The Digital Minefield

In my most recent post, I described the value of being able to instruct students who have grown up in a digital world. Those who have grown up with the answers a website away need a fast paced and energized classroom, where questions are broadly asked and welcomed, and information is given in an applicable and relevant way. With the infusion of the digital age, businesses have changed the way they market, educators must modify the way they teach, and we have even changed the way we socialize. This has been one of the greatest gifts and curses of the digital divide.

Those of us who have been ingrained in the digital culture are proponents of two major concepts—sharing and customizing. The digital generation seems to do this subconsciously: making your favorite song your ring tone, creating a play list on your ipod, uploading pictures to your My Space profile, blogging or twittering about the restaurant you were at, or taking the “What Marvel Superhero are you?” quiz on facebook and publishing the results on your profile. While the information can be useful, entertaining, and a fun diversion, each action creates its own digital footprint, a fossilized record of you for ill or naught. The image you are looking to create and ideals or information you are looking to impart have the potential to be misconstrued, and remain part of your digital image forever.

Day 132 AIM: How can I last to Spring Break?

Do Now: FML. It’s still 5 days until Spring Break, and you just can’t wait for that mojito on the beach. You can hear the Beach Boys already, the sway of palm trees against the warm breeze, the steady roll of the waves. You want nothing more than a beach towel and an excuse to not have excuses. It’s paradise, in its most unadulterated form.

There’s just one problem. You’re still in the suck.

There’s no beaches in the South Bronx, and the closest thing to a mojito you’re going to be sipping is black coffee from the bodega across from your school. Beach Boys? Not if Jay-Z is readily available. That swaying of palm trees is actually the sound of gypsy cabs zooming by, waiting to rip you right off. Oh, and that beach towel isn’t for the beach; it’s to wipe off the nasty shit you got on your pants riding on the 6 this morning. And the only excuses you’ll be hearing are from your students, in regards to why they didn’t do their homework.

Spring break, my friends, is close, but oh so far away.

The Wiki Classroom

A new generation requires a new way of teaching, thinking, and learning. It is readily apparent when you walk down the streets and see kids nonchalantly changing music on their Ipods while simultaneously texting their friends and rapidly readjusting to look up the nearest ice cream place on their Iphone. The world has fundamentally changed, and thus so has the way we educate students. The Old Model of education—absorption and repetition—must make way for the modern student. Today’s student is a product of their environment—fast paced, full of questions, and looking to discover on their own—all of which comes from having the world at their fingertips. As Seymour Papert, an expert on using technology to impact education, once said, “The scandal of education is that every time you teach something, you deprive the child of the pleasure and benefit of discovery.”

The mass production economy and it’s one size fits all absorption techniques has evolved into the Net Generation. Thus, our teaching methods must evolve accordingly, away from lecture and note-taking and some of the traditional styles of teaching and towards inquiry based learning, collaboration and experiential learning. Broadcast learning of old was teacher centered, molding to the teacher’s own flair and style. It was an inflexible and one-size-fits-all method that utilized individualistic learning. Today’s Net Generation—as a result of the many stimuli and prevalence of technology—must become much more learner centered, discovery based, one-size-fits-one, and collaborative. The teacher must follow an interactive model to grasp and hold the learners’ attention and must present them with real world applications and issues that they must synthesize, analyze, and respond to.

Day 130 AIM: How can I incorporate Top 40 songs into my lessons?

Do Now: Be creative, but also be subtle. Remember, any fool can lather their students with T-Pain or Lil Wayne lyrics, but that just seems like pandering in the end, and nobody wants that. The trick to any lyricist is to insinuate identity through a weaving of ideas and verse. Joan Baez would have made a bad-ass teacher, and Bob Dylan should teach 1st year teachers the art of persuasion through lyrics. And what would lesson number 1 be? Simple: the lyrics should match the theme of your lesson or message, lest it be obscured by the greater stimuli of the classroom. For example, when you hear students talking about being a few points shy of passing, offer some Rascal Flatts: 

What hurts the most
Was being so close
And having so much to say
And watching you walk away
And never knowing
What could have been
And not seeing that loving you
Is what I was tryin’ to do

If they give you a sour face, it’s because of one of two things: either (1) they don’t recognize the song or (2) they recognize the song, and they’re not impressed. Either way, it couldn’t hurt to add another “Is what I was tryin’ to dooooooo,” just for effect.

Day 129 AIM: Should I allow my students to eat in class?

Do Now: This is a mixed bag. On one hand, student performance is inherently tied in with blood-sugar levels. Early mornings can be as disastrous as story time with Stephen Hawking unless you get some bagels in your sleepy scholars’ mouths. Afternoon classes will be absolutely silent unless sandwiches manifest themselves. I have a rule in my class: students can eat as long as they work. This is where we must be cautious, for eating can be productive for a diligent student, but it can also be downright distracting to any lesser ones. Candy bars become noisy wrappers. Corn chips become speed bumps to the lecture flow. So implement your own food rule, but remember, food in the classroom is a contentious issue, for it all depends on how the cookie crumbles.

Helpless or Hopeless?

One of the pillars of Teach For America has always been the respect for low income communities, and a key metric of this dogma has always been in the exoneration of parents/guardians and the defense of their attitudes. It has always been assumed that all parents want their students to learn, succeed, and go to college. However, our students might be constrained by medical conditions, family responsibilities, or work. Furthermore, as an addendum, canon law has been extended to all students, who are perceived to have an innate desire to succeed, they just need a dedicated teacher to demonstrate how, and push them to believe in themselves. Of all of Teach For America’s “core values,” this one has always been the third rail of their educational philosophy. Accountability has been siphoned away from parents and students, and placed squarely on the shoulders of their teachers. Lately, this lofty and idealistic principle has waged a private war in my head.

Day 128 AIM: Why aren’t my students coming to class anymore?

Do Now: Be observant. Teachers have to utilize all of their senses, including the all-too-famous sixth one, which we in the industry like to call, teacher intuition. It’s that fuzzy feeling you get when your lesson isn’t going quite right. It’s the force, only it can only inform and not manipulate the situation, which is unfortunate when you’re dealing with a classroom issue. Instead of waving your hand and Obi-Waning some little talkative shit in the corner, you just get the prickles on the hair on your neck, which really isn’t the same. 

But you’ve noticed that your students are coming in fewer numbers, and that’s something even untrained Jedi padawans like us can observe. Well, there are multiple plausible reasons why this may be. It’s late in the semester, so those kids who gave up already gave up. It could also be the month of March itself, which snakes along like an endless tail to a gargantuan monster. But take one look outside, one smell of blossoms in the air, one taste of the air, once frosty now moist with life, and anyone can tell you where your students are: they’re somewhere outside, and it’s almost spring.

Step Up to Parent Teacher Conferences

I am sitting here in my classroom, currently waiting for students, parents, or a combination of both to walk through my door. I have my grade book set up and the lighting just right so that everyone can see the yellow line that denotes homework disappear into obscurity. I hear my co-teacher speaking to a student’s parents in Spanish. My Spanish is about as good as a five year old kid with down syndrome, but I do make out the following words: “baja”, “malo”, “castiga”, “dio mio”, “conejo”, and “?Quieres comer? !Manos a la obra!”

To me, conferences are like Christmas. Bad ass students are suddenly reduced to syccophantic chipmunks. Loners and introverts suddenly ask for extra work. I realize its temporal, but gosh, it’s nice to see what could be.

UPDATE: Our Assistant Principal just makes an announcement for the raffle winner. We have a raffle at Parent Teacher Conferences. For showing up, you get a ticket, and the winning ticket wins a Nintendo Wii. Considering all the distractions our students face on a daily basis, this proves to be an overtly inappropriate gesture.

I’d say the best way to marginalize any school-wide function is to incentivize it with a Nintendo game. For all of our students who cannot manage their time and their parents who cannot manage their students, an interactive time-sucking machine should be the last thing they want. But to pander it with tickets? Who came up with that idea? Why do we want to transform Parent Teacher Conferences into a carnival?

Day 123 AIM: How can I use March Madness in a lesson in my classroom?

Do Now: Let’s face it: everyone loves March Madness, and everyone loves teachers. Even Dick Vitale was once a teacher. Bracketology should be part of every child’s education, and commentary from the Duke-Kentucky Laettner shot game should be recited like poetry. Show a clip of Jimmy V running onto the court and have students write a poem about how it makes them feel. Show them the correlation between free-throw percentage and win percentage and have them describe the relationship statistically. Have them fill out a bracket and write a 1 paragraph response for why they made the choices they did. Or better yet, make it a 5 paragraph essay; after all, you have your own bracket to update.

Day 121 AIM: How can I set my people back hundreds of years?

Do Now: Make a stupid youtube video and sport Yao Ming jerseys.