pencils and pointless prep

"Mr. Johnson, why do we use pencils?"  Cynical Gifted Boy asks.

"It's a learning tool.  Why do we learn?"  I ask him.

"We learn to pass the test so that we can get into the honor's program in junior high so that we can pass the test to get into the honor's program in high school so that by 1901 we can pass the new SAT test so that we can get into the better university so that we can get a better job,"  Cynical Gifted Boy answers.

"What then?" I ask him.  

"I think you work hard and look forward to retirement, where you wonder what happened to your life and why no one wants to talk to you, because they are too busy passing the test to get the job to get the high pay to guarantee that they'll have a good retirement."  

What if we taught in the now rather than as a preparation for the future?  Don't get me wrong, we are always preparing for something else, but it happens by being relevant today.  I use pencils and paper, not because it is necessary for a particular job, but because it is what they need right now to learn.  

sorry kiddos, but pencils aren't always fun

I read a kid's plog today.  It was a free write where he described how horribly bored he was while writing. For a piece about boredom, it was honestly pretty fascinating; vascilating between clever wordplay and edgy sarcasm.  I should have enjoyed it more. However, "that's boring," is a phrase guaranteed to hurt me.  On a very rational level, I get the need for play and the aversion toward work.  What I don't understand is the aversion to learning.  Perhaps I've played a role in blurring the two.

On a more emotional level, I take it personally.  I try hard to make lessons relevant and meaningful, challenging but not too challenging.  I throw myself into what I teach and sometimes the wall of apathy can feel like a wall of spikes. If I'm not careful, tiny disruptions can feel like a slap in the face.  I know, I know, they're kids.  It's not a social contract.

I pull out a paper and write a letter.  It's not meant to be sarcastic and it's not even meant to be sent.  It's a letter to all students:

Dear Student,

I know that learning might feel boring to you.  I know that you want fun.  Clowns and puppets and a Great Dane that juggles fire.  I can't offer you fun.  Don't get me wrong, there will be moments of fun.  There will be moments of humor.  But these are moments.

What I offer is meaning.  I offer you a chance to learn.  I provide you with challenging tasks, a ton of autonomy and a chance to explore the questions in your mind.  If you find that boring, I can't help you.  The truth is that you've been fed a lie.  Through bribes and extortion, you learned that learning is a chore that demands a commodity in return.  I can't give you confectionary delights.

I know that there has been some confusion. You are used to using pencils for the pen pal networks (and admittedly we will use Pen Pal networks in our class) or for creating pictures (we'll do that here, too, sometimes).  Still, our class uses pencils for learning.  If it's fun, that's great.  But fun isn't the bottom line.

You learned that the opposite of boring is fun.  Someday, hopefully, you'll find that fun is not the antithesis of boredom.  It's simply a numbing agent.  It's what you rub on the wound when your sense of meaning has been amputated.  What you need is something that has been missing.  And the true miracle is that it is possible to regain that sense of meaning that you lost somewhere in grade school.

Don't get me wrong, there will moments of boredom and frustration.  I had days when I struggled to learn my multiplication tables and I hated Shakespeare the first go-round.  However, if you can see these moments of dull tasks as an integral part of the meaningful learning experience, you might just find that they become at least a little more tolerable.

Sincerely,

Mr. Johnson

*     *     *

I once viewed pencils as a magical talisman that would transform every student into a self-motivated learner.  I believed that the Pencil Natives would grab hold of a pencil and start creating amazing works of poetry and narrative.  I thought that the simple existence of paper would mean clarity of thought, critical thinking and logic in persuasive writing.

It worked for a day or two, but eventually the pencil novelty wore off and students realized that they were working with tools.  Looking back on it, I was no different than the students. I confused novelty and fun with meaning and depth.  I'd like to think I know better now, but a "that's boring" comment can apparently still throw me over the edge.

Should we be anonymous?

A student ran to me this morning and explained, "Mr. Johnson, someone wrote something really mean on our plog."

I looked at the margins and read the long, convoluted, well-educated rhetoric against immigrants.  "Cheaters, border hopers, criminals," next to well-reasoned explanations on the dangers of urbanization and the reduction of wages with the huge influx of cheap labor.  For what it's worth, I don't think they were referring to "hope" in writing "hopers," but I could be wrong.

"We're Irish, yes, but American too.  We're not illegals. Not any more illegal than anyone else who came here to take land from the Indians. We just came here to work." she tells me.

I pulled out my pencil and erased the marks; forever wiping out the anonymous comment from the public memory of the event.  I am the Editor, the Censor who must decipher between mean-spirited attacks and passionate criticism.

So, I asked the students if we should allow anonymous comments.

"People hide when they are anonymous.  They attack, because it is a surprise attack.  It's secret."

"It's like the KKK.  They cover themselves in a white sheet, spout out hate and they don't have to be transparent."  A bit of an extreme metaphor, I admit, but I could see his point.

"I think we should allow people to be anonymous.  At least it's honest when they do that.  So, people hate the Irish.  At least this way we know it.  No one is pretending."

The debate continued for awhile until a student said, "I think it's hypocritical for us to require people to state their first and last name and yet we post our work with just our first names."

"We do that to protect you.  Remember, employers can go back and search public records.  It's all part of your public footprint."

A boy added,"I know that, Mr. Johnson.  But shouldn't that be exactly what we want people to see?  Okay, so imagine someone takes a photograph of me drinking at a party or entering a burlesque theater and I get hired by a member of the Temperance Movement.  That can be real damaging if they find that on the pen pal networks.  So, why not let them see the good side of me?  Why not let them see that since sixth grade I have been doing community service and I have cared about conservation?"

It has me thinking about anonymity.  Perhaps no one should be anonymous in pencil postings.  Perhaps the veil we wear in plogs and pen pal networks can work both ways - hiding the good and allowing us to commit acts of cruelty without facing consequences.

Mr. Johnson, will you be my friend?

I overheard a conversation a few days back (yes, I eavesdrop on my students) about the pen pal networks.

"I only have twenty followers," a kid says.  

"It's okay.  Jesus only had twelve."  

"That's not true.  Jesus had thousands of followers.  He just had his top eight.  Except it was his top twelve." 

"True.  So, maybe you're not Jesus.  But I'm your friend and though I won't follow you around, I'll always pick you for short stop even on your worst day."  

*    *    *

I receive a request from the insecure short stop asking if I'd be his friend.  I ignore the request.  Okay, that's not entirely true. I think about my own childhood and shudder.  I can't imagine walking to kids' homes and seeing a list of the top eight and realizing that I don't make the cut.  It would be like relational tryouts and I wouldn't have made the junior varsity popularity team.  I can't imagine what it would be like, in the formative years, when I was experimenting with how to interact with others, to have this massive public network of social relationships advertising to the world that I was a loser.

Still, it's not as if I can follow the kid or friend him.  For what it's worth, I'd like to keep "friend" a noun rather than a verb.  Can't a friend be the last refuge of permanence in an industrial world of change?  We've already lost place and we're quickly losing thing. Let's keep person.

It's just that he and I can't be friends.  I can't invite him with me to the pub.  I'm his teacher. He's my student. We aren't going to share stories about work or talk politics (and our shared anger at the McKinley administration for failing to deliver either hope or change in their Caravan to the Top initiative)  

A few days go by and then he stops me in class.  "Why did you ignore my friend request?"  he asks, calling me out on my act of passive-aggression.  

"I'm sorry.  You're my student and I just don't think we can be friends.  Some day, when you're older, send me a friend request again, okay?"  

He walks away, head hung low.  He'll understand, right? 

*     *     *

When I tell Mr. Brown, his answer surprises me.  "I would have accepted his invitation.  I know there is a difference in age and I am concerned with the graying of adulthood and childhood in our country.  Though, to be quite honest, we still have kids working in the factories.  I just think that the last person a kid wants to have reject him is his teacher.  Socially awkward short stop boy looks up to you."

"What about his parents?"  

"I would have become their friends, too.  I would have explained it all to them and talked about his need for a mentor."  

So, I'm left perplexed.  I set up rigid rules for social engagement and they seem to make sense to me.  They are set up to protect myself from rumors.  But in my goal to be safe, I've unintentionally crushed a kid.  

part two of "Full of CREP"

For the most part, I abandon the worksheets.  We breeze through them quickly and then I break students up into small groups to discuss the question, "What are the elements of a good career?"  The brainstorm turns out to be incredibly specific with a few groups simply writing down names of careers.  Perhaps I should have modeled it first.

I then present career philosophies

• Vocational: based upon one's identity, beliefs and values.  It's the notion that who you are guides what you do (a sense of calling to it)
• Hedonist: find a job that is enjoyable, fun or pleasurable.  
• Economic: a job is based upon money.  The higher the pay, the better the job.  
• Recognition: the best job is one where a person will receive honor, recognition, fame or accolades. 
• Humanitarian: here the idea is to make a difference in the lives of others

Students engage in a debate about the merits of each and the question of whether someone can truly pursue multiple career philosophies and find contentment.  Afterward, as they break into small groups again to do a pros and cons chart, a student pulls me aside.

"If there are all these reasons for having a career and our school wants to get us job-ready in the future, why are we only following the economic philosophy?  Why don't we make a difference as a school?  Why don't we talk about identity and values and beliefs?"

"Some people don't think that's important.  They see it as fluff.  Shouldn't we pursue the core knowledge?"

He responds, "It seems like answering the question of why we work a job would be at the core of all of our knowledge."

As the students work on an individual assignment describing their own career philosophy, I hear shouting from Mr. Brown's classroom.

"Faster, I say!  It's not about quality!  It's numbers! It's data! We need to win this race! It's a race to the top, I tell you! And our company will not have any losers being left behind!"

"But Mr. Brown, the work is looking sloppy and everything we do looks identical!"

"Welcome to the edu-factory," he responds.

Students are in an assembly line filling out one line a piece on each of their worksheets.  On the sideline are students who want a piece of the grade as well.  "You sir, do you want to work in this edu-factory?  I'll pay you a C for the work.  Right now you're failing.  Take a C!"

The child simply nods.

"Alright, everybody, your grade is now a C! We only have so many points to spread around.  But we can now hire two new workers."

A child volunteers to work for a D and Mr. Brown fires another worker who refuses a C.  Finally, two more workers begin to whisper to one another.  "We quit.  We'll fail this unit if we need to."

This leads to a chain reaction as the students begin to go on strike.  As my students discuss career philosophies, his students talk about unions and free markets, wages and fairness and eventually meander into why one would work a job.

Neither of us taught the same lesson.  I might steal his idea next year and I know he plans to use my career philosophies tomorrow.  We share.  That's the idea of "common" knowledge and "common" standards.  It's horizontal.  Our paper and pencil "integration" is natural and fluid and based upon our own expertise.

Give us a program and we'll be programmed.  Give us worksheets and our work will be full of sheet.  The results will be uniform, but we'll miss the chance to be innovative.  Give us a chance to develop our own lessons and give us the freedom to share what has worked and we'll grow together.  The best professional development happens over a pint, not in a crowded library.

a class of collage artists

The first time I allowed pencil-based research, I assumed kids would understand how to look at the bias in a source, figure out the facts and summarize them.  So, I brought our kiddos to the library and found a disturbing trend.

Students pulled out their notecards and began to write everythign they read.  Apparently "research" means "become a medieval scribe."  I pulled the group together and said, "If I wanted copies, I'd be running a printing press."  Students stared at me blankly.  Note to self: six graders sometimes have a difficult time comprehending sarcasm.

After dismissing them, the trend continued, but this time a few students pulled out scissors and simply copied and pasted from the Encyclopedia Brittanica. On some level, I didn't mind.  The British already have a monopoly on trade and language.  Do they really need to be the experts on all of humanities' collective knowledge?  Still, we have books with gaping holes, because students simply stole information without even bothering to copy it into their own words.

On some level, the librarian still hates me.

***

Move ahead to this year.  I begin, not with the notion of research, but with the concept of intellectual property.  Here, I separate the class into groups of four and have each group solve a complex, creative problem.  I then allow two spies to steal an idea and use it in their group.  I do a similar thing with a short paper students write.

When the students begin to complain, we have a class discussion on collaboration versus theft of intellectual property.  We discuss the need to share information and make it one's own rather than simply copy the work of others.  

I provide them with two options.  Either they can use a chart or they can use note cards.  However, for each source, they must include the following:

• a question they are trying to answer
• facts (in their own words)
• bias of the source (with at least one loaded word)
• a citing of the source

Students don't seem to plagiarize much anymore, but I had to model it for them.  For all the talk of the Pencil Generation and Pencil Natives and the telegraph promising to instantly connect information from around the world, my students still need help learning to decipher what is true, to find facts, to develop questions and to create an argument that is their own.

should plogs be public?

Six graders snicker at the word plog. It sounds dirty, not in our Victorian sense, but in that innocent sense that you expect twelve year olds to have. Kids like turning it into phrases like "Don't plog the toilet," or into a makeshift cursed word like "Son of a plog!" Still, despite the strange terminology, students take pride in their plogs.

When I pass back their final projects, a student asks me what we should do with them.

"Save them, I guess."

"Can we make them public?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, there is this site I go to and it's like a library, but you can publish your plog and anyone can browse it."

"Wouldn't that be dangerous? I mean, wouldn't you worry about creepy people?"

"Maybe," another student interjects, "but I wonder if that's mostly hype. I mean, we let kids sing solos and do concerts for the public, right? And our school already has a baseball team. What's the difference?"

Another student adds, "Actually, a plog seems a little more anonymous. At a baseball game, they see you in person, learn your entire name and have physical access to you. A plog just means they have access to your public thoughts."

"Anyone in the world could visit this site," I point out.

"Do you really think anyone in the world is just going to randomly find out plogs?" a student asks.  "No,  they have to be searching for it. And if someone across the globe wants to take a boat to our great city and read the work of a bunch of sixth-graders, I say go for it!"

"What if you accidentally said something personal?" another student asks.

"Am I going to quit going to a diner because someone might eavesdrop?"

Another student points out, "I'd like to know what people think of my writing. If someone leaves a bad comment on the margins, I can always erase it."

"I don't know," another boy says. "I get random mail from strange people. I'm not going to divulge my secret, but apparently I have a large some of money in an account in Africa."

Finally, Ruth, a typically shy child, raises her hand and says, "I don't want my posts to be public. I think they belong to the classroom. They should be read by us. These walls aren't all bad. They define our community. I wrote with my classmates in mind. If I knew the public wanted to read my plog, I would have written it a little differently."

A boy adds to her comment, "If we knew that these would go to a public site, we would have been too careful in our approach. We would have tried to sound more important or more humble or more grown-up. I'm with Ruth. I like the barrier we have of a classroom wall."

I quickly develop a compromise, "What if we took this route? What if we played it safe at first and created a three-tiered approach? We could copy and paste the best parts of our personal plogs and made that a public magazine. We could then share our personal plog with the class and then have a separate private journal."

The class agreed with this solution, but then a boy pulled me aside and said, "Mr. Johnson, I think we should get to choose if we make our personal plog private or public. I think every student should have ownership of his or her voice."

phonograph man and the geeky gurus

A man rides his carriage up to the playground and stops the horses.  He pulls out a hand-cranked, ultra-portable, larger-than-the-cosmos phonograph.  It's not a pretty piece by any means.  Far from Mozart, it is a repetitive drum beat and a song with some choice words that the average primary grade student doesn't use (Indeed, it was a bit of a shock to the kindergarten class whose idea of "dirty language" is poopy face and stupid head).

I suppose his main goal involved impressing five and six year olds, not by creating his own innovative music, but by blasting a record loud enough for everyone to hear. On some level, his plan worked.  The little tikes found the phonograph to be an almost mystical experience.  Then again, they are also intrigued by the notion of Santa Claus and four square and playing jacks.

A student points out to me, "Knowing how to use technology doesn't mean you know how to use it," and he says it just like that, italics and all.

I ask the students to set down their pencils and pose the question, "What does it mean to know how to use a medium?"  From here, we discuss the loss of silence in our world, the humming sounds of industry and the choking clouds of soot from the factories.

"So, I can do more, but I'm so rushed that I don't have time to do anything," a girl explains.

"Everything is compressed," a kid says.  "We pack more into it, but we lose the quality."

"Can you elaborate on that?"

"I can take a picture and it's portable, right?  But it's not as good as a painting.  I can listen to music on a phonograph, but it's all scratchy.  We have some motion pictures, but they're choppy.  People are now eating canned meat and it's processed and has the texture of jelly."

I want my students to be geeks and gurus. The geek is knowledgeable about technology.  This person loves it, embraces it and knows how to use it in creative ways.  One the best days, the geek thinks of the future and how technology can be used to solve social, economic and perhaps even personal problems. On the worst days, the geek becomes intoxicated by the novelty and applies futuristic solutions that lack foresight.  Or, the geek is simply a guy on a wagon with a really loud phonograph, imposing his narcissistic desires on the world.

On the other hand, the guru is wise about technology.  This person sees it as a force that is sometimes negative in its dehumanizing aspects.  On the best days, a guru will remind us that the physical is as important as the mechanical and that some things in life should not be chopped into pieces and processed, compressed and then industrialized. A guru knows that, even when we try and predict it, technology takes on a life of its own. However, on the worst days, a guru will grow cynical and angry and shake an elitist fist at every innovation while missing out on the ways technology improves society.

I want my students to be a bit of both. Call it a paradox or a mystery.  I don't want them to abandon technology in a doom-and-gloom fear.  However, I also don't want them to get into the mentality that a robotic world will fix everything.

should kids play games in class?

So, it's the second day of our one-to-one pencil to student unit.  I'm teaching a financial planning / economics unit and incorporating all of the subjects into it.  I expected the "honeymoon" period to last longer, but pencils have no become normal.  On some level, I suppose that's what it's all about.  It's about getting beyond the hype and simply using pencils and papers as tools for learning.

Don't get me wrong, I see a need to teach students to criticize all tools, whether they are designed for print culture or oral culture, agrarian or rural culture, local or global.  However, we also need to get to a place where we say, "Pencils are shiny and new, but the real excitement is what students are learning right now."

So, I spend some time developing a program for learning about economics.  It's a market simulation game, where students graph their own investments and interact with one another.  Throughout this process, they write reflections, send messages and join a discussion zone.

Gertrude steps into my room and asks, "Why are they playing a game instead of learning?"

"It's not a game. It's a research-based, student-centered, interactive learning activity constructed to integrate pencils into a core knowledge environment."  I can play the buzzword game, too.

A student walks up to us, "Mr. Johnson, I love this game.  Why can't we play games more often? This is fun!"

Gertrude gives me the death stare.

I explain to her that the students use math, reading and writing.  I hand her a short example of this and say, "They are actually spending more time using their core curriculum skills than they would be if I stood here and lectured them on economic theory."

"You can't be playing games," she reminds me. "School has always been about work, not play. The bottom line isn't fun."

"The purpose of this game is to learn.  If it's fun, so be it. Trust me, I'm not trying to turn this class into a game. It just happens to be what we are doing in the moment."

She settles down after walking around and asking economic questions to students.  "They seem to know what they are learning," she says with a slight smile.

***

For millennia, it was a cultural universal that games existed for learning.  True, children had fun, but the games were designed to teach both social and physical skills.  Children learned to be warriors, how to govern, how to access cultural narratives all through the act of play.  In fact, Plato theorized that one could learn more about a person through an hour of play than a lifetime of conversation.

Even in America, where we have shifted toward a sit-in-your-desk-and-shut-up-and-learn model, our games become methods of accessing these cultural skill sets.  Thus, Simon Says teaches social conformity and prepares small kids for the prison-like environment of factory schools.  Dodge Ball teaches Social Darwinism and Capitalism.  Hide and Go Seek teaches children that transparency is overrated.  Best run and hide from others.  After all, this is the building block of most grown-up relationships.

On the flip side, our games teach the best of American values.  Hide and Go Seek helps teach autonomy and creativity.  Simon Says teaches listening skills and proves to kids that language can be powerful.  Dodge Ball helps with team work and allows kids to see the value of throwing things at people.

People assume that we play games in the class as a review.  It's true that most classroom games tend to be trivial.  That's why we call them trivia.  For what it's worth, I don't want my students learning anything trivial. Having a contest to see who has memorized the most state capitals doesn't exactly inspire deep thinking.

People consider games to be superficial fluff designed as a cognitive escape.  However, a well-constructed interactive game can reveal the opposite.  Games can be authentic and powerful and vital to students developing a deeper understanding of concepts.

***

When the game ends, students debrief the information in their plogs.  After words, we set our pencils down and talk.  On some level, it feels like waking up for a daze.  Students debate the pros and cons of a market system, talk about the risks of speculation and relate this to the economic crash of last year.

The pencil smudge girl from yesterday raises her hand, "I think there is a danger in playing this game, but I'm glad we played it."

"Can you elaborate on that?" I ask.

"I think the people in Wall Street got suckered into the same vortex that we were just in.  They got selfish.  The market is supposed to curb selfishness, but we found out how quickly it was to form oligopolies and attack people.  It became a game to win.  I think that's how it is for some of the people who run Wall Street."

pencil paradigm shift

games are great, I'm sure, but I want students to use pencils for things like budgets

I'm going to be honest here.  When I first began integrating pencils into the curriculum, I assumed it would automatically increase motivation.  After all, students constantly complain about chalk dust and every one of them hates cleaning the slates.  I figured they would enjoy pencils and paper simply because we were using pencils and  paper.

At first, I was right.  They would see a shiny new crisp yellow pencil and they were hooked.  However, I ran into a problem real quickly. Most of my students used pencils for drawing and for games or occasionally to send pen pal messages.  Few of them had ever used a pencil to graph a problem or to fill out a budget.  Thus, when we did a financial planning lesson, they complained.  "I thought I would be able to play Tic-Tac-Toe and Hang Man.  Tic-Tac-Toe is logic and Hang Man is reading, right?  Can't we play pencil games?"

Students walk into class assuming pencils are amusement devices.  It's often a rude awakening when they find that pencils are learning tools.  Sure, they are shiny and crisp and they don't leave chalk dust.  But don't be fooled by the novelty.  They are meant for thinking and not for entertainment.

So, what ultimately motivated the students?  The project was a success (and I use that term sparingly here - many students struggled, created mismatched graphs, had eraser smudges all over the places, etc.) because it was relevant to the students' lives.  In the end, authenticity triumphed over novelty.

photo credit

is shorthand ruining the English language?

A Language Arts teacher pulls me aside, "Mr. Johnson, I'm concerned about your former sixth graders.  Did you teach them how to write properly?"

"Yes sir, I did.  Are they having a hard time?"

"Well, I'm concerned that some of them have been using shorthand and abbreviations," she explains.

"Well, that doesn't surprise me.  They often hand one another messages written in shorthand before and after school. Apparently they even set the messages on the walls of their friend's homes," Mr. Brown mentions.

"You mean they leave comments for everyone to read?" the Language Arts teacher asks.

"Yes. Personally, I blame it on those PenPal networks they've joined," Mr. Brown adds.

I stay diplomatic and say, "I'll work harder on teaching them proper grammar and punctuation."

Upon further reflection, I have a few thoughts:

• Short-hand is simply another register.  People can switch between casual slang, casual, formal English, persuasive essays, etc. without one register "bleeding over" into the other. A true writer can write a persuasive paper and a poem without losing the ability to do either.
• Short-hand is designed to be efficient and has its place.  Some day, secretaries will use it, I'm sure. My guess is you'll see it throughout the corporate world.
• Language is fluid. It changes constantly.  I can't think of the last time I voted for a member of "Congrefs"
• I use shorthand when students take notes. I also allow them to send answers on a shorthand message. Shorthand can have its place in the classroom.
• Teachers shouldn't ban shorthand, but instead teach students about the time and place to use it.  That's the key to pencil-integrated literacy.

photo credit