Moving Forward with Guiding Questions

Guiding Questions:

• Can interdisciplinary learning allow twelfth graders to increase their motivation by allowing them choice and access to relevant content matter?
• Can a reproducible system of interdisciplinary learning be created and sustained in the high school environment?
• How does interdisciplinary learning boost the connections between language arts and social studies?
• Does interdisciplinary learning create superficial learning in the specific disciplines?
• Does interdisciplinary learning and an academy model create a positive community effect for students?

Closing Blog

Blog Assignment:

Oh President Obama, we must…

1)      Establish a national university for the professional development of educators and policy makers.  This university will not directly monitor educational reform, but will be a forum for educational professionals and policy makers to discuss outside the direct influence of lobbyists. .

2)      Be real about national results.  The jukeing of state by state statics are out of control and need to be publically challenged.  Then publically reward the states that set high standards.

3)      Get rid of the utopian thinking.  Having lofty ideals is admirable, but achieving everything is impossible.  100% “proficiency” will not be possible until we have 100% buy-in.  I’m not sure that is possible with a post-modern society.  Therefore, we must provide opportunity to all, not mastery.

4)      Get rid of Arne Duncan, the guy is a tool.

5)      Get in the conference hall and back common sense agreements between unions and school districts.  Negative portrays in the media will hurt unions and you need their support.  Help them help themselves and plan for some concessions so they save public face.

2)

I attended the AVID Summer Institute this last week and I found myself in a particular situation.  I was participating in the Culturally Relevant Teaching segment and we were conducting a Socratic Seminar.  One of the articles that we had read claimed that too much of the curriculum that students learn is “western” based and should be augmented to suit the needs of our students.  On principle, I agree that learning should be student centered and their buy-in is nearly the most important component of any course.  But I found myself arguing from the conservative vantage point. 

Ravitch’s argument of institutional change and conservatism in education found a home in my voice.  Instead of changing curriculum, I argued for the maintenance of high standards and applying the curriculum to specific circumstance.  I argued that Plato still needs to be taught because educators have a professional responsibility towards other educators and the expected knowledge that students will carry with them to the next grade or collegiate level.  I fail to believe that we, as individual educators, can take personally vain idea that we have the capacity to majorly change a curriculum because they are from a different culture.  There is power in the western canon.

Ravitch’s argument lies on the fact that the American Education System is not broken, it just suffers from a lack of high expectations because we are missing the main points.  We are focusing on the testing of high expectations instead of creating a society of professional and capable educators.  We are searching for a fast solution to a hard problem, students and teachers are not working as hard as previous generation.  This is compounded by the (now decreasing) American monopoly on capital and opportunity with world markets.  Other countries are making/allowing/motivating their youth to a level that equal or above that of American children.  But Ravitch believes the core ideas are still strong and the applicable solution to the ills of the education system.  If teachers have high standards, administrators assess with high standards, and policy makers allow for common sense structural changes, dramatic changes will not be necessary.

3) 

School teachers have the opportunity to work deeply and personally with a person for 181 days in order to teacher them content, resilience, responsibility, and respect.  I can’t think of a more noble and important responsibility.  I believe that a teacher who takes their job seriously is the front line against idiocy and societal self-destruction.  Therefore, as people with important positions, we must use the old adage and “think globally, act locally”.  We must problem solve in our own situations and help students on an individual basis.  We need to check our self-righteous behavior in regards to both best practice and radical reform in hopes that we don’t move too quickly or become resolute against change.  By doing this, we can provide hope and structure for future generations and their ability to participate economically and in our democracy.

4)

American Historical Association

The American Historical Association provides monthly mailers with publications from leading historians.  It also provides an extensive annual conference that has up to 300 presentations with new research.  The membership is steep, but the association does cater some of its efforts towards k-12 teaching.  They offer a booklet “Perspectives on Teaching” that presents about history specific viewpoints and skills.  It also provides packaged lesson plans.  In addition, I stumbled upon a letter from a Superintendent to all new history teachers.  It provided an interesting take until what it “takes” to be a history teacher. 

Romantic Novel Association

I began searching for associations that deal directly with Romantic literature, please notice the capital “R”.  Instead, I found the Romantic Novel Association which unfortunately should be the romantic novel association.  This page helps writers participate in activities and workshops that help develop a sense of the romantic and how to write compelling romantic fiction.  The website states that 90% of all readers need some form of romance in the novels that they read and this is a resource that could help the average reader satisfy those hungry readers.  All joking aside, even this association could provide different types of structures and methods for developing and implementing a writing workshop.

5)

Places that I would like to see in the Bay Area:

1.       Tule Lake War Relocation Center

a.       Even though this is not in the Bay Area, a pilgrimage or hike to this area would be an interesting trip.  I could bring along some of the literature about the relocation camps and relive the terrible migration suffered by Japanese Americans during the period. 

2.       The Google Teaching Academy

a.       The Google team holds a workshop that puts technology into the hands of teachers.  Even though it has an exclusive admission process, I would like to participate and take tech to the next level in the classroom.

3.       Bay Area Writing Project

a.       They have summer workshops that look interesting.  I’ve seen a lot of their essay development stuff, but I’m excited to see what they come up with regarding common core and new projects. 

4.       John Steinbeck’s House

a.       Salinas would be worth the trip and spending a weekend finding out more about the great author.

5.       Central Nigeria Unmasked at the Cantor Arts Center (Stanford)

a.       This sculpture show could provide some valuable information for comparative government.

Books:

1.       The J-Curve

2.       No Matter How Loud I Shout

3.       Graceland

4.       The Greater Strategies

5.       Wild Swans: Three Chinese Daughters

Journals:

1.       Foreign Affairs

a.       I’d like to actually find time to read the copies I get.

2.       Perspectives on Teaching History

Conferences:

1.       I’d love to attend the American Art History Association’s Conference.  They have some amazing speakers and the art provides great structure for my historical thinking.

2.       As mentioned before, I’d like to get into the Bay Area Writers Workshops.

Places I’d like to see in the World:

1.       I would love to make a trip to China.  My knowledge of the Far East is minimal and I would like to expand that area of my studies.

2.       I would love to go to London and do the Shakespeare thing.  I’ve never been to the globe.  A historical theme journey of the city would be amazing.

3.       I love Russian literature.  I want Moscow to become safe and then I could travel there with little fear and see the landscape where the soul develops.

4.       Athens is on the schedule for next summer. 

I responded to Hazem's blog.

Media and the Mind

Why can’t we participate in the media frenzy?  Dr. Roberts phrased his talk by saying that this is a technological revolution or a trend that cannot be countered.  In other words, the ship has left the port.  The increase in exposure and media use has drastically grown over the past fifteen years and the types of media keep evolving for young people.  But why can’t we, as teachers, employ this media to our own advantage?

Dr. Roberts made the correlation between large media exposure and use and a lower academic achievement with students.  Students that use over sixteen hours have dramatically lower grades and successful habits.  While it may take a societal effort to change that sixteen hour clip down to the reasonable seven or eight, we should employ strategies built within this trend to reach the students.  It seems to me that teachers should fight for this media time and immerse themselves in this independent world that students are creating for themselves.  This does not mean that teachers have to try and entertain the student at all hours of the day, but the allowances and resources of the internet and computers are vast.  Educational material and programming is very accessible.

As the internet invades the television, it ability for teachers to assign television or viewable programming will improve.  Most PBS and many other educational documentaries are accessible on YouTube and fifteen-minutes of a video and some additional reading is a way to include media resources that students could adapt towards.   Discussion boards and wikis can be easily accessed so that students can participate in social activities that are focused towards the curriculum.  Many secondary math classes are already working with a flipped or modified flipped classroom that let students use the power of stop and rewind lectures for increased retention.  Why can’t this be done with other interactive materials while requiring discussion on an online forum?

Of course this sounds great in this spacious ivory tower.  But there is still the problem of multiple exposures and the constant flipping of cognitive functions that prevent problem solving.  I’ve got no clue on that one.

More Pupils Are Learning Online, Fueling Debate on Quality

How does one model behavior through a computer screen?  How do they problem solve difficult tasks and compromise with other humans to create not-perfect, but manageable solutions?  These seem to be just two of the glaring problems with a comprehensive transition into “online learning”.  Although, through using the technology responsibly and with an inquiry focus, it could reap benefits and reach motivated students in ways that the typical classroom cannot.

Young people learn from their exposure to other people.  If a student has 40% less exposure to responsible adults, they will have 40% increased influence from other factors.  This could be peers or it could be media on the computer used during instruction.  Additionally, very few people remember the specific skills or content information gained in grade school.  They may use this information to build other important information later in life, but the skills are only sometimes retained.  Yet the relationships, motivations, and resiliencies created during school last must longer.  I find it very difficult to believe that student can make as serious relationship with instructors who have to construct their responses to fit into a digital communication.    

But there are also great opportunities here.  I love ordering and taking course from “The Learning Company”.  It’s how I get through, and look forward, to my commute every day.  These courses have a wide range of topics that would allow students to invest an opinion and choice into their secondary education.  What if administrators required that students take one online course every year, but required these to be elective classes where students could pick something of interest.  This would prevent cheating during the core academic areas and allow students an endless variety of course material that could help build critical thinking and organizational skills all the while preparing them for a university culture. 

Technology Resources for the Teacher:

Props to Josie for this compilation of tech tid-bits.  I’ve already made a series of vocabulary terms on quizlet and made them into three different flash card games, two testing sequences, and a review.  I’ve posted these cards onto our course webpage and linked it up for students.  They can now spend five minutes a night trying to compete with themselves and other classmates regarding who can match the terms fastest or master the terms without error.  Sweet!

I’ve also downloaded the cool timer and screen catch applications.  A lot of the freeware for these materials cause complications and these two seem to be pretty solid.  I love that the clock runs directly off an .exe and therefore doesn’t have to be downloaded onto the fascist district network. 

I've reviewed Jenny Temple's, Megan Manley's, and Natasha's blogs.  I've responded to Jenny and Megan's.

Interdisciplinary Learning

Interdisciplinary Strategy #1

The Gapminder World by Hans Rosling

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/hans_rosling_at_state.html

I’m planning on using this website and this “dataset” as a way to introduce statistics into my comparative government class.  Even though the subject matter is within my “discipline”, the comparisons of the charts and the analysis of trends have a statistic and mathematical base.  Students could choose two different axis and then write a short report on how each chart might have a correlation with a government institution or policy.   The spikes and trending changes could also link to specific historical events.  The challenge of incorporating this website and information is the assignment that students can work on the website through. 

Interdisciplinary Strategy #2

This Week in Review

I’m also planning on having students publish an online paper.  Students will work in teams of eight (with 5 different jobs within the group) to “publish” a paper that summarizes and editorializes the news and topics that are going on in a specific country.  Students will produce cartoons, op-editorials, and news reviews that will help students summarize current events in our countries of study (Russia, U.K., Nigeria, Mexico, United States, China, Iran).  In conjunction with their English teacher, students will practice these writing techniques individually in more scaffolded exercises.  They will then lead a discussion about the most interesting topic of the paper.  Students will be quizzed on their knowledge of their peers’ paper as well. 

Guiding Questions:

I'm split between two ideas here.

How does an "academy" model of school structuring help students create community, anti-stress, academic achievement and prepare them for professional goals?

What are the effects of interdisciplinary learning for students on a cognitive and environmental level?

Mind the Gap!

Mind the Gap-

1)      Quotes for a Response

a.       “In education, this belief in market forces lets us ordinary mortals off the hook, especially those who have not figured out how to improve low-performing schools or to break through the lassitude of unmotivated teens.  Instead of dealing with rancorous problems like how to teach reading or how to improve testing, one can redesign the management and structure of the school system and concentrate on incentives and sanctions” (11).

                                                               i.      It may be because I’m a pinko at heart, but it seems simple that market choices leave off an overall sense of ethics and responsibility.  Market forces produce productivity and allow progress to take over.  Ratvich focuses this idea onto education.  In the need for progress (achieving a higher rate), the forces have used the tool that creates greatest change.  But this change does not have a human sense of responsibility or moderation.  This can also be applied to community poverty and environmental problems.  A corporation is a great tool for dramatic change, but it does not have responsibilities toward local communities.  It has a responsibility towards progress and profit.  It can leave and change communities as necessary to achieve that goal.  This systemic educational change is similar.  It wants to prove that testing and choice are the best solutions, even if they are destroying communities in the process.

b.      “I feared that choice would let thousands of flowers bloom but would not strengthen American education.  It might even harm the public schools by removing the best students from schools in the poorest neighborhoods” (12).

2)      I’ve connected this quotation with a personal experience I had when interviewing at KIPP Academy in Oakland.  After an interview lesson, I sat down and had a conversation with the Assistant Principle and talked about the school’s goals and struggles.  Two fascinating facts stand out from that interview. I found out that KIPP has an admittance test that target’s the student population at average or above average students.  They see themselves as helping students who really do have a hope of getting out of terrible situations and become college students.  They also exclude students who would require I.E.Ps because of special education requirements.  This allows them to cream the “top” students from the rest.  Where does that leave the other students?  Anyone who has run a classroom knows that there is a reliance on the middle and upper students to serve as peer educators for the other students.  Students learn as much from peer study groups as they do from direct instruction in the front of the class.  The students that are left in the general education population just lost their “Harvard” and “Stanford” students.  What is the student’s responsibility towards their peers in the classroom?  How does individual ambition play into this idea?  The second observation I made was that students who misbehaved faced the punishment of expulsion with little leniency.  Their culture of high discipline work ethic left very little room for students to make mistakes.  And when these students left this positive experience, they were thrown back into the general education population and told to deal with the situation.  How does this affect the community as a whole when students are returning dejected?  How does this support the goal as a whole is the same idea Ratvich is discussing.

3)      Ravitch’s Educated Person:

a.       Students need a coherent foundation of knowledge and skills that grow stronger each year.  Knowledge and skills are both important, as is learning to think, debate, and question.  A well-educated person has a well furnished mind, shaped by reading and thinking about history, science, literature, the arts, and politics.  The well-educated person has learned how to explain ideas and listen respectfully to others.”

                                                               i.      How would you characterize a well-educated person?  What should any well-educated person know in today’s world?

1.       I disagree with Ravitch’s idea slightly.  I categorize an education person not by what they know, but by what they are aware that they don’t know.  This lack of knowledge increases listening, empathy, and enthusiasm to learn.  When someone recognizes that they do not know, they are more likely to be observant and gainers of knowledge in a particular community.  Imagine that a Chinese student of Economics walks into a classroom analyzing traditional American literature.  Can we categorize them as uneducated because they cannot readily participate in the conversation?  They are knowledgeable about their own information and are not un-educated.  If this person then chooses to realize that they don’t know the information and begin to actively absorb new information because they don’t pretend to already know it, then they are educated. 

4)      Class education talk

a.       Class covered the basic ideas.  Education is not changing as much as we think it is, and our reforms should be conservative instead of radical.  If the country is going to improve, high standards are going to be essential.  Ratvich also does an excellent job of expanding our discussion of what education consists of and how it has changed over the past century.

b.      If we were to further this discussion, the area that did not receive much attention is technology.  Technology really is a game changer.  Although it goes against Ratvich’s idea of slowing down and focusing on instruction, the ability for technology to assess students and find minute holes in instruction is amazing.  Teachers can get instant feedback using polling and testing information.  They can also be presented with information that goes against their predominant beliefs and therefore transform their own instruction when it goes against the testing facts.  What are the possibilities with technology and how can they help standards and instruction.

5)      One of the topics that will come up in preparing my Comparative Government class is revolution.  Admittedly, I’ve never participated in the revolution and my knowledge is focused on the American, French, and Russian revolutions.  I need to expand my content knowledge within more 20^th century contexts and study the topic.

a.       Book: The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall- Ian Bremmer

b.      Article: Democracy: A Global Revolution?- Dankwart A. Rustow

c.       Website:  http://honors.uoregon.edu/class/revolutions-20th-century-0 A course abstract that discusses a theme/guideline to research the topic.

                                                               i.      Something as simple as an abstract to a college course can provide wonderful information.  As a history teacher, I too often think that I need to research “facts” as my responsibility towards preparing a solid lesson for my students.  I forget that researching perspective changes is also important.  This website helps add a the perspective that most revolutions have a shared component that relates back to the democratization provided by the French revolution.  Revolutions are not the people asking to revert to oligartical rule of the pre-nineteenth century, but the people asking for a return to the “reform” movement that will help their society change towards a more positive future.  The denotative meaning focuses on this point rather than a return to a complete circle of civil society.

                                                             ii.      I’m also starting the J-Curve this week.  I’ll report on that next blog.

6)      Topic Questions and Resources

a.       The aspect of my research that I’m most surprised by is the connection between project based learning and the interdisciplinary academy approach.  Both the New Hampshire and South Carolina articles introduced academies as a strategy to implement project based learning.  Instead of thinking about community first, they went about the project as an instructional goal.  I knew that this was a byproduct of the types of programs, but I was not aware of how prevalent the projects were.  It also seems that the collaboration between teachers and administrators is very important.  Each of these studies reported a tension because radical changes had to be made in order to break away from the traditional system.  These changes caused stresses that in one case (Urban Education) caused several teachers to abandon the new reform movement. 

Student Responses:

Tanya Shah

Karen Vigna

Wilson Pang

6.29.2012

1)            I am fortunate enough to have parents that appreciate art and history.  From the time that I was ten years old until I became incorrigibly annoying, my parents and I packed our bags and travelled throughout Europe to see the classic empires and their masterpieces.  Although a single moment never comes to mind specifically, these summer experiences are the framework of my, sometimes euro-centric, view of the world and love for the lamp of history.  I interacted with other cultures, other languages, and probably most importantly, challenged the visual possibilities of culture as compared to the distinctly suburban houses of the U.S.  Because of these trips, I never stopped reading.

                I followed these vacations up with college trips to Europe and South America.  These allowed a bit more freedom and choice in finding my way throughout Europe.  After graduation, I found my first job working at an art museum that focused on European art in the Eugene community.  Here I experienced my first interactions with education.  These experienced caused me to view the world with an open lens (or at least as much as these experience allow that lens to be open- tricky slope here).

                As an adult, I now realize the many possible avenues of choice that culture, government, literature, and policy can take.  Therefore I make specific efforts to try and stay educated within the community.  These are not limited to, but include Membership or patronage with SFMOMA, de Young, Commonwealth Club, Cal Shakes, Foreign Affairs, American Historical Association, The Economist, and The New Yorker.  Constant interaction with each of these organizations allows me to, try to, fulfill the claim that we put on our students as a lifetime learner in my subject matter.

                The Commonwealth club is a specific example of a continuing education for our public.  (A little tip here, SMC students get tickets for only 7$ and your student ID continues for two years after the date you get the I.D.  Therefore, get it in December when we finish class, and you get cheap tickets to movie theaters and Commonwealth Club for two additional years! This also happens to be my favorite seen in Blazing Saddles.)  Wednesday’s nights are a great time to get away from grading and take BART into the City.  These experts challenge me to think about these issues from different perspectives and also challenge the issues with actual data and expert points of view.  This is especially powerful in the social studies because these lectures allow detailed explanations that are not longer prevalent in the media.

2) I haven’t had the opportunity to discuss this topic with another student yet.  I will repost this specific question after I offer someone candy, coffee, or cash for their opinions.

3) I’ve got my topic down, but I don’t have a working thesis statement.  I need to perform more reading and see what evidence is actually in the databases.  I know that I want to focus on either shared-spaced teaching (two teachers working on the same class at the same time) or benefits of academies and seeing if these academies could be applied in the suburban setting.  These are going to be the focus of my A.P. Comparative Government and English 12 classes this year and I want to have information before we propose structural changes to DVHS.  But I just need to read more.

4) Too stressed for artwork…I’ll try again later.

Quotes from this week’s reading that I found powerful:

“she conceives of mathematics as a system of human thought rather than as a fixed body of procedures, she believes that those students must have experience in developing and pursuing mathematical hunches and learning to make mathematical arguments for their ideas within the context of a discourse community.”

“To regard physics or English classes exclusively as sites for learning about force or Mark Twain is to underestimate their potential impact’

                We have to mold how they look at all of literature and how they apply that contextual situation to their lives and then apply the language use to how they would manipulate a blank page.

My Questions: J.Parks

English:

Content

1)     What is the definition of a theme and how does it interact with a “response to literature” essay?

2)     How does J.D. Salinger’s use of stream of consciousness affect the reader’s emotional proximity to Holden Caulfield?

3)     What are the main three world viewpoints personified by Dostoevsky Brothers Karamazov?

Pedagogical

1)     How can student discussion support the understanding of a specific theme?

2)     What is an appropriate amount of reading chunking for high school students?

Social Studies:

Content

1)     How does the parliamentary system differ from the U.S.’s presidential system?

2)     What are the channels of communication between Russia’s Kremlin and The White House?  Does it change between the Kremlin and Congress?

3)     What are the main existential and essential questions of government and how it relates to the common citizen?

Pedagogical:

1)     How many mapping activities are needed when studying about a place that only 10% of students can currently locate on a map?  Is color coding a useful strategy when working with geography and maps?

2)     How many leader questions are required for students to read a news article about a topic and opinion they have never encountered?

Welcome Folks!  I'll be sharing reflections and incredibly thought provoking information here.  Stay tuned!