Emmaline 's Library tagged principal → View Popular

Filter:
All
Annotated

22 Jan 07

Practical Theory

practicaltheory.org/serendipity - Preview

blog classroom education principal teaching

Blogging vs. Podcasting

I keep a list of topics I want to write about on here. Right now, that list is getting long with several items that really would be hard to do any kind of justice to in under 1500 words. All of the topics are things I love talking about, but I've resisted podcasting about them which gets me back to one of the reasons I prefer to blog.

Writing is actually really hard for me much of the time. Funny for an English major and English teacher, but it's true. Writing can be a really torturous process for me. And that's why I do it. Blogging, in addition to everything else I get from me, forces me to take the time to put my words on paper (well, close to paper anyway) when I'd much rather just talk it out.

I've started questioning that, especially after listening to my interview with Steve Hargadon. His questions got me to articulate a bunch of ideas I've been struggling with putting on paper for weeks now.

Which got me to wondering -- part of my reason for blogging is to keep up the discipline of writing. But does that matter as much as getting ideas out there into the conversation? And if my answer is no, what does that mean for my students?
Instead, we need to create meaningful, relevant curriculum that allows students sufficient opportunities to really step up and take ownership. We need to use the tools that every other aspect of our society and update our schools and our classrooms. But let's also be sure. We can do all of this. We can make our schools inviting, progressive, technology-rich schools, and there will still be kids who refuse to engage or who simply push buttons and press boundaries, even with a curriculum full of new ideas. There is no panacea in education, and some kids will struggle simply because, on a nice spring day, they'd rather be outside too. Or on the internet, or playing games (on the internet). We have to keep working with them to understand their role in their own learning process. We have to make explicit the steps we would take to them to create an engagement classroom and assigments, but then we also have to make sure they are willing to interalize those lessons as well.
5 more annotations...
- We need to do a better job of finding a way in with so many kids. We need to find the spark inside them and then fan that flame so that it can sustain itself. Engagement is not a one time thing, it's a daily struggle -- as the 2 x 4s in my basement will attest -- but if we can find ways -- be it with computer games and cool technologies or if it's through more "old fashioned" ways like after-school activities -- so that more students can experience that engagement, then we will have started on the right path.
- How do we mine that and bring it back to the classroom? How do we find a way to teach kids that finding your own path to engagement and not always relying on others to do it for you is a powerful tool for self-actualization?
- Most things worth doing get hard, and most things worth doing well force us to overcome a gumption trap or two when we would just rather give up. (And yes, I'm borrowing the phrase "gumption trap" from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.)
- But I'm going to also say that we also have to teach gumption. We also have to teach kids how to slog through things even when they aren't fun. And we have to teach kids what it means to see something through, and we have to teach kids that some values are not immediately fun, but are worth it long term. I used to say to my English classes, "Hey, on a warm spring day, I'd rather be outside playing Ultimate frisbee than teaching English, but we all have to be here, so let's find a way to make it meaningful." The flaw in Prensky's article is that there is a difference between recreation and work. It's wonderful when they overlap. It's wonderful when we learn from our recreation. But it's not always the case. And we need to teach kids how to find entry points into ideas that are not, prima facie, of interest to them. We need to find ways to teach students how to keep going, even when the thing they are engaged in gets hard or boring.
- Engaged and Enraged -- Thinking about Marc Prensky's Ideas
  
  Over at Dennis Fermoyle's always entertaining blog, In the Trenches of Public Education, there's a fantastic post and discussion about Marc Prensky's article Engage Me or Enrage Me. Dennis Fermoyle is, well, enraged by Marc Prensky's ideas. Mr. Fermoyle's argument starts like this:
  
  This morning when I got to school, I found that copies of a "motivational" article had been placed in all of the teachers' mailboxes. The name of the article was Engage Me or Enrage Me, and when I read it, I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or vomit. I hope you'll excuse me for putting it so crudely, but the article really was sickening. I talked to another teacher who said he went and banged his head against a locker a few times after he read it. The point of the article is that we need to make school more fun for the students. The implied message was that if kids aren't performing, it's the schools' and teachers' fault because we haven't engaged them.