephant in all of our classrooms. I am not advocating teaching students that the current system is all bad, or that I have all the answers. I am simply saying that the system is not perfect, far from it, as it is sold to us. We must consider alternatives. The system itself does not like being criticized. See the tear gas and riot gear in all the anti-globalization demonstrations since Seattle 1999, but don’t students have a right to see alternatives to the history the system prescribes? Where is our history? Why are subversives forced to teaching under the dark of night? Why can’t we parade our heroes in our classrooms along with the Lincolns and Washingtons? Abbie Hoffman, Ken Kesey, Allen Gingsberg, and Hunter S. Thompson have every right to be heard in an objective classroom. Why aren’t Chomsky or Zinn on any major curriculums?

I entered teaching because as a teenager I realized that I couldn’t change the world alone. I needed help. As an adult, I am learning that this help is not coming from adults. So I look to the students in my classroom to look at the world objectively and make choices to help make it better. I am not subversive. I simply show them what I have learned. I share with them my life experience working in the third-world and inner city schools. I am a connector of worlds. I am a painter of pictures. I understand that the term make the world better is ambiguous and can be construed as neo-hippy blather, so let me put it in more simple terms. I believe in people who work to ease suffering. On all levels. In all places. At all times. That is why I teach. It is beyond politics, ideology, or subversion. It is my nature and I cannot teach any other way.

EduPunk is so yesterday

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It is depressing how even “new” ideas labeled as punk, as in EduPunk, can quickly become mundane water cooler banter in this incestuous and quickly homogenizing edublog echo chamber. Like starving piranha we all latch on to the latest term, tool, or idea and beat it to death, till there is nothing left of it but a shell of the idea it once was or could have been. Then we champion the innovative century. Something is askew in my network, and I think it may need a little kick in the ass, that only anything labeled punk can give it.

I sit armed with a play list swarming with Fugazi, a chip on my shoulder, and a need to vent. Like many of you, I saw the term EduPunk for the first time on Twitter yesterday and took the bait. I followed a few links, googled some names, and by the end of the night I had added about ten new people to my network that seem to be more on my level than anyone in my pre-Edupunk network.

I am not here to out punk anyone or defend terms I had no hand in creating. I am also not here to cheerlead a group of people who could articulate their ideas much better than myself. This post is already one of many, probably too many, posts trying to attach meaning to a label. The creators of the term are probably sitting back and laughing at the direction their idea has taken. Some students are already angry that adults without their input are once again hijacking their movement.

But what I hope students like Lindsea will understand is that teaching is a political act. Whether you like it or not, every time you speak with, engage, instruct, interact with young people in an effort to promote their learning you are either consciously or subconsciously steering them toward the status quo or away from it. As our society becomes more and more global, at least for those of us lucky enough to be living on the comfortable side of the digital divide known as the first world, citizens are either becoming aware of their role as consumers in a resources depleting, imperialistic, war-mongering, poor exploiting, global economy or they are waking up to the idea that there are alternatives.

As educators we have a duty to either promote this brave new world, ignore it and stick to our curriculum, or to awaken young people to alternatives to the way things “just” are. With the birth of colonial expansion in Europe, then the industrial revolution, and ending with the rise of global capitalism “defeating” communism, we are constantly being told that since capitalism won the cold war, it is the best and only option. Never mind the constant state of war necessary to maintain it, or the depletion of unrenewable resources, or the unsustainably built into a system that exploits a large percentage of the global population for the benefit and profits of a tiny sub-group of ultra rich. We are constantly told that this state of globalization is the only game in town.

Teaching is a political act. So if we truly want change we must use any means necessary to break free of the chains being imposed on education. Enter EduPunk? Sure why not. Enter anything you can think of that will help us. The terms and labels are secondary to our primary concern, which is rethinking our educational institutions to reflect our revolutionary spirit, for both students and teachers.

Wikipedia tells us that punks sometimes participate in direct action such as protests and boycotts. These acts are committed in an effort to create social change when it is felt that the normal channels for change have been proven ineffective.

Let me repeat that: These acts are committed in an effort to create social change when it is felt that the normal channels for change have been proven ineffective. I am here to say that normal channels for change have been proven ineffective.

I leave you with a few questions:

What actions are you taking to help foster change in your classroom?
Are the normal channels proving difficult to overcome?
What new (call them whatever you want) techniques do you use?
Are you willing to not lead but listen and follow your students into the unknown

Listen and follow your students into the unknown? That is where you may find the meaning of Edupunk!