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NACHO TEACHER MAN

Shaping the future of the world, one hall pass at a time





WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 09, 2015


DON'T BE CLEVER, KID


He's the most clever kid in the class, more clever than some teachers, more
articulate, more aware of the world, ready to argue a point and passionately
defend a ridiculous idea, an idea that only a teenager could support. He's so
intelligent, in fact, that you know the rest: he's bored. Unmotivated. Lazy
even. Doesn't turn in work, falls asleep in class, checks his phone all too
often.

As is the case with clever kids around the world, he is the one who might not
graduate. He's the one who gets zeros on work he would've gotten hundreds on, if
he had bothered to do it. He's the one that could pass an AP or IB exam without
taking the course, who reads for pleasure. Who is curious.

And he's the one who will fail and won't graduate on time. Why is this? Because
his teachers are personally offended.

At a recent meeting, teachers shrugged: Yeah, he'll have to go to summer school.
We're so sick of his shit.

Meanwhile, I brought up the name of someone who really shouldn't graduate, a
senior who cannot read or write, who also sleeps or is distracted, who scores in
the bottom quarter of any standardized exam. "I don't see how this guy could
possibly graduate," I said.

"Oh, he's fine," I heard. "He'll squeak by like he always does."

"Squeaks by" means he's a little mouse. Cute. Quiet, usually. No trouble,
really. Deals with crumbs of information. Leaves behind evidence -- homework
turned in on time, a test paper with a name on top and two out of twenty
questions attempted. In other words, he's there.

This is how to get by in school and in life. Show up. Do the minimal. Don't make
any noise. Don't offend.

Meanwhile, Clever Kid is participating in university debates (he's ineligible
for his high school debate team because of grades) and helping organize an
international book fair. Meanwhile, he is deemed a failure.

I spoke to one of his former teachers, someone I respect, to find out how it is
possible to for Clever Kid to fail and Mouse to pass.

"He has let too many people down," Respected Teacher said. "One day he'll let
down someone he loves. Or maybe himself."

And it took me a while, but I finally understood: It's really about the adults
and not the children. We often judge our students by our own failures. We fail
to teach or motivate students and so they get the F. Or we fail them because
they're too much like us.

Respected Teacher told me a story about himself: When he was a university
student, a professor took him aside and warned him that he would some day let
someone down. Years later, he had a chance to be published in a major magazine,
messed around, missed the deadline, and was told he would never be invited to
write for that magazine again. Lesson learned, Respected Teacher cleaned up his
act, became a better person because of the experience, and now passes on that
lesson to colleagues and teenagers alike.

The problem is this: Respected Teacher learned his lesson as an adult; he
expects Clever Kid to understand the same lesson as a teen.

Clever Kid is getting a B in my class, and Mouse is getting a D-. I guess I'm
too easy. I accept late work, grade students on what they know and can do. And
the thing is, Clever Kid doesn't know everything and can't do everything. He
might do better if I freed him to learn how he wants.

Recently my class was talking about a character in a novel, about the
character's philosophy. The character said that he respects China because it is
a "freedom-loving" country that has never been colonized by a foreign power. I
saw Clever Kid typing away on his phone. Just as I was about to follow school
policy (take away the phone, punish the student!), he looked up from his Google
results and said, "He's wrong. China was once colonized."

And just like that, the class discussion took a turn towards the dangerous
territory of actual learning. Can we trust this character? Does the character
know what he's talking about? Why would the author do this? What's the point?

One point, I suppose, with the characters in novels and in classrooms, is that
imperfections make us human. None of us will get it right every time. 

Posted by teacherman at 6:10 PM No comments:
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 04, 2014


GRIT AND OTHER CHARACTER STRENGTHS


One of the highlights of my school year was when three of my seniors cried.
About my assignment.

The students found me at lunch one day midway through the first semester. “We
didn’t know it would be this hard,” one of them said. “We’re thinking about
quitting this whole thing ... but we don’t want to quit.”

I asked him to slow down and explain what was happening. My students had just
finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, a dystopian novel where
clones are raised like normal children until they’re old enough to have their
organs harvested. The assignment had students research human cloning and then
debate some of the issues raised. In groups, they campaigned for and against the
use of human clones, making posters, spreading their messages on Facebook and
Twitter, and presenting their views to the rest of the school during homeroom
time. We were planning a school-wide vote on the issue, and both sides wanted to
win, until one of the groups hit an unexpected snag.

“The teachers are arguing against us,” the student explained. Their group was
representing the “yes” side -- governments should allow this kind of cloning
program. “We expected to get some questions and arguments from students, but not
teachers.”

“Yeah, and we want to tell them that it’s only an assignment, that we don’t even
agree with the position, but we don’t want to ruin it. But they won’t even let
us finish. They just shout at us and tell us how immoral we are,” added another
student before bursting into tears.

I broke into a big smile. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not trying to make you feel
bad by laughing, but this actually makes me feel happy.” They looked at me,
stunned. “Can’t you see? People are taking this seriously, which means you’re
doing a good job. Plus, you’re getting a taste of what it feels like to stand up
for an unpopular position. You’re learning!”

They didn’t look so sure, so I promised to send out a staff email, asking
teachers not to interfere. My email was a little strong -- “remember this is
only an English class assignment” -- but I later realized I really should have
thanked my colleagues, especially the ones challenging my students. They were
helping my students develop grit.

Grit, according to Angela Duckworth’s TED talk, “is passion and perseverance for
very long-term goals.” Duckworth, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist, has
found that grit helps people succeed academically and professionally, more so
than IQ, social intelligence, or other qualities. She has also discovered that
grit is difficult to teach. “What I do know is that talent doesn’t make you
gritty,” she said.

I’ve been pondering the importance of grit and other character strengths,
especially whenever I hear stories of former star students who do not do well in
their studies beyond high school. So when the students cried about the teachers’
reactions to their project but decided to continue presenting, I thought to
myself, “Maybe they’re building up their perseverance.”

I recently asked some of my students to take the VIA Youth Survey to see which
character strengths are more pronounced in my classroom of Korean students
studying in an international school with an American curriculum. After
completing the survey, students identified their top five strengths and answered
some questions. The results revealed patterns and left me wondering about how my
school could address the gaps.

The 24 strengths are arranged in six categories: wisdom, courage, humanity,
justice, temperance, and transcendence. The all-important perseverance falls
under courage, along with bravery, honesty, and vitality. It turned out that, of
my 48 students, only three listed perseverance as one of their top five
strengths; not only that, those three have all had lived overseas at some point
in their lives for more than one academic semester. The same numbers were
repeated for the strength leadership.

Despite the small sample size of my survey, these statistics raise several
questions. First, is it possible that a semester abroad helped my students build
up perseverance and leadership? Or are students with these strengths more likely
to live and study abroad? More importantly, however, I wonder if my school
should do anything with this information. If it is true that perseverance is
important and our students lack it, should we work to build it? I have the same
question about leadership – like many international schools, my school claims to
build “twenty-first century leaders” – can we do anything differently to build
this strength?

What my students lack in perseverance they make up in “appreciation of beauty
and excellence” – 14 students listed it as one of their top five strengths.
Perhaps this points to a potentially large number of artistic students in my
school, which leads to more questions: Are artistic students somehow drawn to
this school, or does the school do something to build this strength? In either
case, if it is true that the school has students with this strength, should we
focus on it and build the arts program? Or should we focus more energy on those
strengths that appear to be missing?

I recently posed these questions to an administrator who had spent six years at
the school. He agreed that the school's student population seems to lack
perseverance (“Maybe all high-income students do,” he said) but thought their
strengths should be celebrated and developed. “It's important to work on
weaknesses, but I feel we overemphasize the importance of that in education,” he
said, “and then we just end up pointing out all the problems with our kids,
instead of spending more energy and time helping their strengths become even
more prominent.”

We discussed the difficulties in teaching grit and laughed about the time some
twelfth grade students cried because of my assignment. A situation like that, he
said, “allows them to show their grit naturally.”

In fact, the students pushed on with the assignment. Their team lost the
school-wide vote but won a moral victory when voters said the pro-clones
campaign was more memorable than the anti-clones one. Interestingly, the student
who had brought the complaint to me several months ago was one of the very few
students at the school to list “leadership” as one of his top five strengths.
It's possible, I thought, that the assignment had helped him develop that
strength; at the very least, it allowed him to use his leadership skills
naturally.

I now have more questions than answers about what to teach and how, but I will
continue attempting to create assignments that will raise passions and, perhaps,
build some character strengths along the way.

Posted by teacherman at 4:36 PM 1 comment:
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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23, 2014


RECIPE FOR SUCCESS


One of my classes has been working on Cause and Effect writing. To make things
somewhat interesting, I first asked students to list something they're good at
and then write a quick essay explaining how someone else can become good at it.
One student selected baking, another illustrating. A boy decided to be
interesting by writing about raising dragons (well, bearded dragons, to be
exact). And two boys thought they'd have some fun by revealing, in one case, how
to trick teachers into thinking that you're paying attention when you're really
not, and in the other, how to do well without paying attention.

As is always the case, this kind of assignment reveals so much more than you'd
expect. First, that students recognize bad teaching and can easily outsmart lazy
teachers. "Students can sleep or doodle during class and later copy down
friends' notes after class," one wrote. "This helps students' grades because in
some classes, note-taking is summative. Summative note-taking is annoying."

And speaking of required note-taking, the other student wrote that you can trick
teachers into thinking that you care by writing something, anything, in your
notebook. "What you write doesn't matter at all," he wrote. "It can be a
complaint or something else. However, it's important to write in medium-small
letters using weird handwriting so that teachers won't try to look at your notes
very closely."

So of course, as always, students quickly figure out which assignments are BS
and act accordingly. Even supposedly hard-working Korean kids.

Students also know what it takes to succeed at something, even if they don't
necessarily connect success with school work. The students who wrote about being
good at baking and illustrating both wrote about the importance of practice.
"There are some people that have the 'god's hand,' who have true aptitude in
drawing," one of them wrote. "However, those kinds of illustrators can be found
once in a blue moon. Most illustrators are mainly composed of people who
practice hard. They draw pictures all day until their fingers become paralyzed.
... It doesn't matter whether your drawings are good or bad. If you practice
more and more, your drawing skills will develop."

Exactly, I wanted to yell out as I was reading this. In fact, the students were
in the middle of sustained silent reading as I was glancing through their
essays. I eventually interrupted their reading. 

"You guys all know the secret to becoming good readers and writers," I said. 

"Let me guess, practice," said one of the boys who knows how to trick teachers.

"Yup," I said. "You do exactly that with things you love. And if you did the
same with schoolwork, you'd easily succeed."

"But who wants to read or write for two hours a day?" another boy said. He
admitted he practices on the piano at least that much. He's brilliant.

"I especially love one paragraph in this essay about baking," I told them.
"Listen to this, and in your head, imagine this is about writing."


> The most important thing is that we need a lot of practice to bake well. For
> example, I could bake a chocolate sheet after having three failures, and I
> could make a tiramisu after having four failures. It is natural to fail many
> times before baking well, and we will get better and better as we practice
> more and more. There are many skills in baking, which we can use after being
> able to do the basic things easily and properly. After practicing and when we
> can do the basic things properly, we can move on to the next skill. For
> example, we can improve quality of chocolate by tempering, but before
> tempering, we should be able to melt the chocolate well, being able to control
> the temperature so that the chocolate wouldn’t be changed. More and more
> practice means better and higher quality dessert.

The students pointed out that baking is completely different from school,
because failure when baking is OK. It means you're learning.

"If you fail four times in school and then get one good grade, you still fail,"
I was informed.

And this is when I reminded them that they can revise an essay as many times as
they want, until they succeed, and that the last grade is the one that counts. I
also reminded them that, just like in baking, there are many skills they are
learning in my class, and they can improve the individual skills through
practice and failure.

"See what I mean?" I asked. They dutifully nodded their heads. Maybe they
understood my point and are now willing to practice. Then again, one of the boys
had written, ""If you make a very profound expression and look at the teacher or
your book, the teacher will think that you are concentrating and learning and
will think that you care. You might even earn some good grades using this
method."

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TUESDAY, APRIL 01, 2014


POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE? IT DEPENDS


My students are fascinated -- and baffled -- by stories of American university
life. They're a small group of Koreans, their English isn't perfect, but they
have opinions that make me appreciate their cultural wisdom and question my
philosophy of education.



A recent assignment had my ESL Writing class read a simple cause-and-effect
essay titled "Why College Students Are Poor." In it, the author describes
college students as shabbily dressed individuals who work part-time jobs or make
sacrifices in order to get a degree, hoping that their efforts will pay off in
the long run. One of the questions was: Does the author have a positive or
negative view of college students?


"Negative," one of the students responded. "He says that college students wear
old pants or jeans and T-shirts."


"Really, you think so?" I pointed at another student: "How about you?"


"I think negative, too. The introduction describes them as poor. They eat pizza
and drive used cars."


Our discussion quickly got sidetracked as I told them a popular fashion choice
in college: the baseball cap, put on when rolling out of bed ten minutes before
class. The kids were amused and said that Korean college students dress
fashionably and wear lots of makeup. 


We returned to the essay. "What about the conclusion?" I asked. "What does the
author say is the students' motivation? Do you still think he has a negative
view?"


"He says they hope the education will pay off, so that means he's not so sure,"
the class contrarian said. "That doesn't sound very positive."


Little by little, they started to convince me. Not that the author has a
negative view of college students, but that a lot of things Americans do seems a
little wrong.


"Why do they have part-time jobs anyway?" a student asked. "Why don't they spend
their time studying?"



"Because they have to pay for school," I said. They were shocked to learn
that more than half of American students take out loans to pay for school, which
they then pay off in subsequent decades.


"It makes sense that, if you are independent and have a good job, you should pay
for everything," the contrarian said. "But we believe that education is the
responsibility of the parents."


We believe. He wasn't speaking for his classmates. He was speaking for his
entire country. His culture.


It must be nice to have cultural norms. Expectations. Beliefs that even middle
school students understand about life. In the U.S., there are some abstractions
-- we believe that all men are created equal and something about pursuing
happiness -- but what about the responsibilities of every mother and father?
what about the responsibilities of the government to its people, or basic rights
like education? What are the priorities of the country?


Koreans perhaps are unhealthily obsessed with education. After-school academies
until late night. Standardized test preparation. Insistence on brand-name
colleges. All of it is expensive, and all of it is shouldered by the families.
Is it sustainable? Maybe not, but neither is the trillion-dollar debt in the
U.S. 


Ultimately, I was unable to convince the students that the author has a positive
view of college students. How could I? I certainly couldn't convince them that
graduating with an average debt of $30,000 is somehow a good way to start adult
life.


The problem for me now is that I had previously insisted to this same group of
students that there are definitely right and wrong answers in English class. But
how can I say that something is right when that answer is so wrong in so many
ways?

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MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2014


HOW TO GET STUDENTS TO CHEAT LESS AND HIKE MORE


Thinking Chapter 4: The Associative Machine

As I was reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, I realized that it's
not just a book about how the brain works and makes decisions. It's about
teaching. In every chapter, there is at least one revelation about what goes on
in the brains of all those classroom characters. And so, I'll try to make some
connections, to ponder recent psychological and neuroscientific findings in
order to become a better teacher. Sometimes I'll be wrong. Sometimes I'll miss
something important. But hopefully I'll hit on something important or
interesting from time to time.

To begin the exploration of priming students to succeed, look at the following
words:


homecoming         standardized exam


A lot happened to you during the last second or two. You experienced some
unpleasant images and memories. Your face twisted in an expression of disgust,
and you may have imperceptibly moved away from the computer. Your heart rate
increased, the hair on your arms rose a little, and your sweat glands were
activated. In short, you responded to something disgusting with an attenuated
version of how you would react to the actual event. All of this was completely
automatic, beyond your control.

OK, sorry, I basically copied the opening of Kahneman's chapter, except I
changed his words (banana, vomit). This is a blog about teaching after all, and
nothing is more disgusting and vomit-worthy than standardized exams.

This is one of the more exciting early chapters with potential implications for
the classroom. First, Kahneman explains a little how the association of ideas
works. If you come across an unpleasant idea, such as standardized exams, your
mind and body react both consciously and in silent, hidden ways. He then
explains the marvels of priming: if you were asked to complete the word fragment
SO_P, your response would be different depending if you were first primed with
WASH or EAT. From here it gets complicated, but also really intriguing.

Kahneman describes one experiment that got college students to walk slower
because they had first been primed with words associated with the elderly. Just
being exposed to words like Florida, forgetful, and bald got young people to
slow down. That got me thinking, can students be primed for some long-term
actions? For example, could they become interested in hiking if classroom walls
were covered in pictures of beautiful forest trails? Could they be convinced to
volunteer with pictures of orphanages or soup kitchens? No words, no messages,
just pictures. And then a random announcement: we're planning a hike; sign up in
the office. Could it work?

Kahneman continues by explaining that reciprocal priming effects produce a
coherent reaction. By thinking about old age, people act old, and acting old
reinforces thoughts of old age. The same is true with being amused and smiling:
one reciprocates the other. Even nodding your head makes you more likely to
agree with a message. These ideas point to the use of humor in the classroom. By
laughing, students are more likely to be amused by a lesson, which in turn makes
them feel positive about it. This is all common sense, but I wonder if it would
be possible to trick students into being more agreeable. What if, for example,
throughout the lesson, I tell students to nod if they hear me? Just that. Every
ten minutes or so, nod if you hear me. Of course they'll nod (because I speak
loudly), but by getting them to do that, can I alter their perception of
whatever the lesson is actually about? It's worth a shot; at the very least, all
the nodding will keep them from nodding off.

Kahneman presents other examples of priming effects. For example, people who
have money on their minds (perhaps they saw a dollar-bill screen saver or a
stack of Monopoly money) become more selfish, help less, and want to sit further
away from strangers than people who have not been primed with money. This makes
me wonder how various primes in a classroom might affect students. If there are
posters of various universities, will students connect every task to their goal
of getting into a great university? If so, would they be more or less likely to
cheat on assignments and tests? Would they be more or less willing to help other
students? Obviously I don't know the answers, but I think it's important to be
aware that even the most innocent messages might have a profound effect on
students, whether or not they are aware of it.

One possible way to reduce cheating is posters of eyes. Kahneman explains an
experiment that changed how much people were willing to pitch in for coffee in
an office: on alternating weeks, large pictures were hung in the room, either of
flowers or eyes. There was a big increase in the amount people left during the
weeks with pictures of eyes. Subconsciously, people thought someone was
watching. I wonder if this would work in the classroom. Students want to peek at
a neighbor's paper, but they sense eyes watching ...

The fact that primes work is not up for debate, according to Kahneman, who says,
"You have no choice but to accept that the major conclusions of these studies
are true. More important, you must accept that they are true about you" (57). If
so, then it seems important that schools are set up in ways that would prime
students to succeed, whether that's studying harder or volunteering more or
simply getting out into the wilderness for a hike.

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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2014


WHY SCHOOLS SHOULDN'T ELIMINATE JUNK FOOD


Thinking Chapter 3: The Lazy Controller, part 2

One of my former colleagues used to meet her advisory group students before they
headed in for dreaded standardized exams. She'd hand each a packet of snacks --
candy bars, a juice drink, maybe a piece of fruit. Needless to say, her students
loved her. She said she wanted to make sure each of them had some food, knowing
full well that students freak out on exam days and forget things like breakfast.
Turns out she was also probably helping them get higher scores.

According to Kahneman, research has shown "conclusively" that tasks like the SAT
and ACT drain people. "[A]n effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you
have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to
exert self-control when the next challenge comes around. The phenomenon has been
named ego depletion" (41-42). If you think about it, sitting in place for many
hours bubbling in Scranton pages is an unbelievable effort of will and
self-control for most teens. Furthermore, "[a]fter exerting self-control in one
task, you do not feel like making an effort in another." This explains why many
students start strong and noticeably slow down during an exam (proctor one of
the exams and you'll see). It turns out that the nervous system, especially when
involved in effortful mental activity, consumes glucose: "When you are actively
involved in difficult cognitive reasoning or engaged in a task that requires
self-control, your blood glucose level drops" (43). Researchers have also
confirmed that "the effects of ego depletion could be undone by ingesting
glucose."

The implications of this go beyond having students eat a candy bar during a
break in the exam. Teachers marking papers also suffer ego depletion. A study
found that judges were most likely to grant parole immediately after a food
break and least likely immediately before a break. Were the judges simply being
nice because they felt content after a meal, or were they harsh because they
were hungry? In either case, these findings point to the importance of taking
many breaks while marking papers.

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TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2014


MAYBE BEING GLUED TO A COMPUTER SCREEN LATE INTO THE NIGHT ISN'T A BAD THING


Thinking* Chapter 3: The Lazy Controller, part 1

There are many reasons why electives such as Journalism and Yearbook are so
important ... and fun to teach, which is why I think all classes should be more
like them. For one, these are two classes that create products that are
distributed to the school and wider community, that become records of the school
year. How many classes require students to do real work that is then seen and
critiqued by an actual audience? Not enough. Speaking of being seen,
publications get everyone in the school actually reading, hopefully getting the
young and old into the habit of picking up professional newspapers and
magazines. Another reason is that everyone loves to talk about the importance of
critical thinking skills (without ever really defining them), and producing a
school newspaper or yearbook requires those skills -- students don't discuss
critical thinking in some abstract way; instead, they discuss, debate,
investigate, and make decisions about big ideas. Student leaders get a chance to
practice real leadership, staff members get a chance to collaborate and stretch
their creativity, and administrators get taken to task for decisions and
policies. What I love best about teaching these courses is what is known
as flow.

Several years ago, on the day before deadline, students decided they would stay
in the computer lab after school until they were done. They were working on
issue 1 of the new year, and the new editors vowed to improve on last year's
group who had missed the monthly deadline a couple of times. The design editor
hooked up his computer to the projector so that others could see what he was
doing. The editor in chief alternated between her screen and the classroom's big
screen, snapping instructions for headline sizes and photo placement. The copy
editor, curled up in a corner of the room, shouting occasional frustrations at
articles submitted earlier that day: "What's the matter with these people? Don't
they know how to use quotation marks?" The photo editor, oblivious to the hustle
and bustle around her, sat with headphones on, patiently cropping and improving
images. Hours passed, and work continued. When it all appeared complete,
everyone gathered around the big screen, carefully examining each page and
rushing to their own computers when someone spotted a mistake. No one was tired.
No one needed to go home. Good thing it was Friday, because they finished well
after midnight.

I've observed similar scenarios at different schools -- at an inner city Chicago
school, a boarding school in India, an elite international school in England.
Each time, when a group of committed students with a shared goal get together,
they work. In the moment, they're not worried about grades or college
applications or future contests. They're worried about putting together the best
possible publication they can. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman introduces
psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow, which is when people
"expend considerable effort for long periods of time without having to exert
willpower" (40). While experiencing flow, people "lose their sense of time, of
themselves, of their problems." I've seen it many times, and it's interesting
how the same teenagers who can be described as lazy or apathetic by some
teachers all of a sudden gain focus and willpower when working on a real task.

Surely a very small percentage of any group of students would experience flow in
Journalism class, but there are many activities across the disciplines that can
grab students similarly. This is why I believe students should do real work in
their classes. They should do the work of scientists, historians, mathematicians
-- whatever that work is, as long as it's real. Not all students will become
passionate about all (or even most) of their subjects, but wouldn't it be
something if many students could regularly experience flow in the classroom? In
order to help students become passionate about something, it is important to
find passionate teachers. The most impressive question I've ever been asked at
an interview -- the question that made me think that I want to work for this
principal -- was this: What excites you about your subject? If teachers are
excited, students will be swept up, and the only problem we'll have to worry
about is making evening phone calls home to explain that we're almost finished
with this month's work.

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     * Don't be clever, kid

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