Student Publication and Teacher Revelation

This last week, a group of my students completed publication of Scatterbrain: A Collection of Memoirs - a book we've been working on together since mid-October. As the title suggests, it is a collection of short memoirs written by the students. Here's the description they wrote for the back cover:

"Many adults wonder what goes through a teenager’s mind. Many teenagers wonder the same thing. Scatterbrain: A Collection of Memoirs offers an insight into the elusive minds of those living in a world that is completely their own, between childhood and adulthood, wanting to make big decisions about their futures yet needing Mom’s help to shop for clothes. These memoirs show their laughter and tears, love and hate, confusion and clarity. From coping with the death of a father and battling an eating disorder to camping, fishing, and traveling with friends, the perspectives that these writers have shared are at once unique and universal. They reveal the hopes of children through the vivid memories of young adults."

We used blurb.com -- a "creative publishing service" as it's called -- to take what would otherwise have been just a 'class assignment' that got written, graded, and thrown away and make it into something with value that extends beyond the school building.

One really fascinating experience that this whole process created occurred two days after the book was finished. As a way to celebrate the beautiful work the students had done, I sent an email to our faculty and staff to tell them about the book and ask them to congratulate the kids.

The next day, a few students told me this had made them really uncomfortable. It wasn't the idea of having their work in public that bothered them (they said they didn't mind strangers or even family reading it); it was the idea of their teachers being able to read it that freaked them out. We had a class discussion about it, but no one seemed really able to pinpoint what it was about this situation that they didn't like.

That night I got an email from a student who wanted to explain things more clearly:

"We all appreciate the project, it is really cool. The issues that we had seemed to be with ourselves. I guess it's scary to put yourself out there, especially to teachers who have always been our 'superiors'. We have always been taught you are subordinate to your teachers and they are there to teach you. It seems really sad, but unfortunately it has always been that way. I think moving out of our comfort zone is something we have to do, and for some people that is a harder step than for others."

She mentions being "taught" to believe in this barrier between students and teachers -- I wonder if it's possible to pinpoint when/how that socialization process happens. I've always felt that fewer barriers is the way to help students achieve more meaningful learning (see my post about the CES School Study Tour), but I know that not everyone agrees with that view. In fact, there are some really stellar teachers here at OHS for whom those barriers seem essential to the way they craft their teaching.

The one piece of advice I had for the authors of Scatterbrain (who are all seniors preparing to go off to college) was that they should begin unlearning some of those barriers now. In college, they'll only get in the way.

Adventures in a Traditional High School

Since my last post, I moved across the country and began work at a traditional comprehensive high school. What I've observed so far may not be a revelation to anyone but me, as I've never worked in a traditional school setting. However, I'm quite literally in shock about how many aspects of this environment just don't make sense. I'll try to describe them here in a way that reflects their absurdity:

• During each 45 minute period, teenagers and adults are expected to engage fully in absorbing information and/or participating in activities that have no connection (explicit or otherwise) to either the 45 minutes that came before it or those that would follow it.
• The chunks of the day are meted out by loud ringing noises, whose volume is intended, one must assume, to cut off any train of thought they might be interrupting.
• Students' behavioral patterns are regulated in innumerable ways, so that they must adhere to appropriate use of speech, restrooms, physical space, movement from place to place, and exercise. Similar behavioral patterns are imposed on inmates in prison.
  
• The vast majority of students' intellectual (and sometimes physical) output has no practical function; its sole purpose is to demonstrate a set of knowledge or skills (as determined by the teacher, often without adequate justification provided to students), after which it is usually discarded.

This is only the beginning of what could be a much longer list. It's been said before that education is the least changed public institution of the last 150 years. It was designed for the needs of industry, at a time when schools were expected to produce factory workers and tradespeople; now, in a country where the vast majority of workers produce no physical objects and do most of their thinking about abstract concepts, our schools are woefully ill equipped to educate most people for their expected futures.

Sir Ken Robinson argues the point masterfully in his TED lecture about the need for schools to teach creativity. He says that, in today's world, creativity is just as essential as literacy, and it should be given the same gravity in schools. You wouldn't believe the number of blank stares I get when I ask my students the last time their teachers asked them to be creative. The implied message (and sometimes even the stated one) seems to be that, in the confines of a traditional school - with all the trappings presented by the bulleted list above - schools aren't equipped to encourage creativity; students will just have to wait for college to get that.

Coalition of Essential Schools: Boston School Study Tour

This week I attended the Coalition of Essential Schools' (CES) Boston School Study Tour. Every time I visit another of the CES schools, I'm reminded how powerful a learning experience it can be to encounter new contexts and new approaches to schooling.

On this trip, I visited the Boston Arts Academy (BAA), a public pilot school that emphasizes the arts through direct arts instruction as well as integration of the arts into traditionally academic subject areas. I also visited The MET in Providence, RI, a publicly-funded "district" of small schools that emphasizes extremely personalized instruction and uses internships as the focal point of the students' curricula.

Both of these schools gave me things to think about; I think I was most impacted, though, by the MET. It is a truly alternative model of schooling that resonates with a lot of the values I've held for a long time but haven't known how to articulate. To give you an idea of the impact it had on me, here are some notes I took during the visit:

"I’m thinking about how to break down walls. Being in a classroom every day is too safe, I get too comfortable, and the tendency to revert back to the ‘default’ is too great. Kids feel it also—people like Andy should be rock stars, but they’re barely passing. The dangers of traditional schooling seep into those kids too.

We need to leave school more. Kids need to have more choices. I need to be willing to have less control. I need to be more transparent and more of a whole person, and I need to encourage students to be that too.

How can I bring these ideas back to HTH? How can other teachers get a sense of this without having seen the alternatives for themselves (that is, true alternatives, not just new names for the same things)? When we always get positive reinforcement from visitors and guests, it’s hard to see through another lens. Even here, amongst the most progressive educators, the questions being asked sound something like, 'But when do they learn math??' so it’s hard to imagine stretching so far outside the box when people are coming from that frame of reference."