The district office HR representative explains to us at the staff meeting, "From now on, teachers must avoid any site that allows for social networking with students."
"I can't believe this," Ms. Jackson says. "I . . . I've volunteered in my church's youth group for years. It seems that the best way to model appropriate adult behavior is to interact with kids and be a positive role model."
"No can do, Action Jackson! Churches can have creeps. Do we want you to seem like a creep?"
"What about the grocery store? I run into students at the grocery store all the time. It can be a real network of social interaction."
"Nope. You can be on the site, but you can't greet students. Just avoid eye contact and pretend that they don't exist."
"I coach baseball."
"Is it the school's team?"
"No."
"Then, you'll need to resign immediately."
"I'm a family friend of one of my students. Her whole family has been over for dinner."
"That might be misconstrued as a date. Just tell her family that you cannot be friends with them until their daughter is in college."
"But she's in the fourth grade!"
"Well, they'll have to take a rain check, then. Any more questions?"
"Can it be an anti-social networking site? I mean, can I go to a riot where my students might be attending? To me, that's pretty anti-social," I add.
"Good point. We might need to revisit that. Let's go to the Board with this. Perhaps we'll simply pass a rule that you cannot interact with a student at all outside of school."
Image
"Mr. Johnson, are pictures more real than reality if we just forget reality after it happens anyway?"
"What do you think?"
"I think a picture is more real, since it doesn't change."
"What about memory?"
"Your imagination gets in the way of reality."
Imagination. Imaginary. Root word: Image.
Graven images.
"What do you think?"
"I think a picture is more real, since it doesn't change."
"What about memory?"
"Your imagination gets in the way of reality."
Imagination. Imaginary. Root word: Image.
Imago.
Make believe. Make belief.
We are living in a world just beginning to shift from a print to an image culture. We create imagery. No, we capture imagery, letting imagination believe it is less important or less real or less true than the snapshot flash of a camera.
But we also create images; spinning truth and reality to improve the image we try and maintain with the vain hope of masking our mortality.
Graven images.
I spent an hour retouching a photograph I'll use in my pen pal network.
It might capture reality, but I feel less real than I did an hour before when I broke bread with my wife and daughter. (Okay, I had to break the bread into really tiny pieces for her, but it was still breaking bread) When I share the sense of confusion in sketching out a pencil-based image of myself, my wife reminds me that it is human.
"Tom, we hide. We stay out in the open. We hide again. Social context, language, clothing - these are all a part of the natural desire to create that element of self that we experience so deeply."
"It just seems like we lost something human in the process."
"No, our technology, our tools, our language, culture . . . those are what make us human. The need to develop an image is the root of imagination. It's what makes us who we are. It's pictographs on cave walls and hierogliphics on pyramids and stained glass on cathedral walls. The tools might change, but the sense in which we create an image or capture an image and then call it reality . . . that is a part of what makes us human."
My daughter paints a monster. It's real, or at least it is real to her. I retouch a photograph. My wife quilts a blanket. True, we might be moving toward an "image culture." However, let's not kid ourselves. We have always been image-based. It's just that the tools change in how we express imagination. Yet, whether we conjure up a new vision or try and rethink our public memory, it is always an act of imagination.
Imagination. Image. Imago.
"Imago Dei," she reminds me as I slowly slide the air shudder and watch the silhouettes fade into darkness. Even now, as I embrace her beneath our comforter, I am experience at once the empirical reality of her warmth and conjuring up images of that moment she walked down the aisle. Even when we are laid bare, in our most vulnerable moments, we are still bound by our images.
Tech Masks
"Sorry I'm late. Some idiot in a horseless carriage cut me off and spooked my horse a bit," I tell Paul the Preindustrial Poet when we meet for coffee.
"I know what you mean. I was cut off by a mustang this morning. You know the type that a guy gets in his mid-life crisis. I was walking down the street and he just cut me off."
"I guess I'm just in a bad mood. Some anonymous guy wrote told me that I'm going to Hell."
"On your plog?"
"Yup."
"It seems like people use technology to hide. It's like it becomes a mask. Whether it's cutting you off in a horseless carriage or being vindictive in a plog or bumping their phonograph loud enough that the whole neighborhood hears. They wouldn't cut you off in person or shout at you in a room or shout a song so loud that the whole city hears. It's like the technology becomes a way to hide."
"Is it really masking anything?'
"What do you mean?"
"I understand that it's unpleasant. I get that. And I understand that people use technology to hide. Or they forget the human side behind it. But cutting people off, making mean comments and the like - isn't that simply a part of the human condition?"
"I know what you mean. I was cut off by a mustang this morning. You know the type that a guy gets in his mid-life crisis. I was walking down the street and he just cut me off."
"I guess I'm just in a bad mood. Some anonymous guy wrote told me that I'm going to Hell."
"On your plog?"
"Yup."
"It seems like people use technology to hide. It's like it becomes a mask. Whether it's cutting you off in a horseless carriage or being vindictive in a plog or bumping their phonograph loud enough that the whole neighborhood hears. They wouldn't cut you off in person or shout at you in a room or shout a song so loud that the whole city hears. It's like the technology becomes a way to hide."
"Is it really masking anything?'
"What do you mean?"
"I understand that it's unpleasant. I get that. And I understand that people use technology to hide. Or they forget the human side behind it. But cutting people off, making mean comments and the like - isn't that simply a part of the human condition?"
When a Child Hates Pencils
I have a student who walked into class the first day and began biting on the pencil nervously and eventually he simply snapped it in half, leaving shards of our beautiful crisp medium on the floor.
At this point, I am supposed to send him to the office, send a telegram to his mother and begin the "step process" to eventually isolate him entirely from learning. Except, the school system is precisely the cause of his problem. I know it sounds bizarre, but the boy hates pencils. Not pencils, really, but writing and his hatred of writing has little to do with a hatred of language or expression or anything that naturally flows into writing.
See, Josiah has spent the last three years giving almost no effort in writing and in response, he has received huge block letters with the words FAIL. It's not that he had the chance to write anything substantial anyway. In an effort to create a 20th Century factory-style education, his teacher used isolated-skill worksheets (the name says it right there - they aren't "think sheets") and he grew weary of being bribed with colorful stamps and peppy praise.
Pencils were not used for learning, but for working.
Then, we he began acting up, teachers sent him to another classroom as part of the Shame-based Oppositional Behavior Process (or SOB Process), where he had to copy words out of the dictionary or write "I will not be a class fuck-up" repeatedly.
Want real education reform? Buy pencils, yes. Purchase some crisp new paper as well. However, nothing will change in student learning until we get over a system of bribes and extortion.
Our principal encouraged me to keep Josiah away from pencils until he was "mature" (as if a pencil was something one has to mature into) and has "proven that he can earn the privilege of using them again." I ignored his advice and handed Josiah a new pencil the second day of school. I told him he could draw, write poetry, tell a story, whatever.
"Will I get a stamp?"
"No. I don't do stamps."
"A letter?"
"No letters here either."
"Then why should I do this?"
"I write because I have something to say. I draw because I want to create. I can't control it. There's something in me that propels me to draw."
"Will you read it?"
"Yep. I'll even write comments and on some parts I'll ask you to do an assignment I choose. I'll make some corrections. I'm still your teacher. But my goal is feedback, not judgement."
He tears a page out of the journal, writes a poem about wanting to fly and then creates an origami flying dragon with the poetry written on the wings. It's beautiful and quirky and it didn't happen because of letters or stamps or peppy praise.
At this point, I am supposed to send him to the office, send a telegram to his mother and begin the "step process" to eventually isolate him entirely from learning. Except, the school system is precisely the cause of his problem. I know it sounds bizarre, but the boy hates pencils. Not pencils, really, but writing and his hatred of writing has little to do with a hatred of language or expression or anything that naturally flows into writing.
See, Josiah has spent the last three years giving almost no effort in writing and in response, he has received huge block letters with the words FAIL. It's not that he had the chance to write anything substantial anyway. In an effort to create a 20th Century factory-style education, his teacher used isolated-skill worksheets (the name says it right there - they aren't "think sheets") and he grew weary of being bribed with colorful stamps and peppy praise.
Pencils were not used for learning, but for working.
Then, we he began acting up, teachers sent him to another classroom as part of the Shame-based Oppositional Behavior Process (or SOB Process), where he had to copy words out of the dictionary or write "I will not be a class fuck-up" repeatedly.
Want real education reform? Buy pencils, yes. Purchase some crisp new paper as well. However, nothing will change in student learning until we get over a system of bribes and extortion.
Our principal encouraged me to keep Josiah away from pencils until he was "mature" (as if a pencil was something one has to mature into) and has "proven that he can earn the privilege of using them again." I ignored his advice and handed Josiah a new pencil the second day of school. I told him he could draw, write poetry, tell a story, whatever.
"Will I get a stamp?"
"No. I don't do stamps."
"A letter?"
"No letters here either."
"Then why should I do this?"
"I write because I have something to say. I draw because I want to create. I can't control it. There's something in me that propels me to draw."
"Will you read it?"
"Yep. I'll even write comments and on some parts I'll ask you to do an assignment I choose. I'll make some corrections. I'm still your teacher. But my goal is feedback, not judgement."
He tears a page out of the journal, writes a poem about wanting to fly and then creates an origami flying dragon with the poetry written on the wings. It's beautiful and quirky and it didn't happen because of letters or stamps or peppy praise.
I Banned Pencils Today
I see the need for all types of media in my classroom. I have fought the battle to expand our band width so that my students can use phonographs without running into the tuba players. I have fought to avoid the term "pencil bullying" and to use tablets and pen pal networks in class.
Yet, in math today we banned the use of paper and pencil.
I asked students to find the area of a volume of a cylinder that is twenty inches wide and twenty inches tall. I watched students fidget for awhile before realizing that they would have to solve this using a cerebrum rather than a slate or a paper.
No manipulatives. No paper. No slates. No chalk. Just a mind. It took awhile at first, but eventually every child answered it and then shared their process with partners.
Having tools is a part of being human. I never want to deny that. Yet, I also want to recognize that we have the power to abandon our tools and use our highly evolved minds. I ask students to do mental math because I want them to see that their brains are powerful in and of themselves.
Thanks EDM 310
I normally post responses to people's comments, but life has gotten crazy-busy lately. So, I want to direct this at Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class in general:
Thank you for all the positive feedback. It is always encouraging to get compliments, que stions and insightful responses from readers. I know that my blog was a "required reading," but it often felt from the responses that people were reading this not simply out of a desire to get a grade, but in an honest desire to think about education. There were plenty of times when I considered scrapping this bizarre, satirical, often clunky little blog, but your comments helped reshape how I chose to approach writing this. So, again, thanks to all the folks who are reading this blog.
-John Spencer
Thank you for all the positive feedback. It is always encouraging to get compliments, que stions and insightful responses from readers. I know that my blog was a "required reading," but it often felt from the responses that people were reading this not simply out of a desire to get a grade, but in an honest desire to think about education. There were plenty of times when I considered scrapping this bizarre, satirical, often clunky little blog, but your comments helped reshape how I chose to approach writing this. So, again, thanks to all the folks who are reading this blog.
-John Spencer
My Eduplog Nominations
I am doubtful that anyone will nominate Tom Johnson's Adventures in Pencil Integration, seeing as how there is no 19th Century Satirical Blog category (and it really can't be called "new" if it takes place back in the day). So, with that in mind, I am doing a post about the Eduplog Awards of 1897.
Best Individual Plog: This was a hard one, but I'm having to go with Waldo's Pond. I love the way he takes up Thoreau's notion of finding a pond and thinking about life. The combination of poetry, sketches and thoughtful reflection make this a truly literary education plog.
Best Individual Tweaker: With the explosion of opium dens and the use of cocaine in medicine, I'm a bit shocked that anyone would ever glorify the concept of a tweaker. Shame on you, Eduplog!
Best Group Plog: Caravan to the Valley does a great job creating a satirical plog mocking William McKinley's Caravan to the Top.
Best New Plog: Theodore Grant's Losing My Sideburns deals not only with what it's like to be a new teacher who must shave his sideburns and dress professionally, but also what it means to completely lose one's former identity in becoming the "man in charge" at this one room schoolhouse.
Best Class Plog: I'm Down with Brown. It's a brilliant plog dealing with social class issues throughout this current Spanish-American War. Topics such as marginalization and racist language (hence the brown) . . . oh, what's that? Wrong use of the word class? Oh well, I'll keep it up anyway.
Best Resource Sharing Plog: 20th Century Learning Resources - George has a way of finding all the resources that are necessary for the Industrial Age and locating them in a daily paper. Nice work, George! Where else will I find the 18 Ways to Integrate Origami into Daily Paper-Based Instruction?
Most influential Plog Post: We Are the Factory. I love the notion that in creating this current modern factory model, those of us who are complicit in it become the factory itself.
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion: I almost went with the meadowlark on this one, but I'd have to say the robins at Steele Park.
Best Teacher Plog: Learn to Serve. I love the way Ruth gets her children to serve without feeling coerced or falling into the overly progressive trap of "let's go fix the world."
Best Librarian / Library Plog: Mary Emerson's Damn Dewey's Delightful Decimal System is a mildly irreverent description of the life of a lonely librarian with a keen sense of alliteration and irony.
Best School Administrator Plog: I Assist in Intending, in a Super Kind of Way is an honest, funny and often bizarre portrait of an assistant superintendent of a small rural district.
Best Educational Tech Support Plog: A Sketchy Solution has saved me on many occasions when I simply couldn't figure out how to fix a pencil.
Best eLearning / Corporate Education Plog: Thomas Edison's Education Funhouse might be a bit overly corporate, but come on, it's Thomas Effing Edison, guys! The man who invented (or had other people working for him who invented) the light bulb - the very symbol we will forever use when drawing clip art pictures of people with an idea. If we're going to have corporate buyout of education, let's at least keep it entertaining in the process.
Best Educational Use of a Phonograph: Can You Hear Me Noun? is genius in the way it captures both the limitations and the strengths of the phonograph and the human voice in education and grammar in particular.
Best Educational Use of Motion Pictures: Check Out Some Skin! I realize the marketing on this one failed, with many patrons assuming it would be a peep show. But regardless of the box office dud, this was a real hit with my classroom. Who knew the epidermis could be so fascinating?
Best Educational PowerSlide: How PowerSlides Lost Their Power is a self-mocking PowerSlide making use of everything we dread when we hear the first rumbling of that Edison projector: comical typeface, cheap stock photography, entire paragraphs on one slide. You get the idea.
Best Educational Use of a Social Network: Ray's Cafe. Just go there sometime and try the pie or the pi. Either way, you'll never have enough. People connect in a deep social network on a daily basis.
Best Educational Use of a Virtual World: Isn't that precisely schooling already is? A dark virtual world with draconian discipline all in the name of the "real world?"
Eduplog Award Nominations - 1897
Best Individual Plog: This was a hard one, but I'm having to go with Waldo's Pond. I love the way he takes up Thoreau's notion of finding a pond and thinking about life. The combination of poetry, sketches and thoughtful reflection make this a truly literary education plog.
Best Individual Tweaker: With the explosion of opium dens and the use of cocaine in medicine, I'm a bit shocked that anyone would ever glorify the concept of a tweaker. Shame on you, Eduplog!
Best Group Plog: Caravan to the Valley does a great job creating a satirical plog mocking William McKinley's Caravan to the Top.
Best New Plog: Theodore Grant's Losing My Sideburns deals not only with what it's like to be a new teacher who must shave his sideburns and dress professionally, but also what it means to completely lose one's former identity in becoming the "man in charge" at this one room schoolhouse.
Best Class Plog: I'm Down with Brown. It's a brilliant plog dealing with social class issues throughout this current Spanish-American War. Topics such as marginalization and racist language (hence the brown) . . . oh, what's that? Wrong use of the word class? Oh well, I'll keep it up anyway.
Best Resource Sharing Plog: 20th Century Learning Resources - George has a way of finding all the resources that are necessary for the Industrial Age and locating them in a daily paper. Nice work, George! Where else will I find the 18 Ways to Integrate Origami into Daily Paper-Based Instruction?
Most influential Plog Post: We Are the Factory. I love the notion that in creating this current modern factory model, those of us who are complicit in it become the factory itself.
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion: I almost went with the meadowlark on this one, but I'd have to say the robins at Steele Park.
Best Teacher Plog: Learn to Serve. I love the way Ruth gets her children to serve without feeling coerced or falling into the overly progressive trap of "let's go fix the world."
Best Librarian / Library Plog: Mary Emerson's Damn Dewey's Delightful Decimal System is a mildly irreverent description of the life of a lonely librarian with a keen sense of alliteration and irony.
Best School Administrator Plog: I Assist in Intending, in a Super Kind of Way is an honest, funny and often bizarre portrait of an assistant superintendent of a small rural district.
Best Educational Tech Support Plog: A Sketchy Solution has saved me on many occasions when I simply couldn't figure out how to fix a pencil.
Best eLearning / Corporate Education Plog: Thomas Edison's Education Funhouse might be a bit overly corporate, but come on, it's Thomas Effing Edison, guys! The man who invented (or had other people working for him who invented) the light bulb - the very symbol we will forever use when drawing clip art pictures of people with an idea. If we're going to have corporate buyout of education, let's at least keep it entertaining in the process.
Best Educational Use of a Phonograph: Can You Hear Me Noun? is genius in the way it captures both the limitations and the strengths of the phonograph and the human voice in education and grammar in particular.
Best Educational Use of Motion Pictures: Check Out Some Skin! I realize the marketing on this one failed, with many patrons assuming it would be a peep show. But regardless of the box office dud, this was a real hit with my classroom. Who knew the epidermis could be so fascinating?
Best Educational PowerSlide: How PowerSlides Lost Their Power is a self-mocking PowerSlide making use of everything we dread when we hear the first rumbling of that Edison projector: comical typeface, cheap stock photography, entire paragraphs on one slide. You get the idea.
Best Educational Use of a Social Network: Ray's Cafe. Just go there sometime and try the pie or the pi. Either way, you'll never have enough. People connect in a deep social network on a daily basis.
Best Educational Use of a Virtual World: Isn't that precisely schooling already is? A dark virtual world with draconian discipline all in the name of the "real world?"
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