In my last post about blogs in the classroom (January 27, 2008), I mentioned that one obstacle I've encountered in using blogs in the classroom is how to get our blogs to be something more than just a homework assignment. Writing in a way that is inviting to a broader audience (people outside of our class/school, non-students, etc.) has proven to be difficult to overcome, but I've slowly made headway toward getting students to do this more effectively.
First, I showed examples of posts from last year's students. Then I gave examples of "professional" bloggers' work. Then I showed my OWN blog. While each of these got us a little bit closer, I still had a number of students whose writing sounded a lot like "Today in Spencer's class I worked on my project." I didn't seem to be getting through to them that, if I didn't know them personally or know about their school work, I would have no idea who this Spencer guy is or what the heck their project is about. This kind of writing automatically precludes a readership outside that immediate context.
What finally worked best was just to let them start writing (seems obvious, but I didn't get it at first). After about a week of posts, I was able to pinpoint who understood our new objectives and who still struggled. Sharing the work of those who "got it" with the rest of the class was really exciting because I finally saw some light bulbs turning on in their heads. These trailblazing posts were the model around which the rest of us could shape our work.
Here are some examples of the students' blogs:
Friday, February 22, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
White Privilege
This week I re-read Peggy McIntosh’s article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” I had read it a few times before, and the point that always stands out to me is the line that reads, “Whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal….” I occasionally realize that I have this exact attitude when I recognize that “white” is not really a part of how I identify myself. There is nothing inherently valuable (I seem to have learned) in my race, so I don’t tend to count it among the things that make me proud of who I am. And yet, this is so because I inadvertently see myself as the default, the norm, the “average” as McIntosh says. This was put into stark contrast by my experience in grad school class last week when a colleague – the only person of color in the room – was the only one to include race in her answer to a warm-up icebreaker that asked, “Who are you?”
I say that I see myself as the default. In fact, McIntosh suggests that the reason I can see myself that way is because my position of power in society allows me to have that perception. If I wanted, I could enumerate the ways in which my profile represents not the default, but rather the top of the power totem pole. My racial identity would be at the top of that list, and here's a partial list of others:
I want to stop here to note that I originally intended this to be a list of the ways in which my profile does, in fact, represent the type which is perceived as normative and average in the us/them dynamic of which McIntosh speaks. It wasn’t until I had written about half of the list that I realized I was actually making a list of the social advantages of my power position. (I added the second sentence in the paragraph above once I had made that realization.)
At the CES Small Schools conference (see my post about the 2008 Winter Meeting) last month, I listened to Camilla Greene talk about the stages that many white, privileged educators must go through in order to become effective advocates for change in school systems. The first step, obviously, is awareness. One of the next steps, though, is often guilt and shame. I admit that I'm still (in many ways) working through this stage, but I can see the progress I've made and the ways in which I am starting to envision my position of privilege as a powerful tool for enacting the change I hope to see. As Dr. Anthony Clark (Deputy Superintendent for Instruction, Innovation and Social Justice for the San Francisco Unified School District; also an affluent, white male) said, he encounters colleagues of color who often tell him that they've been saying for ten years the same things that he says, but when he says them, people listen.
References:
McIntosh, P. (1988). White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Wellesley: Wellesley College Center for Research on Women.
I say that I see myself as the default. In fact, McIntosh suggests that the reason I can see myself that way is because my position of power in society allows me to have that perception. If I wanted, I could enumerate the ways in which my profile represents not the default, but rather the top of the power totem pole. My racial identity would be at the top of that list, and here's a partial list of others:
- I’ve never thought I was disadvantaged or missing out on anything because of my gender.
- Financially, I’ve never wanted for anything substantial (even now as an adult).
- It is legal for me to marry the person I love in any state. (See article on "Straight Privilege" for similar points along these lines.)
- I can travel almost anywhere in the world and be fairly confident that I can find people who speak English – my first (and only) language.
- I am not the first in my family to go to college.
- I am not the first in my family born in the U.S.
- My doctor says I’m physically and mentally fit. I have health insurance that pays for her telling me that.
- I can walk into most affluent neighborhoods and not feel out of place. (This one is the product of many of the above points combined.)
- I get most of my religious holidays off without having to request them.
I want to stop here to note that I originally intended this to be a list of the ways in which my profile does, in fact, represent the type which is perceived as normative and average in the us/them dynamic of which McIntosh speaks. It wasn’t until I had written about half of the list that I realized I was actually making a list of the social advantages of my power position. (I added the second sentence in the paragraph above once I had made that realization.)
At the CES Small Schools conference (see my post about the 2008 Winter Meeting) last month, I listened to Camilla Greene talk about the stages that many white, privileged educators must go through in order to become effective advocates for change in school systems. The first step, obviously, is awareness. One of the next steps, though, is often guilt and shame. I admit that I'm still (in many ways) working through this stage, but I can see the progress I've made and the ways in which I am starting to envision my position of privilege as a powerful tool for enacting the change I hope to see. As Dr. Anthony Clark (Deputy Superintendent for Instruction, Innovation and Social Justice for the San Francisco Unified School District; also an affluent, white male) said, he encounters colleagues of color who often tell him that they've been saying for ten years the same things that he says, but when he says them, people listen.
References:
McIntosh, P. (1988). White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Wellesley: Wellesley College Center for Research on Women.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Access and Engagement
In her book Access and Engagement (2000), Aida Walqui describes the myriad factors that contribute to the success (or lack thereof) of immigrant students in schools. When reading her work, I found myself feeling pretty helpless as she described the various factors that impede their success – family support, immigration status, previous academic achievement. These enormous factors are more or less entirely out of the hands of teachers, so it leaves me feeling like we are attempting a hopeless task in some ways.
On the other hand, she does mention a few things that contribute to student success on the part of the school and the teacher, such as support in second language acquisition, social challenges, and in some ways educational continuity. She mentions programs such as Project New Beginnings (a "newcomer program for newly-arrived adolescents"), which seems to use many strategies that can be successful, but in some ways these programs may also stigmatize the immigrant students within the greater social context. It’s this stigmatization that we should avoid as much as possible to help what she calls the “enduring” and “situated” selves coexist in a healthy way.
One thing that stood out to me in her book was the idea of “noninterventionist” parental support (passive means of supporting academic success, such as providing a home environment conducive to learning, as opposed to active support in the form of phone calls to teachers and visits to the school). I don’t think I had ever considered this kind of support as a contributor to student success, because I just assumed that students who do well without the apparent involvement of the parents were able to do so because of inherent motivation or greater understanding of school expectations. However, I do appreciate the implication of this idea, as my home growing up was certainly a place conducive to being academic and productive, whereas certain friends’ homes lacked that atmosphere and were consequently poor places to study.
This ties back to Kozol (see my post about his book Savage Inequalities) in that, just as homes can have that atmosphere, certain schools can be more conducive to being academic than others. The “75% equal” schools he describes (pp. 175-180), with differences in teacher pay, books, facilities, and resources, are less likely to be able to achieve the desired atmosphere than other schools and are, therefore, less likely to allow students to be successful.
Kozol leads me to wonder about how High Tech High plays a role in this system. So far we have been able to keep our schools small enough to provide mostly individualized attention to students who need additional support, and we certainly foster an atmosphere of studiousness and professionalism that will help channel our students toward being “governors” rather than “governed.” However, as a school of choice I wonder how many students who have not yet been taught how to gain access to power will be likely to apply in the first place. If none of those disempowered students are being served by our schools, then we are only sifting out the ones who have learned how to “play the game” and separating them from their peers who haven’t (instead of using the former to uplift the latter, as I think we hope to do).
I hear this criticism from friends of mine who work in other schools in San Diego - that the existence of our schools makes the job they do harder. The only vaguely satisfying response I’ve gotten to the accusation that HTH schools only “skim off the top” and lower the mean for neighborhood schools is that it’s more a question of long-term vision than immediate results. If what we do works, eventually school districts and legislators and communities will see that it works and understand how to implement some of what we do to make the whole system a little bit better. In the meantime, though, it will likely get worse.
An obstacle getting in the way of that process of uplifting all schools, though, is that, because we are successful, we attract students and families that already have access to power and influence and successful schools. It’s the same concern as the KIPP schools mentioned in Tough’s article (see my post on the "Culture of Power") – if students who don’t need us are attracted to come here, it leaves less room for the ones who really do (and who are likely to be the first ones muscled out by power and influence).
Now I feel like I’ve talked myself in a circle and I’m again feeling a bit hopeless. I really believe that what we do works, but at times I wonder who it really works for. And as our student population continues to diversify, it seems like we’re losing our sense of how to keep doing what we do (as evidenced by growing numbers of students in summer school – the bulk of whom are minorities – as well as the growing number of students being held back, being put on academic contracts, etc.). The fact that the ethnic composition of students on IEP’s seems to reflect the power dynamic only reinforces some of my skepticism.
References:
Walqui, A. (2000). Access and Engagement, (4-22). McHenry: Delta Publishing Company.
Kozol, J. (1991). Savage Inequalities. New York: Crown Publishers.
On the other hand, she does mention a few things that contribute to student success on the part of the school and the teacher, such as support in second language acquisition, social challenges, and in some ways educational continuity. She mentions programs such as Project New Beginnings (a "newcomer program for newly-arrived adolescents"), which seems to use many strategies that can be successful, but in some ways these programs may also stigmatize the immigrant students within the greater social context. It’s this stigmatization that we should avoid as much as possible to help what she calls the “enduring” and “situated” selves coexist in a healthy way.
One thing that stood out to me in her book was the idea of “noninterventionist” parental support (passive means of supporting academic success, such as providing a home environment conducive to learning, as opposed to active support in the form of phone calls to teachers and visits to the school). I don’t think I had ever considered this kind of support as a contributor to student success, because I just assumed that students who do well without the apparent involvement of the parents were able to do so because of inherent motivation or greater understanding of school expectations. However, I do appreciate the implication of this idea, as my home growing up was certainly a place conducive to being academic and productive, whereas certain friends’ homes lacked that atmosphere and were consequently poor places to study.
This ties back to Kozol (see my post about his book Savage Inequalities) in that, just as homes can have that atmosphere, certain schools can be more conducive to being academic than others. The “75% equal” schools he describes (pp. 175-180), with differences in teacher pay, books, facilities, and resources, are less likely to be able to achieve the desired atmosphere than other schools and are, therefore, less likely to allow students to be successful.
Kozol leads me to wonder about how High Tech High plays a role in this system. So far we have been able to keep our schools small enough to provide mostly individualized attention to students who need additional support, and we certainly foster an atmosphere of studiousness and professionalism that will help channel our students toward being “governors” rather than “governed.” However, as a school of choice I wonder how many students who have not yet been taught how to gain access to power will be likely to apply in the first place. If none of those disempowered students are being served by our schools, then we are only sifting out the ones who have learned how to “play the game” and separating them from their peers who haven’t (instead of using the former to uplift the latter, as I think we hope to do).
I hear this criticism from friends of mine who work in other schools in San Diego - that the existence of our schools makes the job they do harder. The only vaguely satisfying response I’ve gotten to the accusation that HTH schools only “skim off the top” and lower the mean for neighborhood schools is that it’s more a question of long-term vision than immediate results. If what we do works, eventually school districts and legislators and communities will see that it works and understand how to implement some of what we do to make the whole system a little bit better. In the meantime, though, it will likely get worse.
An obstacle getting in the way of that process of uplifting all schools, though, is that, because we are successful, we attract students and families that already have access to power and influence and successful schools. It’s the same concern as the KIPP schools mentioned in Tough’s article (see my post on the "Culture of Power") – if students who don’t need us are attracted to come here, it leaves less room for the ones who really do (and who are likely to be the first ones muscled out by power and influence).
Now I feel like I’ve talked myself in a circle and I’m again feeling a bit hopeless. I really believe that what we do works, but at times I wonder who it really works for. And as our student population continues to diversify, it seems like we’re losing our sense of how to keep doing what we do (as evidenced by growing numbers of students in summer school – the bulk of whom are minorities – as well as the growing number of students being held back, being put on academic contracts, etc.). The fact that the ethnic composition of students on IEP’s seems to reflect the power dynamic only reinforces some of my skepticism.
References:
Walqui, A. (2000). Access and Engagement, (4-22). McHenry: Delta Publishing Company.
Kozol, J. (1991). Savage Inequalities. New York: Crown Publishers.
Savage Inequalities
While it's on my mind, I wanted to share a bit from a book sitting on my shelf right now. In Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities (1991), he aimed to expose the very separate and very unequal state of schools in America that, with the support of the courts' gradual degredation of Brown v. Board, perseveres still today. The following passage stood out to me:
“The parents or the kids in Rye or Riverdale [two notably affluent communities in New York]…may well tell themselves that Mississippi is a distant place and that they have work enough to do to face inequities in New York City. But, in reality, the plight of children in the South Bronx of New York is almost as far from them as that of children in the farthest reaches of the South.
All of these children say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. Whether in the New York suburbs, Mississippi, or the South Bronx, they salute the same flag. They place their hands across their hearts and join their voices in a tribute to ‘one nation indivisible’ which promises liberty and justice to all people. What is the danger that the people in a town like Rye would face if they resolved to make this statement true? How much would it really harm their children to compete in a fair race?”
A colleague of mine recently pointed out his frustration with the fact that Kozol has been writing books like this for years without ever attempting to offer solutions to any of the problems he exposes. But maybe some of us need only to be reporters - to shine the klieg light on the truth - so the dissemination of the knowledge we report can inspire others to action. (Which reminds me, thanks to my good friend Ephraim for lending me this book.)
References:
Kozol, J. (1991). Savage Inequalities. New York: Crown Publishers.
“The parents or the kids in Rye or Riverdale [two notably affluent communities in New York]…may well tell themselves that Mississippi is a distant place and that they have work enough to do to face inequities in New York City. But, in reality, the plight of children in the South Bronx of New York is almost as far from them as that of children in the farthest reaches of the South.
All of these children say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. Whether in the New York suburbs, Mississippi, or the South Bronx, they salute the same flag. They place their hands across their hearts and join their voices in a tribute to ‘one nation indivisible’ which promises liberty and justice to all people. What is the danger that the people in a town like Rye would face if they resolved to make this statement true? How much would it really harm their children to compete in a fair race?”
A colleague of mine recently pointed out his frustration with the fact that Kozol has been writing books like this for years without ever attempting to offer solutions to any of the problems he exposes. But maybe some of us need only to be reporters - to shine the klieg light on the truth - so the dissemination of the knowledge we report can inspire others to action. (Which reminds me, thanks to my good friend Ephraim for lending me this book.)
References:
Kozol, J. (1991). Savage Inequalities. New York: Crown Publishers.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The Culture of Power
I recently read an excerpt from Lisa Delpit's book Other People's Children (1995) in which she talks about what she calls the "Culture of Power." This is, essentially, the culturally inherited values/norms/expectations that allow children of the dominant culture to be more successful in school than children of marginalized cultures. She says that the former receive constant implicit reinforcement that allows them such a greater level of success, whereas the latter need to be explicitly taught the "rules" of power in order to be allowed access to them.
Reading her work led me to think a lot about how this is at play in my practice at High Tech High. One way in which the culture of power is apparent in the classrooms of HTH is through the difference in the performance of “village” students (students from within the High Tech schools prior to high school) versus students who came recently from other schools. The class of students I currently have includes a number of students who were in the inaugural 6th grade class at High Tech Middle five years ago, and the degree of socialization into the “High Tech High Way” that they exhibit is pretty extreme. To observe the difference between those students and the students who were new to the village last year is pretty substantial. As some of my colleagues put it, the former have “drunk the Kool-Aid” – they understand projects better, they work more cooperatively in groups, they are able to budget their time more effectively, they verbally assert their ideas and opinions with greater ease, and they demonstrate other similar academic skills that make them more successful than the students who don’t yet have those skills.
These are all skills and strategies that we explicitly teach to students, particularly in 6th and 9th grade classes, through benchmarks and scaffolding. We model how to communicate and cooperate in groups; we set intermediate deadlines to help students understand the pacing of a long-term project; and we practice discussion skills through Socratic seminars, mock trials and debates. This kind of explicit instruction in behaviors that support academic success is similar to the kind of “rules” which Delpit enumerates and which schools such as KIPP provide to their students (see Paul Tough's "What It Takes to Make a Student," for a further discussion of the KIPP schools). As an aside, KIPP's "SLANT" approach feels so incredibly prescriptive that I can’t imagine being that kind of teacher, but I understand why some students might really benefit from it.
In spite of our complex socialization process, somewhere along the line some HTH students do not develop these skills to the same degree as others. As I think of the students in my own experience who are less successful at applying these skills, the faces that come to mind belong mostly to working class students and students with IEP’s. The latter may stem from the additional challenges that some students with learning disabilities face when it comes to organization, focus, and articulation of ideas. One thing I know I often struggle with is how to support those students so that they may be better able to enact the same strategies as their more successful peers.
The question of why working class students struggle with these skills perhaps comes from a difference in communication strategies employed by students of different socioeconomic backgrounds. As I perceive it (from my limited experience), more affluent students are often taught from a young age that speaking up, disagreeing with adults, and having opinions are behaviors that are rewarded – all of which are skills I know I personally value in my students. Meanwhile, many students of working class backgrounds are taught that respect for one’s elders and waiting one’s turn to speak are very important values. Those students – at least from what I see in my own classes – will usually answer when asked a question, but won’t tend to volunteer information or advocate for themselves when they are confused or need help.
In Tough’s article he references statistics to back up these observations, although I suspect that this is the kind of subject where I could easily find data that tells me the exact opposite is true. But regardless of the numbers, I still have a lot of learning to do in order to better support all my students in their acquisition of the kinds of skills and "rules" that will make them more successful later in life.
References:
Delpit, L. (1995). Other People’s Children, (pp. 21-26). New York: The New Press.
Tough, P. (2006, November 26). What It Takes to Make a Student. New York Times Magazine.
Reading her work led me to think a lot about how this is at play in my practice at High Tech High. One way in which the culture of power is apparent in the classrooms of HTH is through the difference in the performance of “village” students (students from within the High Tech schools prior to high school) versus students who came recently from other schools. The class of students I currently have includes a number of students who were in the inaugural 6th grade class at High Tech Middle five years ago, and the degree of socialization into the “High Tech High Way” that they exhibit is pretty extreme. To observe the difference between those students and the students who were new to the village last year is pretty substantial. As some of my colleagues put it, the former have “drunk the Kool-Aid” – they understand projects better, they work more cooperatively in groups, they are able to budget their time more effectively, they verbally assert their ideas and opinions with greater ease, and they demonstrate other similar academic skills that make them more successful than the students who don’t yet have those skills.
These are all skills and strategies that we explicitly teach to students, particularly in 6th and 9th grade classes, through benchmarks and scaffolding. We model how to communicate and cooperate in groups; we set intermediate deadlines to help students understand the pacing of a long-term project; and we practice discussion skills through Socratic seminars, mock trials and debates. This kind of explicit instruction in behaviors that support academic success is similar to the kind of “rules” which Delpit enumerates and which schools such as KIPP provide to their students (see Paul Tough's "What It Takes to Make a Student," for a further discussion of the KIPP schools). As an aside, KIPP's "SLANT" approach feels so incredibly prescriptive that I can’t imagine being that kind of teacher, but I understand why some students might really benefit from it.
In spite of our complex socialization process, somewhere along the line some HTH students do not develop these skills to the same degree as others. As I think of the students in my own experience who are less successful at applying these skills, the faces that come to mind belong mostly to working class students and students with IEP’s. The latter may stem from the additional challenges that some students with learning disabilities face when it comes to organization, focus, and articulation of ideas. One thing I know I often struggle with is how to support those students so that they may be better able to enact the same strategies as their more successful peers.
The question of why working class students struggle with these skills perhaps comes from a difference in communication strategies employed by students of different socioeconomic backgrounds. As I perceive it (from my limited experience), more affluent students are often taught from a young age that speaking up, disagreeing with adults, and having opinions are behaviors that are rewarded – all of which are skills I know I personally value in my students. Meanwhile, many students of working class backgrounds are taught that respect for one’s elders and waiting one’s turn to speak are very important values. Those students – at least from what I see in my own classes – will usually answer when asked a question, but won’t tend to volunteer information or advocate for themselves when they are confused or need help.
In Tough’s article he references statistics to back up these observations, although I suspect that this is the kind of subject where I could easily find data that tells me the exact opposite is true. But regardless of the numbers, I still have a lot of learning to do in order to better support all my students in their acquisition of the kinds of skills and "rules" that will make them more successful later in life.
References:
Delpit, L. (1995). Other People’s Children, (pp. 21-26). New York: The New Press.
Tough, P. (2006, November 26). What It Takes to Make a Student. New York Times Magazine.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Intersession 2008 (part 2)
As mentioned in my earlier post (Intersession 2008), I recently taught a two-week intensive course called The Art of Social Protest. In it, students chose from a variety of media and created socially conscious work about a variety of topics of relevance to them. Because students received a pass/fail designation for course, there were several issues paramount to its success. One was student choice: because the grade was not an issue, it was clear from the beginning that students' most significant motivating factor would be their intrinsic investment in the work they were doing.
As a result, the issues and media students chose for their work vary greatly: a surrealist film suggesting the social pressures felt by girls to look a certain way; a surfboard mural depicting extinct species of frog; a dystopic short story about censorship; political comics on global climate change; punk songs about racism and the government; and a collage protesting the depiction of women in shojo cartoons - just to name a few. By and large, the pieces students produced were successful in their aims. I've posted a few examples below.
Lora, "Shojo Collage"
Beth, "Bob Dylan"
Lisa, "Scared of Growing Up"
Beth & Mari, "Somewhat Surreal"
For more student work or information about Intersession, visit my Digital Portfolio (http://teachers.oregon.k12.wi.us/pforsich).
As a result, the issues and media students chose for their work vary greatly: a surrealist film suggesting the social pressures felt by girls to look a certain way; a surfboard mural depicting extinct species of frog; a dystopic short story about censorship; political comics on global climate change; punk songs about racism and the government; and a collage protesting the depiction of women in shojo cartoons - just to name a few. By and large, the pieces students produced were successful in their aims. I've posted a few examples below.
Lora, "Shojo Collage"
Beth, "Bob Dylan"
Lisa, "Scared of Growing Up"
Beth & Mari, "Somewhat Surreal"
For more student work or information about Intersession, visit my Digital Portfolio (http://teachers.oregon.k12.wi.us/pforsich).
Student Voice
In an earlier post, I mentioned that I want to work harder at including students' voices into the process of designing and implementing projects in my class. One way I have tried doing this recently is through comments.
At HTH, semester grade reports are accompanied by teachers' narrative comments about each student - usually consisting of a brief summary of the work our team did that semester, a few comments about the students' strengths and areas for improvement, and then a goal or two that the student should consider for the future. For many teachers, this process feels a bit like writing notes next to the letter grade on the last page of an essay: the student is going to look for the letter grade, knowing that he doesn't have the opportunity to revise his work, and he will possibly never read the comments. The comments, then, feel pretty meaningless.
The way my partner and I make comments feel more meaningful for us and for the students is to have "student-led comments," in which the students write some notes about their progress and performance over the course of the semester and then we augment them with our own observations. Having the students take this opportunity to reflect on the work they've done is useful not only to us as teachers but also to their parents, who (in some cases) rarely get to hear their children talk about school in quite this way.
The process of including student voice in our comments doesn't end there. Today, as a warm-up activity at the beginning of the period, I gave everyone back their comments and our responses so they could read them before their parents get them in the mail. Then I asked them to write their responses to our responses to their comments. Some students took the opportunity to challenge the constructive critiques we had offered; some asked questions of us; and some thanked us for the complimentary things we had written. One student said, "I appreciate the opportunity to hear your perspective on my work ethic, because in general I'm a pretty self-conscious person." Another said, "I disagree that I've become more mature since last year; I know I need to keep working on my school attitude." A third student said, "You wrote...the best things I've ever read about myself. I stand complimented."
The exciting glimpses that comments have allowed us to see of our students on a truly personalized scale have helped us to know their aspirations, their motivations, and the way they really see themselves.
Other ways I've been working to incorporate student voice in my practice include student-generated rubrics (which my partner Anne and I have done this week with great success), one-on-one conferences to set project expectations/goals, and discussions with my classes about issues concerning the school outside my classroom. Usually, it is during these activities that I feel the most connected to the students and the most effective in teaching them the skills/information that will be useful to them beyond high school.
At HTH, semester grade reports are accompanied by teachers' narrative comments about each student - usually consisting of a brief summary of the work our team did that semester, a few comments about the students' strengths and areas for improvement, and then a goal or two that the student should consider for the future. For many teachers, this process feels a bit like writing notes next to the letter grade on the last page of an essay: the student is going to look for the letter grade, knowing that he doesn't have the opportunity to revise his work, and he will possibly never read the comments. The comments, then, feel pretty meaningless.
The way my partner and I make comments feel more meaningful for us and for the students is to have "student-led comments," in which the students write some notes about their progress and performance over the course of the semester and then we augment them with our own observations. Having the students take this opportunity to reflect on the work they've done is useful not only to us as teachers but also to their parents, who (in some cases) rarely get to hear their children talk about school in quite this way.
The process of including student voice in our comments doesn't end there. Today, as a warm-up activity at the beginning of the period, I gave everyone back their comments and our responses so they could read them before their parents get them in the mail. Then I asked them to write their responses to our responses to their comments. Some students took the opportunity to challenge the constructive critiques we had offered; some asked questions of us; and some thanked us for the complimentary things we had written. One student said, "I appreciate the opportunity to hear your perspective on my work ethic, because in general I'm a pretty self-conscious person." Another said, "I disagree that I've become more mature since last year; I know I need to keep working on my school attitude." A third student said, "You wrote...the best things I've ever read about myself. I stand complimented."
The exciting glimpses that comments have allowed us to see of our students on a truly personalized scale have helped us to know their aspirations, their motivations, and the way they really see themselves.
Other ways I've been working to incorporate student voice in my practice include student-generated rubrics (which my partner Anne and I have done this week with great success), one-on-one conferences to set project expectations/goals, and discussions with my classes about issues concerning the school outside my classroom. Usually, it is during these activities that I feel the most connected to the students and the most effective in teaching them the skills/information that will be useful to them beyond high school.
Friday, February 1, 2008
CES Small Schools Network - 2008 Winter Meeting
This reflection taken from my notes at the Coalition of Essential Schools' San Francisco conference on equity in the classroom:
"Sitting in a conference about equity in schools, hearing Camilla [Greene] remind us to 'call a sham a sham,' I am literally holding back tears as I think about how much harder I need to work to address these issues, how much more of myself I need to give before I can really make the difference I want to make. I feel ashamed that the only students in my class who are failing or close to failing are students of color. What am I perpetuating by allowing this disparity to exist in my classroom?"
"Sitting in a conference about equity in schools, hearing Camilla [Greene] remind us to 'call a sham a sham,' I am literally holding back tears as I think about how much harder I need to work to address these issues, how much more of myself I need to give before I can really make the difference I want to make. I feel ashamed that the only students in my class who are failing or close to failing are students of color. What am I perpetuating by allowing this disparity to exist in my classroom?"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)