Entry # 13: Building Dreams --
Supporting Students' Desire to Learn
On the Middlweb Listserv we are having
a discussion about advisories and their importance for our middle schoolers.
It seems there is a rift between those of us who embrace this time and wish
we had more of it, and those who "perceive advisory as an extra, that
takes away instructional time, causes extra work for teachers, and is so
contrived in an attempt to 'connect' to kids, that it is irrelevant."
I heard this complaint by teachers all the time at my old school. I'm hearing
variations of it now in my new position. I think this thinking goes to the
heart of your teaching philosophy. You either believe that understanding
your students and their talents and needs is the starting point, or you
believe that the "subject" is the starting point and the other
"stuff" amounts to just so many distractions.
I don't think there's any substitute for getting to really know kids in
terms of classroom management or curriculum. If kids feel like they're just
a number in your class, they won't respond in the same way and neither will
you.
It's up to the advisor to make advisory relevant vs. contrived. If I were
in a classroom right now, teaching science, the election would not be part
of my regularly scheduled plan, but how can a teacher ignore what's going
on in the world? When we do, don't the kids take note and pull back?
Sneaking in real conversation
As a non-advisor I was always trying to sneak in real conversation. The
other night I was pleased to see a teacher on the news who was conducting
an election and multiple hand counts to concretely demonstrate the possibilities
for errors. Talk about a teachable moment!
When Columbine went down, lots of classes didn't touch it. It was disturbing
and it wasn't part of the curriculum. Kids didn't want to talk at first,
but didn't we all need to "connect"? Wasn't that the biggest lesson
of the tragedy?
In Making Big Schools Feel
Small by John Lounsbury and Paul George, it seems it all starts with
making the connection. In Michael Wynn's book, Building Dreams, it's
the same message.
I find myself returning to the question of the relationship between teaching
and learning. Can we teach, if students don't want to learn from us? Will
they want to learn from "strangers"? Can we really teach "strangers"?
In the book Schools
That Learn by Senge et al, they begin with a section called "The
Remembered Moment" and they ask everyone to think about a time when
they felt truly supported in their desire to learn.
Maybe we should all do that with our colleagues, our students and their
parents. If we then compared the key characteristics of those experiences.
I wonder what patterns we would find... I' ll hazard a guess that there
wouldn't be much about standards or test taking skills in our memories.
Imagine the lessons we might learn, lessons that would point the way in
terms of school and course design, content and curriculum.
[Note to reader: MiddleWeb listserve members are recalling times when *they*
felt truly supported in their desire to learn. We'll be posting their recollections
on this page.]
A student-centered focus
Yesterday I attended sessions at the convention of the National Alliance
of Black School Educators, held here in Philadelphia.
In the conference program, I learned about this organization's mission to
"raise our collective voices in an urgent demand for equality and excellence
in education". At every session I heard presenters who bore that mission
out and kept returning to the need for a student-centered focus.
I listened to a mathematician who spoke concretely about the "need
to know" factor when teaching Algebra. He clearly understood the need
for African American students to not only grasp, but to excel, in mathematics,
yet he also understood that a bunch of algorithms on a page were not enough
to motivate their minds and hearts.
His presentation reminded me of my experience as a thirtysomething with
profound math anxiety. I had to take math to pursue my overall goal of a
teaching degree. It was a hurdle that scared me. However, when I got to
class and there wasn't a textbook, I relaxed. The professor was going to
use real world problems to teach us how to solve linear equations with multiple
variables.
I not only survived this class, I looked forward to it. I became proficient
and received an "A." During the class, I imagined myself as a
GM executive trying to decide how many cars I should make with two doors,
four doors and or a hatchback feature. The teacher connected us with his
subject; he demystified the algorithms.
In my second session I listened to presenters from a small school in Providence,
RI as they described a school where parents, teachers and students develop
individualized education plans for every single student. It's a school without
classes, grades and many of the other trappings we tend to equate with learning.
These teachers from the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center
shared some impressive data about their students and their ability to win
college scholarships with their portfolios and demonstrations of their own
learning.
Helping students build dreams
My final presentation of the day was titled "Closing the Achievement
Gap: Developing Classrooms and Schools of Excellence." The presenter
was Mychal Wynn, the author of the Building
Dreams book I mentioned earlier.
Mr. Wynn began by asking us if we knew what our assignment was. He didn't
want to hear about our mission statements, he wanted to know about our understanding
of the real deal, and our vision for achieving it. In fact he wanted to
know if we had three goals that would directly support our vision.
He shared his experience as a student with low English grades and a dream
to be a writer. He spoke of a counselor that looked at his records and told
him to set his sights on engineering. He wondered aloud about what might
have happened if his counselor had instead spoken to him about the discrepancy
between his grade and his dream, and the need to address that divide.
He talked about clustering students based on their personal visions or dreams
and then designing assembly programs that address the steps they need to
take to realize those dreams. He demonstrated the ways to weave in all of
the required content coupled with this student-centered approach.
He did all of this and more, not as a way to "accommodate" students
with learning deficits, but rather as a way to inspire all of our students
so they'd want to be informed. He offered concrete ways to revamp everything
from bulletin boards to student posture, so that all roads would lead to
both the actualization of student dreams and the school's vision of closing
the achievement gap.
As I listened to Mr. Wynn I felt rejuvenated. I bought one of his books,
he has 15! Not bad for a kid with poor English grades... Now the question
is, what am I going to do tomorrow to share what I learned. How can I start
having those conversations about "remembered moments" and dreams
with folks from my twelve schools...hmm?
[Editor's note: Deb is co-moderator of the
new MiddleWeb listserve.]
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