A good mentor

October 8, 2006

Teaching anywhere can be grueling.  Oh, sure, we do it for the great psychic rewards, kids growing up, students going on to do great things in the field, etc., etc.  But it’s a grind.  It’s a performance profession, but one in which the performer must do the writing and directing and producing, and on many days, rewriting while the cameras roll.  Turnover is high.

Which means that a good mentor is worth her weight in platinum or emeralds.  Saying the right thing to encourage any teacher to perform better is great, saying the right things to get a teacher to stick around . . .

So, this story is about a teacher mentor who did something dreadfully right.  May it occur more often, please.

At a blog called “all the standard catstrophes.”

2 Comments | Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Literally: Can’t shut up to learn history

September 27, 2006

There should be a Congressional Medal of Honor, or something similar, for junior high school and middle school teachers. Particularly the boys can be among the most irritating creatures on Earth, above mosquitoes in a tent on a hot night, above a cat who wants you awake at 4:30 a.m. Such teachers, afflicted by kids who appear absolutely unable to be quiet long enough to allow two sentences together into their heads, face audiences more daunting than any faced by non-funny comedians, or by school boards proposing an increase in taxes.

Maturing teenage brains

Now we have the MRI images to demonstrate that it’s true, and why. Jake Young at Pure Pedantry has a post on the research (just published in Nature), with good links to the videos of the maturing teenage brain.

One theory is that teenagers are actually from a separate barbarian race. However, I suspect that there is also an underlying neurological reason for this barbaric behavior that has to do with the different rates of brain maturation in the human cortex.

The neurological changes that happen in the human brain over adolescence are described in a great article by Kendall Powell in Nature.

Alas, no sure-fire lesson plans, nor even hints of teacher survival strategies accompany the research findings.

Santayana was right: Some of these kids will be condemned to repeat history, either Texas history, or U.S. history to 1877.

3 Comments | Brain development, Brain learning, Education, Harry Wong, Pedagogy, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Tantalizing partnership in Abilene, Texas

September 26, 2006

When I handed in my paper on the history of the Pleasant Grove Review to my journalism history professor, I lamented the lack of really good books and articles on Utah papers in general, and I noted how I had difficulty finding experts to cite, and so I had to spend hours in the backrooms of libraries and archives going through newspapers. He gave me a long deadpan look, and said, “You’re the expert — now.”

Actually, finding the stuff in those odd places was a good bit of fun.

Kids in Abilene, Texas, may have an easier go of such research in the future. A local consortium has funding to archive local history sources.

The Abilene Library Consortium has been awarded $2.2 million to begin a Digital Archives project. The Consortium members are Abilene Christian University, Abilene Public Library, Hardin-Simmons University, McMurry University, and Howard Payne University. The five-library group will build a digital repository to preserve and present historically significant materials that tell the stories of people within their communities. The repository will be available to the public and to each home institution. Staff will schedule workshops to assist individuals and agencies in preserving their historical records.

The Dodge Jones Foundation has awarded $2 million dollars and the Dian Graves Owen Foundation awarded $200 thousand dollars to begin the project and sustain it for the first three years. The grants include funding for equipment, staff, training and outsourced services.

I wonder whether high school teachers in Abilene are salivating at the chance to turn loose a small army of young historians, or are they instead suffering through one more meeting on how to boost TAKS scores?

Tip of the scrub brush to Library Technology in Texas.

Leave a Comment » | History, Libraries, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

An MIT education, on-line

September 26, 2006

Occasionally we visit the use of technology in education. It seems to me that our technical acumen far outstrips our serious application of technology to learning, and we should be trying to close the gap.

MIT offers OpenCourseWare, which is a large catalog of offerings, on line. It is a step towards realizing the potential of on-line learning:

a free and open educational resource (OER) for educators, students, and self-learners around the world. It is true to MIT’s values of excellence, innovation, and leadership.

MIT OCW:

  • Is a publication of MIT course materials
  • Does not require any registration
  • Is not a degree-granting or certificate-granting activity
  • Does not provide access to MIT faculty

Historians, especially teachers wishing to crib for great syllabi, will want to look at offerings like the courses from Pauline Maier. Economists should explore offerings in economics, too.

Leave a Comment » | Economics, History, On-line education, On-line learning, Teaching, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Two things: History

September 24, 2006

More on the Two Things meme: Glenn Whitman at Cal State/Northridge offers two sets of “two things” for history:

The Two Things about History:
1. Everything has earlier antecedents.
Corollary: all culture, including religion, is syncretic; there is nothing purely original.
Second Corollary: there’s no question that a historian can’t complicate by talking about what led up to it.
2. Sources lie, but they’re all we have.
–Jonathan Dresner

The Two Things about Teaching History:
1. A good story is all they’ll remember, not the half hour of analysis on either side of it.
2. They think it’s about answers, but it’s really about questions.
–Jonathan Dresner
[I have no idea who Jonathan Dresner is, but you have attribution and his e-mail.]

Off the top of my head I can’t improve much on those, though I do think the point about the good story applies both in studying history and in teaching it. We need the story to tell us what not to do — fairy tales serve a purpose in establishing myth, and history should do much the same thing if it is to help us avoid the dangers Santayana warns us about (see the Santayana quote at the top right ear of this blog, for example).

It’s all about the story. If the story is remembered, the errors may be avoided. If the story is not remembered, the chances of avoiding the errors are greatly reduced.

6 Comments | Education, History, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Behind “kill all the lawyers”

September 24, 2006

In an otherwise informative post about a controversy over alternative certification for school administrators, at EdWize, I choked on this:

The Department leaders, Klein, Seidman and Alonso, lawyers all (perhaps Shakespeare was correct), are rigid ideologues who have alienated their work force as well as the parents of their constituents

Did you catch that? Especially the link to the Shakespeare line, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers?”

This is not exactly history we’re fisking here — it’s drama, I suppose. Still, it falls neatly into the category of debunkings, not too unlike the debunking of the story of Millard Fillmore’s bathtub.

The line from Shakespeare is accurate. It’s from Henry VI, Part II. But it’s not so much a diatribe against lawyers as it is a part of a satirical indictment of those who would overthrow government, and oppress the masses for personal gain.

It is Dick the Butcher who says the line. Jack Cade has just expressed his warped view that he should be king, after having attempted a coup d’etat and taken power, at least temporarily. Cade starts in with his big plans to reform the economy — that is, to let his friends eat cheap or free.

Dick chimes in to suggest that in the new regime, the lawyers ought to be the first to go — they protect rights of people and property rights, and such rights won’t exist in Cade’s imagined reign. Cade agrees. The purpose of killing the lawyers, then, is to perpetuate their rather lawless regime.

At that moment others in Cade’s conspiracy enter, having captured the town Clerk of Chatham. The man is put on trial for his life, accused of being able to read and keep accounts. Worse, he’s been caught instructing young boys to read. Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Freedom - Political, Good Quotes, Law, Public education, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

World changing presentations

September 24, 2006

Before the proliferation of video projectors and computers, and the proliferation of Microsoft PowerPoint and similar programs, lectures with visual aids usually meant a few phrases on a chalk board, or a few select phrases on flip charts. Sometimes visual aids meant overhead projector slides, which offer the advantage of the lecturer’s being able to write on the slide as the lecture progresses.

When I did a lot more lecturing for corporations and professional groups, I carried 35-millimeter photo slides, professionally produced. Some of them showed just the cover of a book. I favored black or very dark backgrounds with one word on a slide. With just one word, I could edit the presentation more easily, shuffling the order of the key words I wanted to use literally up to the last moment. Laying out a three-hour presentation using just single-word slides, with a few photos or other illustrations, served to focus me on the outline of the speech, on the pacing and timing of the presentation, and focus especially on just what the message was to be — what I wanted the audience to leave the auditorium humming.

PowerPoint changed all of that, and not necessarily for the better. Oh, I use PowerPoint myself, though I tend to favor single, high-impact historical photographs, rather than the thousand-word essays some people put up on the single slides. I still edit to get pictures that are spare in presentation, but rich in thought, and rich in potential for edifying talk. I have seen a few PowerPoint masters — perhaps you have, too — who can dispense an enormous amount of information and inspiration with a minimum of words and slides. Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Abraham Lincoln, Business, Education, Teaching, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Maybe homeschoolers have ulterior motives (sometimes)

September 24, 2006

Scripps News carried an op-ed type of feature from a Texas English professor named John Crisp, that questions whether public education is as bad as some crack it up to be, and whether homeschooling is the noble answer to the over-stated problem that homeschooling is cracked up to be. The entire piece is worth reading, but his closing paragraphs deserve emphasis:

Abandonment rather than improvement of our public schools would be an unfortunate choice. I’m attracted to the ideas of the late Neil Postman, who argues in his book “The End of Education” that to the extent that our nation enjoys a common shared culture, that culture has been developed and is passed on from generation to generation at least partly by means of the shared knowledge and ideas that we acquire during our common experience in the public schools.

In other words, because our public schools are a place where we develop a set of common stories, myths and experiences _ George Washington crossing the Delaware, Betsy Ross sewing the first flag, even the fear of being sent to the principal _ they encourage a sense of a shared heritage that helps pull our country together.

Homeschooling and vouchers for private schools _ places that allow the teaching of the things that Roger Moran believes _ tend to pull us apart. All in all, our public-school system has served us well; it would be better to repair its faults than to abandon it.

13 Comments | History, Homeschooling, Public education, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Carnival of Education #85

September 23, 2006

Obviously we’re all gearing up for the State Fair Edition.  Carnival of Education 85 is up over at Median Sib, and the quality and applicability of the posts just gets better and better.

The quality is very high, really.  I’ve checked out more than a dozen links.  No bad ones.  It’s safer than a spinach salad, that’s for sure.

Leave a Comment » | Education blogs, Pedagogy, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Teaching writing and persuasion

September 19, 2006

I’m biased. I debated in high school, and spent four years debating at the University of Utah under Jack Rhodes, and then I coached debate for a year under Tim Browning at the University of Arizona. That training got me through journalism school, into law school and through it, and did me yeoman service in politics. The ability to survive and thrive in the heat of public policy discussion is . . . fun.

Over at The Reflective Teacher, we get a great argument for using debate to teach 8th grade English, especially the persuasive writing paper and the research paper. Looks good to me.

3 Comments | Curricula, Education, Lesson plans, Pedagogy, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The student who needs more

September 17, 2006

I learned two tricks over the last three years that I wish I could use more often. First, most DVDs have caption tracks. I accidentally turned on the captions for a rather difficult DVD in economics. Before I could turn it off, I realized that several kids whose first language was not English were thoroughly engaged in the presentation, something that was rare for them. They were able to hear words and see them on the screen, making connections they had been unable to make before.

Second — well, really, it’s the same trick — I found that kids I knew to be dyslexic picked up material like sponges from good videos, and the captioning helped them, too. What was really interesting was that I had three students thank me for showing them because, they said, they can’t learn from books. All three were dyslexic, but not known to be by the school district. Videos that tell a good story give them enough to pass the class, and often excel. Adding captions helps.

So when I saw this post at RedKudu, I was pleased to see that other teachers care about kids who have difficulty learning. It’s a great story, without an ending yet. Go see.

2 Comments | Education, ESL - English as a Second Language, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Ann Richards, you warned us

September 14, 2006

 

Former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, and a sample of a Texas barbecue rib. Photo by Elecro-Fish Media (Austin, Texas)

Ann Richards died yesterday. It’s sad for me to think what might have been, had she been able to hold off one more charge by the Texas Republicans, had she defeated George Bush in her second campaign for governor of Texas.

Gov. Richards was a gracious and graceful woman who was simply fun to know — while quietly and forcefully inspiring others to do good deeds. In a former time, a candidate who defeated someone like Richards would have the good sense to keep her in government in some capacity, just for her wisdom and experience. It will be a tribute to Richards when civility is returned to politics.

Ann Richards was a public school teacher, clearly of the highest caliber. We can only hope there are more like her teaching in Texas schools today.

Update, September 17, 2006: Molly Ivins, perhaps America’s best political columnist, was a close friend of Ann Richards. Her column well reflects the special qualities of Richards, why we will miss her so badly, and why we should worry that there are so few like her around today.

 

1 Comment | Heroes, History, Leadership, Politics, Teaching, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

One-room schools and national memory

September 13, 2006

Speaking of Jim Bencivenga — I did, here — he was the education reporter for the Christian Science Monitor prior to his time at the U.S. Department of Education, where he was my predecessor as director of Information Services in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) (a long title that means “the office that’s looking for good stuff and new stuff”).

A Google search revealed that Bencivenga is cited in a book of quotations for an article he wrote on one-room schools.

The single-room worlds remain strong icons at the heart of our national memory, permanent as any church spire piercing the New England sky.

On country schools, Christian Science Monitor 13 Feb 85

In my family, childbearing has been put off to later than average for a couple of generations. So I heard stories of the old one-room schools from those who experienced them. The memory of one-room schools was with my parents, and my maternal grandparents (I did not get a chance to meet my paternal grandparents). There are, in 2006, a few one-room schoolhouses remaining — in Maine, California, Nebraska, Hawaii, and other places. NPR featured a series on them this past year.

One-room schools seem awfully quaint, and perhaps wholly obsolete in times when some school districts give every student a laptop computer to get schoolwork done. The values taught in those schools should be preserved, however: Love of education, seeking of wisdom, cross-generational learning, respect for people of differing ages, and a reliance on living the golden rule, among other things.

The U.S was once a nation of mostly one-room schoolhouses. Change isn’t always completely for the better, even when it is mostly so. We struggle to keep good values in changing times.

We still don’t have a magic formula for how people learn, or how education should work; it remains true that in education, one-size fits few.

1 Comment | Good Quotes, History, Pedagogy, Public education, Teaching, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Jargon – fuzzifying the facts, fuzzifying history

September 11, 2006

Jargon is the death of many a useful idea in large organizations. Good writers try to avoid jargon, trying instead to provide language that will be readily understood by the reader or listener, and language that is clear and precise in its meaning.

In history, jargon and buzzwords tend to obscure what is going on. Phrases like “collateral damage” are much less graphic, and useful, than phrases like “civilian casualties.” Jargon can make history a difficult task — I’m thinking of some of the documents from the Pentagon during the Vietnam War, just for example.

In a post titled “Buzzword Blingo,” Aphra Behn – Danger of Eclectic Shock has some fun with jargon, and helpfully includes links to several sites that deal with the crippling effects of jargon on learning and plain old conversation.

3 Comments | Accuracy, Business, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Classroom tip: Marines, piracy and terrorism

September 6, 2006

How does a teacher make history interesting, especially to elementary school students? Here’s one way to make a lively discussion, from History is Elementary. You don’t need to mention Gomer Pyle.

1 Comment | Current History, History, Lesson plans, Pedagogy, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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