Reasons

There are many excellent lines in Sassafrass' song My Brother My Enemy--a song that talks about Loki and Odin's reasons for turning on each other.  At the end of the day, it is a song about reasons.

Reasons are OH so important for helping students to understand what they are supposed to do and why they are supposed to do it. They're essential for faculty too.  Honestly, if you want someone to do something, the best way to get them to do it is to give them a *real* reason for it.

Today, my remaining students and I were discussing Finals.  (Our seniors have already left!  Thus, I have a month with my non-seniors!)  "Magistra?" asked M, "This is a really bad question, I know, but do we have a final exam?"

I explained that not as such.  Their project was their final exam.  Their Mythology project shows off their research skills, English writing skills, Latin composition skills, all of their grammar and vocabulary they have learned this year, and their Roman Culture knowledge.

"Yeah, you bet it does.  I've had to think more on this project than I ever have," commented J.

So, I explained, the project would be their final assessment.  It was important to me, I told them, that their final be meaningful and synthesize the information they learned, not that they vomit information back onto a page.

My students were relieved.  K commented, "This has honestly been the most meaningful thing I've done all year."  "I'm really glad we did this," A noted.  O, tiredly, complained that although he should technically, gradewise, be exempt from his History final, he wasn't.  When he had inquired why, his teacher had given him the 'reason' "Because that's the way I've always done it."  O said that he would have understood if he had received the reason, "Because I have this meaningful assessment that will really show me what you have learned this year and I could use it to improve how I structure my class."  But that was so not the reason.  I mean, come on.  Couldn't the teacher have said something better than "It's the way I've always done it,"?!?!

Reasons are excellent and useful things.  Sadly, we, as a culture, are quite poor at using good, real reasons.  Instead, we settle for excuses and 'reasons' that promote fear and lack of true knowledge.

How will we promote the use of true reasons in our classrooms and our daily lives?

An Ass Out Of U and Me

In his post yesterday, Justin addressed just a few of the problems with making assumptions.  This is something I run into a lot--from students, colleagues, administrators, members of Sassafrass, and really just people in general.

So, if I haven't mentioned this already, I am the one of the logistics people for Sassafrass.  My job is to communicate things very clearly to those outside of Sassafrass what we want and what we need.  I need to communicate to those within Sassafrass what those outside of Sassafrass need and want from us.  And I get to make things like travel arrangements and hotel reservations for the group as well.  It's a bit crazy, right?  However, when you do a job like that, you can't make assumptions about anything.  No matter how sure you are that people know something, you make sure to say it anyway and be super clear about it.

Problems arise when people don't read what is sent out fully and carefully.  I know it is not just my students who have issues reading directions.  When I was a student, one of my English teachers would write directions like this on tests:  "Please answer the following questions in 2-3 complete sentences.  Stand up, turn around 3 times, and sit back down."  Then, she would sit at the front of the classroom and watch us.  If we did not stand up, turn around 3 times, and sit back down, she took points off.

It drives me CRAZY when teachers get in students faces, make assumptions about why they didn't do work, yell at them for not doing the work or for forgetting to turn something in, and yet, these teachers are the ones who don't turn their grades in, or read the memos fully and carefully, resulting in "forgetting" to cover a testing room, or to remind their students of some important information, that the Office asks teachers to disseminate to students.

Our culture teaches us to make assumptions.  It does not teach us to ask questions, to think critically, to think logistically.  And yet, when students "dare" to assume something, teachers get in their face for not thinking critically or asking for help.

Why is this?  Perhaps we know the answer to this.  Perhaps we only know part of the answer.  But how will we start to reverse the unspoken rule that it is alright to make assumptions rather than clarifications?

Success!

I have returned from Baltimore!  All of the craziness and rehearsals before the trip and the rehearsals and craziness once we got to Balticon PAID OFF.  The whole weekend was fantastic, and the performance was, dare I say, epic.  The entire team of Sassafrass came together in the most incredible way!  This includes our friends and Sassafamily, ran around and got us food, played Pack-Mule, did our makeup, and kept us relatively sane for 4 crazy days at Balticon, and WELL before, as we prepped for everything.

Sundown the Musical was EXTREMELY well received, and I wish I could provide a review for you.  However, having been in the musical, I am probably not the best person to ask for a review!  Gary, our Incredible Convention Liaison, had promised us that, if we had time for an encore, he would hold up a piece of paper saying so at the end of the Musical.  I will never forget the image of the audience giving us a standing ovation, with Gary at the front, applauding wildly, while holding in his mouth a piece of paper with the NASA symbol on it.

I can say that I had people I didn't even know, as well as people that I did, coming up to me and saying how amazing Sundown was and that they wanted to see it again.  We got invitations to perform it at other conventions, and the panel we gave about the creation of the musical was PACKED.  Standing room only.  Success.

The feeling of success after such a long, often difficult and stressful preparation is one of the best feelings ever.  Success is not always, or, in this world, often a feeling we get to feel.  When we get that feeling, we need to cherish it and remember how we got there--with hard work, persistence, sometimes tears, but never, ever, giving up.

Offline for a few days!

Greetings, Loyal Readers!

I will be offline for a few days (Thursday, May 23 - Tuesday, May 28), as I am traveling to Balticon in Baltimore, MD.  My A Cappella Group, Sassafrass, will be performing our epic musical story Sundown, about the death of the Norse God Baldur and the resulting Ragnarok!

It promises to be amazing, and I will tell you all about it when I get back!

Cheers,

~Emily

The Goat Rodeo

Have you ever had one of those days/weeks/months/years where it is just one thing after another and you just feel like it a) never ends and b) couldn't be controlled if you tried?

If so, Congrats, you know the definition of a Goat Rodeo. 

Alright, now, who feels like that sounds like school these days?  What about just life in general?

One of my Teacher Friends recently told me that his year "just feels like constant administrative mandates and paperwork.  Just give a little more...a little more....a little more...."

And all of a sudden, you feel like the school owns your soul and are you are spending FAR more time doing school work for no extra pay (or an insultingly small amount of extra pay), than you ever imagined.

And we wonder why so many teachers burn out so quickly.

The same is true for our students.  Their lives are constant Goat Rodeos, between schoolwork and all the extracurricular activities that they do, sometimes because they enjoy them, sometimes because they "need it to get into college," and sometimes because of both.

How many of us have been there, as students, teachers, or both?  (Last year, one of my Teacher Friends kept track of her hours that she spent working on school related tasks.  I don't find the results surprising, but I do find them...interesting, especially for those who think that teachers get this amazing, Mythical Summer Break.)

It's time for us to defend ourselves.  And yet, the way that The System is organized makes it nigh impossible to do so.  So what do we do?  Well, the word NO is a powerful one.  "No, I'm sorry, I can't serve on that committee."  It's even better when you back it up with reasons, but don't feel like you have to.  I guess the biggest thing I wish I had known as a First Year Teacher is that it is OK to say no.  Admin will often go for new teachers first, since they know that said teachers want to make a good first impression.  But it is OK to say "No, I'm really still trying to get my work and my year organized.  I really would like to do a good job on my teaching and associated responsibilities this year, and feel that now is not a good time for me to take on yet another commitment.  Thank you for understanding."

As you can probably tell, I suck at saying no.  I admit that fully.  But I am getting better!  In order to get everything done, I've had to enlist my skills of making checklists, managing my time, and remembering that I MUST take time for myself.

What skills do you think are necessary to manage the Goat Rodeo? How do we go about TEACHING them to our students and to ourselves, since they do not learn skills like these anymore?

Keeping It Together

If you're like any other person, you have occasionally had to hold it together when you just wanted to fall apart.  You might have been tired, sick, hurting, dealing with family crises, friend drama, whatever.

Whatever it was, you had to keep yourself together and give the appearance of being OK when, inside you are so...well...not.

Like everything else you might learn, this is a skill, for better or worse.  Sometimes, it's a coping mechanism for children with rough home lives, and sometimes it's just something that some people are better at than others.  Especially these days, when people have so much going on, Keeping It Together is a necessary skill.

There are many pieces that play into it.  One is LEARNING strategies to cope. We spend so much time "covering material" in class that we spend no time at all teaching students how to manage their time and their lives.  In all honesty and seriousness, we often believe they will get that at home.  But most often, they aren't. Quite often, their parents don't even know how to manage their own lives, let alone how to help their children.

The other piece that I, at least, see so little of is PROCESSING with students, and even with other adults.  I hear a lot of, "Well, you must make this class a priority."  And then another teacher says "NO!  MY class is the priority!"  Conflicting messages, right?

But no one, not even parents, sadly, discuss the too much work and crazy life stuff that happens in high school, middle school, whenever, with their children.  At school, this is actively discouraged, or is stigmatized as "going to the school counselor."  

I once had a conversation with a parent, and I mentioned that it would be helpful if she processed some of her son's poor grades with him.  I worked to help the student process the grades, but some help from the parents would be appreciated.  "Oh," she said, "but we just have so much going on.  I just forget to talk with him."

As sad as it sounds, I see and hear this a lot.  Parents model the "too self-absorbed and busy to help" attitude all the time.  And here we are wondering why Kids These Days are SO self-absorbed and busy!

This is a Cultural Thing.  It goes far beyond schools.  But what can we do to help students and ourselves learn how to Keep It Together?

Making it Happen

A few days ago, I was talking with the Official Liaison for Sassafrass at Balticon, and I thanked him for being so good at getting ALL of the logistics together for a 16 person ACapella group, whose members are scattered all over the United States.  He said it was a bit crazier than he had had to work with in the past, but he was, if he did say so himself, getting stuff done and making things happen.

Making things happen can be rough.  It requires a specific skill set and a lot of persistence.  I realized, as I was thinking of all the work he had done for us, that so many of us lack that persistence.  We are so conditioned for instant gratification that we aren't willing to work for a long time to make something we want happen.  It gets passed off as "just too much work," for students and teachers alike.

On top of this, the arts of writing and discussion, as well as thinking outside the box, are very rarely taught.  Thus, between the lack of persistence, the lost arts of writing, discussion, and creative thinking, as well as the taught "sit down, shut up, and listen to the person in control," mentality, making stuff happen is a rare skill.

In order for for us to make things happen, we need to break the cycle.  When I was a child, my parents presented everything in our house a choice.  We discussed the choices before I made them, and after I made them.  Before any of us in the house made a choice, we discussed the Pros and Cons of said choices.  My parents taught me how to make a coherent argument for the choice I wanted, and how to argue against the other choices.  Sometimes, we needed to make a hybrid between the choices, and that's where the creative and independent thinking came in.  Needless to say, I did NOT learn these in school.

Now, as a teacher, I despair for my students, who possess none of these skills.  How can we teach these skills?  How can we help students learn persistence--that hard work pays off?  How can we break the "sit down, shut up, listen to the person in control" mentality?  How can we help students learn to make things happen?

Fear and Terror and Failure

These days, does it seem like everyone is scared of everything?  There's always something to be terrified of. I mean, sure, everyone has their little fears, like public speaking, or spiders....you know.

But I'm not talking about that.  I'm talking being really, truly terrified of something.  Although they would never admit it, people are terrified of flying, or being blown up or shot...really anywhere now.

And Schools are terrified that students might think for themselves.  No, they won't admit it.  They might not even consciously know it.  But it's true.  It's just the system we have been raised in.

We all have little fears and big terrors.  But what happens when we confront them?  Better question, what happens when we DON'T?

I have found that my students do not even consciously recognize their fears.  I mean, yes, they are teenagers, filled with all the bravado that that entails.  But they don't even know how to think about their fears and how they might go about confronting them.  Among these huge terrors is that of failure.

Ok, so failures.  Justin has been thinking about Rites Of Passage all this week.  To me, one of the big Rites Of Passage is how you handle your first major failure without someone to handle it for you.  Often, up through high school, Mommy, Daddy, and Your Teachers deal with a student's failure for them.  No one teaches them to learn from it.  No one discusses with them how they might go about not having this happen again.  Our culture is full of messages that mistakes are bad and horrible and no competent, good person ever, EVER makes them.  So our students are scared of them and won't take risks in their learning, for fear that they MAY make a mistake.

The great Roman orator Cicero is famously quoted as saying: "Anyone can make a mistake.  Only a fool keeps making the same one."  How do we teach students that making mistakes is alright, as long as they learn from them?  How do we model learning from our own mistakes and failures?  What can we do to encourage learning from mistakes and failures?

"Preparing For College"

On Monday, I was scheduled to proctor an AP exam in a specific room.  Like any proctor, I dutifully carried my basket of AP exams up to the room....only to find a class in there.  Taking a test.  Evidently, no one had bothered to inform the poor teacher that there would be an AP exam in his room.  I felt so badly, but eventually, my wonderful Assistant Principal figured out a way to get the AP exam moved to my room, which was free at that time.  *sigh*  For all that she was busy, my Assistant Principal had to drop everything to work on this problem, because someone else couldn't have been bothered to inform a teacher about a room change.  This had, evidently, been happening all week.

This got me thinking about what I like to call The Goat Rodeo.  If you are not familiar with the term, a goat rodeo is a situation that cannot be controlled at any time, no matter how hard you try.  Just think, honestly, about trying to lasso a bunch of goats and get them to GO somewhere or DO something specific.

Our lives are busy.  Our students' lives are busy.  In order to get ANYTHING done, even in a mediocre manner, with so much going on, one MUST have good organization and prioritization skills.  And yet, that is the one thing we "don't have time" to teach students.  I've often heard teachers say, "Well, they'll learn them as they get more work."  No, they won't.  Like any skill, this needs to be taught and learned.

I had a conversation recently with my students about planning and logistics.  We talked about how, in college, you absolutely must manage your time.  There was no one telling you when to do things.  YOU are in control of your own learning and your own schedule.  "So," asked J, "When do we learn that?" I looked at him, with faux-curiosity.  "We hear all of this talk about preparing us for college," J explained.  "Yeah, but no one ever teaches us how to actually survive in college!" A added.  M, the student-of-the-color-coded-binders, commented that her mom taught her how to color code, which had been a life-saver for her. Finally, one of my seniors had a profound insight. "Look," said C, matter-of-factly, "the hard truth of it is that teachers do everything for us.  They treat us like...like perpetual fifth graders!  That's how it works at other schools too.  We can't bring them with us to college!  Why do they do this?  It hurts more than it helps."  Everyone else agreed vehemently with her.

I do not talk about infantilization with my students.  Never have.  I do discuss organization.  Nevertheless, my students, especially C, hit the nail on the head when they talked with each other about this issue.

When the students can see the problem, identify it, and talk coherently about it, we must address the problem.  It is OUR responsibility to teach the children and "prepare them for college."  So, maybe we need to go back to our roots and remember what life was like in college, especially our first year!  How do we really teach those skills within the confines of the system?  And how do we model those skills ourselves?

Sending and Receiving Messages

This week is another round of MCAS (the Massachusetts Standardized test), as well as AP exams.  Welcome to the Week Of Standardized Testing Squared.  I get to proctor MCAS in the morning and APs in the afternoon, with one class of EXTREMELY full, tired, and de-motivated students in between.

I was thinking about the messages that these tests send to students and teachers alike.  Once the students finish their exams, they are allowed to do nothing except for stare at the wall.  They can't read, eat, draw, or even go to the bathroom.  (Well, they can, but it isn't the deep-breath break that I would allow them.  They have to be escorted to the bathroom by an attendant, so that "break," too, is a rushed one.)

As proctors, teachers are not allowed to do much either.  We used to be able to answer an email or two while we watched our students take MCAS, but now we can't.  We have all of this work to do, much of it being busywork and paperwork and grading, especially since we have to get our assessments back to students "in a timely fashion."  And we aren't allowed to do any of that.  We must stare at the students and stare at the walls.  We can't eat either--not even a granola bar.

Ok, so I could go on about other things we can't do, and the students can't do.  But what messages are these  directives sending?  This takes me back to my thoughts about Control, and False Control.  The messages that the state and the College Board are sending to students are: "We are big, you are small.  We control you.  We do NOT trust you.  You are infantile."  In the case of the College Board, add: "You are a source of revenue and that is all." In the case of teachers, the messages are:  "We are big, you are small.  We control you.  We do NOT trust you.  You are infantile."  In the case of the College Board, add: "You aren't even a source of revenue, except to our workshops.  You just have to keep teaching this course because we have control."

No wonder Students behave in infantile manners!  No wonder Teachers do as well!  The message they receive is that they ARE untrustworthy babies, so why would they aspire to anything other?

This has been a super cynical post.  I know.  But it is true, and it is time we faced up to it.  As long as we have the factory model, we are stuck with this infantilization of both students and teachers.  I think about how, in ancient Rome, Greece, and Egypt, young men, the ages of my Seniors, would be giving their first political speeches.  The students CAN think, and work, and be trustworthy and adult-like, if they are only given the opportunity and the guidance to help them form into young adults and not old toddlers.

So, how do we break this?  How do we send the RIGHT messages, like the ancient cultures did?  Especially in this culture where WE, the teachers, are treated like babies as well, how do we break out of that pattern and find the trustworthy adult in all of us and our own students?

Busy!

You know those weeks when you are pretty sure you won't have a moment to breathe?  I have a few of those coming up.  Between teaching, life, and Sassafrass at Balticon, for which I still need to get some blocking and lyrics memorized, I am pretty darn busy!!

My students and I are still trying the experiment on staying organized and budgeting time, which really seems to be working for all of us!  We check in about it periodically.  I encourage my students to share both their successes and their failures, so that we can ALL learn from both.

On Wednesday, a friend of mine asked, "What's your secret to staying chirpy when you have so much going on?"  I had no idea what to tell her.  Checklists, chocolate, channeling your energy, even when you feel like you have none left.

The more I thought about it, however, the more I realized how important it is to take time for myself, no matter how much I have going on.  It is so hard, especially when you feel like you need to get everything done NOW. I used to sing a lot when I needed to relax.  Now, since I have to prepare a lot of music, singing has become an item on my work list, though I still enjoy it.  Can you still unwind using an item on your work list?  I think you can, especially if you space out the tasks.  Write, then sing, then write, etc....The tasks use different parts of your brain and make it easier to get through everything.  To be honest, I have no idea where I learned these coping strategies.

And I think about this in terms of my students.  They are so full, so busy, and have SO much that needs to be done NOW that they have no idea of how to handle it.  Ironically, we are so busy "covering material" in class that we have NO time to teach them how to study it and handle all they need to do.  As a result, we get less than satisfactory work.  Both they know it and we know it, but it may well be the best they can do under the tight time circumstances.  How do we make it possible for the students to do their best work?  How do we teach them how to cope?

Mirror, Mirror

One of the many things I have worked very hard to teach my students is how to think, act, and speak like a Roman would.  I hear many things about how Latin is a dead language, and all of that, but my students and I have tried to make it come to life, since, as we have begun to realize, Roman Culture (and Language!) has carried over into the modern world.

Amid all of the teaching of ancient language and culture, we talk about modern language and culture.  And we talk a lot about self-presentation, both for Romans and for us today.  And I thought about Justin's post from yesterday.

My students and I often talk about how they are presenting themselves--what they mean to do, and what they actually do.  Actions vs. Words, right?  But, as the students point out to me, neither their words nor their actions matter in other classes.  They are, as one of my students put it, "pre-labeled for your convenience."

We were talking, recently, about Cicero, and his self-presentation in two different letters, one to his wife, and another to a colleague.  "He sounds like a big dick," commented K.  I asked why she felt that way.  "I mean, he's like 'yo, I am all important and stuff,' all the time." she replied.  Her friend B agreed: "Yeah, he just writes like he owns the senate...and all of Rome."

After some discussion, S, a usually sweet, quiet "hard working" girl, brought up, "Does he 'own Rome' like we 'own the school'?" Confused, K asked her to elaborate.  "Well," said S, "Ms P. is always like, 'Why aren't you listening?  Do you think you own the school or something?'"

I thought about this, and clearly the rest of her class did too.  "It sounds like the Roman Senate was just...glorified high school," observed J.  We discussed the importance of being confident in Ancient Rome, and selling yourself.  But where does that go over the line from being Confident to being a 'big dick," as K so eloquently put it?

What CAN we learn from those ancient authors and their self-presentation?  What happens when we see ourselves in them?

Comments

Ahh, 4th quarter warnings.

If you are like me, and many other teachers, grading is your least favourite part of your job.  Comments are even worse, right?

How many of you have an electronic grading system where you can only enter canned comments?  Most often, these are comments that show up on a sheet with numbers next to them.  For example, you type 08 to enter the comment "is a hard worker" or 16 to enter "works hard but struggles."

To me, this exemplifies the factory system.  There is NO opportunity to personalize anything in terms of feedback for the students.  We were talking about personalization and building community two days ago.  Here's the absolute antithesis.  Students are getting exactly the same comments.  There is NO opportunity for  teachers to add comments to help students grow.  None at all.

The worst part is that students KNOW that these comments are meaningless.  They know that they are entered from a comment sheet.  And so, they pay no attention.

These "comments" assign labels, such as "hard worker" or "frequently unprepared."  As much as I used to hate spending time writing out paragraphs about my students, I miss being able to give them this feedback.  So now, we meet individually and I give them that feedback.

I can't even imagine getting these comments on a report card.  Parents have no idea what is going on with their children, and have to "bother" the actual teacher to find out.  While these canned comments are supposed to be "timesaving," in reality they end up making much more work on both sides.

So I think about feedback, about factories, about labels, about the untruths Justin talks about.  How can we, even constrained by factory "comments," give constructive, meaningful feedback to students?  How can we teach them that what they do really matters?

Acta, Verba, and Stercus Tauri

On Tuesday Morning, one of my Spanish teacher colleagues asked "Alright, what is happening with the Latin program?!"

I had to tell her that I had NO idea.  After all, no one tells me anything and when I ask, no one seems to have answers.  "Right," she replied.  "Why would anyone tell you anything.  You're just the teacher.  And, of course, it's Teacher Appreciation Week."

*sigh*

If you are looking at the title of my post curiously, Acta = actions, Verba = words, and Stercus Tauri = bullshit.

If you looked at the actions vs. the words of my upper level administration, you would come out with Stercus Tauri.  Their words say that they appreciate their teachers.  Their actions say otherwise.

And this is what my students and colleagues see every day!  No WONDER my colleagues are bitter and my students don't understand the difference between Acta and Verba.  No wonder my students feel betrayed.

For Teacher Appreciation Week, my Latin 3 / 4 class actually got me a card.  They all signed it.  On the inside, one of them wrote, "Magistra, we, at least, appreciate you."  While I was SO excited to get a card from my students, I was super sad to see that they KNOW that I am not appreciated otherwise.  I always make a point of showing them that I appreciate them, too.

And yet, for our last few weeks together, we must keep up the Joyful Community we have built.  Now, I think, the need for it is stronger than ever, and the students know it as well as I do.  Can we make the Community stronger?  Can we all appreciate each other?  How do we show it and strengthen it in the last few weeks together?

Quickly and Easily

Yesterday, Debbie responded to my post with the following comment:

I love the "by asking them the right questions we are teaching them how to ask the right questions themselves".

If you have to repeat something a dozen times then what you are saying or how you are saying it isn't being received in the manner intended. Time to say something different.

So often I hear parents and educators complaining about some problem with kids and they don't look at how they are creating or adding to the problem. Child "A" seeks attention -- ok, so what are you going to do about it? The child needs attention! Child B refuses to do such-and-such. And why is this a problem? What is the underlying issues that need to be resolved before such-and-such will happen?

We are mentors and teachers and yet we forget that, when we come to a problem that doesn't resolve quickly and easily. 

These days, we are all taught that everything should resolve quickly and easily.  Students believe firmly that everything they do should be quick and easy, since that's what they are taught in their other classes.  And yet, they are willing to work for HOURS to beat that one video game on the SUPER HARD setting.  Why is this?

Well, Video Games aren't supposed to be EASY!  (well, games in general aren't supposed to be easy!)  But School, that's so boring and easy.  They can just COAST through it.

When my students hit something that doesn't get resolved quickly and easily, I remind them of the video game metaphor.  Remember, I tell them, Learning is a quest.  Provided with that metaphor, one of my students asked me, earlier this year, "Well, where are the cheat codes?"  I reminded him that it was more honorable to complete the quest without the cheat codes.  Then, one of my other students interjected, "Well, there are cheat codes, aren't there?  We know how to look interested.  We know how to write the kind of strange essay that our English Teacher wants..."

Why is it that we spend so long teaching the students that learning, that work, that thinking is easy?  It's not that they don't have the attention span, nor is it that they are lazy.  It's that the students are receiving the wrong message.

How do we send the RIGHT message?  The message that learning, that Thinking does not happen Quickly and Easily.  How do we make that happen?

Telling Stories, Sharing Stories

In his post on Friday, Justin asked: 

"What new stories will we share today? And can you really change a factory into a community garden by sharing stories?"

And Debbie, responding to my post on Friday, wrote:

"It's so easy to ask the yes/no, question/answer questions that access one neuron in the brain (you know what I mean) rather than the open-ended, thought-provoking, guiding questions that make connections, getting many, many neural pathways firing and working together."  

In my personal opinion, yes.  Yes, you can change a factory into a community by sharing stories.  Sharing stories requires asking the right questions.  Getting all the neural pathways firing and working together.  The right questions guide the stories until the students are able to ask themselves the right questions.  In other words, the right questions begin the shift from Factory to Joyful Community.  If we start by asking the right questions to our students, and model our thought process, they will pick up what we ask.

As one of my students often says, "Well, Magistra would say, 'Where would you look to find that answer?'  So let's follow that advice."  If we ask the right questions and give the right tools to begin the inquiry process, students will begin looking things up on their own--first because they have to, but then because they can.  They will start finding new resources, things I have never even heard of but are so utterly cool that they become part of our cannon of resources.

Too often, I see teachers either get frustrated because their students "just aren't getting it quickly enough."  Clearly, this means that they are just lazy.  No, it means that they need to be taught HOW to do something and WHY to do it.  Only then will they "get it."

Teachers get annoyed because their students dare to ask questions when they don't understand something.  "They don't know how to research anything!" a colleague recently complained to me.  But they are never taught HOW or WHY.  Sometimes they may be given resources to start them off, but most of the time, at least in my experience, the students are simply told "research this."

So this takes me back to my How and Why themes.  It takes me back to scaffolding, like I have mentioned. How do we guide the formation of a Joyful Community?

Zero to Hero...

Yesterday, I handed National Latin Exam scores and awards back to my students.  They, having no idea of what they had received on it, were AMAZED to receive their certificates!  I was SO PROUD.  Even those who didn't receive certificates were AT the National average. And, as we all realized, they had started with 2 years of catch-up to do.  And THIS is what happened.  One of my students compared us to Hercules.  (Hence the Disney Song Title...)

"Alright," my assistant principal asked me, with a big smile on her face, "how did you do it?"

The answer was easy.  I built a community, encouraged students to help each other, laid down the expectations early on, and used Latin composition and scaffolded storytelling, oral and written, to encourage the students to use the new grammar, and mix it in with the history and mythology.

In reality, is this easy?  Hell no.  It's a ton of work, especially when you are presented with a bunch of students who have had a rough experience with a prior teacher and who are taught in other classes that they can simply coast.  They have so much work to catch up on, and they have no confidence.  So the first thing I had to do was ask the right questions to get them thinking.  We started working with stories, and posing questions to each other about them, first in English, then in Latin.  And confidence slowly emerged.

How do you ask the right questions?  It was as much of a learning experience for me as it was for them.  Lots of experimentation, lots thought, lots of wondering how far we could push ourselves on one story.  And at the same time, we had so much grammar to learn...which we managed to embed, mostly, in the stories. And it goes, often, against our own education to think about and ask the right questions.

I was worried about the National Latin Exam, I admit, but the students were super ready, and super confident.  And this is what happened.

So how do we ask the right questions?  What do we think about to make sure that this happens?  Even more importantly, perhaps, how do we make it our own nature to ask these questions, both of our students and of ourselves?

Right Next Steps, Part II

Have you seen Astronaut Chris Hadfield's video about what happens when you wring out a washcloth in space?  How about his amazing song in collaboration with Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies?

Chris Hadfield is ALWAYS willing to answer questions about space and space travel.  All it takes is for you to tweet it at him! (@Cmdr_Hadfield)  Sometimes, he'll even make a video for you.

So why do I bring this up?  Well, I took the video about the washcloth and showed it to my students.  They were amazed.  "I never would have thought of that!" one of them said.  "Ohhhhh so that's how surface tension works!"  another exclaimed.  And here I am--their Latin teacher.

THIS is what happens when you encourage curiosity and inquiry.  And it's so exciting that there are people out there like Chris Hadfield reaching out to teachers and students and the general public to encourage that inquiry.

What's a scientist? one of my colleagues asks her class on the first day of school.  She listens to the responses and then poses her own definition-- "A scientist is a person who never grew out of asking 'Why?'" Like a child. (This is a skill the humanities could seriously benefit from too!!)  They were encouraged to figure things out.  Or sometimes NOT, and they were just determined to figure it out for themselves.  It's a matter of determination and giving students the TOOLS--the Courage-- to confront the situation.  It's a matter of confidence.

So, this takes me back to yesterday's post and the one before that.  How do we build that confidence?  Maybe it starts with the message of the Song that I linked to at the top.  It doesn't just start at school--it starts at home.  We have no control over our students' home lives, but we can help them at school.  So how do we do that anyway, especially when they are getting different messages at home and at school?  What can we do to give our students the Confidence and the Courage to inquire?  To never stop asking "why?"

The Right Next Step

Yesterday, in his post, Justin asked:

"Is it possible to build learning communities strong and vibrant enough to overwhelm the factory mindset? To burst the confining factory walls in a blaze of the Fire of Truth? If so, sign me up now … but if not, what’s the next right step for community builders?"

And Laura, responding to my post yesterday, said:

" I wonder if teachers don't realize how much impact their criticism has on students - not to mention how grades are just about the worst possible form of feedback ever invented! Again and again in my classes, every semester, year after year, I hear from students who thank me for my classes because it helped me to get over some bad writing experience like the ones you two have described - either in college, or high school, or some experience even farther back in elementary school that derailed them as writers. How do we go so wrong with that as teachers? For me, it's easy - there's always SOMETHING good in a piece of writing that a student does, and even if it is just one aspect of the writing, I focus in on that to praise, while also giving lots of feedback about how to improve things that are not working so well. If teachers are giving their students writing assignments in which they cannot find something to praise in the work that their students do, they should CHANGE THE ASSIGNMENTS. That's what I did when I switched from traditional essay writing to storytelling. Although it is long ago for me now, I can indeed remember reading essays that were completely boring, impersonal, writing with which I could connect as a reader in any meaningful way... and I suspect that is the case for lots of teachers - but they MUST do something about that and change the assignments. What a terrible waste of time it is for both student and teacher alike if they are all just bored and frustrated...!"

So, I thought about this.  What if the next right step IS to change the assignments?  To praise the good things, even if there is only one tiny good thing about something a student does.  We are so trained and conditioned to focus on the negative.  However, amazing results come to those who focus on the positive!

What if the next step for community builders is to change the mindset, at least in their own classrooms, to the positive focus?  To finding that one good piece?  This is HARD to do in a factory setting, where your classroom may be the only place where students see this mindset.  However, it can be managed, even when you sit on committees.  (I often find myself pushing for positives on the committees I sit on!)  It is the positive focus that burst the factory walls within my own classroom this year, especially with my Latin II students, so disparate and disconnected, both from the school and from each other.

With that said, how do we change our own outlook to focus on the positives?  To find and praise that one good thing, while offering constructive feedback?  Is that the Right Next Step for the community builders?