A lesson in iteration

This is my first semester as a full time faculty member at a university. At this university the professors use the same books for their course and often similar assignments.
To make sure that I was in proper alignment with my coworkers and perhaps more importantly my department chair, I basically just tweaked his syllabus for each course and moved on.  Now that I'm nearing the end of the semester and grading the finals I'm seeing holes in "my" instructions to my students.

For one assignment they are asked to do 30 hours of observation in local public schools, an activity that many of them seemed to enjoy. As they progressed in the 30 hours students were supposed to write a field lab, which included description of their daily activities. Unfortunately this is precisely what I am getting. Just a vague description "they went over the math homework," "The teachers only have a break or prep time during P.E. or specials."  This is "fine" but I find myself wondering, in the wake of all that we have discussed over the semester and how emotional and vocal my students often are about things like the lack of prep time -- where are their comments? Where is the emotion and reflection?  --- Its not there and its not there because I didn't put it there.

So this brings me to iteration...In games and game designing, players and designers are able to create something  - a game board perhaps - then they play - they find the errors and then keep the good parts, toss the rest, redesign and then play...this happens until the designers are happy.   Then they let players loose on it, and again keep the good parts and toss the rest or find ways to make the problems less of an issue by giving better instructions.

Escher's Draft of a rhomboid tesselation

This is now my new mission...not only do I have to make it writing intensive but I have to toss what isn't working: the instructions on the daily observations, the detailing about what a cover page should and should not be, etc. But this isn't limited to assignments - I feel like the students went out into the world and had experiences but never had the opportunity to share or express. This too should be changed and since I start this process all over again January 9th, I better start cracking.

Waterfall, Escher

Lesson Inspirations from the Strangest Places

I have a old marble composition notebook. I've been carrying it around with me since 1998 or 1999. Well not carrying it around per se, I don't want you to think that its been in my purse these past 13 years, but its been pretty close.

In this notebook which is rather beat up and stained, smeared, crinkled, dogeared, ripped and taped; I have ideas. Ideas that I get from the strangest places.

My latest obsession is with this one ... I think the image explains why

I saw this in a article on Shine from Yahoo. Usually their articles are fairly useless and contain such fascinating headlines such as "Warning: Cigarettes are Bad for You" or random horribly ungrammatical blog posts.  The rest of the article that this idea came from included ideas about how to waste office supplies and use them as decorations for items that hold other office supplies -- like a pencil holder that has other pencils glued to the outside of it.  So it was mostly useless but fun to read.
 
In this activity: each post-it note contains a fact about a story the class read. The class, as a whole, decided what image to create with their post-its and I'm assuming hours later the image is complete.

Now I doubt that I will ever be able to use this idea in as was originally designed - I share a classroom with have the faculty in my building. So I would choose a different way to implement this.  Either placing the notes on a larger sheet of paper that would be possible to take with me or allow the students to create the outline of a shape rather than a full graphic image.

Along with posting this idea here, I printed out a copy of the image and it is now firmly taped to a previously blank page in my composition notebook.

My notebook contains ideas: pictures like the one above, ill-structured questions, random quotes that I think would make interesting writing prompts, even different ways to approach teaching parts of speech [by function; nouns can be direct objects, indirect objects, etc].

I make it a point to go through this notebook - even now when I can't use many of the ideas, on a regular basis --usually once a month.   Now instead of finding interesting ways to present materials to my middle school students - I give the ideas to my current students who happen to be pre-service teachers.

Maybe next semester I will have my students create their own notebooks and we can make them dual entry processing books. In these books, on the even pages they will post the idea and on the conjoined odd page they can take notes and process the idea further. Several times a semester we can go through these in small groups like a workshop - discussing improvements or twists or takes on them.

See, I get ideas in the strangest places.

Take a little time

The semester started for me and my students last week, and today they began for my daughter, who is singing loudly and off-key about being in kindergarten while getting her head scrubbed.

She probably doesn’t have a future career on the stage though she is a bit of a drama queen and loves to dance, but she does have a really good point.

My daughter, in spite of the fact that our schedules are busy and that we were all up at 6 am, and we have spent the last two weeks moving and unpacking and painting and buying replacement furniture and uniforms and school supplies which has left us all sore tired and cranky – she not only somehow finds pleasure in most of the things that we do but also she takes time for herself.

This is something as teachers we forget. We take on the roles of too many other people: teacher, parent, partner, scout leader, coach, chauffeur, even student.  If you added up all the things we needed to do in a day obviously there wouldn’t be enough hours in the day.

Even in our daily school schedules we forget ourselves. From 7 am until 5 we’re “on” or we’re grading, we’re talking about students we’re doing physical labor and acrobatic stunts trying to hang things from the ceiling.  I can remember having to run to the bathroom during those 4 minutes of change of classes and still getting lectured by administrators for not being at my door to greet students.

For all the things we do, that we need to do, that keep adding to our “to do” list there is one item that we as people need to put back on the list: take a little time for me.

During my lunch period I don’t grade papers. I don’t respond to email. I don’t answer parent calls and I don’t talk about students.  I sit with friends and talk about anything else but kids. When it’s a loner lunch I listen to a book on cd or read an actual book for FUN, listen to a podcast I currently work in a location where I have unlimited access to the internet so I watch episodes of shows that I’ve missed by going to bed at 9.

We lose 1/3 of our teachers in the first 5 years because of burn out. There are many reasons why teachers are burnt out, reasons that are impossible for us to control, however, what we can control is taking time out for ourselves so that we can relax, recharge and get back to changing the world!

Whats in a name?...Depends really.

In my second year of teaching middle school I decided that the use of my full last name was not "for me." I was trying out using the hyphenate version of my maiden and married names (this didn't last long) and felt that a five syllable 19 letter last name was a little too much to hear all of the time, especially when students have a habit of mispronouncing either one let alone both.


To avoid a year of correcting students on this matter I went by Ms. B.  Decorated my door with bees, put bees on my syllabi and business cards. (I think you get the picture.) 

One of my coworkers suggested that I was inviting a nickname and an unkind one at that.  This may have been true middle schoolers are notoriously difficult to deal with and they like to talk. about. everyone.

I know that I came up with many names for teachers myself at that age, none of whom had names as enticing to morph in to something cruel as Ms. B.  I suggested to my co-worker that this moniker would not be my fate if I didn't portray it. This isn't to say I did not or would not grade accurately, that I would shy away from discipline but, unlike some of my coworkers, I have a habit of treating my students like people and my classroom like a second home (where they clean up after themselves and can't put their feet on the furniture).

The students were everywhere in the physical space of the classroom. Their summer reading projects went on display. Those came down as they completed new projects and the students decided which of their works to put on the walls.

As the first quarter progressed and back to school night came about, as one parent suggested that Ms. B wasn't formal enough for her liking, and just as my coworker had, that the kids will come up with their own name for me. I explained to her my choice but assured her that students will have names for all of us regardless, but that I wasn't really afraid of what they were coming up with since honestly I didn't treat their kids like children or little adults but like 12 and 13 year olds who occasionally needed to be reigned in and at other times needed more independence.

Before the end of the first quarter, in accordance with my own experiences as a 12 year old, my students came up with their own name for me. I was dubbed Mz. Bizzle.

They also expressed a desire to redecorate my door. The sign on my door expressed how the students felt and completely contradicted what my co-workers and even their parents expected.  (The image here isn't the actual art but its very similar).

My point here isn't that you should invite kids to insult you or that you necessarily adopt the view of middle school students that I have but instead that:

1. You should eliminate the source of something you see as a potential recurring issue and pick your battles. Expecting students to pronounce a 19 letter last name, slightly unreasonable. Expecting students to respect you regardless of what you call yourself, far more reasonable.
2. If you are uncomfortable with certain levels of formality don't force it. I look for my mother when I hear "Mrs. Maiden name," and my mother in law when I hear "Mrs. Married name." When I hear my first name I look for an adult to be saying it.
3. Know your own boundaries and enforce them. Just like with formality if you're not comfortable with treatment you are receiving don't accept it.
4. Accept and give appropriate student affection and respect. 

I cherish the name Mz. Bizzle - I wanted it for my license plate but someone else beat me to it.  I love the name, the signs they made, and the contributions the kids made in my life. To have earned that name meant that I accomplished something beyond the curriculum map.