Ok, time for a flood an avalanche of needing to capture all the elements, a series of conversations with myself about "the work", MY work, OUR work.
It came to pass this week that both a great deal of data was gained both from students and teachers about the implementation of this NGC model. There is digital and material evidence to show a series of investigations into the needs of the students to determine readiness level, areas of strength, and areas of extreme "newness". I am using ONLY positive, affirmative language - I will do my best to never again describe this process in deficit language again because it demands the possession the multiple skill sets, talent, passion, and vulnerability and the choice into "newness" is always being open to change.
So this week provided many types of data that I would like to look at, videos, notecards, pictures, summaries, standards- all these pieces mixed together to tell a picture about the who we are working with.
But before I launch into that I need to spend only a FEW moments acknowledging the, much more personal in nature, challenging sets of conversations I have had to have this week. The heart of the matter is this- I bring a very passionate spiritual life to teaching. I cannot undo who I am and I willing not hide my sense of life and purpose away because it makes the system uncomfortable. I am willing to be in dialogue about how "my experience" living these 26 years in the world the story I have painted as my lens and view, and ask you to tell me about yours. We might not get anywhere, it might feel uncomfortable to be so honest, we might vehemently disagree and use past events to illustrate how we have come to that conclusion. We might agree deeply and walk away feeling like there is another in this world who mostly "gets" us, and it will feel nice.
But I will not put away my sense of faith, that love and compassion are the ONLY way we will ever change this world, and to not call upon their immense power to melt our hearts and make humans out of us yet, then we are in darkness. I will keep loving, I will keep on reminding those around me- Buddhist, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Atheist, Agonistic, Women Who Run with Wolves, and those who just do not care- that I care about who they are and their experience of life. I think if we all learn to do this, to love whoever is nearest to us simply because they are a part of our existence (plant, animal, human), then life would be better. If this deep faith in compassion makes you uncomfortable or you feel it should be kept in my faith tradition only places, then I say please, tell me who you are, let me learn what it is that is making you feel this way, tell me what makes you uncomfortable and what you are afraid compassion for all might bring.
But that is the underlying cause of my work, it is the work that I believe many many people before my time and after me will continue to fight towards, the abolitionists, the peace prize winners, the ground level NGO volunteers who give their bodies over to hard manuel labor, gay rights activists, and now a small group of teachers who dare to invite the possibility of real change to happen with their students.
Finally, before we break down the work of the model this week I have one final item to address. It seems to me that within the context of the group we are in (innovative educators) that we are the only "privileged" public school. I want to stress of deeply those of us working on this believe that this model can and SHOULD be taken to schools which have highly underserved public services. If in the course of this work, that becomes a possibility to partner with such a school who wishes to take on the challenge of being radically open and vulnerable I know I would relish in the chance to practice this in another place. This happens to be the context into which I fell, this is the community that I have access to. There are challenges here unique, like every context, and I would like to somehow be able to over the sometimes negative judgement that the work is less meaningful because it is with children who are "perceived" as having more advantage. Children are children, no more in control of where they came from then those in underserved neighborhoods. So is it not CRITICAL that we begin to help those children to HAVE MORE to believe they NEED LESS and to have them find the area they want to bring RADICAL COMPASSION?
The data that is collected I believe reveals that despite the fact that most of these students are high performers, there is a real "newness" to critical thinking and concept organization. I would be very interested in discovering the similarities or challenges between students in a "lower performing" school and these students. I bet they would be more similar than different.
Activity 3: Four Corners and Making Sense of Theme
The idea was to have students develop a stronger foundation for what a theme was. The teachers had 5 words they put in the room and students would choose which theme they thought best described the video on manuel scavengers. Before this could be done a summary of the video was given by some students.
It came to pass this week that both a great deal of data was gained both from students and teachers about the implementation of this NGC model. There is digital and material evidence to show a series of investigations into the needs of the students to determine readiness level, areas of strength, and areas of extreme "newness". I am using ONLY positive, affirmative language - I will do my best to never again describe this process in deficit language again because it demands the possession the multiple skill sets, talent, passion, and vulnerability and the choice into "newness" is always being open to change.
So this week provided many types of data that I would like to look at, videos, notecards, pictures, summaries, standards- all these pieces mixed together to tell a picture about the who we are working with.
But before I launch into that I need to spend only a FEW moments acknowledging the, much more personal in nature, challenging sets of conversations I have had to have this week. The heart of the matter is this- I bring a very passionate spiritual life to teaching. I cannot undo who I am and I willing not hide my sense of life and purpose away because it makes the system uncomfortable. I am willing to be in dialogue about how "my experience" living these 26 years in the world the story I have painted as my lens and view, and ask you to tell me about yours. We might not get anywhere, it might feel uncomfortable to be so honest, we might vehemently disagree and use past events to illustrate how we have come to that conclusion. We might agree deeply and walk away feeling like there is another in this world who mostly "gets" us, and it will feel nice.
But I will not put away my sense of faith, that love and compassion are the ONLY way we will ever change this world, and to not call upon their immense power to melt our hearts and make humans out of us yet, then we are in darkness. I will keep loving, I will keep on reminding those around me- Buddhist, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Atheist, Agonistic, Women Who Run with Wolves, and those who just do not care- that I care about who they are and their experience of life. I think if we all learn to do this, to love whoever is nearest to us simply because they are a part of our existence (plant, animal, human), then life would be better. If this deep faith in compassion makes you uncomfortable or you feel it should be kept in my faith tradition only places, then I say please, tell me who you are, let me learn what it is that is making you feel this way, tell me what makes you uncomfortable and what you are afraid compassion for all might bring.
But that is the underlying cause of my work, it is the work that I believe many many people before my time and after me will continue to fight towards, the abolitionists, the peace prize winners, the ground level NGO volunteers who give their bodies over to hard manuel labor, gay rights activists, and now a small group of teachers who dare to invite the possibility of real change to happen with their students.
Finally, before we break down the work of the model this week I have one final item to address. It seems to me that within the context of the group we are in (innovative educators) that we are the only "privileged" public school. I want to stress of deeply those of us working on this believe that this model can and SHOULD be taken to schools which have highly underserved public services. If in the course of this work, that becomes a possibility to partner with such a school who wishes to take on the challenge of being radically open and vulnerable I know I would relish in the chance to practice this in another place. This happens to be the context into which I fell, this is the community that I have access to. There are challenges here unique, like every context, and I would like to somehow be able to over the sometimes negative judgement that the work is less meaningful because it is with children who are "perceived" as having more advantage. Children are children, no more in control of where they came from then those in underserved neighborhoods. So is it not CRITICAL that we begin to help those children to HAVE MORE to believe they NEED LESS and to have them find the area they want to bring RADICAL COMPASSION?
The data that is collected I believe reveals that despite the fact that most of these students are high performers, there is a real "newness" to critical thinking and concept organization. I would be very interested in discovering the similarities or challenges between students in a "lower performing" school and these students. I bet they would be more similar than different.
Activity 3: Four Corners and Making Sense of Theme
The idea was to have students develop a stronger foundation for what a theme was. The teachers had 5 words they put in the room and students would choose which theme they thought best described the video on manuel scavengers. Before this could be done a summary of the video was given by some students.
The 5 themes were:
Identity
Culture
Religion
Technology
Poverty
Then each group gave some reasons why they believed this was the best theme to describe the video. I want to acknowledge, these themes chosen by the teacher were very broad and I believe in the future we will work towards developing specificity, but the students were having a very hard time trying to even identify words that could be used as themes.
Identity
Culture
Religion
Technology
Poverty
Then each group gave some reasons why they believed this was the best theme to describe the video. I want to acknowledge, these themes chosen by the teacher were very broad and I believe in the future we will work towards developing specificity, but the students were having a very hard time trying to even identify words that could be used as themes.
After all the groups spoke, I asked a question, I debated about adding the video, because I feel so embarrassed by how long I spoke. But essentially I wanted them, if they could to draw a connection between the lack of technological infrastructure making manual scavenging obsolete (the wealthy US) compared to India AND the scavengers place in India's caste system. It is confusing still as I type it- but the thought occurred to me as one girl spoke that there was a simile between India being on the bottom of the world caste system and their people having the lowest types of labor ones we don't even have in this country. This way of thinking is just practicing that type of connection. You have to do it WITH kids, they need to have it modeled in order to get there, but you cannot GIVE it to them and then tell them its the ONLY right answer. So my question was convoluted, leading them there without them knowing where there was, and something magical came out.
THEN WE GOT TO THIS!!!
Following this discussion the students were asked to place three themes from each document (video, poem, article) on a post it - for a total of 9 post its. They then placed those post its on a large sheet of construction paper and began moving the post its around in around to find ways of combining these themes into one greater theme.
Here is one student speaking about how he came up with an understanding of how these three documents could be brought together.
Activity 4: Theme Development and The Standards Conversation
The next major effort with the students was to have them decide on a single word, a uniting theme, and to write this on a notecard with a description of why on the back. Both the "hows", indeed the next "how" as well as far as the tools to make this happen with students have been developed by the teachers. It is critically important that they be trusted with deciding the appropriate scaffolding and tools for the students because they know them best. I was very excited to see tactile and creative tools being used to capture the work along with the technology.
Here are some working samples of students theme cards:
The next major effort with the students was to have them decide on a single word, a uniting theme, and to write this on a notecard with a description of why on the back. Both the "hows", indeed the next "how" as well as far as the tools to make this happen with students have been developed by the teachers. It is critically important that they be trusted with deciding the appropriate scaffolding and tools for the students because they know them best. I was very excited to see tactile and creative tools being used to capture the work along with the technology.
Here are some working samples of students theme cards:
I choose these examples because I think they exemplify the range of conceptual readiness levels for such work. In both the variation of word choice and the details used as examples of evidence of how that theme emerged to them. In the future I hope that students can take these larger concepts and develop a specific claim about the world as they see it- what about control, from where does it come and who has the most or least of it?
Now, the final task was spread across two days of instruction, but it was all part of this larger exercise. When deciding how to approach the conversation of evaluation using the standards, the team felt the initial dream of having them independently evaluate themselves against three standards was a bit too lofty. Instead as a class they paraphrased in their own words a single standard, then went back to the samples they had sorted in activity 2 based (developing, meeting, exceeding) and examined whether those really did in fact meet standards.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.6
Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how the author acknowledges and responds to conflicting evidence or viewpoints.
Now, the final task was spread across two days of instruction, but it was all part of this larger exercise. When deciding how to approach the conversation of evaluation using the standards, the team felt the initial dream of having them independently evaluate themselves against three standards was a bit too lofty. Instead as a class they paraphrased in their own words a single standard, then went back to the samples they had sorted in activity 2 based (developing, meeting, exceeding) and examined whether those really did in fact meet standards.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.6
Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how the author acknowledges and responds to conflicting evidence or viewpoints.
What is exciting is that students are engaging in breaking apart what it is that they are supposed to do, using the same language as their evaluators.
What also becomes evident is that, not unlike many teachers who are new to the CCSS, the subtly of what makes this an 8th grade standard and not an anchor standard or a 4th grade standard. In the 8th grade the focus on this task, where it gets it intellectual rigor is not just in identifying the purpose but how the authors manages ambiguity within their content area of expertise. This is here so that by the time they are in 11th and 12th grade they know well enough how to identify ambiguity that they may think of the language the actually want to say it in, of how those concepts can be put into words that shape mens hearts to listen.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.6
Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of the text.
Students must have a continuum understanding of where they are going just as much as adults. It is clear that although students are exploring, the are in real "newness" when it comes to breaking apart the tasks of critical thinking that make up high level complex tasks. And that's ok, we now have a place to begin the conversation.
Given their "newness" we ran with this paraphrase letting it be enough that they were evaluating their own work based on a standard. One student aptly figured out that, just because it was the best example in the grouping of three samples did not in fact make it meeting or exceeding. This made a window into the conversation for where they were as a a group. I was not there to capture some of these words, but I will hope to do so in the future, I also am hoping the teachers will begin blogging about these events so you can hear it from their perspective.
The following day each student went back to a specific prompt on the document analysis and wrote a NEW answer in a different color on their Google Doc below their original answer, trying to make the response an "Exceeding" according to their basic understanding from the class conversation.
Some of this was more successful than others. Looking back it may have been a good idea to give them the sample rubric for the standard so they might have something more concrete to work off of. Most showed minimum improvement from the first to their second answer and so there is hope and lots of room for growth.
What also becomes evident is that, not unlike many teachers who are new to the CCSS, the subtly of what makes this an 8th grade standard and not an anchor standard or a 4th grade standard. In the 8th grade the focus on this task, where it gets it intellectual rigor is not just in identifying the purpose but how the authors manages ambiguity within their content area of expertise. This is here so that by the time they are in 11th and 12th grade they know well enough how to identify ambiguity that they may think of the language the actually want to say it in, of how those concepts can be put into words that shape mens hearts to listen.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.6
Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of the text.
Students must have a continuum understanding of where they are going just as much as adults. It is clear that although students are exploring, the are in real "newness" when it comes to breaking apart the tasks of critical thinking that make up high level complex tasks. And that's ok, we now have a place to begin the conversation.
Given their "newness" we ran with this paraphrase letting it be enough that they were evaluating their own work based on a standard. One student aptly figured out that, just because it was the best example in the grouping of three samples did not in fact make it meeting or exceeding. This made a window into the conversation for where they were as a a group. I was not there to capture some of these words, but I will hope to do so in the future, I also am hoping the teachers will begin blogging about these events so you can hear it from their perspective.
The following day each student went back to a specific prompt on the document analysis and wrote a NEW answer in a different color on their Google Doc below their original answer, trying to make the response an "Exceeding" according to their basic understanding from the class conversation.
Some of this was more successful than others. Looking back it may have been a good idea to give them the sample rubric for the standard so they might have something more concrete to work off of. Most showed minimum improvement from the first to their second answer and so there is hope and lots of room for growth.