Creating Relevancy through Meaning and Metaphor

“In a world of fixed future, life is an infinite corridor of rooms, one room lit at each moment, the next room dark but prepared. We walk from room to room, look into the room that is lit, the present moment, then walk on. We do not know the rooms ahead, but we know we cannot change them. We are spectators of our lives.”

“In a world without future, each moment is the end of the world.”

-Alan Lightman, from Einstein’s Dreams

Exercises in metaphor pervade our history, whether it is Sir Isaac Newton’s revelations concerning the physics of our universe from his experience with a small apple, or Christ’s ability to paint parables for his disciples that illuminated the word of God. Metaphors allow us to explain the sometimes unexplainable, as the early mythologies were less religiously intended as opposed to a necessary way to explain the terrifyingly inexplicable events that surrounded early man, such as bolts of electricity falling from the sky.  In his excellent novel, Einstein’s Dreams, Astrophysicist and Creative Writing professor Alan Lightman imagines the dreams of Albert Einstein.  The dreams are not mathematical equations or a blank slate blackboard filled with calculations and diagrams.  The dreams he imagines are the dreams of worlds.  The worlds all vary in one fundamental way, the role that Time plays in them.  In one, he imagines time as a fixed point, in another, a flock of birds.  He then observes the way that people react in those worlds: What would they love? What would they fear? These nightly meditations eventually lead him to his truth, that to understand how time works in our world, he merely needs to observe how the people around him behave. Like his non-fictional counterparts, this Einstein has learned through the power of metaphor, and a strong reliance on the learning principle of Meaning.

Meaning requires an emphasis on bringing relevant and engaging experiences to students. “The more meaningful or relevant the task or application of information is to the students’ work, the easier it is to learn. The teacher may make explicit reference to students’ personal experiences as a link to connecting content with the students’ lives or they may actually simulate the experience in the learning activity” (DBTC).  In the public school classroom, now more than ever, the diverse populations of students that enter our doors bring with them a multitude of different attitudes, experiences, beliefs and feelings about school.  The typical schema that we expect students to have, schema that represents a more culturally exclusive time, no longer exists in all our students.  For many teachers, the response to this inability to guarantee what students are bringing to the classroom, causes them to simply start over, treating the students as blank slates.  The prolonged effects of this “Episodic View of Reality” (Feuerstein, Feuerstein, Falik, and Rand, 2006) can have devastating long term consequences. A better, more ethical way to combat the diverse schema that students are bringing to the classroom, is to provide meaningful, metaphorical anchor experiences at the start of units, that will pre-load metaphorical and experiential schema for later reference, building relevant and usable meaning into the lessons that follow.

One issue brought forth when meaning is not addressed in the classroom is that there is little to no transfer of skills from class-to-class, or, more insidiously, from grade-to-grade. The episodic view is the result of a lack of connection that the student feels toward the subject matter.  In short, their education is something that is being done to them, not something that they are actively participating in. In some colleges, “Anchored Instruction” is being used to ground certain instructional practices in relevant life experiences.  In this case, a Computer Learning class, where students were learning how to use technology, was paired with a teaching and learning class that used the students own struggles as a basis for studying instruction.  A study of the experiment concluded that ““Evidence from other research projects suggests that a specific emphasis on analyzing similarities and differences among problem situations and on bridging new area of application facilitates the degree to which spontaneous transfer occurs” (Cognition and Technology Group, 1990).” by providing the students with a relevant and meaningful basis for discussion, they were more likely to retain, and later use, the skills they were introduced to.

Another anchor activity our district was introduced to recently was the Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment program.  Based on the theory and research of Reuven Feuerstein, the program consists of simple instruments, such as recognizing pattern, or connecting dots, that are seemingly unrelated to content area studies. “Organization of Dots engages children in projecting virtual relationships in an amorphous cloud of dots to form specific geometrical forms. The resulting products must conform to given forms and sizes in changing spatial orientation. The exercises become progressively complex as the child gradually overcomes the challenges of conservation, representation, and precision” (Ben-Hur, 2006). As you bring the students through the instruments however, it becomes a metaphorical discussion regarding learning styles in general, that can be applied into almost any situation.  To teach us how to use the instruments, we were first tasked with completing them, and the frustration and learning that occurred even in the adults, was eye-opening, and empathy inducing.  We have used this experience with classes of all levels, and it has myriad connections that we continue to reference throughout the year.  Without providing this anchor experience, our ability to tap into relevance and meaning would be greatly diminished.

The ability to create transfer across grades is important, but it can be even more powerful when it is planned through the use of interdisciplinary anchors. The answer is that children learn by mobilizing their innate capacities to meet everyday challenges they perceive as meaningful. Skills and concepts are most often learned as tools to meet present demands rather than as facts to be memorized today in hopes of application tomorrow. Further, daily life is not separated into academic disciplines or divided into discrete time units; instead, the environment presents problems that one must address in an interdisciplinary, free-flowing way, usually in collaboration with peers and mentors” (Barab and Landa, 1997). By connecting experiences and metaphors that breach into different subject area, we increase the capacity for meaningful experiences, that also privilege the concept of transfer simultaneously. Again, the created meaning becomes a common reference point that teachers can refer back to in order to help students facilitate learning.

Lightman’s Einstein envisions a world where time is fixed, and everything that will happen is already known by the people that inhabit it. He describes this life as a series of rooms, with the absence of choice, its inhabitants serving only as “spectator’s in their lives”. Without meaning, a child’s education must feel this way. The student who is tasked with navigating these rooms, only to move onto the next, truly comes to believe as well that each day is “the end of the world.”  We must as teachers be sure to provide relevant  and meaningful experiences for our students.  We must help them to see that they have agency and choice, and we must create for them, reference points that they can use to put their education in the context of their own lives.  Short of taking them around the world, and covering all of the potential references they may need in our diverse curriculum, we can still produce metaphorical anchors that can be used to help students bring a common experience and schema to their day-to-day learning lives.

References

Barab, S., & Landa, A. Designing Effective Interdisciplinary Anchors. How Children Learn,54, 52-55.

Ben-Hur, M. (2006, December 1). Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment-BASIC. . Retrieved , from http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/strategies/topics/Instrumental%20Enrichment/hur3.htm

Feuerstein, Feuerstein, Falik, and Rand (2006), Creating and Enhancing Cognitive Modifiability:  The Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment Program, ICELP Publications

Principles of Learning. (n.d.). . Retrieved July 11, 2014, from http://d20uo2axdbh83k.cloudfront.net/20140516/950b5968383aac0612b95267241b6fbb.pd

Saphier, J., & Gower, R. R. (1997). The skillful teacher: building your teaching skills (5th ed.). Acton, Mass.: Research for Better Teaching.

Vanderbilt, Cognition and Technology Group. a. Anchored Instruction and Its Relationship to Situated Cognition.Educational Researcher, 2-10.

Talking about Poetry with Middle School Students

  As my classroom begins to roll over into full workshop for the rest of the year, I know that many of my students will be attempting poetry, many for the first time.  It's important as teachers that we have authentic discussions with students surrounding our expectations.  Middle school students generally come into poetry with similar misconceptions or issues.  Here is a list of the most common:

-       -Poetry has “No Rules”

-       -Poetry must rhyme

-       -Poetry must be short

-       -Poems must be on a serious topic

-       -Poetry should be difficult to understand or vague

-       -Poetry only needs to make sense to the writer

None of these things are true, and helping writers through these assumptions is key to getting them to write poetry well.  There are a few general ways you can attack these conceptions, and create a more meaningful and authentic experience for children.

1.     Poetry is not Anarchy:  As with any other piece of prose, poetry must be created with intent behind it.  This intent can be shown through many different ways, but unless the student is writing poetry that purposefully assaults the conventions of Standard English, poetry should be grammatically and conventionally sound.  This is the most common mistake kids make when starting middle school poetics.  To address this, have he students redraft their work in paragraph form, or ask them to compose in this manner.   This will allow them to make sure that the poem follows standard conventions without confusing them in terms of line breaks.

2.     Poetry is written for Performance:  Poetry has historically been a spoken art form.  As such, the use of commas and periods in the poem must be used with intent, directing the reader as to how the poem should sound when read aloud.  This is also an opportunity to teach mini-lessons around the use of Alliteration, Assonance, Metrics, and Rhyme (although these are higher level concepts).

3.     Poetry is not from Concentrate:  A poem is as long as it “needs” to be.  In some cases, this is predetermined, as in Sonnets or Villanelles.  Other poems have their length determined by subject alone.  In either situation, the economy and functionality of words is paramount.  There should not be any words or phrases that amount to excess baggage, and students should be able to justify why things are included on the page.

4.     Poetry is not all Dirges:  Neruda wrote about fruit and salt, Whitman and Ginsberg wrote about their bodies, and Bukowski wrote about his own depravity.  There are no “set” topics for poetry, the desire to write alone is the key, the need to capture, to “Name the World.”  If the student wants to create a Haiku, make sure they research the form, understand the subtleties it provides, and not focus on the fact that it is only 3 lines. Choosing a topic is important, but not limited to what we would typically define as “momentous” or life altering events.  A good poem adds grace to the mundane, meaning to normalcy.

  This post is as yet unfinished, what would you add to it?  What issues do you see when students attempt poetry?

Portal Flash Learning Lesson

Now that the first few setup lessons have been completed, we are moving into some of the experiential learning that will shape the class.  Since the main thrust of the class is to break students out of their typical assumptions about what “school” can be, I wanted to provide an initial experience that was seemingly as far from these assumptions as possible.

The students were asked to log into their computers and run a Google search on “Portal Flash”.  This should bring up multiple accessible links to the game, Portal: The Flash Version.  The Flash version of the popular game Portal was not made by the developer, Valve, and is free on various Flash sites on the internet.  Unlike the console and PC version, the Flash version offers physics based puzzles in a 2-dimensional environment.  The puzzle require “portals” to be placed to allow the player to find a pathway to an exit.  As the game progresses, the puzzles get more difficult, and start introducing variables that affect the player’s ability to easily pass through the game.

When we began playing, I set up a few rules.  Students were told that their goal was to get to the highest level that they could, but that they could not ask me questions about the game, or I would simply reply with a question.  I told them that they could use the tools available to them such as Youtube or Wiki’s, to help them through.

Then I sat back and observed the chaos.

Invariably, even the most accomplished gamers in the class hit a wall, a point where they could no longer breeze through the levels without pausing to think, or ask questions of their classmates.  Here was where the game began to provide gold.

Kids became frustrated, agitated, excited.  They clicked the mouse too hard, or squirmed in their seat as the character fell into a pit or was incinerated on a laser floor.  They were animated, began asking questions of one another, furiously searched Youtube for the best walkthrough videos.

They were engaged in the truest sense of the word, despite the difficulty.

The students continued to play through to the lunch break, and when they returned, we started talking.  I asked the following 4 questions, giving them time to write their responses prior to sharing.

1.     What were the difficulties you faced during the game?

2.     How did you deal with these difficulties?

3.     How was this experience different from your idea of what “school” is supposed to be?

4.     What have you learned about learning, or how you learn best?

The discussion went well, with most of the students explaining the benefit of doing it themselves, and of not being given answers.  They said that there was a sense of accomplishment when they finished a level on their own.  Simply saying these things to my students would have paled in comparison to having them complete the activity first.  They need the experience of learning outside of what they have been conditioned to believe it is.

I was struck by some of the student responses in other avenues.  When a lecture is occurring, or they are being asked to participate in activities that “feel” like “school”, my students are constantly asking to get a drink or go to the bathroom.  During the 80 minute block, over 2 different classes, not a single student asked to leave for any reason.  I’m not surprised by this at all.

We need to think about how we can demonstrate LEARNING in our classrooms, not simply explain to our student’s why it is important.    The more we can begin to understand that learning is something that is happening within these children AT ALL TIMES, the more we need to be cognizant of the worthiness of the tasks we ask them to do.  Is it simply busy work?  Are we just padding a grade book? Justifying our own existence?

Take some time to try the game yourself.  What emotions does it elicit in you?  How do you deal with frustration and failure?  How do you manage a lack of ability or control in something as simple as a two-dimensional computer game?

What can you learn about your student’s educational lives from it?  

Log on, and get uncomfortable.

Fast Food Education Nation

“Education is being strangled persistently by the culture of standardized testing.  The irony is that these tests are not raising standards except in some very particular areas and at the expense of most of what really matters in education.

    To get a perspective on this, compare the processes of quality assurance in education with those in an entirely different field- catering.  In the restaurant business, there are two distinct models of quality assurance.  The first is the fast-food model.  In this model, the quality of the food is guaranteed, because it is all standardized.  The fast-food chains specify exactly what should be on the menu in all their outlets.  They specify what should be on the burgers or nuggets, the oil in which they should be fried, the exact bun in which they should be served, how the fries should be made, what should be in the drinks, and exactly how they should be served.  They specify how the room should be decorated and what the staff should wear.  Everything is standardized.  It's often dreadful and bad for you.  Some forms of fast food are contributing to the massive explosion of obesity and diabetes across the world.  But at least the quality is guaranteed.

   The other model of quality assurance in catering is the Michelin guide.  In this model, the guides establish specific criteria for excellence, but they do not say how the particular restaurants should meet these criteria. They don't say what should be on the menu, what the staff should wear, or how the rooms should be decorated.  All of that is at the discretion of the individual restaurant.  The guides simply establish criteria, and it is up to every restaurant to meet them in whatever way they see best.  They are then judged not to some impersonal standard, but by assessments of experts who know what they are looking for and what a great restaurant is actually like.  The result is that every Michelin restaurant is terrific.  And they are all unique and different from each other.

  One of the essential problems for education is that most countries subject their schools to the fast-food model of quality assurance when they should be adopting the Michelin model instead.  The future in education is not in standardizing but in customizing; not in promoting groupthink and "deindividuation" but in cultivating the real depth and dynamism of human abilities of every sort.”

-From “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything”, by Sir Ken Robinson

I’m thinking about the balancing act that teachers are being forced to play these days, especially the good ones.  It seems we’ve moved into an era where we need to go underground.  The attacks on the profession have created a false accountability that is more political than effective.  Good teachers are forced to whisper about the progressive individualization they employ in their classes, or face possible public scrutiny.  Bad teachers embrace the calls for standardization because it is easier to implement, and is in their eyes, more easily defended.

As the stakes become higher, and pressure is mounted, we see a desire to return to more draconian practices in the classrooms.  The need to pass standardized tests as a district, by its very definition, robs the individual of his or her rights as a learner.  We need more analogies like Robinson’s.  We need to get the information out there that our students DESERVE a personalized education. 

It is not frivolity, it is not a pipe dream, it is not a lofty goal to be attained.  It is their RIGHT. 

Everything we do to posture and squirm around this fundamental truth will only delay the inevitable.  We can change the system to make it work for our students, or we can allow outside forces to declare our regressive system a failure, and shape it to their interests, whatever those may be.  As teachers, I believe that we are the protectors of our students; we got into this to make a difference in their lives.  What better difference could we make than to hand them a system that they deserve?

There is a change coming, and it’s up to us to get in front of it before the cynics among us unintentionally damage it beyond repair.  That greasy burger is not good for you, even though it’s cheap and fast.  Try not to choke on it.

Day One: Ideas for the Opening of School

Tomorrow the kids arrive and a new year begins.  I’ve been given an amazing opportunity, and it has me excited, engaged, and to be honest, nervous. 

I’m piloting a model classroom this year.  Many of the posts on this blog will feature the ideas and lessons that I plan on implementing, but also whether or not they are successful.  The goal is to create a living document that I can use for reflection and development.

The class will be an 8^th Grade Language Arts “A-Level” class, which is code in our district for “Standard” or “College Pre” level.  The students that have been selected all are on the bubble, students that have consistently scored between 10 points above or below proficient on the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJASK).  Many of these kids have had difficulty forging connections between their school lives, and their lives outside of education.

The goal for the year is to strengthen those connections, to allow them to see that their lives include both their academic pursuits as well as the pursuit of their interests, or to get Foundational, their happiness.

The class will provide experiential lessons and activities that will provide metaphorical and literal translations into their academic lives.  The class will have an open door policy, allowing teachers and administrators, parents and community members, to drop in and participate in the work we are doing.  Fostering this sense of community is one of the hallmarks of the class.

Before any of this can take place however, there has to be a groundwork of trust that is created, which leads me to my activity for the first day.  I’ll be taking the students outside (weather permitting) as a physical removal from the school environment, and starting with learning their names and getting everyone familiar with one another.  I will then introduce the class rules, and hold a discussion about each, inviting students to share their previous experiences at our school.

Here are the 4 Class “Rules”:

Your Words Matter

Too often, students arrive in the 8^th Grade believing that their academic future is “fixed”.  That there is no possible way to transcend the difficulties that they have had in the past, whether they are academic, behavioral, or social.  It’s important on the first day that I let them know that they will be judged only by what they say and do from this point forward, and that when we communicate, their words must be clear and precise.  Their words will define their character, they are not something cheap top be thrown about, devoid of meaning.

You have a Voice, USE IT

As a by-product of this, the importance of their words is tied to the use of their words.  Not speaking up opens up the ability for others to speak for you, to assimilate their ideas as yours.  Not questioning, or probing deeper into the things you are struggling with, robs you of the instruction you are entitled to in our system.  Learning to speak for yourself will be an important part of the class.

We Can’t Do This Alone

No one works in a vacuum.  Many of the things I will ask you to do require collaboration, the ability to work well in a group.  Use the resources around you to develop yourself, to enrich yourself, to strengthen yourself.  When we do this well, we all become stronger.

 Life isn’t about FINDING Yourself, it’s about CREATING yourself.

I first saw this on a mug at Barnes & Noble, and I have no shame in saying it changed my life.  This ties into the first rule.  Students tend to think that there is some perfect self out there, and that after they wander through their education and life enough, they will discover this perfect self.  We know that this is not true, and we owe our students the knowledge that every experience, every challenge, every triumph, and every failure is a piece of the person that they are creating.  We are all in a process of becoming, of working towards becoming the person that we would like to be.  To that end, we need to be mindful of the things we do, the choices we make, and the road we travel.

Suffice to say, I’m pumped to start this year.  There will be roadbumps along the way, but the new tactics and personalization that I plan on providing my students has me completely energized. 

How are you starting the year in a unique way?

What are you going to do that will change lives in your classroom? 

Please let me know, and I’ll get back to you this weekend with how it all went down!

Metaphor through Video Games: Braid

Most people don’t consider video games to be art, much in the same way that television struggled to achieve that distinction, but as the industry becomes more accessible and diverse, and less wantonly commercial, we are beginning to see games emerge that challenge not only our hand-eye coordination, but the way we think about our own place in the world.

Ironically, some of the more simplistic-looking games are fulfilling this ideal.  Braid is a two-dimensional side-scroller, in the tradition of Super Mario Bros. and other early 8 and 16-bit games.  The sprite, or character, moves through the world from left to right in an attempt to solve puzzles and advance through a series of tasks.

Where Braid differs from the norm, and many of the more “advanced” three-dimensional games on the newest hardware, is the gameplay, and how that relates to story and metaphor.

As the title of this blog suggests, the best learning happens when the learner is activated, or for the purpose of the blog, on fire.  As an adult, I find myself becoming engaged by a question, looking into the potential answers, usually through the internet, and when I’m truly on fire, following a systemic pathway of links and articles.  I sometimes even lose track of time when activated in such a way. 

Art should always have this effect on us.  The first time I watched the film Donnie Darko, by Richard Kelly, I was intrigued.  I immediately played the movie a second time, this time with the director’s commentary, even though it was already midnight.  The next night I watched it again with the cast commentary.  I went to the web, and read theories and posited my own.  I made a list of works from the film that were referenced, and went out into the world to get my hands on them.  I read Watership Down again, purchased the book and film versions of The Last Temptation of Christ, picked through the short story “The Destructor’s” by Graham Greene, and learned about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and how it relates to physical time travel.  All of this learning and consumption came about due to a movie about a guy in a creepy bunny suit. This is what good art does, activates us and invites us into the flow of ideas that the author lived in when they were creating; it enriches the art and opens us up to more of it.

Braid is comprised of a series of worlds, and within each world, time functions in a different way.  The function of Time in the game is tied to an overarching narrative that is richly developed at the start of each world.  After completing the game, I began to have questions about its meaning and development, and began to research.  I discovered that the game was based on 3 novels that the developer was intrigued by, The Cat That Walks Through Walls, by Robert A. Heinlein, Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino, and Einstein’s Dreams, by Alan Lightman.  I went out immediately and devoured them. 

Einstein’s Dreams was an unbelievable find.  The basic crux of the novel is the idea that in order to understand how time functions in our universe, Einstein had to see the effect that changes to time would have on the human beings in those worlds.  He then looked at what we value in our societies, and determined how time works in our world based on those things.  It’s a stunning metaphor that shows the power of creative thinking in solving incredibly complex mathematical questions.

Braid’s first world is its best example of the effect that altering Time would have on our lives.  The text at the beginning of the level questions what would happen in a world where we could take back our mistakes.  How would it change the way we live our lives.  The gameplay mechanic in this world allows the player to rewind if they make a mistake.  As a learning tool, this allows for a great lesson to our students about risk taking and success, but it also provides teachers a valuable understanding.

Just because a student is capable of “doing something perfectly” right off of the bat, doesn’t necessitate they “know” anything, they may have simply gotten lucky, and this shows no strategic skill in problem solving per se.  Think of a maze.  A student runs through without making a wrong turn on the first try.  A second student resolves to take every right turn in order to create a system for success, that results in several dead-ends prior to getting through the maze.  Which experience was more valuable?  Which student demonstrated higher order thinking?  The obvious choice is the second student, but how often do our assessments and grades reward the first student with better marks?

Using Braid as a way to access this metaphor, and to begin implementing it into our instruction is, I believe, a valid and worthy exercise.  In what other ways can we create experience and metaphor as a way to help students privilege the journey as opposed to the end result?  As we move toward more 21st Century methods of teaching, the answer to this question should help to guide our instruction as well as our assessments.