Time vs. Soul?

I'm guessing we are all having some version of this experience with our students in the placements.

We see the ways our cooperating teachers plan what they teach, adapt according to how things go, make sure they are reaching all of their students the best they can given the time they have. I am very impressed with the flexibility and intelligence these teachers are bringing to their work.

I also see the students' innate and powerful curiosity about the things and people in their environment, their willingness to dive deeply into what interests them, and how they so often let their hearts and souls show on their faces. I'm studying how teachers try to balance the limitations of time and resources in the classrooms with the need to address these kids' soulfulness and depth.

Recently when we had a guest teacher at our placement, a kid was finished with a dictation they were being given, and it was important that the other children have a quiet atmosphere in which to finish theirs. The boy was whispering and laughing with his neighbor, so I asked him to come over to a side  table. I gave him some paper and a pencil and told him to draw what the dictation sentence is about.

He started in, and did not look up until most of the other kids were out the door for recess. I was amazed at how quickly and how deeply he entered into this spontaneous project.

 If even experienced, talented teachers barely have enough time to teach their students what they need to teach them, I want to learn the efficiencies that make depth of experience and personal connection with kids possible, as often as possible. I am noting them as I see them, but I would love others' observations about what they are seeing along these lines.

Ok, now I want to own an ipad mini.

I've been waiting for this since the quarter started. I could see that I was eventually going to figure out a way to get a personal relationship with this ipad, but I found it yesterday, and I'm soooo happy.

I've been wanting to find a way to do/learn/play with animation that made sense for my needs. I have been interested in "serious" puppetry for a long time, and what I've done with kids is sort of a hybrid of animation and puppetry. I believe I might have used the absolutely most labor intensive way possible of doing animation during the summer ("Oedipus the Snowman," still available on YouTube). It was ridiculous, ridiculous. But I loved it, too, and the potential for teaching using animation.

Saturday after I got the istopmotion app, I tried it out by trial and error,  and it's pretty intuitive, so I figured it out pretty quickly.

The reason I'm this happy is that my brain has been ready and waiting for something like this app, so it snapped into place like a missing puzzle piece.

Wish me luck.

Facing Technology

"Learning is amplified by the number of people who are collaborating, participating, communicating and creating. The learning is not about the technology tools, but what students can DO with them to learn in new ways. The learning is about authentic tasks, that allows students to contribute in a individualized and personalized manner to make them realize that their work matters in the real world.

(http://langwitches.org/blog/2013/01/27/learning-in-the-modern-classroom/)

I chose the image at the top of the page because it is beautiful, impressive, and to me, kind of daunting in its complexity. How do you enter this building? How do you get from place to place in it? There are colorful, interesting-looking things in there; what are they?
I'm thinking of this as a metaphor for encountering all of the tools of technology for learning, teaching, and communicating. There is so much potential. An overwhelming amount of potential?

·      When I read Grow Your Network: Become a Detective, it motivated me to just start following more people on twitter. They are fenced into their own columns in tweetdeck; I will be tending them for a while and seeing if they fit me. So that is one nice entry point for me into the Information Entity.

I chose the quote above because it is a nice summary of what we have been learning this quarter, the importance of the students' connection with others, with the world, and with themselves as learners and citizens. It's clear that technology for technology's sake is not very useful, but it's good to be aware that some people may not be so discerning about the specific uses of these tools; we should watch out for that ourselves. I am most interested right now in the potential of technology to allow our students to use visuals and audio in their learning.

I also have a question about students, teachers, and technology: how can we make the best, most meaningful use of these tools to connect with other people?

Non-Googleable Questions?

August 6 Post

Studio Visit

All of the activities in the studio were engaging, but the most affecting for many of us were the human organs. I agree with other cohort members who said that it felt significant to hold and examine a brain that had actually come from a person.

Real physical artifacts are so powerful for kids, too, and we should seek them out for our students whenever we can. A few years ago, I hoped my students would be interested in a diary from an Oregon Trail emigrant that I borrowed from a friend, so it was really nice to see their amazement and respect for it. The context really helped; we had been working for a few weeks with photos and diary excerpts, which brought the subject down to a more personal level. Anecdotes from diaries on historical websites gave the students a relatable view of daily life and the attitudes and feelings of individual emigrants.

When I brought in the diary written by a man named Dan, we looked at the cover first, which was understandably very beaten up. Then when I opened it up, they could see the beautiful script that some people of that era wrote. The students all gasped. It was a wonderful moment, because as we went through the residency, we could almost always refer back to Dan. The kids felt a connection to him because we had the book that he had carried on the trail, and even though he must have been exhausted at the end of each day of traveling, he wrote in it most days.

When we looked at the human hearts in the studio, there was a personal connection for me. My dad has been dealing with congestive heart failure for quite some time, and one of the hearts we looked at had that same medical issue. I don't understand why, but I didn't feel the slightest bit upset looking at it. My thoughts were more along the lines of understanding better how hard the body can work to adapt itself to its conditions, and how strong human bodies are. I think that, despite my dad having had five heart attacks and three open-heart surgeries, among endless other things, he must be a really tough guy to have withstood all of that, and to have retained his quality of life for the most part.

After his second bi-pass, his surgeon came out and explained to us how it went. It was a pretty rough operation, as there was so much scarring from the previous surgery. He said, "to clear away some of the scar tissue, I lifted his heart..." and he showed with his hands how he had lifted my dad's heart up. We could not stop staring at his hands after that. He had held my dad's heart in his hands!

If we give kids opportunities like the one we had in the studio to learn in such an engaging way, they will probably remember some of those experiences for their whole lives.

August 2 Post

Jumpin'

I chose this photo for my entry because it shows a kid who looks engaged cognitively in the head and arms, and also ready to run in the legs and feet!

Today was the first time our cohort did any physical activity together that was lengthy. It seems that the overall mood at the beginning was agitated, but then it calmed down a bit as we focused on what we were supposed to do.

I would guess that many of us had fairly intense experiences while doing this. Our cohort has proven itself to be supportive, but there is also an element of competitiveness.

We will need to discuss the issue of competition with our students. I think competitiveness can be positive or negative. My daughter is very competitive, and the issue of fairness is also important to her. We talk about and practice good sportsmanship when we do things like play badminton, but my goal with her learning to be a good sport is a long-range goal; I don't think she is quite developmentally ready to take on what I now think is a very complex attitude: being a "good sport." It seems that to adopt this attitude you need to have some empathy and awareness of how your own behavior may affect someone else's experience. I think anxiety ("will I be good enough?") can blunt a person's ability to care about what others are feeling, so it would make it even more important that as teachers we involve the students in creating a supportive classroom community.

Lesson Plans, Micro-teaching, August 1 Post

Lesson planning: learning how to do this is like getting the key to a treasure chest.

I have been reinventing the wheel as an art teacher for a long time. I am lucky enough to have wonderful human resources to call upon for advice about teaching; my best friend is an art specialist, for example. But it's been ridiculously hard to get enough information to suit me.

When I went to the informational talk about the program that Amelia gave, she said, "You will know what you're doing" by the time we finish the fifth quarter. The picture of what this means is gelling for me with every class we take.

I also feel so appreciative of the cohort. The two examples of micro-teaching we saw were as instructive as the other information we are getting about how to do it. The support we give each other is so sustaining to me.