tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77710018360265537012024-02-06T19:10:38.947-08:00Hawke TalkeHawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-37942636613121207022019-09-17T08:18:00.003-07:002019-09-17T08:18:41.394-07:00How I trained myself to drink black coffeeI stopped putting cream and sugar in it.Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-35394903256456547932019-04-18T06:21:00.003-07:002019-04-18T06:21:29.797-07:00Dear AG Barr<div style="background-color: #fbfbfb; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 17.3333px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Billy,</div>
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Can I call you Billy? AG sounds like what the 4H kids used to call themselves in high school, always followed by a head nod and hand gesture that has not aged well. And William makes you sound like a king, which, may I remind you, you are not. So Billy it is.</div>
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Look, Billy: We’ve got a situation on our hands here. At some point, people are going to read this damned thing, and they’re going to realize that there’s only one<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>reasonable</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>conclusion to be drawn from it. So I’m writing to help you with some of this damage control. You can’t change people’s opinion about what they read, but you<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>can</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>influence<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>what</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>they read. No, I’m not talking about redactions and the found poetry of your “summary” - those were cute tricks, but they leave behind a trail. What I’m talking about here is influencing not<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>how</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>they read it, but<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>what they read</em>. You’re going to leave several trails, so that the ensuing discourse will focus on<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>which trail is real</em>, not on the obvious implications of the one true report.</div>
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Have you seen the trick that TV villains use, where they stand in a hall of mirrors to confound the good guy? That’s your play. Release the report in ten different versions, with significant variations among them. Those prone to conspiracy, which at this point appears to be roughly half the country, will have everything they need. Some will argue that these are different drafts from Mueller’s team, others will argue that the version supporting their already-drawn conclusions is the one true report, and still others will (rightly) accuse you of trickery. But none of it will matter, because they’ll be talking about everything except what is, at this point, obvious to those of us whose brain has not yet been turned to mush.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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I think you can figure out what to put into those other versions, but just in case, here’s a starter list:</div>
<ul style="background-color: #fbfbfb; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 17.3333px; margin: 0px 3em 1.5em 1.5em; padding-left: 1.5em; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;">Unnecessary, nonsensical editorializing by investigators, meant to confirm the worst fears of his constituents, coming out in not-so-subtle lines like, “The president, a white man, did not understand that his dealings with Klimnik were racially insensitive.”</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;">Salacious details about the president’s conduct, not just while in Russia, but also in places he could not possibly have been, such as Antarctica, the International Space Station, or inside a library</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0.75em;">“Accidental” inclusion of a report-within-the-report about Hillary Clinton’s role as a star witness</li>
</ul>
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I could go on, but I think you’ve got it from here. I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to screw this up as badly as you need to.</div>
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Your Friend,</div>
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<br /></div>
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Plaidimir</div>
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PS Just in case, I have leaked ten different versions of this letter to the press.</div>
Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-14189929545717153492018-08-19T14:36:00.001-07:002019-03-14T09:46:15.082-07:00What the hell is going on in Venezuela?<style type="text/css">
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<b>August 20, 2018: What the hell is going on in Venezuela?</b></div>
<div class="p2">
This post is for my fellow <i>gringos</i>, and other interested parties, who might be reading about something happening in Venezuela and wondering what in the actual hell is going on there. </div>
<div class="p2">
From my first visit in 2002 to my most recent in 2012, Venezuela changed drastically, say, from a 5/10 on the Made-up Poverty Index to an 8/10. Venezuela went from a country with a lot of poverty to a country defined by it - evident in rampant inflation, severe shortages of household staples such as food and toilet paper, and in nationwide rationing that forced the majority of the populace to spend several hours per week in lines, hoping for a chance to buy eggs, flour, oil, or cornmeal. National homicide rates skyrocketed, eclipsing 500 per month in Caracas, the nation’s capital <span class="s1"><sup>1</sup></span>. Medicine became scarce. There was growing unease. When our family visited, our primary fear was that we would be kidnapped - a fear that was not exactly allayed by the Barcelona airport’s wall-sized mural stating that it was <i>everyone’s</i> responsibility to report kidnappings<span class="s1"><sup>2</sup></span>, along with a kidnapping hotline to report any in the moment.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p2">
From 2012 to today, the country has gotten exponentially worse, currently rating something like a 25/10 on the Made-up Poverty Index.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p2">
Another clear indication that things in Venezuela were not going so hot? The currency situation. Here's a rundown of the past 16 years, with commentary:</div>
<div class="p3">
2002:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p2">
You could go to an official bank and exchange 1,500 bolívares for a dollar. This next part I’m only going to explain once, so read carefully: For foreigners like me, what a dollar could buy then is roughly what a dollar can buy now. The reason behind this is complicated, but essentially, it comes down to this: Even though dollars are scarce, everything about the Venezuelan economy is tied to the dollar. However, throughout all this time, most Venezuelans continued to earn the same salary, meaning their purchasing power declined dramatically.</div>
<div class="p3">
2008:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p2">
You can now go to the same official bank and exchange 2,500 bolívares for a dollar. Two other major developments:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li4">The government is getting tired of everything costing thousands and millions of bolívares, so they’re restructuring the national currency, effectively taking three zeroes off and calling the new currency the “bolívar fuerte.” So 5,000 bolívares are now 5 bolívares fuertes.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></li>
<li class="li5">As the government has kept the official exchange rate static, the bolívar has actually lost quite a bit of value in international markets, so now, on the black market, you can exchange one dollar for 7,000 bolívares (or, soon, for 7 bolívares fuertes.)</li>
</ol>
<div class="p2">
To give you a sense of what this means, over the course of six years, the price of everything has increased roughly <b>five times</b> what it cost in 2002. Your Starbucks latte that used to cost $5.00 is now $23.33. This price increase also applies to more basic supplies - a $2 loaf of bread is now over $9. You’d probably stop with the nonessential purchases, which is what happened in Venezuela at this time.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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2012</div>
<div class="p2">
The official exchange rate is up to 4.13 bolívares fuertes to the dollar. The black market exchange rate is up to 35. That loaf of bread now costs over $45.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p3">
2013</div>
<div class="p2">
It’s only a year later, and you’re not planning on visiting for a while.</div>
<div class="p2">
Regular, days-long power outages and water shortages become the norm. The Venezuelan government says, look, we recognize that what we’ve <i>said</i> our currency is worth isn’t actually accurate, so they move the official rate closer to the black market rate. By a little bit.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p2">
The official exchange rate has risen to 6.3 bolívares fuertes to the dollar, while the black market rate has soared to 63. One loaf of bread: $84</div>
<div class="p3">
2014-2015</div>
<div class="p2">
Between September 2014 and September 2015, the black market exchange rate goes from 100 to 730 bolivares (fuertes) per dollar, and at this point, Venezuela is the country with the highest inflation rate in the world.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p2">
One loaf of bread: $973</div>
<div class="p3">
2016</div>
<div class="p2">
It’s dishonest to give a single exchange rate for 2016, because at this point, things are spiraling really quickly:</div>
<div class="p2">
February 2016: 1,000 bolivares fuertes to the dollar.</div>
<div class="p2">
December 2016: 4,300 bolívares fuertes to the dollar.</div>
<div class="p2">
This is when the US news starts to take notice of the enormous public health crisis that has been building for years. There is such a scarcity of food and medicines that visitors report that everybody looks to be in bad health - the most visible signs being that nearly everybody has lost weight, people’s skin is hanging from their bodies and badly burnt by the sun, eyes appear to be sunken, and there are numerous people eating from the trash. <i>Almost</i> everybody is doing far worse than before.</div>
<div class="p2">
One loaf of bread: $5,733</div>
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2017:</div>
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July 2017: 10,000 bolívares fuertes to the dollar</div>
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September 2017: 20,000 bolívares fuertes to the dollar</div>
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December 2017: 100,000 bolívares fuertes to the dollar</div>
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One loaf of bread: $133,333</div>
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Here, you’re probably skeptical. “Wait a minute,” you’re saying, “if this is a country where people are living in extreme poverty, there’s no way people can afford this.</div>
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li4">You’re right. People can’t afford it.</li>
<li class="li5">You’re also right that this isn’t <i>exactly</i> how it works. Yes, wages have increased some over this time (relative to to the 2002 dollar.) But they haven’t increased nearly enough to make anything really affordable. And besides, at this point, there is little medicine in the country, the nation’s hospitals are routinely without electricity (not to mention medical supplies), most of the nation’s professionals have fled the country, and colleges are closing their doors because professors refuse to work for wages that don’t allow them to buy even a loaf of bread per month.</li>
</ol>
<div class="p3">
2018</div>
<div class="p2">
January 2018: 200,000 bolívares fuertes to the dollar</div>
<div class="p2">
Up to this point, the “official” exchange rate has still been 10 bolívares fuertes to the dollar. You might say, “that’s meaningless!” And, for the most part, you’d be right. With one giant exception: If you’re part of the Venezuelan government, you can <i>purchase</i> dollars - actual US dollars! - at this rate. So, a government official (or, importantly, someone with government connections, go to an official government bank, pay 200,000 bolívares fuertes, and receive 20,000 US dollars. You take <i>one</i> of those US dollars (leaving $19,999 untouched), exchange it on the black market for 200,000 bolívares fuertes, return to the government bank, and exchange this for another $20,000 US dollars. Remember back in 2016, when I said <i>almost</i> everybody looked worse? Well, it turns out, she also noticed that there were a bunch of new restaurants opening, and that there was no shortage of brand-new automobiles on the road. People in the government, and people with government connections, are doing better than ever.</div>
<div class="p2">
One loaf of bread: $266,666</div>
<div class="p2">
One loaf of bread (with government connections): $2</div>
<div class="p2">
Due to massive popular uprisings, the government makes a big show of stopping this practice of publicly allowing its friends to print free money, and changes the official exchange rate to 25,000 bolívares fuertes per dollar, <i>and</i> ends the de facto government loophole that allowed them to print dollars essentially for free. True, this 25,000 is a big jump from 10. But it’s also still far from the currency’s purchasing power within the country, and laughably far from the currency’s actual value in international markets<span class="s1"><sup>3</sup></span>.</div>
<div class="p3">
2018:</div>
<div class="p2">
Now it’s August 2018, and you’re running out of clever expressions to show just how bad things have gotten. The black-market exchange rate is now at 5,900,000 (5.9 million) bolívares fuertes to the dollar.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p2">
One loaf of bread: 7.86 million dollars</div>
<div class="p2">
Minimum wage: 5.6 million bolívares fuertes per month (roughly $0.95/month)</div>
<div class="p2">
You’re in charge of the country’s economy. What do you do?</div>
<div class="p2">
Well, if you’re Nicolas Maduro, who is <i>actually</i> in charge of the economy, you look at a couple things:</div>
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li4">Due to hyperinflation and rapid monetary devaluation, the minimum wage of your country is now 95 cents per <i>month</i>. That seems like a problem, particularly since your socialist revolution promised to redistribute wealth to the people.</li>
<li class="li2">People are really starting to notice this whole hyperinflation thing, like, every time they go to buy something and they have to pay some number of millions of bolívares fuertes, which reminds them of how bad things have gotten.</li>
<li class="li5">There’s still only one meaningful industry in your country - oil extraction and exportation. You have been unable to provide adequate food or medicine to your people. The New York times has recently reported that the average Venezuelan has lost 25 pounds in the past year. People are fleeing your country, building refugee camps on the Colombian and Brazilian borders and emigrating to Chile, Peru, and Ecuador like never before.</li>
</ol>
<div class="p2">
You decide to prioritize, and address #1 and #2, leaving #3 for another day.</div>
<div class="p2">
Tomorrow, Venezuela will once again restructure its currency, much like the conversion from the bolívar to the bolívar fuerte, which removed three zeroes. This time, though, to go from the bolívar fuerte to the new bolívar soberano (the “sovereign bolívar”), you will remove five zeroes. So one million bolívares fuertes becomes 10 bolívares soberanos.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p2">
In addition to this, you have decided to redistribute wealth by increasing the minimum wage by 3400 percent - from 5.6 million bolívares fuertes (56 bolívares soberanos) to 1,800 bolívares soberanos.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p2">
At least, that’s what you had planned to do, until you were notified by your aides that this was an entirely untenable plan and that the country would essentially stop functioning, immediately. Sick, elderly people who have been relying on paying for their own home care (particularly since hospitals are currently out of order) and who have been saving for this, who had planned on their meager savings paying for six years of home care, would have been able to afford only two months before their savings dried up.</div>
<div class="p2">
So instead, caught in bad policy-making, you say that it was simply a mistake, that you, like everybody else, were thrown off by the odd choice of <i>five</i> zeroes<span class="s1"><sup>4</sup></span>, and that what you <i>meant</i> to say was that the minimum wage will be increased to <i>180</i> bolívares soberanos, not 1,800. So the minimum wage will increase only to about 3.5 times what it was (from $0.96/month to about $3/month.)</div>
<div class="p3">
2019 and Beyond</div>
<div class="p2">
Nobody knows what will happen. But there is almost no confidence that the August 2019 change will improve conditions for Venezuelans, and a sense of certainty that the country will continue to get worse in every possible way.</div>
<div class="p2">
Meanwhile, many of us will continue to send bi-monthly 60-pound care packages of food, medicine, medical supplies, and toilet paper to our most trusted hospital and neighbors. We will continue to gather with other Venezuelan émigrés to sing música llanera , dance, remember old times, and worry together about our loved ones who have remained. Most will keep calling daily, hoping there is enough electricity to get through, and remind ourselves that the people we fear for are still there, living very real lives, fighting to survive. Most will encourage their parents and grandparents elders to leave, even though they most certainly won’t. This political and economic curse has ended the optimism of a country whose unofficial anthem for years hinged on these lines: “No hay mal que dure cien años, ni cuerpo que lo resista; yo me quedo en Venezuela, porque yo soy optimista.”<span class="s1"><sup>5</sup></span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p7">
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––</div>
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<sup></sup><br /></div>
<div class="p9">
<span class="s1"><sup><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>1<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></sup></span>This happened the same year that Chicago made headlines for surpassing the 500-homicide mark annually. Chicago and Caracas have roughly the same population.</div>
<div class="p9">
<span class="s1"><sup><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>2<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></sup></span>What a contrast to my hometown, Fresno, where the airport has an artificial redwood forest and an exhibit highlighting Sun-Maid raisins.</div>
<div class="p9">
<span class="s1"><sup><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>3<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></sup></span>Just to be clear: The black market value is the best estimate of the bolívar’s value on international markets.</div>
<div class="p9">
<span class="s1"><sup><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>4<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></sup></span>Note to future policymakers: Know the state of math education in your country before enacting policies that rely on people’s ability to mentally divide by 100,000 on a habitual basis.)</div>
<div class="p9">
<span class="s1"><sup><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>5<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></sup></span>There is no evil that can last a hundred years, nor body that can take it; I’m staying in Venezuela, because I’m an optimist.”</div>
<br />Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-35880993765049826332015-06-05T04:20:00.002-07:002015-06-05T04:26:22.554-07:00A Restorative Conversation goes really well<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">May 28, 2015: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A restorative conversation stops a spiraling Tiara.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-0a131400-c36f-d220-adf0-5fa8583a0a39" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This morning, I walked into an SBAC testing room and saw that there was cereal on the floor around Tiara’s desk (Tiara is a 6th grade student at our school, and, of course, this name is a pseudonym.) Ms. Napoleon was texting the phone, and Tiara was sitting back at her desk and sulking.I said, “I’m going to pick up this cereal. Tiara, would you mind helping?” I started picking up the cereal, and Tiara started helping. When we were done, I said, “<span style="line-height: 20.7000007629395px;">Tiara</span>, can I check in with you?” and walked out of the room with her.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We walked to the dining hall, which was empty - I didn’t walk us upstairs (toward the reflection room) because I didn’t want Tiara to feel like she was being removed from the room. When we sat down, I said, “Tiara, I’m proud of you. A year ago, if I would have asked you to help pick up the cereal, I don’t know that you would have said yes. But just now, you chose to help. You’ve come such a long way.” Tiara smiled, a little bit. I paused for a few moments.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: “So what’s going on?”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara started talking quickly, in a high-pitched voice. I couldn’t really understand what she was saying. This is how many of her meltdowns start. I said, “Tiara, I can’t understand you and I just want to hear what’s going on.” She was still mumbling somewhat, but I did my best to hear what she was saying and listen actively.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: “We were in class and they said we could talk but I was by myself in the back so I asked if I could move and he said no.” </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: “Who is he?”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: “Mr. Landshark. So I got mad and that’s when I threw some cereal on the ground. Then Ms. Napoleon was texting for me to get removed and I was mad about that, too.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I repeated the key facts, then asked, “what were you thinking about when that happened?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: “I was mad because he didn’t let me move, and yesterday we already had an issue so it was already bad.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: “Are you saying that part of your anger was carried over from yesterday?”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: “Yes.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: “What have you thought about since this happened?”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: “I’m feeling a little better.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here, I decided to teach Tiara a little bit about how we, as humans, react to stress. This is where I was hoping most of the learning would take place, both from the perspective of Tiara understanding herself (personal growth) and from the perspective of Tiara understanding others (empathy.)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I explained what some call the “compass of shame”, which I instead called “the four stress responses”:</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whenever we go from a positive feeling to a negative feeling, it causes stress. This is something that happens to everybody: Our brains release a chemical, and whether we notice it or not, we tend to react in one or more of the following ways (I draw the compass):</span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Withdraw: We actually leave the place we are.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Avoid: We stay where we are, but we do everything we can to avoid the issue.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Attack other: Usually not physically - often this looks like us saying mean things about the other person in our minds.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Attack self: Also not physically - this is most often us putting ourselves down in our own minds.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like I said, we all do these things. Sometimes we do more than one of them. Like when I trip on shoes that I left out and I get mad at my wife. I say in my head, “why didn’t she move those shoes!?” [points to “attack other”] But that’s absurd; it has nothing to do with her! It’s just my response to the stress of going from feeling good to feeling bad that happened when I tripped. Sometimes I’ll say something and somebody else will say something about what I said, and I have a stress response and say in my head, “that was so stupid. I can’t believe I said that. I’m so dumb/inconsiderate/mean.” But I don’t really believe those things about myself; it’s just a stress response.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I ask, which of these stress responses do you think you had today?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara points to “attack other.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: “What happened? Please know I’m not going to share any details of mean stuff you said in your head.” We both smile.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara, “I was just thinking mean things about Mr. Landshark.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: “Thanks for sharing. Again, that’s a normal stress reaction. It’s not what you chose to do; it’s just what happened...did you do any of these other things?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara pauses and studies the compass. Finally, she points to “avoid.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: “That’s what I was thinking. Say more about that.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: “Well, when Ms. Napoleon was texting the phone, I was just kind of avoiding the problem, kind of in my own world, trying not to deal with it.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: Sounds like a very normal stress response.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I explained the significance of knowing about this:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are two reasons it’s important to know about stress responses: One, because it helps you recognize when you’re having one so you can stop it. You’ll notice that you are saying mean things about someone in your head and be able to say, “wait, this isn’t a choice I’m making; I’m just having a stress response.” And then you can give yourself a minute to let your body get rid of the stress chemicals. Because if you don’t notice it, often you’ll do something you didn’t mean, which will cause more stress, and then you’re stuck having a bunch of stress responses in a row.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The second reason is because another thing that causes us to get stuck is when we’re not right with someone else. That feeling is stressful and, if we don’t deal with it, it leads to even more stress responses. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: So you said you already felt like you weren’t right with Mr. Landshark. It sounds like that had something to do with what happened today.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: Yeah. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: So in these situations, the way to become right with somebody again is to figure out what harm was done, and then repair the harm.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: You mean apologize?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: Maybe. It probably depends on the harm. Let’s start with Ms. Napoleon. How was she impacted by what you did?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: She might have been confused because she had just come into the room. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: That’s a good start. How do you think she felt when she was texting?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: Maybe a little concerned, because she was trying to help me but I was avoiding it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wrote down: Ms. Napoleon - confused, concerned.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: And Mr. Landshark, I don’t think he cared because he didn’t notice what I did.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: That’s possible, but be careful with that. Just because somebody doesn’t say something doesn’t mean they didn’t notice. If he did notice, how do you think that affected him?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: He would have been mad...or maybe frustrated.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: Great. Is there anybody else affected by this?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: The kids around me, I don’t know if they saw it, but they might have been confused about what was going on.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: There’s one more person who I think has been affected by this, and it’s not me :) Who do you think that person is?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: Me.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: How were you affected by what happened?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: I was angry. But I’m feeling better now.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: What do you think was causing that anger? Were you embarrassed by the way you acted?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: I think that was it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: Remember, that’s just a stress response. But it made you feel embarrassed, then you got angry. So - do you forgive yourself for having that stress response?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: Yes.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: OK; we’ve been talking for about 10 minutes. I’m curious - what have you learned?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara explained the stress responses to me, fairly accurately. I asked why they matter, and she explained that they’re normal and we have to know they’re happening so we can stop them.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: How can you repair some of this other harm? What do you think you could do?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: I could tell Ms. Napoleon I’m sorry, that I didn’t mean to make her upset.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: That would probably help. What about with Mr. Landhsark?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: Same thing?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: What’s that?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: I think I should tell him I’m sorry, that I was just having a response to my anger and it wasn’t really about him.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: Do you think that will make the two of you right with each other again?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: I think so.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: Great! I’ve been learning about this stuff and I find it fascinating...it helps me to explain a lot of things that have happened in my life. Have you found this helpful?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: Yes.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: In what way?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: Because it helps me know why sometimes I start saying things about myself, but it’s just because I’m stressed.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me: Thanks; that’s helpful to know. Let’s go back to class and crush this SBAC, OK?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara: All right. [she smiles]</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We walked back to class and, on the way, I said, “now, when you go back in there, know that you’re sitting next to some people that sometimes have their own stress reactions that sometimes affect you. Keep in mind when you see them having stress reactions, and notice when you’re having a stress reaction to what they’re doing.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tiara came into the room, got right to work on her SBAC, called Ms. Napoleon over and said, “I’m sorry for what happened earlier. I didn’t mean to do it”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ms. Napoleon asked me a minute later, dumbfounded, “what did you SAY to her!?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ten minutes later, Tiara and Mr. Landshark checked in outside. I asked her how it went afterward, and she said it went really well. “You’re all right with each other?” I asked. “We’re all right,” Tiara said, and she smiled and got back to work on her test.</span></div>
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<br />Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-71458626122663399032015-05-27T17:14:00.001-07:002015-05-27T17:14:21.839-07:00Close Reading + Teacher Time OutsLast week, I had the pleasure of working with one of our teachers for three days straight, trying to learn as much as we could about Close Reading.<br />
<br />
Some background:<br />
<br />
1. I wrote about <a href="http://hawketalke.blogspot.com/2013/11/anchors-close-reading-and-case-for.html" target="_blank">Close Reading</a> before. If you're into problem-based mathematics, you are probably the type who would like reading instruction centered on close reading.<br />
<br />
2. Close reading is something that Achievement First has been taking fairly seriously for 2-3 years now. It is, at this point, central to our model. This is one of the areas in which I feel very lucky to have been at the right place at the right time, because I've been able to learn about something so powerful from people who really know what they're talking about.<br />
<br />
3. Our school's "greenfield" model for next year has small-group close reading at the core of our humanities instruction, bolstered by a barrage of content knowledge, daily small-group writing with feedback, and twice-weekly seminars for students to discuss the big ideas of what they're learning, grounding everything in the myriad texts they've read.<br />
<br />
4. The teacher I was working with, Tanesha, is a <b>phenomenal</b> teacher who is leading the close reading in our 5th grade next year, who has taught in a lot of ways and is eager to learn more about close reading. We've worked together in the past, and I'm ecstatic that she is joining our school community (and that she will be one of my own kids' teachers in the near future.)<br />
<br />
5. Our close reading teaching cycle takes two days, and consists of<br />
<ul>
<li>A 45-minute intellectual prep meeting, in which teachers get to know the texts (together) and target outcomes deeply and prepare a hybrid script/menu that will allow them to help students draw out key findings from the text while ensuring that the teacher's mind is squarely on student thinking (i.e. listening <b>to </b>students, rather than listening <b>for</b> specific answers.)</li>
<li>Day 1 of teaching (45 minutes), with real-time coaching</li>
<li>Studying student work and intellectually preparing for day 2.</li>
<li>Day 2 of teaching (45 minutes), with real-time coaching</li>
<li>Studying student work to determine next steps</li>
</ul>
<div>
6. For what it's worth, our math teaching cycle is fairly similar, except that the two-day cycle doesn't always hold.<br />
<br />
Here's what was great about this:<br />
<br />
For these three days of "training" (training is in parentheses because it was more like co-exploring than a transfer of knowledge), we only worked with three students (all at the same time). We asked a teacher for a few kids with different levels of reading proficiency and ended up pulling Jordan, Marc, and Tina (pseudonyms, of course). There is something really special about getting to know a small group of kids as learners.<br />
<br />
The text we selected, <i><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177119" target="_blank">Because I Could not Stop for Death</a> </i>by Emily Dickinson<i>, </i>is simply a great poem. It's a lot of fun to read with kids of different ages. In this case, we were working with fourth graders...I'm not sure I would want to read the poem with kids younger than this, but I remembered the last time a teacher and I read it with a group of fifth graders, one of the kids, Jacob, said it was his new favorite poem OR song. There is a lot of joy in reading great texts with kids. There is also a lot of joy in reading great texts <i>without</i> kids - we did plenty of that, too, and it was exhilarating to dive deeper and deeper into each of these texts together.<br />
<br />
By day two, Tanesha was getting far more out of the texts than I had gotten in my multiple reads. She was on fire, and bringing a close reading lens to everything she read at this point. I kinda expected this, because she's amazing, but it's nice to see your concept of someone validated so beautifully.<br />
<br />
Probably the most fun we had was in teaching the kids, because of something I learned in a conversation with Elham Kazemi while at the NCTM national convention. I missed her talk at <a href="http://www.shadowmathcon.com/" target="_blank">#shadowcon15</a>, but you can catch the re-runs <a href="http://www.shadowmathcon.com/elham-kazemi/" target="_blank">here</a>. Tanesha and I had a lot of fun taking a liberal amount of time outs, asking each other things like:<br />
* How about that line of questioning? Was I really having kids doing the thinking there?<br />
* Should we ask for more evidence or push for more ideas?<br />
* I want to ask this - is it too leading?<br />
* Given what Jordan said, how do we figure out if he understands <i>this? </i>[points to anticipated response from planning page]<br />
<br />
At one point, Marc called a "student time out", and the students started discussing the ideas in the poem on their own, without teacher intervention. This was great because it showed student ownership, it was a subtle way for Marc to make fun of us in a collegial way, and it gave us some necessary feedback that we probably weren't spending enough time sitting back and letting kids discuss.<br />
<br />
All in all, the experience solidified my belief that reading great texts with great kids and great teachers is a pretty incredible way to spend my days. I'm looking forward to the next round, to seeing this in action with math and science lessons, and to continuing to grow through our school's collective wisdom and ongoing iteration!</div>
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Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-25260527417169183912014-10-07T18:22:00.000-07:002014-10-07T18:22:30.675-07:00An exhilarating conversation<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sebastian: Daddy, do you want to know what happened in school today?</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Me: Of course I do. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sebastian: My teacher was subtracting and said, we can't do 2 minus 8. So I raised my hand and said, "yes we can; it's negative 6." My teacher said, "you're ridiculously smart."*</blockquote>
<br />
I made a quick decision to ignore the fixed-mindset compliment and instead focus on the positive by focusing on the negative (so to speak):<br />
<br />
How did you know 2 minus 8 was negative 6?<br />
<br />
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<br />
Not the best explanation, but the thinking is there.<br />
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At this point, you're likely thinking that I'm a math teacher, so I'm probably patting myself on the back for having taught Sebastian how to subtract in this case. I have not. About a month ago, he started asking me what negative numbers were, and I talked him through a conceptual explanation (something like counting down from three, then beyond zero). I was excited not because he was doing 'advanced math' but because he had applied his conceptual knowledge to this new situation.<br />
<br />
So I thought to myself, I wonder what this kid can do. I remembered a story my parents told me (about asking about square numbers at an early age) and wrote this on a piece of paper:<br />
<br />
0^2 = 0<br />
1^2 = 1<br />
2^2 = 4<br />
3^2 = 9<br />
4^2 = 16<br />
5^2 = ___<br />
<br />
10^2 = 100<br />
<br />
...and I read it aloud:"Zero squared equals zero; one squared equals one; two squared equals four," and so on, ending with "what do you think is the value of five squared?"<br />
<br />
When I returned a minute later, this is what the paper looked like.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTsWUSnZXIPigOaboWWJ3XAu-GV77YWbPo3qAuZVpzq9A8KSfDglF7F4ZIO8hik16i8r4SCHWDKbL_maTNd9OV_k82S1P0K_t4hQ7Ua_wAViSg1yeh_O7jlasx5vwtwH58O-0yOo5GgAYQ/s1600/photo+01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTsWUSnZXIPigOaboWWJ3XAu-GV77YWbPo3qAuZVpzq9A8KSfDglF7F4ZIO8hik16i8r4SCHWDKbL_maTNd9OV_k82S1P0K_t4hQ7Ua_wAViSg1yeh_O7jlasx5vwtwH58O-0yOo5GgAYQ/s1600/photo+01.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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Three things jumped off the page:<br />
1. The kid got it. Nice!<br />
2. His explanation focused on how he knew the answer was 25, not on how he knew what "squared" means. We call this a "what-how" explanation...not nearly as strong as a "what-why" explanation.<br />
3. He decided to go one step further and write 20^2 = 200. I love everything about this, even though it's not correct.<br />
<br />
I asked him about the 20^2=200. How did you figure that out? He explained: If 10 squared is 100, then 20 squared is 20 times 20, which is 200. I asked how he knew and he said that 20 was twice as much as 10 so it was 200 instead of 100. I asked him how he could check it and he said, "I could count by 20s." I stayed silent. He started counting by 20s and, when he finished ("...320, 340, 360, 380, 400. Four hundred!") he said, "I don't want to cross it out, so I'll just write 200 plus 200."<br />
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My heart sang. And then things got even better when I thought: Let's see if you can do these, too. These might look like your typical exercises, but, given where Sebastian is mathematically, they're at least one step above your average "now that you've seen one solution, try five identical problems."</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgDpNET5cYuCmY5uw0yFiq2YdqTN7e6ZyaHjiACTBZenZGXBZOLjoy-jDvqcSluIM4xEIVEt0tOjwQBH7F7luI6QN0HFpufwfB1VaBDiY5VNn04QkPxhpLGo9f7rC1WvjffpmJEm84IW39/s1600/photo+3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgDpNET5cYuCmY5uw0yFiq2YdqTN7e6ZyaHjiACTBZenZGXBZOLjoy-jDvqcSluIM4xEIVEt0tOjwQBH7F7luI6QN0HFpufwfB1VaBDiY5VNn04QkPxhpLGo9f7rC1WvjffpmJEm84IW39/s1600/photo+3.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
Sebastian counted by 6 (aloud) to get an answer of 36. Then came 7^2, and he said, "I need to add 7 to 36." I asked why.<br />
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He tried it out. He got halfway through and stopped. "Wait," he said, "first I need to add six dots and then seven dots, so I need to add thirteen dots."<br />
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How did you get thirteen?<br />
<br />
His response was somewhat messy. There was a lot of what-how talk thrown in there ("I need to add seven and six, so I need to add 13, so I know that four more gets us to 40, and then...") and a lot of false starts where he was trying to get to the answer while talking through his method, but his answer boiled down to this: "It was six groups of six but if I add six dots it will be six groups of seven. Then I need to add seven more dots so it will be seven groups of seven."<br />
<br />
There are so many beautiful things about this response. The kid is seeing groups in his mind. He's understanding the nature of multiplication. He's using the concept of multiplication to make connections between two multiplication problems. He's using a pattern he discovered to determine that he even needs to multiply in the first place. He's up at 9:30 at night doing math because he (and his dad) just can't get enough.<br />
<br />
He then spent about 10 minutes going down a rabbit hole, coming up with various answers that were not the actual value of 7 squared, partly because he was accidentally adding 13 to 30 (not 36) and partly because he was thinking really hard and his working memory was filled with a lot of things and he kept trying to decompose 13 different ways to make the addition easier.<br />
<br />
The only helpful nudge I gave was to point to 43, point to 36, and say, "if it were 10 more than 36, what would it be?...but you added more than 10, so it should be more than that..."<br />
<br />
At one point, I made what I consider a critical mistake. I said something like, "you're doing it right, but 36 plus 13 is not 43." The second half is fine, but the first half reinforces the idea that there is a 'right' strategy. I should have instead validated that his strategy made sense or that his strategy seemed like it was based on solid reasoning. That's OK. I like Sebastian's mistakes here, and I like my mistake too - if I had not said this, I don't know that I would have reflected on this idea.<br />
<br />
He figured it out from there: He laughed at his handwriting-based mistake, used his tens and ones chart, and quickly got 49.<br />
<br />
I asked him how he could check to see if he was right and he said, "I could count by sevens, but I don't know how to count by sevens." Then he counted by sevens anyway, and when he landed on 49, his face lit up.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgByHMiyZpE9XYQQTrA3TsHdL30i1X95NwwHj8Vc60JyBy5EU0aIij_CxnX04Ae6OVULtEJYsLgO5rYoLVjC0qbwMwRnsLFOnCUepI26GdfBEqOpyjTHH5bIbQ244IhwBG4NFS7vVauPg4S/s1600/photo+4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgByHMiyZpE9XYQQTrA3TsHdL30i1X95NwwHj8Vc60JyBy5EU0aIij_CxnX04Ae6OVULtEJYsLgO5rYoLVjC0qbwMwRnsLFOnCUepI26GdfBEqOpyjTHH5bIbQ244IhwBG4NFS7vVauPg4S/s1600/photo+4.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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Feeling confident, we strapped on some wax-and-feather wings and tried to see how high we could fly: 14^2. Here are some action shots:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhML6axJ3sEgFEedrn863vBztLGwYdb7lS7I3H9nhNPEKaaThKjKMUGq4_yiFlqRMpG_vCt3DqkqUwJSDYoDqwbNck76UTBZF0z66fQfb97snN_0mUNpiNJWtMByy37NFyChWX91JwFE9Og/s1600/photo+7.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhML6axJ3sEgFEedrn863vBztLGwYdb7lS7I3H9nhNPEKaaThKjKMUGq4_yiFlqRMpG_vCt3DqkqUwJSDYoDqwbNck76UTBZF0z66fQfb97snN_0mUNpiNJWtMByy37NFyChWX91JwFE9Og/s1600/photo+7.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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That last picture is his sticks-and-dots representation of 14+14+14....+14 (14 times), and his tens-and-ones chart that he used to figure out what 14 tens and 56 ones added up to.<br />
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Here are a handful of brief takeaways from all of this:<br />
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1. Sebastian was able to do all of this math because he has been taught everything in a highly conceptual way. From the concept of subtraction to the concept of multiplication to the visual representation of multiplication that allowed him to find the link between 6x6 and 7x7, everything that he has been taught set him up for success here.<br />
2. To take #2 a step further, I would argue that he was able to do math he hadn't yet learned explicitly precisely because he has not been taught a series of procedures. Teaching kids a bunch of procedures means they know those procedures but don't know how to approach procedures they have not been taught. "But his tens and ones are an example of a procedure!", you say. You're right, but this procedure is backed up by his conceptual understanding. When he learns the standard addition algorithm (with the corresponding conceptual understanding), it will be a natural extension of what he has already figured out.<br />
3. To <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2014/04/reactions_to_the_common_core_m.html" target="_blank">all you engineers out there</a> complaining about how your child's common core math homework is far too complicated, a. in many cases, you're probably right, and b. you're looking at otherwise simple problems seemingly made complex by nonstandard strategies; it may be worth it to also check if your kids can do something you wouldn't have been able to do at their age because of their developing conceptual framework.<br />
4. I'm grateful that Sebastian has teachers who have embraced the Common Core math standards and have committed themselves to teaching things conceptually.<br />
5. Hearing and pushing kids' thinking is a lot of fun.<br />
6. Kids, in general, are capable of more than we often give them credit for.<br />
7. Notice how this "real-world" math was so engaging!<br />
8. More than a handful.<br />
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Special thanks go to Sebastian for his hard work, to his teachers at Elm City College Prep Elementary for doing such a great job teaching him mathematical concepts, and to Joseph "Compadre" Yrigollen for his encouragement via text message while all of this was going down. Thanks also to you, loyal readers, for indulging me in a long-winded monologue about the virtues of talking math with your kids.<br />
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*The use of "you're smart", while clearly well-intentioned here, is dangerous because it discourages mathematical risk-taking, particularly in relatively high performers who want to preserve their image of being "smart", and discourages relatively low performers from trying - if another kid is just "smart" then no amount of effort is going to get me there anyway. Beware the small phrases that reinforce fixed mindsets!<br />
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"We can't do X" is troublesome because it implies that, in math, there are things we can and can't do. The less arbitrary rules we impose on math, the better. After all, even the famous "can't divide by zero" edict really just means that dividing by zero is <i>problematic</i>. I mean, of course you can take a pile of money and try to split it equally among no people. Of course you can take a pack of M&Ms and put them into piles of zero M&Ms. It's just problematic, which is not always a bad thing. Every case of something you "can't" do in math seems to come down to constraints anyhow.Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-37292507640278834952014-09-22T18:33:00.000-07:002014-09-22T18:33:00.034-07:00Seven for SebastianHey everybody,<br />
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I haven't written in a long time because I've been spending most of my time listening. Also, I've got this quote stuck in my head from Jorge Luis Borges: <i>No hables a menos que puedas mejorar el silencio. </i>Don't speak unless you can improve the silence. I've been following what is happening in Ferguson (and, by extension, America) and have read a few great, thought-provoking books, and I spend most of my non-coaching working hours listening to different ideas about how to make our school better. I'm enjoying all of the listening and learning a lot; it just means I haven't gotten to write much.<br />
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But since I'm writing now, let me share a few stories about my son. <a href="http://hawketalke.blogspot.com/2013/08/remembering-gatorade-reflections-on-our.html" target="_blank">Barbara</a> often gets to be the star of this blog, but Sebastian gets to be the star today. Yesterday was my birthday, but I haven't written since his seventh birthday, so this one's for him. Here are seven stories so you can get to know him a bit:<br />
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1. He came to me one day and said, "I commented on a YouTube video." I was scared and asked him for the details, and he shared that he had commented on a video showing a 'time travel tunnel' that set people's cell phone times back a minute or two. He wrote that the electric lights probably created a magnetic field that interfered with the cell phones' operation.<br />
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2. He likes to climb up the walls and do pull-ups on the door frame, and every time he jumps onto my bed he jumps straight into a forward roll.<br />
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3. When I told him that I saw the Administrator of NASA Charlie Bolden at the train station, he later asked, "So Daddy, did you eavesdrop on NASA?" For the record, I did not, but I loved his choice of words.<br />
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4. He carries his older sister (age 8) on his shoulders and walks around the house. They are inseparable, to the point that he often says, "I'm going to go to Barbara's room now because I don't want her to be alone."<br />
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5. When we were at the zoo last week, he said, "Is that a bear?" and I replied, "Nope. Chuck Testa" and he thought it was the funniest thing in the world because he spends his time watching YouTube videos by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/rhettandlink2" target="_blank">a couple of lovable goofballs</a> who taught him who Chuck Testa is.<br />
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6. He told me a story about how his teacher had him walk to the board to write something and he couldn't reach, so she picked him up so he could reach. He concluded with, "and that was my first time ever being picked up by my teacher." He is way small.<br />
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7. This summer, we visited my cousin Sarah's science lab, where she set up a sweet visit with demonstrations and the like, and after one of the experiments instead of a simple "good bye," Sebastian went up and gave the guy a big hug.<br />
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With all the good and bad in the world, I'm just happy I get to spend plenty of time with this little guy.<br />
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<br />Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-44730097212282367642014-04-19T05:45:00.002-07:002014-04-19T05:45:20.137-07:00Reflections on Montreal: 1,4, and 5<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Avid reader Kerri writes: </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16.799999237060547px; text-align: justify;">"Considering that I will be taking my 11 year old daughter to Haiti in the summer, where french creole is the language, and which we know none of...I'd be interested in all of the above topics but especially 1, 4 & 5."</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ask and ye shall receive! I'm so glad the two of you have this chance to travel together - it will definitely be one of the most memorable experiences she'll have from childhood, and hopefully will continue to strengthen the already-strong bond between the two of you. I can't wait to hear how it goes and all you learn while you're there!</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">1. How being a clear outsider in a new setting builds empathy (involves power structures in the US)</span><br />
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First, it's impossible for me to give an honest account of what it is like being a stranger in a strange land without noting that, here in the United States, most of the country's structures are set up so that I, as a straight white male, feel 100% comfortable. When we crossed the border back into the United States, I instantly felt more comfortable, which I'm not sure I would feel if I were somebody else. Many African Americans have reported feeling this same sense of relief upon entering Africa, because they feel like for once they are not seen as unwelcome or "other" by legal, political, and/or social forces.<br />
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Second, traveling as an American is never the same as being an immigrant to America. As Americans, we are sometimes looked down upon due to various stereotypes but, more often than not, we are welcome as tourists. There are no real long-term pressures to conform, and there is nobody actively seeking to have us removed from the country.<br />
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With all of that said, there is something really powerful about looking around and knowing you don't <i>really</i> belong here. This manifests itself in hundreds of very small ways: Being in a restaurant and realizing that you don't know what to order because you don't understand the menu, people asking you a lot of questions that you don't know how to answer, walking down the street and not even having a sense of what anybody else was talking about around you, not being able to make small talk with the people who cleaned our room or the receptionists or cashiers or anybody else, really - we weren't able to adequately express our appreciation for all the nice things people did on our behalf or our interest in the lives of others. On this trip, because we spent much of the time walking down the street, hand in hand, I suppose we looked like I might have the answers to some of these questions, all asked in French:<br />
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Which way is th<span style="background-color: white;">e insectarium?</span><br />
Which way is the lake?<br />
At what time do the parking meters stop charging?<br />
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My answers to #1 and #2 were "that way" (in English), and #3 was<span style="background-color: white;"> "je ne sais pas". But I was also asked a handful of other questions that I didn't understand, to which I replied, "je ne parle pas francais."</span> It's one thing to be able to say, "hey, I'm sorry, but I have no idea" and another to basically end the conversation.<br />
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In any case, being unable to communicate with people in the way you'd like happens to be a great catalyst for considering the plight of others. (Caution: It's not <b>the same</b>; it's never <b>the same</b>. I wouldn't ever say, "yes, I know exactly how ___ feels because I, too, have felt this same way while traveling.) Feeling out of place is a good reminder that there are millions of people who feel out of place in America. Remembering that we're feeling out of place <i>by choice</i> makes this even more powerful - think of the people who feel out of place and have no choice in the matter.<br />
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This is all a fancy way of saying that stepping out of our comfort zone is generally a good thing, particularly if - like me - your comfort zone is really comfortable, because it reminds us that all this comfort is something we often take for granted.<br />
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But wait - wouldn't this be possible without international travel? Couldn't we just go to another part of the United States, or even another part of our own city?<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">4. My obsession with language and, in this case, inability to grasp even the most obvious dialectical differences (involves some technical linguistics and, ultimately, why we went to Montreal over, say, Toronto, or another part of New Haven)</span><br />
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I spent the summer of 2001 in Puerto Rico, studying music and dance (because college is great), and while I was there I met a man named Ali who sold scented oils on the streets of Old San Juan. He was born in South Carolina and called himself a citizen of the world, and we had a couple conversations that have stuck with me. The vendor next to him was from Argentina (call him Carlos), and Carlos and I had been talking about Argentina because I had spent a previous summer working and traveling there. Ali asked me about my travels and I asked him about his, and at one point he asked me why I did all this traveling. I replied that I wanted to get another perspective about how people lived in different places, and he said, "well, if you really want to see how people live and experience the world differently, you don't need to come all the way over here. Go to the American South. Stay with a black family in Mississippi. See what their life is like."<br />
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Ali's point is a great one. Did I (do <i>we?</i>) travel far away to forget that there are immense differences at home? Was I uncomfortable with the prospect of experiencing firsthand the sense of being an outsider so close to home?<br />
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Probably. But there's also something else: I love language in general, and the Spanish language in particular. I wanted to learn to speak Spanish really well. I wanted to hear the differences in how people spoke Spanish in different places. I found it fascinating that people in different places could have the same thought - the same word in their head, even - and that their mouths could consistently produce the sounds in such unique and beautiful ways. I wanted to be surrounded by a bubble of language.<br />
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So that's why our family went to Montreal: I wanted us to be surrounded by another language. Yes, we went to some fun attractions and had fun at the park and ate poutine, but this was really because I wasn't going to be able to convince my kids to sit still on a park bench and just listen to people (also, because there is some fantastic stuff to do with kids in Montreal and I wanted the kids to get the most out of it.)<br />
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On this trip, as on so many others, I found myself obsessing over both the phonetic (how it sounds) and social (how people use language to interact with one another) aspects of language<br />
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In Montreal, "bonjour" is pronounced, at least 50% of the time, as "bonshour" (the j is not vocalized.)<br />
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Vowels after a nasal consonant are often nasalized and seem to be formed differently from what I've heard before, which I can only due justice by referring to the "main" as in "whatcha doin, main?"<br />
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In terms of other differences between Parisian and Quebecois French, I have no idea. I looked it up afterward but I didn't recall hearing any of it firsthand; it is fascinating to think that these accents most likely sound completely different to native speakers of French, but I could listen to somebody for an hour and not be able to tell where they're from.<br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">5. How we grappled with culturally appropriate code-switching and never quite figured it out (what we learned and didn't learn about being non-French speakers in a French-speaking city)</span><br />
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This primarily involves the social aspects of language.<br />
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Everybody we met spoke French to one another and, initially, to us. After three days, I never figured out the etiquette of how to tell people that we don't speak French or whether to let it become known through blank stares or badly pronounced, mis-timed ouis and nons. I understand about 50% of what people say to me, and about 10% of what is said around me, but when it's time to speak, I can't really communicate much other than "I don't know", "yes", "no", and "I am a pineapple." Throughout our trip, we tried greeting people with:<br />
* "Good morning" (to get the point across),<br />
* "Bonjour, good morning" (in an attempt to get our point across but show a little deference first), and<br />
* "Bonjour" (which did not get our point across and was often followed by a French question, a quick yes/no reply or blank response from me, and then a lot of English.)<br />
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Then, after having an entire conversation with somebody in English, some folks would wrap it up in French, which seemed to be a reminder that, hey, we're still in Quebec, and the language here is still French.<br />
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In any case, though code-switching is something most of us to do some degree, this trip required a level of code-switching that I don't yet understand very well - it reminded me of when I was first learning Spanish and found myself in all Spanish-speaking situations, and I didn't know whether the more respectful thing was to butcher the language (look, I'm not going to force my language onto you) or not (look, I'm not going to butcher your language and pretend like I'm doing either of us a favor here.) My response to that set of awkward circumstances was to get better at Spanish really fast, but I don't know how much time I'll have to get better at French right now, or whether that's the best way for me to choose to spend my time.<span style="background-color: white;"> But next time we're here I'll probably figure out more of the rules, and we'll see where things go from there. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">Any advice here? Does anybody out there have a good way of letting people know you respect and love their language but have no idea how to use it to communicate?</span><br />
<br />Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-34998819715286227372014-04-18T05:33:00.003-07:002014-04-18T09:38:54.574-07:00Montreal: Choose your own adventureHello, friends!<br />
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The kids and I just spent a few days in Montreal. We had a great time, but that's not a very insightful post in itself. I have a lot of insights from this trip, but don't want to write 10 pages of insights. What do you want to know about?<br />
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1. How being a clear outsider in a new setting builds empathy (involves power structures in the US)<br />
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2. How direct experiences such as travel are so much more effective at building academic background knowledge than just about everything else (involves anecdotes about the trip that will stick, and why)<br />
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3. If I were to take a class to Montreal, how would we prepare? (involves Rafe Esquith)<br />
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4. My obsession with language and, in this case, inability to grasp even the most obvious dialectical differences (involves some technical linguistics and, ultimately, why we went to Montreal over, say, Toronto)<br />
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5. How we grappled with culturally appropriate code-switching and never quite figured it out (what we learned and didn't learn about being non-French speakers in a French-speaking city)<br />
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6. The nexus of circumstances that have led us to be so fortunate to be able to take this trip in the first place (involves why we will never take this sort of opportunity for granted)<br />
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All of the above, of course, involve funny and touching anecdotes about Barbara and Sebastian.<br />
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Vote in the comments! Or send me an e-mail! I'm happy to write about any of this but think putting all of it together defeats the purpose of sharing any of it. Let me know what you want to know, and I'm happy to oblige :)<br />
<br />Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-82672380066512625712014-03-04T18:10:00.002-08:002014-03-04T18:50:18.739-08:00#ThrowbackThursday<div>
If you're curious, you can read my preamble to this project <a href="http://hawketalke.blogspot.com/2014/03/preamble-to-throwbackthursday.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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I subscribe to the philosophy that simpler is almost always better. Keep that in mind as you read my macro-structure for teaching character in writing class.</div>
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Every Thursday in writing class, which is already #ThrowbackThursday, we currently play classic jams from the 80s and 90s (and some 00s, though that makes me feel old) - it's heavy on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki97oF8LBFE" target="_blank">Destiny's Child</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6n7bW-s7TI" target="_blank">N'Sync</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POq2AznJO1Q" target="_blank">Backstreet Boys</a>, and other staples of my late adolescence. We also invest heavily in teaching sentence frames (much gratitude to Doug Lemov for <a href="http://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/first-glance-sentence-starter-adds-unexpected-rigor-writing/" target="_blank">the inspiration</a>) but we haven't yet put the two together with character - until now.</div>
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Assume the following:</div>
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1. Our kids know the names of the "big seven" character strengths and their definitions, with some level of background for each.</div>
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2. We have 10 minutes every Thursday for this activity, in writing classes of about 30 kids each.</div>
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We start #ThrowbackThursday by reviewing two character strengths (the ones we're focusing on) and a couple sentence frames (see below)</div>
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We then show a "protagonist card" (e.g. Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé, Frederick Douglass), two "sentence frame cards" (e.g. sentences beginning with "despite" and sentences that include the words "neither" and "nor"), and a "character strength card" (e.g. "grit", "social intelligence") and have students use the Rally Robin structure (whereby students take turns writing as many creative responses as they can) throughout the duration of the #ThrowbackThursday song that use the protagonist, one of the sentence frames, and the character strength in a grammatically accurate and plausible way. Does the song have a character-themed message? Of course it does! Does the song incorporate one of the sentence frames at some point in its lyrics? Maybe! </div>
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Bonus points (utterly worthless bonus points, that is!) will be given for responses that incorporate a reference to the song that is playing at the time, but our debrief will focus largely on creativity, correct use of the sentence frame, and students' interpretations of the character strength being described (e.g. In your sentence "Despite her quarrels with some of the other members of Destiny's Child, Beyoncé showed a lot of social intelligence by speaking well of them even after launching her solo career," how does this action show social intelligence? Are there any other character strengths Beyoncé showed through this action? What have you done in a similar situation? What would you hope to do next time?)<br />
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For good measure, I'll ensure the debrief highlights the grit it took to continue generating increasingly ridiculous sentences, the social intelligence it took to let your partner have a turn when you really wanted to just write your next sentence already, and, of course, the character strengths exemplified in the student-generated sentences themselves. Throughout, we'll have a lot of fun (see <i>zest</i>.)</div>
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I don't mean to plant any ideas in your head, but allow me to highlight that I'm planning this before doing it with students (some may say <b>"proactive</b>ly"), it's a student-centered <b>activ(e)</b>ity, the character strengths <b>align</b> to both the song lyrics and the actual student actions during the activity, and this activity <b>recurs</b> every Thursday.* I should also point out to the hashtag-averse that all the kids are doing it, and its use gives us permission to play cheesy music under the guise of being "hip to the groove" (as all the kids are saying these days.)<br />
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Let me know how you would simplify or otherwise improve this macro-structure!<br />
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Thanks,<br />
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Robert<br />
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*For full points, here's <a href="https://class.coursera.org/teachingcharacter-001/human_grading" target="_blank">one piece of relevant research</a>: Seligman's research is not limited to character growth in the "Big Seven", but underscores the importance of using one's own "signature strengths" as levers to improve in the "Big Seven", which is the reason behind expanding our list of character traits beyond the seven that seem to get most of the air-time. Boom. Two points.</div>
Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-28024588318244014042014-03-04T17:54:00.002-08:002014-03-04T18:11:44.161-08:00Preamble to #ThrowbackThursday<div>
This is the first of two posts responding to an online course graciously taught by the inimitable Dave Levin through Coursera. It has been a good experience and has served to both refresh some of what I knew and push some of what I thought I knew. In this post, I'll put some of my philosophical thoughts out there; in the next post, which will serve as my final project, I'll describe a "macro-structure" for character development.</div>
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In the spirit of embracing the 'and', I want to highlight some issues I see with this approach to character education <b>and</b> why I believe it's the way to go. I hope your mental soundtrack is playing<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsReWx9XdNs" target="_blank"> the last movement of 'Rodeo'</a> by American composer Aaron Copland, because I'm going to start with the beef:</div>
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I see two primary issues with the approach this character education I've learned about here and elsewhere:</div>
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1. Using data from indicators of character strengths to inform decisions about what to work on often leads to a change in the indicators but at the cost of a distortion of the character strength it was designed to indicate, per the Campbell effect (see below.) So if we try to build, say, grit, by working on how well we keep working when we feel like giving up, maybe we actually just get better at looking like we're working for a longer period of time, or over-reporting how often we felt like giving up, or any number of things.</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."<br />
<i>Assessing the Impact of Planned Social Change, </i>Donald T. Campbell, December 1976<br />
(from <a href="http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2013/uri-treismans-magnificent-speech-on-equity-race-and-the-opportunity-to-learn/" target="_blank">this talk</a> by Uri Treisman on equity and the opportunity to learn in mathematics education)</blockquote>
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2. Any discussion of how strengthening one's character provides a better shot at success should include a healthy dose of acknowledging the reality of our world: We do not live in a merit-based world, and we do our kids a disservice if we point to low college persistence numbers and fault a lack of grit before financial stress, structural racism, alienation, social pressures, or any of the other very real causes that are often acknowledged outside of the front page. I know of many great teachers who walk this line effectively, and I want to make sure that teachers who are exploring character for the first time grapple with these issues before making the mistake of going in front of a group of kids and telling them that if they would only show more grit, the world would treat them more fairly. KIPP teacher extraordinaire and fellow graduate of the esteemed Rice linguistics department, Lelac Almagor, says this far better than I ever could <a href="https://bostonreview.net/comment/7509" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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<b>I fully believe what I've written above, AND I concurrently believe that an intentional emphasis on character education is the only way to go. </b></div>
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As a parent, I can't let my fear of being oppressive or controlling (nor my fear of distorting and corrupting our family processes) keep me from looking out for my children's best interest, or from talking to my kids about the choices they're making, or from helping them to learn the value of hard work, honesty, attention to detail, playfulness, or any of the other things that make life more wonderful. I hope their teachers feel the same way, so that if Barbara works hard she feels like she's becoming a more hardworking person. If Sebastian says something unkind to another kid, I hope the teacher would highlight for him that this is not the way to live one's life. </div>
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And, having been a kid myself (OMG, you too? No way), I can now look back on the cumulative effect of a lot of these small moments that, in retrospect, have had a huge hand in shaping the person I am today. What if my teachers had decided that they didn't want to emphasize character for fear of being paternalistic? Would I have learned the lessons I learned from countless hours spent studying for Academic Decathlon, or from avoiding my 3rd grade journal project, or from any of the number of things I initially thought were hilarious - only to learn later that they were hurtful to others? I'm glad they spoke up, and I'm glad they did so in a way that assumed I would learn from each experience, rather than assuming I was showing the signs of some immutable trait.</div>
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If you're still interested in reading about a small way to teach character that I hope will lead to some good things, <a href="http://hawketalke.blogspot.com/2014/03/throwbackthursday.html" target="_blank">read on...</a></div>
Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-50326242111367914442014-03-03T16:28:00.002-08:002014-03-03T16:44:25.583-08:00Teacher development at Elm City MiddleAt Elm City College Prep Middle School, as at most Achievement First schools, we spend a lot of time thinking about teacher development. As I've written before, I believe teacher development should be a school's first priority, not because we should care more about adults than we do about kids, but because the effort we expend to develop teachers leads to a much greater impact on students than a singular focus on individual students.<br />
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Our work with teachers falls into four categories, seen through the lens of a science lesson on cell division:<br />
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<b>Before the lesson</b>, helping teachers to do the intellectual work to prepare for a lesson. This is a time to ask questions such as "What will a truly exceptional response to this question sound like? What misconceptions do we expect students to have, and what will they sound like? How will we follow up to get students to do the thinking required? How can we create cognitive dissonance to get students to confront their own misconceptions? Where and how can we help students find the joy in this lesson?" <i>Here's where we take an initial "mitosis creates new cells", transform it into "mitosis is an ongoing process that creates new cells through the division of existing cells, initially faster than cells are dying and later, in adulthood, at approximately the same rate as cells are dying." Then we figure out how to ask questions to get kids there when their first response to "how does the number of cells change throughout one's lifetime?" is "You get more cells."</i><br />
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<b>During the lesson</b>, helping teachers with whatever it is they're currently trying to develop in their own teaching. This ranges from classroom management (I might send a signal to scan the room to see who is on-/off- task, or remind a teacher to smile, or whisper to a teacher that they should use proximity to get students A, B, and C back on track) to the broader category of holding a high bar for student outputs (I might ask a student to revise his/her response by using two of the unit's vocabulary words or by restating the answer in a complete sentence, or I might indicate that the teacher should ask a follow-up question to ensure students are building on each other's responses - <i>"I wonder if anyone can add to that last response by using more precise vocabulary?"</i>) This real-time coaching is a key component in making sure the intellectual work teachers did ahead of time translates into a positive learning experience for teachers and students in the classroom.<br />
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<b>After the lesson</b>, looking through student work to determine how the lesson went and what we can do to improve for next time. This ensures that we're being honest about the impact a lesson had - an in-depth analysis of student work highlights the true impact of the lesson on student understanding in a way that is often overshadowed in the midst of a lesson by how the room "feels." <i>Did students actually understand not only the process of mitosis, but also its function? Can they articulate this understanding in writing, without any "rounding up" needed from us? What are our next steps based on the writing we see?</i><br />
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<b>Finally, about once a week, we work on the important parts of teaching that don't fit into a single lesson</b>. How can we develop our capacity to promote an inclusive environment in which we are understanding and affirming our kids' identities? What do these unit tests reveal about what I should re-teach and how? What are best practices for grading/giving feedback to students/calling home about homework? How can we make the most of our time at school so we're not taking hours of work home every night? How can we motivate students who we're not currently reaching? How can I develop as an instructional leader? How can I give this critical feedback to a colleague?<br />
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This may sound like a lot of meetings. First of all, this doesn't mean four meetings a week. Usually it's one or two, and we don't get to do all of this with every teacher every week. Second, I think it's strange that so many teachers in so many schools are essentially left to figure all of this out on their own. These are not the dreaded "staff meetings" with a room full of teachers listening to a presentation - they're intellectually stimulating collaborative work sessions where teachers develop their skills while planning to help students develop theirs.<br />
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It's tough to pick a favorite part of this process, but for me it's a tie between 1) seeing the joyful rigor we've planned for come to life for kids during the real-time coaching part of this process and 2) looking at student work to see what students produced. The first is wonderful because it's great to see kids smiling and learning and saying brilliant things, and the second is great because it allows us to both celebrate kids' progress and figure out what we can do to help them continue to grow. I cannot imagine a better way to spend the day.Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-11324588708357938402014-01-22T06:18:00.001-08:002014-01-22T06:18:37.275-08:00This I believe (right now)<div>
<b>What follows is an interview with myself.</b><br />
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Q: This idea of interviewing yourself - it seems pretty vain. You probably think this interview's about you, don't you, don't you?<br />
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A: Good one. [High five] Let's get to the questions, shall we?<br />
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Q: OK, but one more meta-question first: Do you have any reservations about putting all of your thoughts and beliefs out there?<br />
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A: Yes. I've been wrong before, and there's a part of me that doesn't like being publicly wrong. There's a part of me that is scared I'm really ignorant in some area and will let that ignorance shine here. There's a part of me that is worried I will say something stupid that will make other people feel demeaned, and their lives and mine will be worse as a result. But I'd like to follow Rule #10 from <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/danieljoseolder/fundamentals-of-writing-the-other" target="_blank">a piece by Daniel José Older</a> and remind myself that "the fact [I] will mess it up is not a reason not to do it."<br />
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Q: Got it. Next question: In what way do you admire Diane Ravitch*?<br />
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A: Whoa! That's pretty specific for an opening question, but I'll bite. Diane Ravitch has very publicly changed her mind about some pretty important issues, which is a difficult thing to do. She pioneered a lot of work that led to increased school choice and test-based accountability, then several years later stated that she now disagreed with most of the work that she had done. In order to come to this conclusion, she must have spent a lot of time examining the impact of her ideas and listening to people who disagreed with her...and when I say listening, I mean the kind of listening we don't see a lot of right now in education. There are lot of people trying to convince the world they're right, arguing their 'side',and working to break down the opposition with logic, charts, historical data, international comparisons, ad hominem attacks - basically anything that will advance their agenda and help them win a small battle in the long war to win over the public. </div>
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Q: But Diane Ravitch has said some really terrible things lately, such as blaming school shootings on high-stakes testing and charter schools, and basically shouting her privilege through hyperbolic comparisons between slavery/child abuse and having students take tests for four days/other things that are not slavery or child abuse.<br />
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A: Exactly. I should mention that the way Ravitch currently engages in debate (or doesn't) is actually much more like the norm mentioned above, and much less like the open process that led her to change her mind. That's a shame - it's offensive, it weakens her argument, and it is demeaning towards those who have experienced (and currently experience) any form of slavery or actual child abuse. So I want to be clear that I'll limit my desire to emulate her to the realm of publicly changing one's mind and hope that she stops her ludicrous assault on reason and conscience.<br />
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Q: You mentioned wanting to be OK with changing your mind. Why don't you tell us what you currently believe, so it can become more apparent if you later change your mind...<br />
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A: Great; at the risk of changing my mind about any of this (which I'd be fine with; I trust myself to make reasonable decisions as I go about life, and that I'll definitely listen to more people, experience more things, read a lot, and continue to try to get better at my job, and that all of these put together will definitely cause me to change my mind on some of what's below), here's what I currently believe about education. I'm not going to name all my assumptions; you can probably tell what they are based on the below - or feel free to ask me and I'll happily share. </div>
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<b>Most education debates themselves</b> aren't really worthwhile at this point because nobody seems to be listening. When people try to sound as if they've been listening, they often say things like, "we actually believe most of the same things," which only ends up being another tactic to try to convince the other side of the debate that my side was right all along. Even the concept of "different sides" is a strange one - it's as if one side really wants what's best for kids and the other wants, I don't know, fabulous wealth for themselves? No; every reasonable person in these debates wants what is best for kids; they just have different ideas about what this entails, or what aspects of kids' lives matter most, or how to get there, or - ok; there is a lot of room for disagreement. With that said...</div>
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<b>Most people in education actually believe most of the same things.</b> Preparing for a low-rigor test is a horrible way for kids to have to spend their time. Asking teachers to put any test first, rather than letting the test results be a byproduct of learning, leads to less learning (and, incidentally, poor test results.) Kids are super important. Teachers should be treated well and schools should be well-funded. Everybody should have access to great schools. Nobody in this debate is going to pop up and say, "well, actually, I'm not sure <i>all</i> kids should have access to great schools..." because nobody that I can think of believes that, and even if they did, they probably wouldn't say it out loud anyway. What some people <i>do</i> say is that poverty is such a monster that any work that schools do is just a drop in the bucket, going on to argue that a much more sizeable portion of our efforts should go toward eliminating poverty. I agree, though as a teacher and teacher coach - outside of voting and advocacy work - I'm not sure how this belief translates to how I should better do my job. I've also seen plenty of teachers who underestimate their kids' intellects based on out-of-school factors, so I'm generally wary of mixing the "how can we help this kid learn as much as possible?" conversation with the "this kid has gotten a really raw deal" conversation<br />
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Q: Wait, back up a bit. So no tests then?<br />
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A: I didn't say that. This is where I probably disagree most with some of my readers. I do think a strong, challenging, yearly test aligned to standards is a good way to keep tabs on which kids are falling through the cracks and to highlight which educational practices are leading to the best outcomes for kids. So yes, I support well-developed standardized tests. With enough data, it can tell us where some of the bright spots are (in terms of teachers) and can show which students need more support. I don't expect these tests to be perfect, and I wouldn't treat them as if they were, but at some point we should be concerned with which students are learning more or less than other students and what we can do to improve this, <b>and</b> that relying on millions of teachers' individual notes or anecdotes to determine this is even more flawed and much less efficient. I do think we tend to freak out too much over single-year test scores and should always look at a minimum of two years of data before making any real judgments, but ignoring the data altogether seems like a waste of potentially good information regarding what to do next.</div>
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Q: What is the biggest shift in mindset you've had in the past year or so?<br />
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<b>A: Curriculum matters a lot.</b> I believe there should be a strong curriculum, based on something like the Core Knowledge sequence (wait-don't leave!) There should be some leeway to account for differences - I mean, there's something really important about knowing one's own history, but everybody knowing everyone else's history isn't something we could really fit into a k-12 curriculum with any real depth. I like the Common Core standards in math - for their focus and coherence, and also for their explicit standards for mathematical practice - but I worry that these practice standards will continue to be treated as second-class standards. I love the ELA standards and hope we can continue to push for reading meaningful texts and basing our analysis on the texts themselves, not on the "choose an interesting assertion, state it convincingly, and have it validated" methods I used throughout high school English classes.<br />
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Q: Anything else? Maybe something controversial, to keep your readers on their toes?</div>
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<b>A: Here's one: Developing great teachers should be the primary goal of a great school. </b></div>
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Q: Shouldn't the goal of schools be to help students? </div>
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A: Yes, but focusing on developing teachers seems to lead to more student learning than focusing exclusively (or even primarily) on students - what do you think happens when teachers become stronger? They can more effectively help students. Plus, they're happier (or at least I am; the times I've been learning and growing are the times I've been happiest.) A school that puts student learning first - which I'd guess is what most schools try to do - is using most of its resources (time, money, strongest teachers) to provide extra help to some number of students. In a school that puts teacher development first, resources go to developing teachers, who are then able to better reach a much greater number of students. </div>
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Q: That sounds simplistic, and intentionally provocative.</div>
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A: Good catch. That's because I'm being simplistic, and trying to highlight a mindset of mine that has changed over the past couple years (and that is still evolving.) There's a lot more to it than putting more money in the PD budget and less in the tutoring budget, because...</div>
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<b>Teacher development is really hard.</b> Teachers lead busy lives and have a lot to do. Besides, helping a teacher to improve takes a lot of effort and skill. Sometimes I think I've done this somewhat effectively, and other times I know I haven't. At Achievement First, I think the teacher development we do is in the "decent" to "good" range - not in the "painfully bad" to "bad" range, which is where I hear most district- and school-based PD is elsewhere, but also not yet in the "great" to "outstanding" range, where teachers all develop really quickly and continue to grow through strong professional development opportunities. I do feel lucky to work at a place where we do this somewhat well, and where I get a lot of help and development; I just don't think we're knocking it out of the park quite yet. For what it's worth, Edward Brooke in Boston and the Success Academies in New York seem to be doing this better than anyone else at the moment. Uncommon Schools also seem to have a bit of a head-start here, though at this point I think we do largely what they do (just maybe not quite as well yet.) I have a pretty limited worldview here, and I'm sure that there are other public or private schools that are also doing great work in this area. If you know of any, let me know in the comments.</div>
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I should also mention that a lot of great teacher development is currently happening <i>outside of schools. </i>The Math Twitter Blogosphere (MTBos for short) is filled with great teachers sharing ideas and talking about curriculum and pedagogy. It's where I've learned the most about problem-based learning (which I think is the way forward in math instruction) but, beyond that, where I have learned the most about many of the broader societal issues I've mentioned here.<br />
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<b>Outrage over the strictness of "No Excuses" schools is misplaced. </b>Let me start by saying that I've been to a lot of schools that I wouldn't send my kids to. Some of these were "No Excuses" charters and others were (non-charter) district and private schools. My gut reaction was worst in schools where I saw kids treating each other (and teachers) poorly. In some cases (though not many), teachers were treating kids poorly. Mostly, though, teachers were letting kids do whatever they wanted, and kids weren't choosing to be really kind to each other...nor were they choosing to spend their de facto free time learning a lot. So to everybody who writes with outrage that they would <i>never</i> send their kids to a school where kids are expected to follow directions, I wonder what they would tell the parents of kids who <i>do</i> choose to send their kids to a strict school. They're wrong? They shouldn't want what they want? They're being duped? This all seems really patronizing. Is it that hard to accept that some parents (like myself) actually want a school with consequences for not doing your work? I think my kids are fantastic, and I think the kids at our school are fantastic, and I also think that kids don't always make the best decisions for themselves. For what it's worth, I don't always make the best decisions for myself, either, and usually the natural consequences of my bad decisions remind me that they were, in fact, bad decisions. I'm not OK relying on natural consequences for kids that are several years away. </div>
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Q: It sounds like you're blaming kids for the things that happen to them. This smacks of the worst possible form of respectability politics.<br />
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A: Good point. I think there's a place to both acknowledge that current realities work against many of our kids and still help every kid become his/her best self. See <a href="http://www.bostonreview.net/us/lelac-almagor-character-education-inherent-flaws-schools" target="_blank">this post</a> by a KIPP teacher and fellow graduate of the esteemed Rice University linguistics department for a much better explanation than I could ever give.We walk a fine line between, on one side, putting responsibility on children of color for the structural elements working against them and, on the other side, failing to teach any personal responsibility for fear of reinforcing existing power structures.<br />
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Q: But couldn't that be done in another way? Say, talking with kids about the choices they're making instead of simply assigning consequences?<br />
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A: What, you think we don't talk to kids, or listen to them? Where are you getting your information?<br />
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Q: OK, maybe there's some conversation, too, but Alfie Kohn says that consequences...<br />
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A: I'm going to stop you there. At this point, if Alfie Kohn actually believes what he writes (which I doubt), he believes that there should never be consequences for anything in school, many students (presumably children of color) have "no first language", teachers should figure out what to teach after students have arrived for class on the first day, and every individual teacher in America should have absolute freedom regarding what to teach.<br />
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Q: Thanks for taking the time for this interview.<br />
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A: No, thank <i>you</i>.<br />
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Q: Alright, thank you again.<br />
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A: No; I will <i>not</i> be out-thanked. Thank you and good-bye.<br />
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*Can we admire people for traits out of context? Admire the founding fathers despite their hypocrisy, Ender's Game without acknowledging its author's bigotry, or Comedy Central - despite the latter's inability to produce a new episode of Workaholics or Drunk History for some time now?<br />
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I hope we can, because if we can't, every time we look to somebody as a positive example, there is somebody ready to show us how they were wrong about something else, or how they were actually not great to all people. We don't want to take this too far and endorse a person's entire world-view while sweeping horrible character deficiencies under the rug (but Forrest was such a strong leader!) but I hope there's some middle ground where we can still learn from people other than Gandhi, Mandela, Mother Teresa, Dom Basile, Rigoberta Menchu, and Jesus. </div>
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Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-28206726278116607352013-11-02T17:58:00.003-07:002013-11-02T17:58:59.537-07:00Anchors, close reading, and a case for problem-based mathematicsThink of the following:<br />
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<li>What is/was your grandfather like? (If you are or were lucky enough to have known two, pick one.)</li>
<li>Who was your best friend in college?</li>
<li>Where did you go on your last trip? What was it like?</li>
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Sometimes you have an epiphany that seems to connect to so many different parts of your life that you can't wait to share it with the world...and then you realize that - precisely because the epiphany was so tailored to your own experiences, almost designed to fit snugly into your brain - maybe the world won't appreciate how you felt discovering it.<br />
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That's not what worries me about this post. What worries me is that the idea behind this is probably something you have all thought of already, and I'm simply late to the party.<br />
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Here's the gist: In your life, there are a very few anchor experiences that define key eras of your life. Maybe these moments number in the tens, maybe in the hundreds - but compared to the gargantuan number of memories that we can call to mind when remembering, say, middle school (or the first year of marriage, or your first job, or that house on Garland Avenue, or ages 3-9, or that summer in Argentina, or your maternal grandfather, ...) the number of memories that have come to define the experience is pretty manageable.<br />
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These anchors are largely a function of how the mind works. In <u>Funes el memorioso</u>, author Jorge Luis Borges illustrates brilliantly that memory is more about forgetting than about excessive remembering - through a main character who is incapable of forgetting details and is thus entirely unable to generalize (for example, the word "dog" has little meaning to Funes, as there is no unique set of characteristics that all "dogs" share.) As Borges points out, if we actually remembered everything equally, it would be difficult to make sense of anything.<br />
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I would guess these anchors are somewhat universal and, over time, become somewhat arbitrary. They're not always the most important memories, and they're not always the most representative of the experience they have, in some cases, come to supplant. When Iyouthought of your responses to the initial questions above, I imagine the same image of your grandfather came to mind that usually comes to mind. To me, the house on Garland always begins with a specific snapshot: Bamboo curtains against a mango-colored accent wall, with the punishing Fresno heat coming through the large sliding glass door. My grandfather always introduces himself to my working memory by blowing a low note on a trombone just above a small child's flapping hair, or leaning back and smiling on a couch in a beach house. Niagara Falls is a view of the falls on my right with my kids playing in the bath to my right. From there, sure, we can imagine a handful of other memories, and push ourselves to remember many more, but the important highlight here is that this one memory often serves as the entry point to all the others.<br />
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If possible, think of something new you've learned recently, as we're all famously bad at remembering what it was like to learn something that we now know without thinking. I'll focus on something I started learning long ago (over half my life ago, at this point), so there's a good chance I'll get at least some of this wrong:<br />
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Most of my anchors for Spanish vocabulary and grammar came from popular (or once-popular) songs...our teacher enlisted Juan Luis Guerra to teach us about the subjunctive, Joan Baez and Mercedes Sosa for the present perfect tense. In college, I had a professor who emphasized analyzing and memorizing poetry, and for a time I would remember lines of these poems when trying to recall whether a certain object was a masculine or femenine noun. I still remember the line "y caliente...como agua de la fuente" when hesitating for an instant to recall whether to say "el fuente" or "la fuente." What I didn't realize until today was that all of these times when we spent two days on the lyrics to one song, analyzing what the songs meant, we were doing a form of <b>close reading</b>. We were determining the main ideas presented in the song, but we were also internalizing a boatload of vocabulary and grammar in context.<br />
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Two weeks ago, my epiphany came during a one-hour discussion about close reading with our instructional leadership team - Rebecca, our principal; Nick, our ELA dean; Chris, our math dean; Dacia, our regional superintendent; and me, our historian (as in <i>history coach</i>, but also as in<i> high school club member who was voted neither president nor treasurer and thus goes home to blog about it on everyone else's behalf</i>.) We talked through a close reading lesson designed around <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Address" target="_blank">JFK's famous civil rights address</a>, giving our own critiques of the lesson and then reading the critiques by Common Core co-author David Liben and extracting from these some huge lessons regarding Close Reading. These takeaways were fairly life changing:<br />
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<ol>
<li>Yes, close reading is about the text. Specifically, a deep understanding of the central idea(s) of a text should guide what kids do. I'm proud to say I knew this one; I'm more proud to say that my understanding of close reading before today stopped pretty much here. So I learned something from this experience :)</li>
<li>Close reading is also the activity where we get the most traction with metacognition. Generally, I'm not a huge fan of metacognition as a reading strategy, and I think it leads to a lot of wasted time...but in this context, it makes a lot of sense. To me, it sounds a bit like this: "So notice where you stopped there. Why did you do that?...Which of these sentences seems to jump out? Why did it catch your mind's attention? Make a mental note; that's what you can do as a writer to catch your audience's attention...and as a reader, think of where the author is trying to grab your attention and what they're trying to tell you at that moment."</li>
<li>Close reading is one of the best ways to teach and reinforce specific vocabulary.</li>
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Points 2 and 3 were new to me, and point 3 had me reflecting on everything I had ever learned, leading to the stream of consciousness you may have wisely abandoned by now. Because when you read a small sample of text over and over again, and focus intensely on its meaning, you are exposed to the same words in the same context to the point where you essentially memorize certain lines of text and their literal meanings. From JFK's speech you may remember "a moral issue" and "a partisan issue" and the amount of time each of these stayed in your working memory while grappling with larger issues...from there, you'll likely associate (at least for some time) the words "moral" and "partisan" with these specific lines.<br />
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When I was first learning Spanish (now over half my life ago), I learned through a lot of close reading in the form of listening to the same songs over and over. Juan Luis Guerra taught me the subjunctive and "la fuente" (as opposed to the incorrect "el fuente".) Joan Baez and Mercedes Sosa taught me how to express gratitude while reinforcing what little I knew about the present perfect tense. I was reminded in our Close Reading conversation that repeated exposure to many of these song lyrics led to a level of memorization that allowed me to call specific experiences to mind in order to remember - even at the word level.<br />
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In math, this brought me to the idea of a problem-based approach to learning. Sha Reagans, incredible math teacher and current principal of Newark Collegiate Academy (High School), used to teach an 'anchor problem' for every concept, so that students could refer to this problem when thinking through the concept later. From my own schooling, I still remember the "interior angle of a five-pointed star" problem when it seems a situation could become more clear by circumscribing (drawing a circle around) a figure. I remember "Twelve Days of Christmas" and "Snail Climbing a Wall" when thinking about the limitations of discrete functions. This may be another case of me looking for confirming evidence, but this line of thinking leads me to believe ever more firmly in a problem-based approach to math teaching and learning.<br />
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Throughout our lives, though we are subconsciously choosing anchors to represent various experiences, these anchors don't always telegraph themselves. That bamboo curtain didn't jump out and say, "Take note: I'm more important than the dusty backyard," but I always think of it first regardless. In school, however, the anchors I remember first when thinking of Spanish or math or chemistry are usually the carefully chosen and designed experiences chosen by my teachers. Furthermore, we didn't simply experience these once and move onto the next thing - we spent time with each to ensure that the memory would stick.<br />
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For teachers, I see one clear implication of this idea:<br />
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Know what you want the anchors to be, and design students' learning experiences around these anchors. Prioritize the most important content and ideas, and ensure that students have repeated exposure to this content and these ideas. Get the most out of small experiences, rather than simply trying for more experiences.<br />
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I'm curious what parts of this <b>do not</b> resonate with folks. Does anybody experience anchors in their own lives differently? How do we reconcile the idea of learning primarily through a small number of well-chosen experiences with the (conflicting?) idea of exposure to a broad base of content, breadth of vocabulary exposure? I'd appreciate any thoughts you have in the comments.Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-16108475743035945722013-09-29T17:59:00.000-07:002013-09-29T17:59:09.546-07:00On chessIn early July, I taught our kids to play chess. Barbara thought it was OK, but Sebastian ate it up. He now asks to play chess <i>all the time</i> and I, of course, oblige. The other day, he asked the esteemed Mr. Pierre to play. See the photo at right.<div>
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Here's the problem: I'm not very good at chess. I mean, I know how the pieces move, and I can think a couple moves ahead, but whenever I'm up against an opponent with any kind of chess training, I'm toast. So while I'm consistently beating Sebastian for now (brag!), I'm not really going to be able to help him become great. Because I think, in order to become great, your teacher know a lot about the subject - at least good enough to ask you great questions and push your thinking.</div>
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Here's the context for that photo: It was about 15 minutes before our first Achievement First Day of Practice for the year, which is a funny name for a day when all teachers get together for professional development. I've been to a lot of professional development over the past 10 years, most of it actually pretty good (I know this is not typical; I live a charmed life.) None of this PD, however, has been as focused on building teacher content knowledge as this day was. We dove into student work to engage in conversations about how to get our kids closer to excellence. We looked over the upcoming units we were going to teach, making sure we really, <i>really</i> understood the content we were going to teach and how we were going to go about developing it. We had each done several hours of pre-work, mostly in the form of diving into the content we'd be teaching, to make sure we were going into these conversations prepared to discuss big ideas. And at the end of the day, we definitely had a much better understanding of the <i>stuff</i> we were going to teach. </div>
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I love this development, because you could teacher-move the heck out of a class, but if you don't understand the material, kids aren't likely to get very far. Conversely, when teachers deeply understand the content they're teaching, they can take kids really far. I think of John Rajeski in Atlanta, a professional writer-turned-teacher whose students consistently become solid writers. I think of my high school history teacher Mr. Ethen, who seemed to live and breathe history. Without the deep knowledge that these teachers possess, the ceiling for their students would likely be fairly low. But this doesn't mean you have to be a content expert <i>before</i> you start teaching. If you find yourself in charge of teaching something you don't know much about, you can learn this stuff - it just takes work. And I'm glad that, in the case of our small network of schools, we've decided to make this so important that we're spending a few days outside of school this year exclusively on educating ourselves.</div>
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Back to chess. Barbara is starting to come around (see photo), and now I'm even more psyched about our kids getting better at chess. This means, of course, that I'm first psyched about learning a lot more about chess myself. I've been practicing with a good book, but now that I've found <a href="http://lizzyknowsall.blogspot.com/2013/08/50-lesson-beginner-curriculum.html" target="_blank">Elizabeth Spiegel's blog and corresponding curriculum</a>, I know where I'm going next, and I know it's going to be a lot of fun for everybody involved...much like I know our classes at school are only going to get better and more interesting as we continue to deepen our own content knowledge.</div>
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Game on.</div>
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Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-88061737727860592022013-08-19T18:38:00.000-07:002013-08-19T18:38:40.473-07:00That's that terminology I don't likeMy face-to-face and phone-to-phone conversations about Achievement First tend to become a love-fest of sorts...there is so much thoughtful stuff going on in our network, plus I love our school, and there's really nowhere else I'd rather be. But there are some things about the ed reform movement at large, including AF, that I'm not a huge fan of. In particular, though I love so much of what we do, I don't always love how we talk. I'm not asking for these things to be changed, and I think I understand the rationale behind all of the terms (and will continue to use many of them when appropriate because I generally believe that alignment is a good thing.) Here is a brief list:<br />
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1. <b>Upspeak</b>. This is where you end every statement with a rising tone, as if it were a question? But what's more annoying? is when it's used? at every natural pause? in a <span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span><span style="font-size: large;">E</span>N<span style="font-size: x-small;">T</span>e<span style="font-size: x-small;">nc</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">e. </span>(the last word is spoken in a definitive downward-moving tone.) I reckon this is a function of ours being a youthful movement/organization, and that this linguistic feature is merely a mirror of a general shift-at-large over the past 15-20 years. I don't have any philosophical qualms with this one, and I don't believe it belies an underlying lack of confidence (as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKyIw9fs8T4" target="_blank">Taylor Mali </a>posits); I just find it annoying.</div>
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2. <b>Scholars</b>. I had some professors in college who were scholars. There were Biblical scholars, scholars of medieval Spanish writing, scholars of 19th-century Brazil, world-class mathematicians (who are scholars in their own right), and Constitutional scholars. I've heard the argument before that calling ten-year-olds "scholars" belittles the term...and that may be the case, but I know that's not the spirit in which the term is used. It is used to mean "a future scholar", or "one who is studying and working hard, as scholars do." That's cool. I like reminding kids I'm working with that they are on their way to doing great things. What I don't like is the implicit statement that we're not going to treat kids like kids. Rafe Esquith likes to remind us all that kindergarteners barely know where their belly buttons are, and that treating them as if they were already in college is a bit absurd. I think about Barbara and Sebastian, ages 7 and 6, respectively, and it cracks me up to think that they are referred to as "scholars" at school. Yes, I hope they end up extremely well educated, but I'm also aware that they currently enjoy ice cream, have horrible taste in television shows ("Dog with a Blog"), and don't like wearing pants at home (but seriously, who does?) I propose that we replace the term "scholars" with "kids" and, if it helps us keep their potential in everybody's mind, focus on asking these "kids" great (dare I say rigorous?) questions that inspire them to think deeply.<br />
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2.5. <b>KIPPsters</b>. This one is just pure baggage. In 2009, when KIPP Fresno closed, we had to confront the truth that there would be no KIPP for our kids to come back to. Tying their identity, even tangentially, to a school that was about to close seemed like a bad idea; we preferred, instead, to focus on helping them develop their character regardless of their surroundings. It also reinforced the "you're better than all those other kids" narrative that goes against our overall mission of helping all kids. I'm fine with "this is a special place" and "let's work on going against the norm and becoming <i>extraordinary</i>"; I'm less OK with "you're better because you won the lottery and got into this school." Though I think it's obvious, my dislike of this term has nothing to do with the kids this term is used to refer to. I love the kids I've had the pleasure to teach in Fresno and in Jacksonville, and I've met a lot of amazing kids from KIPP schools across the country. I just don't love the term KIPPster.<br />
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3. <b>Rigor </b>(and its derivatives). Does this mean "difficult"? "At a level that requires application or analysis, rather than simple understanding or recall"? "Scaffolded in such a way that kids can figure out the meaning on their own, but in a stepwise fashion"? When we were looking at some of our mistakes after the Year of Terrible Results (2011, in Jacksonville), we identified "rigor" as a huge gap. What we meant was that we were asking questions that were too easy and that didn't force kids to keep the concept in working memory (in order to apply the concept) long enough for it to make its way into long-term memory. I understand that "rigor", in our case, was a shortcut for this more precise but long-winded verbiage, but it means so many different things to so many different people that it now leads to more confusion than clarity. Let's either have this word mean one thing or take a break from it until we figure out how to dress it up to convey the specific meaning we're going for (e.g. "You should try increasing the Blooms-Rigor of your final question" vs. "Maybe your questions aren't difficulty-rigorous enough.")<br />
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4. <b>The Achievement Gap</b>. I'm not the first one to publicly dislike this term because it takes "white achievement" as the norm and implicitly accepts that this should be the norm by comparing other groups to white students' achievement. I'd much prefer to talk about "educational inequity" or "gross unfairness" (which reminds me of Dr. King's quote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere", indicating that educational inequity is everybody's problem.) Look, I don't have a problem comparing our students' work to that of their wealthy, largely white counterparts, because <i>I want our kids to do as well as possible</i>, and this is the group that is currently doing the best. But let's just name it. We're not reinforcing a standard sense of norm by saying we're comparing our kids to <i>normal</i> kids out there who have <i>regular</i> opportunities; we're comparing our kids to the students who are performing the best. On standardized tests, in writing samples, and the like.<br />
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5. <b>Acronyms and ultra-precise terminology for everything</b>. Last weeks, we sat in an otherwise very good training that took a 3-minute detour to clarify the difference between TDQs and EBQs, how each related to the PBA in its relative need for framing and context vs. contextualization. The point of the session was to learn how to ask better questions - why can't we just call this "asking better questions" and then clarify what characteristics good questions have at various points in the lesson, to achieve different purposes, etc.? I get the need to precisely define terms, but I think we may have jumped the shark here. Some of you may<br />
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6. <b>Trite phrases</b>. There are a host of other words and phrases I think are comically overused, like <i>transformational impact </i>(particularly to describe some good-sized jump on a math test), <i>climbing the mountain to college</i> (which most often runs together as Clem The Man To College), and...<br />
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...write your guesses/contributions in the comments :)</div>
Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-40007570810331962572013-08-13T20:49:00.003-07:002013-08-13T20:49:21.229-07:00Remembering the Gatorade: Reflections on our family trip to VenezuelaI spent about 2 ½ weeks in Venezuela this summer with my wife Maria, our daughter Barbara (age 7), and Sebastian (age 5, then 6). I then came back to a job I love in the US while the rest of my family remained for a couple more weeks. Most people I have seen since returning to the US have asked about the trip, and I have yet to find an answer that really captures an honest answer to the question, “how was it?”<br />
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Truthfully, there was some good and some bad, but in the end it doesn’t really matter how it was in some general sense. I tend to polarize my past experiences after the fact, and I often remind myself of this when I’m in the middle of an experience that lends itself to this type of polarization. For college in general, my summer working in Argentina, and a recent trip to Niagara Falls, I remember thinking I would probably idealize the experience ex post facto and – lo and behold – I think back fondly on those times, even though not a lot of dopamine was coursing through my veins at the time. The two weeks my family and I spent together in Venezuela, on the whole, were a great way to spend the summer, and, more importantly, were crucial to our kids' development. As time distances me more from the experience, I’m increasingly seeing things this way, though there was certainly a lot I didn’t love at the time. I call this <i>remembering the Gatorade</i>. Skip to the end if you don't particularly care about the details but still want to know what a sports drink has to do with memory.<br />
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<b>If you’re curious about what all happened, here’s a brief list:</b><br />
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<li>Our family of four was staying with my wife’s family, which is not without its issues.</li>
<li>Venezuela is currently a very dangerous country. One night, we returned to the house at 1am and had to call a friend who was ‘in’ with some of the local troublemakers in order to escort us back home. There’s a lot of stress because of this sense that things have never been this bad – most people we talked to had been robbed at some point in the past year, which can take its toll.</li>
<li>Venezuela is facing its worst economic crisis in recent times. When a store receives a shipment of butter, or corn flour, or toilet paper, there are lines down the block. It’s tough to live in a place where you don’t have access to what you need. </li>
<li>I was sick for about half of the trip, which is par for the course. It’s all but impossible to avoid unfiltered water, even with a great deal of effort, and this water has the effect of absolutely wrecking my intestines. Every time.</li>
<li>The exchange rate is artificially held low (by a factor of 5) by the government. So the prices are sky-high for people who live in Venezuela, and dirt-cheap for visitors. </li>
<li>Interestingly, we filled up a 30-liter tank of gas for 3 bolivars, which amounts to about 10 cents (at the unofficial exchange rate.) This one cent per gallon exchange rate is the result of exorbitant oil subsidies, which some op-eds in local papers assert primarily help the rich (who can afford cars.) I’m skeptical of this argument, since people who ride buses also end up paying for gas, albeit indirectly. Regardless, that’s some cheap gas.</li>
<li>I was on a plane a few weeks ago, and for the entire 40-minute duration of the flight, I was the most scared I’ve ever been. I filed an FBI report about it later, and I’d include the details here, but my sense is that the FBI doesn’t like people blabbing on about things you’ve asked them to investigate.</li>
<li>It was absolutely wonderful to spend so much time with Barbara and Sebastian.</li>
<li>Though it was a bummer to not be able to walk around Maria’s family’s neighborhood (for reasons of safety), the upside was that I got to read a lot. I read or listened to the following:</li>
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<li>The Alchemist</li>
<li>Moonwalking with Einstein</li>
<li>Practice Perfect (again)</li>
<li>Antifragile (almost done!)</li>
<li>To Sell Is Human</li>
<li>The Book Whisperer</li>
<li>A bunch of Radiolab podcasts</li>
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…And, inspired by Josh Foer, I decided to memorize the only list I had handy, which was the list of 42 “rules for getting better at getting better” from Practice Perfect. Going into PD season, this has definitely come in handy!<br /><br />
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<li>Barbara started speaking Spanish with everybody she could find, having extensive conversations about anything and everything. </li>
<li>Sebastian’s last trip to Venezuela was when he was 2. His Spanish isn’t as good, and he was getting really frustrated with the fact that everybody seemed to constantly feel the need to tell him that his Spanish wasn’t very good. His response was to ‘prove’ that he speaks Spanish by rattling off a quick dialogue: “Yo <b>sí</b> sabe español. Como estas bien como estas tu bien como estas tu bien gracias.” Sadly, as those of you who actually habla the español already know, this didn’t help his case very much.</li>
<li>After I came back, Sebastian had his 6th birthday party, and apparently a good time was had by all.</li>
<li>I really enjoyed spending time with my father-in-law. He’s a good guy, and we haven’t spent a lot of time together in the past. My favorite episode on this trip was when he invited himself (and me) to go fishing at 9pm with a fisherman who was going out for his daily catch. They caught the fish; we promptly fried and ate it. </li>
<li>The low point of the trip was at a concert (which was great – Billo’s Caracas Boys, which is still a phenomenal group) when I ran to the restroom, only to find that there was no toilet paper. I ran to another restroom owned by the same locale and again found no paper. I ran out and told the manager there was no toilet paper, and he replied, “That’s correct.” Ultimately some napkins from the bar had to suffice, but nothing can take back the sheer terror of his response.</li>
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In the end, though, this trip wasn’t about me having the time of my life. I left for the last two weeks (to come back and work), and my family stayed; by the end of the trip, our kids didn’t want to come back because they were having so much fun with their cousins. Barbara told me she wants to go back to Venezuela when she’s 25. I say that sounds great, as long as the country is less of a mess by then.<br /><br /><div>
So, looking at the above, if all incidents have equal weight (which they don’t; wondering how your kids will do when you likely die in a plane crash isn’t something you cancel out with fresh fish), there’s about an equal ratio of positive to negative comments. That’s nice, as it allows me to choose how I remember the trip. </div>
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For guidance, I’ll go with my natural tendency, but look to Barbara for guidance on what to call this tendency:</div>
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Barbara told me something about the trip yesterday that made me think we’re probably doing some combination of raising her right/being very lucky parents and maybe not talking about social norms quite enough. We were walking through the soda/sports drink aisle at Target, with lots of people around, when she loudly broke the silence with: “One day in Venezuela I had really bad diarrhea. I had to eat only mashed potatoes and drink Gatorade all day. It was the best day ever.”</div>
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Let’s coin the phrase “remember the Gatorade” to describe the glass-half-full phenomenon when applied retroactively. So, remembering the Gatorade, it was a pretty good trip. We reconnected with a part of our family we don’t see often, our kids developed a more rounded sense of who they are and where they come from, and we’ve all gained in some way from the experience of truly <i>living </i>in a place so radically different from where we are living now.<br />
<br />
<b>Teaching tip</b> (look for this in Teach Like A Champion 2.0):<br />
Use the last 20 seconds of your class to Remember the Gatorade, reminding kids of what a great time you’ve all had, how hard everybody worked, how much they all embraced and learned from mistakes…even if this stuff only happened a little bit. People will remember the end of class positively, and – if this is what you’re doing at the end of class – will, by extension, remember all those positive attributes and come to class tomorrow ready to learn from mistakes, work hard, and have lots of fun doing it.</div>
Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-68022319985306882782013-07-01T20:59:00.001-07:002013-07-01T20:59:51.688-07:00A Raisin In The SunI've spent the last 3.5 days packing up our apartment (to move to a house a couple blocks away), teaching our kids to play chess (while cracking myself up by playing out several scenes of <i>Searching for Bobby Fischer</i> in my mind), running, napping, and reading up a storm. In fact, since Friday afternoon, I've read the following:<br />
<i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Misfits-James-Howe/dp/0689839561/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372737295&sr=8-1&keywords=the+misfits" target="_blank">The Misfits</a>,</i><br />
<i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Joey-Pigza-Swallowed-Jack-Gantos/dp/0312623550/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372737346&sr=1-1&keywords=joey+pigza+swallowed+the+key" target="_blank">Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key</a>,</i><br />
<i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Away-Murder-Story-Emmett/dp/0803728042/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372737372&sr=1-1&keywords=getting+away+with+murder+the+true+story+of+the+emmett+till+case" target="_blank">Getting Away with Murder</a></i> (the true story of the Emmitt Till case),<br />
The end of <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Explore-Diabetes-David-Sedaris/dp/0316154695/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372737405&sr=1-1&keywords=let%27s+explore+diabetes+with+owls" target="_blank">Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls</a>,</i><br />
Everything Doug Lemov has ever written on the <a href="http://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/field-notes/" target="_blank">Teach Like a Champion blog</a>, and, most recently,<br />
<i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Raisin-Sun-Modern-Classics/dp/0413762408/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372737428&sr=1-5&keywords=a+raisin+in+the+sun" target="_blank">A Raisin in the Sun</a></i>.<br />
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(all in all, about 700 pages, but, more interesting: Which one of these things is not like the other?)<br />
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I saved <i>A Raisin in the Sun</i> for last because I was least excited about it; I'd read it as a freshman in high school but didn't particularly like it. I remember, in fact, arguing with my English teacher about the movie adaptation, me on the side of "Sidney Poitier is totally over-acting this scene", and her on the side of "well, he was nominated for a Golden Globe largely on the basis of that scene so..."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBV4-javHbowAoHBM9GoxPI-mJCTxOLDkBOLZce0YIF884mHYtolnOcsBTJ0E1hfXZzNX8N47q8LIWY5gMPrQFQqDxBMVtaWNNZaJwfttiJMx9ENEjRcTBnn_VcfOn6VIn0w-nlAGeXWDn/s420/poitier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBV4-javHbowAoHBM9GoxPI-mJCTxOLDkBOLZce0YIF884mHYtolnOcsBTJ0E1hfXZzNX8N47q8LIWY5gMPrQFQqDxBMVtaWNNZaJwfttiJMx9ENEjRcTBnn_VcfOn6VIn0w-nlAGeXWDn/s320/poitier.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Well, now.<br />
It turns out I see things a little differently at 32 than I did when I was 14. This time, from cover to just-before-the-cover, I found the play profoundly heartbreaking. Not so much because of what math teachers would call the <i>surface features</i> of the play (the plot, for example), but rather because the underlying tension and frustration all but scream at the reader. It all felt very personal.<br />
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So, here are a couple takeaways:<br />
1. The backdrop of this play is a wonderfully horrific description of the effects of systemic oppression, and<br />
2. It is really, really hard for 14-year-olds to truly understand literature about the human condition.<br />
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Disclaimer re: #1: I haven't ever suffered the effects of systemic oppression directly, so I'm sure a lot of the meaning and connection was still lost on me.<br />
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Thoughts re: #2: Just as background knowledge influences literal and inferential comprehension in a big way, so life experience seems to be the driving factor behind emotional reactions to literature. As a teacher, this is a good reminder that some of your kids are going to connect very deeply to some themes, but not everybody really has the experience to get all worked up over a character deciding not to go to work for a couple days. This is why I <strike>cry </strike>get bad allergies in both eyes when I read <i>The Giving Tree</i> with my kids, while they're just glad we're reading a nice story together.<br />
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Bonus thoughts: Reading all of this in such a short time was a good reminder that there is a huge difference between <i>good</i> literature and <i>great</i> literature, and the distinction is just as much in the reader's mind as it is in the text itself.Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-2040591924612653432013-06-10T17:50:00.002-07:002013-06-10T17:50:58.771-07:00The Ort Report<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last week, our lower school (5th and 6th grades) went "camping" at Camp Jewell, close to the Massachusetts border. We had a fantastic time - we all had one heck of a time: Kids canoed and climbed rocks and swam in the lake and built a fire and went on a nature hike and performed campfire skits and made s'mores and...we learned about ort.<br />
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At every meal, our camp counselor would have us sing the "ort report" song and would reveal how many pounds of ort we had left uneaten at our last meal.<br />
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As you may be able to see from the bar graph, we steadily reduced the amount of ort left at every meal. That's good - it's generally a good thing to get kids to care about not leaving so much food and drink behind at meals. And all that really happened was this: We got excited to see the number (by doing a quick song and dance), our counselor gave the occasional tip* on how to reduce our ort, and we saw the number at every meal - represented neatly in a bar graph.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">*My favorite tip was this: <i>When using milk for cereal, keep in mind that one bowl of cereal takes about half a carton of milk. So you may want to find someone else who wants cereal and just get one carton of milk among the two of you.</i></span><br />
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I like the ort report for two reasons:<br />
<br />
1. It helps kids care about a great cause, and one I suspect we don't talk about as much as we used to - not wasting food. But this isn't the nebulous "kids in China are starving" argument; it's more of a soft sell.<br />
2. The ort report, whose stated purpose is to show how many scraps of food (and drink) were left uneaten (and...undrankened?), also helps foster other great habits: cooperation among table-mates, planning ahead for what you'll actually eat and drink, and erring on the side of taking less food than one may take otherwise. Economists call these other effects 'positive externalities.'<br />
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This all got me to thinking: What are the other 'ort report' -type activities that produce positive externalities in schools?<br />
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The one practice that comes to mind is the practice of asking students for evidence (usually <i>text evidence</i>) to support their answers. This gets kids to read more carefully, to evaluate each other's answers more carefully, check their own thoughts to make sure they're supported by evidence, and, ultimately, learn to pay closer attention to details in the first place.<br />
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Other than that, I'm struggling to find something as useful or elegant as the <i>ort report</i>. I'd love to hear more ideas in the comments...<br />
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In the meantime, one positive externality of the fact that this ritual is about <i>ort</i> is that, in reading this short post, you learned a new word exclusively through repeated exposure. Nobody defined ort for you, but, if pressed to define the word, you could probably get pretty close to the dictionary definition. This is the power of embedded, indirect vocabulary instruction. So thanks for reading, and congratulations on your new word - you ort to be very proud of yourself.<br />
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Sorry about that last one...Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-67996330307106490072013-05-11T19:30:00.003-07:002013-05-11T19:30:54.849-07:00Should kids read less?<div>
Instead of reading for four hours a day, I think our kids would be better off reading for two hours a day and consuming carefully selected media (movies, television programs, podcasts, plays, and the like) for the remaining two hours. Here I mean National Geographic specials, Mythbusters, historical speeches, and anything else that meets essentially the same level of criteria we would set for the books and texts our kids read.) Real Housewife fans, sorry for getting your hopes up.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
When you're reading, assuming what you're reading meets some minimum bar of quality, you are doing a couple of things:</div>
<div>
#1. practicing decoding, fluency, and comprehension skills (i.e. practicing reading), and</div>
<div>
#2. learning something about the world that can someday apply to other texts you'll read, or, in a more broad sense, other situations you'll encounter. This means context, content knowledge, and vocabulary.</div>
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<br /></div>
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When you're watching TV, you're not doing #1. Well, you're not practicing decoding or fluency, but you are practicing some sort of comprehension skills. And, unless your decoding and fluency skills are incredibly advanced, you're doing #2 much, much faster. By "doing #2", I mean building context, content knowledge, and vocabulary - not pooping. Grow up.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Just like professional athletes build their football abilities on the field/court/pitch part of the time, and in the weight room the other part of the time, we need to start targeting the knowledge gaps in more efficient ways than waiting for a child to sound out and slog through text he doesn't yet understand. Of course, the underlying philosophy here is that content knowledge (specific "background knowledge" for a given text) is essential for reading comprehension, and matters much more than a more generalized list of reading strategies.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
If you're not convinced, I invite you to read the first three paragraphs of Laura Ingalls Wilder's "The Long Winter", a 4th-grade-level book, and think about what circumstances (in terms of applying reading strategies and knowing something about the world) would lead to a middle-school student from New Haven to be able to answer the questions that follow. What would such a student from New Haven have to have experienced in his/her education (or in his/her life) in order to fully comprehend these three paragraphs and accurately answer the questions that follow?</div>
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1. What does "corked it tightly" mean?</div>
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2. When does this story take place (what time of year? what time of day?)</div>
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3. Show me the motions Laura likely used when she "drew up a pailful of water".</div>
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4. After Laura had drawn the pailful of water, why did she rinse the jug?</div>
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5. What caused the prairie to shimmer? What color is it likely shimmering?</div>
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You and your kids can strategize away - good luck with that. In the meantime, we'll be driving to Iowa (hey Trpkosh), following the position of the sun, and handling hot, dark objects while discussing how color affects heat absorption and how evaporation has a cooling effect. Or, at the very least, we'll be watching TV and movies about the prairie, and building our knowledge of the world. You may decode one percent faster from the extra reading practice, but we will have a leg up when it comes to forming a coherent mental model of what we're reading.</div>
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As a bonus, here is a video of a 'science walk' my daughter Barbara and I took last week. She undoubtedly grew as a reader during these 45 minutes - more, I'd say, than if we had taken 45 minutes to read about flowers and erosion. Enjoy!</div>
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Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-43438918526812507252013-04-28T08:41:00.000-07:002013-04-28T08:41:23.996-07:00Do Whales Eat Bears?This is a post about messing around, but it's also about background knowledge, conceptual change, and inquiry. The genesis of this is described below, but the driving force behind the final YouTube video was a chance to entertain Joseph. This one's for you, <i>compadre</i>.<br />
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Sebastian (age 5) asked me today, "Daddy, do whales eat bears?" I thought it was an interesting question, and a good opportunity for me to practice building conceptual change. So I failed right out of the gate by not asking him why he thought whales might eat grizzly bears. But then I quickly redeemed myself with the following line of questioning:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifRThX_fABRVP_E3PfnhiwdWsW8M9tNpgLEFI9kREhkk8F4fpGrRE2dgTxW-IxWoeSXGUBn3OBcSDTChVbqCRUVEDdrHhvcEbqVJA90UOOhLzZOzYE0yummgEyE3mYCNiT1qbtgTsFD1HJ/s1600/keypoints.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifRThX_fABRVP_E3PfnhiwdWsW8M9tNpgLEFI9kREhkk8F4fpGrRE2dgTxW-IxWoeSXGUBn3OBcSDTChVbqCRUVEDdrHhvcEbqVJA90UOOhLzZOzYE0yummgEyE3mYCNiT1qbtgTsFD1HJ/s320/keypoints.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Me: Where do grizzly bears live?<br />Sebastian: Grizzly bears live in caves.<br />Me: Right; where do whales live?<br />Sebastian: They live under the ocean.<br />Me: So can whales eat grizzly bears?<br />Sebastian: No.<br />Me: Why not?<br />Sebastian: Because they don't live in the same place.<br />...<br />Sebastian: Then what <i>does</i> eat bears?</blockquote>
This was fantastic. I asked what he thought, and he didn't know. It turns out I didn't really know, either (my guess was "some humans"), so I asked my good friend Google. Then Sebastian and I read this website together:<br />
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<a href="http://www.whateats.com/what-eats-bears">http://www.whateats.com/what-eats-bears</a><br />
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Here's a screenshot, so you can follow along:<br />
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<br />
Here was our line of questioning:<br />
<br />
After the first paragraph:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Me: So what eats bears?<br />Sebastian: Bears eat other bears.<br />Me: Wow! That's messed up. What else might eat some bears?<br />Sebastian: [points to the newt from the unrelated picture to the right] This?<br />Me: Let's go back to the text to find out.<br />Sebastian: Oh, bears.<br />Me: Read the first sentence for me again. [He reads it.]<br />Sebastian: Oh, so tigers eat bears sometimes.<br />Me: You're right. Do they eat all kinds of bears?<br />Sebastian: No; they only eat little bears.</blockquote>
I actually think this was the right sequence. Going back to look for evidence is a good place to start, and I'm starting to see, as a teacher, that there is a huge connection between the practice of looking for text evidence to support an assertion and the idea of conceptual change: We're looking to confirm or refute what we believe, and the way to do it is to look at real evidence.<br />
<br />
So Sebastian reads me the second paragraph, and we dig into which types of bears are most dangerous to other bears. We have a short conversation about grizzly bears, Sebastian assures me he is not afraid of grizzly bears because he knows Tae Kwon Do, and I remind him that he actually should be afraid of grizzly bears because they are dangerous and will eat you:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Me: If a grizzly bear and a black bear are in the same place, which one might eat the other?<br />Sebastian: The grizzly bear might eat the black bear.<br />Me: Why?<br />Sebastian: That's because grizzly bears are bigger and stronger.<br />Me: And if, instead of a black bear, a grizzly bear is standing next to you, what might happen?<br />Sebastian: The grizzly bear might eat me.</blockquote>
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Bingo. I don't want my kid going all Tim Treadwell just because he is a yellow belt in Tae Kwon Do. Notice also that we've covered a bunch of topics in some surface-level depth that we will continue to build on in lots of future conversations: Asia, the fact that there are many types of bears, the vague idea that you can't be eaten by something that is far, far away from you, and some sort of a reciprocal relationship between A-eats-B and B-is-eaten-by-A.<br />
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Then, in an homage to the great Joseph Yrigollen and Kyle of <a href="http://realultimatepower.net/">realultimatepower.net</a> fame, I wrap it all up with a meta-lesson on Key Points:<br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-_EZPTKieE">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-_EZPTKieE</a><br />
<br />Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-33119510452457145062013-04-15T07:21:00.000-07:002013-04-15T07:21:34.598-07:00The Hard Sell<b>Imagine two schools:</b><br />
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School #1 has an air-tight system of accountability for students and spends an enormous amount of time and energy ensuring that kids, on the most basic level, follow all teacher directions, complete their homework, and re-do this work when it does not meet the standard.<br />
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School #2 invests the same amount of time as School #1, but instead uses this time to develop teachers' ability to plan stronger lessons, manage their classrooms using teacher 'moves', look at and respond to data, and infuse character education into their lessons.<br />
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To which school would you rather send your kids?<br />
At which school would you rather teach?<br />
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And yes, I will go ahead and acknowledge that this is a bit of a false choice, and that the "so what?" argument applies to both schools - if you plan a great lesson and nobody pays attention, so what? And if everybody pays attention but nothing worthwhile is planned, so what? I encourage you to put these misgivings aside and indulge me a bit here...<br />
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<br /></div>
For a long time, I thought I would want to send my kids to School #2, and I was certain that School #2 was a better place to work. I had seen a lot of School #1s make the transition to School #2s, and had even participated in a transition a lot like it at KIPP Fresno. I assumed this to be the enlightened path - it only natural to want to go beyond compliance and really dive head-first into better teaching. Besides, I attended some pretty great schools as a kid, and they were all like School #2.<br />
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<b>There were a few defining moments that helped change my mind:</b><br />
<br />
1. In 2010, we started KIPP Impact without a well-defined discipline system, and realized within the first week that this would inevitably lead to much less learning, less safety in the building, and, in the end, nothing but frustration and resignation as we watched kids make decisions that were not in their own best interests or in the best interests of those around them.<br />
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2. Also in 2010, I began working with a lot of Teach For America corps members who, despite their drive and passion, essentially had no learning going on in their classrooms because they were told to simply plan great lessons. They had not been taught to manage their classrooms, and their kids were suffering as a result.<br />
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3. In 2011, my daughter Barbara started kindergarten. I was largely absent from her life during this year and could not read to her and, at the end of her kindergarten year, she was far behind where she could have been in her reading. When I visited the school, many kids, including Barbara, were off task, and very little effort was made to get them back on task.<br />
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4. At this point, I've seen time and again the effect of basing a discipline system exclusively on teacher-student relationships, and it appears to be a key point of vulnerability in the design of many schools. One year of high teacher turnover and the school is set back significantly.<br />
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<b>So here's where I stand right now:</b><br />
<br />
School #2 can work when the school is staffed by veteran teachers who truly know their craft and have been teaching effectively for 10+ years. Let me add a condition here: This school should have no more than one less-experienced teacher joining the faculty in any given year.<br />
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However, any time there are less-experienced teachers involved, I am putting my money on School #1. Because here's the thing: School #3 has an airtight discipline system <b>and</b> puts time and energy into planning great lessons and teaching character and responding to student data. And the only path to School #3 is to start with School #1 (a strong accountability system) and then reap the rewards of time <b>not </b>spent dealing with discipline or making up for class time lost because of misbehavior or inattention.<br />
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<b>But WHY?</b><br />
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Premise #1: Let's begin with the premise that kids, much like adults, don't always act in their own long-term self-interest. Then let's remind ourselves that it is our job to act in students' best long-term interest, even when they don't.<br />
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Premise #2: Kids learn more by doing than they do by staring out the window, messing with the other kids around them, sleeping, or pretending to work. Yes, they would probably almost always learn more from hands-on activities than worksheets, provided they are actually doing those hands-on activities, and not simply building towers using fraction strips. But worksheets with teacher feedback and opportunities to learn from mistakes are better than window-staring, right?<br />
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Premise #3: Though we don't always make rational decisions in the long run, we are remarkably consistent at making rational decisions in the short term (see Freakonomics.)<br />
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So the key, then, is to provide short-term rationale that help students lean towards what is actually in their best interest in the long run. If you don't do your homework, you will have to stay in from recess tomorrow. Though it may be more fun to mess around in class than to do your work, you really don't want the teacher to call home about your choices. The social capital you stand to gain from talking back to your teacher is not worth staying after school all week. And making the positive version of all of these choices, as it turns out, helps you <b>and all the kids around you</b> in the long run...even if that's not why you're making these choices.<br />
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Underlying all of this is Mike Goldstein's idea of the "misbehavior tax" (which he refers to <a href="http://www.startinganedschool.org/2010/11/08/four-types-of-misbehavior/" target="_blank">here</a>), which undercuts learning more than just about anything else in the classroom. This is not behavior for behavior's sake; it's behavior for the sake of work for the sake of learning.<br />
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<b>Added benefits of the hard sell</b><br />
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I've met a lot of teachers who want their classroom to be an egalitarian haven, where kids and teachers make every decision together, nobody has power over another, and positivity and kindness are the teacher's only tools to combat the negative effects of society. Ironically, these teachers' classrooms tend to be the places where kids are most cruel to each other, and where the teacher's own misgivings about being an authority figure have actually led to significantly less learning (and thus far less empowerment of students down the road.)<br />
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But the real world doesn't work like this. Even the children in your classroom who grow to become entrepreneurs will likely work for somebody else along the way and, even when they're independent, they'll still have to follow laws and pay taxes and, ideally, treat others with respect. Instead of teaching our kids to navigate a fantasy world in which nobody is in charge, let's teach them to deal with rules - even rules they may not like - and to work within those rules. (Note: This is <b>not</b> the same as 'the world is unfair, so let's be unfair', nor is it the same as 'you'll have homework in high school, so you need homework now'. This is more along the lines of, 'Show me a successful person, and I'll show you someone who grew up with rules.')<br />
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<b>Where can this go wrong?</b><br />
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If the school has a poorly defined curriculum, then a strong accountability system is only as good as individual teachers' ability to create, find, or modify great lessons. To all you new school leaders out there: Pick a curriculum from the beginning and go with it - I recommend something well-defined that makes sense to you.<br />
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If individual teachers are in charge of every part of this, i.e. if there is no administrative support structure, teachers will have no time to plan lessons, grade papers and give feedback, or sleep. The leadership of the school needs to take on the majority of the burden here.<br />
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If the school focuses on an air-tight accountability system but does not have a strong structure for supporting teachers with lesson planning and teaching, this could easily turn into the "everybody's working, but on nothing" scenario. Nine hours a day of intensely focused handwriting practice is probably not going to help kids get ahead in the world.<br />
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If the school never helps kids evaluate the choices they're making, so that they can make connections on their own between short-term desires and long-term rewards, the kids could have an adverse reaction to a lack of structure down the road, much like kids whose parents forbid drinking alcohol then go to college and indulge in binge drinking. Note what happens when we extend this metaphor: In many classrooms, teachers are trying to fight binge drinking in college by letting ten-year-olds drink as much as they want.Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-87471924458306842572013-03-31T14:38:00.002-07:002013-03-31T14:45:43.314-07:00Text Selection Matters, or STOP WASTING TIMELet me start by saying that I believe very few things more strongly than I believe what I am about to write. I've been wrong in the past - A LOT - but I would be shocked to find I am wrong about this one.<br />
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In my last post, I posed the following choice:<br />
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a) You could ride bikes together, encounter something interesting, and have lasting memories of the day.<br />
b) You could ride bikes together, encounter something interesting, and instantly forget the experience.</blockquote>
Option b) describes much of our current reading instruction, and we absolutely must change this. In this metaphor, the skill of riding bicycles symbolizes the skills of decoding and making meaning of printed text, commonly grouped together and referred to simply as <i>reading</i>. The experience itself, and the knowledge to be gained by riding the bicycle, refers to the content of what is read. Let me start by describing a practice that we see in many reading classes:<br />
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1. The teacher talks about a reading skill that students should practice, such as <i>finding the main idea</i> or <i>making inferences </i>or <i>identifying and interpreting examples of figurative language</i>. In the best of cases, this takes less than 10 minutes.<br />
2. The teacher then puts a text in front of students so that they can practice this skill. This text is not connected to anything the students have learned previously, so that the teacher can be sure the students are using today's strategy and not simply making connections to what has been previously learned.<br />
3. The students answer several comprehension questions about what they have read, and answer questions directly related to the day's aim, to ensure they are practicing applying the correct metacognitive strategies they are supposed to be applying.<br />
4. At the conclusion of the lesson, the teacher never speaks of the passage, or its contents, ever again. Students are not expected to remember what they have learned and, due to the desired novelty of each subsequent practice passage, they are passively encouraged to forget what they have read. the debrief inevitably focuses on the strategies students used, and make it clear to students that they are not expected to take any knowledge away from the passage. The words students have read are simply a vehicle for practicing today's skill.<br />
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To see an extreme version of this, pay attention to the "test prep" that is done in reading classes. Students across the country read disjointed passages and answer comprehension questions about them. At its peak, this practice takes hours away from other potential activities <i>every week</i>.<br />
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First, to the idea that kids need to be ready to read things they have never heard of, let me ask you how often you really read doctorate papers in physics (no cheating, cousin Sarah!) or how often you read just one academic paper on a totally unfamiliar topic. You don't, right? If you really care, you try to build a base of knowledge before diving into something so technical. And you can understand newspaper articles about things you don't know because the authors can assume some level of general knowledge, and fill in the rest of the gaps for you.<br />
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I'm not going to spend the next three hours ranting about the relative merits of skills-based reading instruction. Instead, I want to make a couple of simple propositions:<br />
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1. Increased knowledge of the world will allow you to understand more of what you read.<br />
2. Reading skills aside, education should be biased towards knowing more things, rather than less things.<br />
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#1 is really the point here, but even if you don't believe it, #2 is a nice backup.<br />
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Back to the original bike-riding choice, this time framed in terms of reading:<br />
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a) You could read something, learn a few interesting facts, and have lasting memories of the material (which would positively affect your ability to read future texts about a similar topic), or </blockquote>
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b) You could read something interesting, encounter a few interesting facts, and instantly forget what you have read.</blockquote>
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Absurd as it sounds, we often make choice b. We put material in front of our kids and all but instruct them to forget what they have learned, all because of our notion that <i>what </i>students read doesn't matter - based on our actions, only <i>how</i> they read seems to matter. I don't buy it.</div>
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Text selection matters. And it matters even more when taken cumulatively. Even if we still focus on skills (which, I'll admit, I think is largely a waste of time, compared to the opportunity cost of learning material that will allow students to acquire new vocabulary much faster, and recognize all of the information that writers assume they already know), we at least owe it to our kids to use the time they spend reading to also build a coherent body of knowledge.</div>
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Let's be much more intentional about the things our kids read. Eventually, we'll become much more aware of what core knowledge we're helping our kids develop, and we'll align this with the most frequent assumptions authors make, using, oh, I don't know, <i>the Core Knowledge sequence,</i> or something similar. But a necessary first step is a recognition that time spent reading material we don't actually want our kids to learn anything from is a terrible use of time. Even in fictional works, there is always something to be learned. Meaningless, disjointed texts are not only taking all of the joy out of reading; they are also taking away most of the learning.</div>
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As I read this, my 5-year-old son is sitting next to me reading about sharks and keeps shouting things like "Daddy! Sharks don't have bones!" and "their skin is like SANDPAPER! We used sandpaper before in my class!" Looking backwards, it's a good thing his teacher thought it was important that he use sandpaper; <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5EgyuiCF4S4B7ARMdia-dHN7Q-ibxOMynMBNeUep5SICUt_RKmNq2CW9yCa7ratadxGyGqzSD8S4nMz3vOJ92l6oXrAJAndBdh7uJJIPU7nckApxb7jCnOfzrW9oPOzXm5QO_rCsdm4gf/s1600/Shark+Attack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5EgyuiCF4S4B7ARMdia-dHN7Q-ibxOMynMBNeUep5SICUt_RKmNq2CW9yCa7ratadxGyGqzSD8S4nMz3vOJ92l6oXrAJAndBdh7uJJIPU7nckApxb7jCnOfzrW9oPOzXm5QO_rCsdm4gf/s320/Shark+Attack.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
otherwise the reference to a shark's "skin like sandpaper" would have been lost on him. Looking forward, he will be in better shape next time he reads about marine life, not because we have practiced making inferences about sharks, but because he is beginning to grasp predator/prey relationships, variety within a species, and the vastness of the ocean. We'll build on this the next time we read about the ocean, or about other predators, or the next time an author compares a character's motions to those of a shark, or the next time someone is called a <i>remora</i>, and so on...</div>
<br />Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-46187610316169635242013-03-30T08:01:00.001-07:002013-03-30T08:04:01.081-07:00Getting Less out of Bicycle RidingOn this beautiful spring weekend, you could choose one of the following ways to spend a morning with your child:<br />
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a) You could ride bikes together, encounter something interesting, and have lasting memories of the day.</div>
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b) You could ride bikes together, encounter something interesting, and instantly forget the experience.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZVC2eCk-Ssl_mKZAj485kesGn3ahuzjs1WANsS0WKl8rF0luIkcyDpZY27rIpon5ACmvWnGf-u-DiTwhQYTodUkexVkDTxROtG5N7_MJnE6oVeGm29ILn9vmSnS-XGwlncQSGSV7zRf8L/s1600/Memory+eraser.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZVC2eCk-Ssl_mKZAj485kesGn3ahuzjs1WANsS0WKl8rF0luIkcyDpZY27rIpon5ACmvWnGf-u-DiTwhQYTodUkexVkDTxROtG5N7_MJnE6oVeGm29ILn9vmSnS-XGwlncQSGSV7zRf8L/s200/Memory+eraser.jpg" width="200" /></a>Now suppose you have this forced choice every weekend. Or every day. Would you choose for your child <i>and</i> learn something new from every experience, or simply to practice riding her bike? Without a doubt, riding a bike is a good thing to spend time doing. Practicing this skill will make your daughter more proficient at a skill that is useful for fitness, transportation, and both personal and fossil-fuel based independence. But wouldn't it be nice if you were actually riding <i>somewhere</i>, or at least noticing new things along the way, or, I don't know, learning something about the world?<br />
to practice riding her bike </div>
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What current, near-ubiquitous educational practice am I describing here? </div>
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There are certainly many right answers; I'll share my take on this soon.</div>
Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7771001836026553701.post-84876486089892524552013-03-25T16:52:00.001-07:002013-03-25T16:52:10.577-07:00The First Rule of SongfestAt KIPP Fresno in 2004, we wanted to start a Friday tradition that had enjoyed some success at other similar schools, so we started Songfest. We copied the lyrics to songs that had meaning, and prepared to sing them together. Our first song was Lean On Me, followed by We Are Family, then Patience (by Guns 'n Roses.) After that, I'm less sure. There was "It's the End of the World as we Know it", likely with more consistent capitalization, but it all became a blur pretty fast.<br />
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The first rule of songfest may very well have killed the whole thing: Everybody must sing.</div>
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At the time, this seemed reasonable enough. If the goal is for everybody to feel the power of this positive music, everybody should participate. We couldn't, in good conscience, let a kid opt out of something that was going to help her. We wouldn't let a kid opt out of learning to read, or learning multiplication facts, so it seemed natural that a child should not have the choice to avoid all of the positive benefits of singing your heart out as part of a wonderful group of enthusiastic young people.</div>
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The results were mixed, at best. A lot of kids sang and had a good time, and there was some level of joy in the room. There were also a lot of kids choosing to opt out, leading to a lot of frustration from us - the adults in the room - who were trying to make sure that everybody sang.</div>
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In 2012, human genius Joseph Yrigollen, this time at KIPP Jacksonville, came up with something much better: A class vs. class game of "don't forget the lyrics." You have likely never seen a group of young people more enthusiastic than the 5th and 6th graders of KIPP Jacksonville singing their hearts out to "We are Young" and "Someone Like You" (by Adele, not Rod Stewart.) I recently brought Joseph's innovation to our school in New Haven, Elm City College Prep, and our kids' rendition of Taylor Swift's "We are Never Getting Back Together" (like, ever) still ranks as one of the highlights of my (our?) year. </div>
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Let's say there are three goals of songfest:<br />
1. Foster a sense of team and family<br />
2. Have fun<br />
3. Share the positive messages of the songs<br />
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Our original forced-singing approach may have had an edge in #3, but even that was too often obscured by the First Rule of Songfest. For goals #1 and #2, the Yrigollen method was a clear winner. And, though you may laugh, I think there is something to learn from Taylor Swift's steadfast resolve to not make the same mistake again, Adele's soulful decision to find her happiness elsewhere, and Fun.'s, well, Fun.<br />
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Song selection might have something to do with the relative success of Don't-Forget-The-Lyrics: We have recently chosen songs that many of our kids already know, and these are songs that many of our kids are choosing to listen to outside of school. There is also less teaching involved here, as we're not intending to teach the lyrics or the message explicitly. Still, I think the biggest difference is in the setup. I try to imagine applying the First Rule of Songfest to our game of "don't forget the lyrics", and I see it falling flat. The biggest difference is what Rafe Esquith calls the "soft sell."</div>
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The soft sell is pretty straightforward: Don't spend so much time and effort making people do something they don't want to do. Instead, spend time and effort getting them to want to do it. Rafe doesn't <i>make </i>his kids come to school at 6:30 for math club, but within the first month of school he usually has 100% of his class coming to math club daily. He doesn't force his kids to take guitar lessons with him during recess, but most of his kids take him up on the offer. Rafe is a master of convincing kids that they want to do what is good for them. How does he do it?</div>
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1. For anything that he is going to soft sell (which, for Rafe, is most things), he makes sure it is clear that <b>this is not mandated</b>. As soon as the First Rule of Songfest is put into place, it automatically becomes something that kids want to do <i>less</i>. Being told you don't have a choice is often the best way to turn people off to an idea. Though it is essentially the opposite of our approach to homework, Rafe's soft sell is extraordinarily effective - you don't <i>have</i> to read tonight, but if you do, a lot of good things will happen. Looking back at how painfully we learned this lesson, the new First Rule of Songfest should probably become "Don't talk about Songfest."</div>
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2. Rafe builds a strong in-group bond between the kids in his class. The implicit message is that <i>those of us in this room are special</i>: We love to learn, we are nice to others, we are going to college, and we will become extraordinary. This develops the kind of positive peer pressure that allows wonderful things to happen.<br />
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3. Drawing on Kohlberg's six levels of moral development, Rafe consistently talks up his kids' small choices and makes them feel like heroes for choosing to do hard things on their own. This is tough to celebrate when your only real choice is "do this thing" or "detention."<br />
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In my next post, I'll explore the opposite of the soft sell, and explain how an airtight homework system and certain heavily influenced decisions have helped to build strong habits <i>and</i> solid academic skills. In the meantime, what are some examples you have seen of the soft sell, or places where you have seen it fall apart? Let us know in the comments!</div>
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Hawke Talkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541410031318289708noreply@blogger.com0