Website

Well done, Anneke--obviously I need to start putting photos in my websites!!  And your efforts to get students to take responsibility for missing class are impressive--I look forward to hearing  how it plays out.

What would you think of sending your link to your site to others in physics, in case they want to attempt something similar?

And where do you find your photos??!

THANKS,
Tom

Website!

Just a quick post to say that I'm testing out using a website with my Physics students: https://sites.google.com/site/sharbotlakephysics/.

In my first practicum, I spent HUGE amounts of time helping students catch up on missed classes during lunch, prep period and after school. My students quickly learned that they could get one-on-one teaching if they missed class, which increased the incentive to miss class.

So the new policy is this: if a student misses class, they will first download the blank notes from the website, read the pages in the text, ask a friend to help them fill in the notes, and do the homework. Then they can come to ask me questions. I hope it will increase responsibility for their own learning. So far, they have responded very well to the idea of a website.

School to Community

I'm very excited to start my second placement, returning to my 11U/12C Physics class in the mornings and the School to Community class in the afternoons. I miss my great Physics students, and can't wait to dive into Electromagnetism with them (Karyn has a great idea for building speakers out of Tim Horton's cups, wire and magnets, which I hope we can try!). And I am especially looking forward to working with the School to Community class, which is the topic of this particular post.

I love even just the name of the School to Community class: isn't that what education should be for every student? A place where students can learn useful skills that they know they will use in their local community, and a place to practice those skills by doing helpful things for the community. In my high school, the School to Community students learned about taking care of the environment not by sitting in a desk and studying the greenhouse effect, but by actually caring for the environment practically: they ran a recycling program in the school. It is certainly a challenging class to teach, and I greatly admire the creativity, dedication, and care of the School to Community teachers who I've met. I think that special education teachers are truly leading the way for good pedagogy, which could (I think should) be incorporated in different ways into any classroom.

I'm looking forward to finding out how they are learning to capitalize on their strengths to do the important things that they were born to do. It takes a lot of creativity and patience to help students learn to develop and expand these strengths and abilities, and I am really looking forward to observing and practicing in this placement. I have so much to learn in this class! Most of all, I can't wait to get to know the students. I've seen amazing encouragement and valuing of differences in School to Community classes before, and I'm very excited to be introduced to this new classroom dynamic.

A bit of a background: I know that I'm very biased. Working with exceptional students has been my passion for a long time. I was fortunate to grow up with a wonderful friend, who was later diagnosed with Aspergers, who spent countless hours dreaming up creative stories with me. She's also a computer genuis, and so in the days when I was still in the ancient computer game world of "pipe dream" and "worms", she introduced me to the new world of "civilization" and other such games (As an aside, she's still a computer whiz, and has gone on to study computers and cognitive science in university). We had a lot of fun together as kids. She showed me the brilliance, but also the social pain of living with Autism, even though neither of us knew that her challenges had an official label. There were times that I didn't understand why she would react the way she did to social situations, but there was an unspoken understanding that it was okay. That friendship taught me a lot about seeing people for the amazing resilient, determined, brilliant people who they are, and tossing the negative lenses school culture can use to view people with exceptionalities out the window.

This friend continues to inspire me, but she isn't alone in doing remarkable things with her abilities. I had the privilege of growing up with several other amazing people with exceptionalities. The oldest sister of one of my best friends has the most beautiful heart, and despite her disability, every time I see her, she always has something encouraging to tell me. Her smile can brighten any sad day. When I was very young, my Opa (Opa is Dutch for "grandpa") was suffering from Alzheimers Disease, but could still humm along when we sang hymns and kept his laughing twinkle in his eyes. I started working at camps, with respite care, a group home, and volunteering at hospitals and retirement homes, where I've gotten to know many many more wonderful people with exceptionalities. I could talk all day about the amazing things I have learned from these remarkable people. I met a young woman who had learned to handwrite, draw beautifully, shoot arrows, independently drive her wheelchair, hold the attention of a whole room, and so many other abilities - all while being paralyzed from the neck down. I currently meet with a brilliant man who can hold each letter in every word of a complex sentence in his head for long periods of time while he spells each letter through blinking. I've met a woman who is both non-verbal and blind, and can communicate genuine love in ways that I admire and aspire to. I've met person after person after person who has done and is doing amazing things by capitalizing on their strengths. Any time I stop and think about it, I am overwhelmed by the remarkable people I have the wonderful privilege to know.

So that is where I'm coming from, and hence my excitement for this great opportunity to teach in a School to Community class. Yet, while I know that I am certainly biased by these positive experiences, I was still quite taken aback by several of the responses of others to my good news that I'll be teaching in a special education class. There seems to be a surprising misconception that the School to Community class is somehow not a "real" class or "not as important" as an academic Physics class! I think it's quite the opposite: in many cases, I think the School to Community classes have really got what education is all about, far better than some Physics classes! I'm hoping to take what I learn about differentiated instruction and teaching concepts that are applicable to real life in this placement and apply it to my Physics classes, since I think special education is leading the way for all education. There couldn't be a more "real" class in the school.

I'll keep you updated on what I learn there!

Dewey

How fortunate that I mentioned Dewey and that may have nudged you to listen a little differently to the lecture!  Hope you get a chance to read him a bit too.  I see you can read Democracy and Education online at http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/dewey.html
You are certainly convincing me that you are one of those occasional (rare?) people who really gets it about the words and the tune going together!  I really enjoy how much you are writing and how well you are writing.
There was a time when how well one could teach was considered in selecting people to teach in this faculty. Now all that matters is your research potential and how much you have already published.  And there are research seminars for faculty and graduate students but rarely are there any seminars about teaching.  I did manage to get a "Teacher Education Affinity Group" going and meeting from time to time but that seems to have faded away--perhaps writing this will encourage me to try to revive it!
Thanks for brightening my day with more refreshing insights into the complexities of teaching!
Tom

Dear Dewey

I laughed when you mentioned Dewey, Tom. One of the lectures in September and another one today was about Dewey, but I must admit I initially wrote his philosophy off as being not related to my personal philosophies because I took away the incorrect notion that Dewey didn't support creativity and relating school to life. I think I interpreted the September lecture this way simply because Dewey's philosophy was presented in a very disconnected-from-life experience. I listened more closely to the details of the lecture on Dewey today, and sure enough - he is all about learning from inquiry into genuine life problems! It's amazing how much the style of teaching impacts the message that gets remembered, eh! Consciously or not, I related Dewey's philosophy to the feeling that the lecture created. When I listened to the September lecture, I was feeling: "This sounds like a lot of fancy words about Dewey's life and wife and history; that doesn't relate to me, and I can't do any creativity thinking here", and so I connected Dewey's philosophy to the feeling I experienced of irrelevance. I was totally off the mark about Dewey! Thanks for prompting me to give Dewey a second chance. I also fortunately have a friend in philosophy who defended Dewey as well. It's reassuring to know that Dewey understands everything I've been feeling and experiencing.

This was also a good reminder of the method being the message. Emotions in class are extremely powerful teaching tools. For example, when we cancel variables in problem solving, I make an ka-boom explosion sound effect. I've always done this for both my own learning and my teaching (with different volumes of ka-boom's depending on the situation - I even ka-boom quietly in my head during exams). Why? Because it's exciting! I'm not just cancelling a random greek letter with another greek letter, I'm picturing a giant hot air balloon which was accidentally filled with hydrogen gas instead of air, exploding into an awesome fireball when the flame is ignited (all people standing a safe distance back, and wearing safety goggles of course)! That mass on the bottom of the fraction hit the mass on top, and now they are both cancelled in a giant exciting explosion!! And cancelling variables should be exciting, because when we cancel out variables, we're getting closer to narrowing in on our solution! Goodness, I'm getting excited just writing about it!

Excitement for excitement's sake isn't the point, however. I believe this excitement actually makes me a better problem solver: if cancelling variables reminded me of visiting the dentist, I'd do it when necessary, but I certainly wouldn't go out of my way and rearrange my equation to make cancelling variables possible. But since cancelling variables is so exciting and fun, my eyes are jumping around even the biggest scariest equation on the look out for ways to simplify it, and of course, once I've exploded a few variables, the answer usually just falls right out of the giant cloud of fire. I want to help my students develop their own images and positive emotions when they learn any skill in Physics, so my method of teaching needs to be one that induces positive emotions and images.

Now that I'm on the topic, I might as well mention another point this experience learning about Dewey brings up in my mind. I was reminded today how extremely important it is for teachers to not just believe their message, but to believe in their message enough to actually do it. It sounds ridiculous that a teacher would try to teach us that the only way to learn is through inquiry into life-related problems using a teaching method that was not at all inquiry-friendly with few connections to real life. But it happens - even with very good teachers. In today's job market, I can't imagine Queen's hiring anyone less than highly experienced, well-established, knowledgable, and talented teachers. I feel quite nervous to judge these teachers because they are so much more experienced, knowledgeable and skilled than I currently am. But as can be observed at McArthur, even some of those great teachers can easily disconnect their philosophies of education from their actual teaching styles. Therefore, even if it seems obvious, and almost ridiculous to write down, I'm going to write it - mostly as a way of keeping myself accountable. I'm going to practice what I preach. If I truly believe that creativity is essential for learning and using Physics (and I do believe this), than my students are going to learn in creative ways. My philosophy of education is not just going to be something that I have written down in my portfolio somewhere: I'm going to believe in it enough to actually use it.
Aside: It's interesting how much learning in one area of life influences another - I feel like I'm preaching out of James 2 right now (the gist of that chapter is: "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds...You believe that there is one God. Good! Even demons believe that - and shudder"). Disconnecting faith philosophies from real-life actions, such as loving people, has disastrous results (which do happen all too often!) for Christians. So maybe that's why I feel strongly about making sure my philosophy of teaching lines up with my practice.

So all that to say, thanks for the encouragement to look a little closer at Dewey! He does have a helpful philosophy after all. I just need to dust it off the powerpoint slides, and put it to good use in my classroom.

VERY impressive discussion!

Thanks, Anneke, for some excellent reading--quality and quantity very impressive.  Keep up the good thinking!  I'd be interested in what you see as some of the positions other students occupy in between the two extremes. I've never read enough of John Dewey to be sure, but I think he argued 100 years ago that school and life must be interconnected.  Obviously, his message did not carry the day, and we continue to have curricula that focus on the facts and ideas that students must learn with little or not attention to the connections between the ideas and everyday life. The student perspectives that you describe are ones that they have been taught--by their former teachers. Quite unintentionally of course, by teachers who weren't making the efforts you describe to at least create problems that the students could at least have a chance of connecting to everyday life.
THANKS for some great reading, keep up the good thinking!
Tom

School vs. Life

Since finishing my first practicum, I've been talking with people and thinking a bit about how the students in my science class thought about school in relation to themselves. I saw two extremes: students who thought of school as a definition of themselves, and students who saw school as unrelated to their lives. In between, of course, I saw the many students who found themselves between those two extremes. For this post, however, I want to focus on the students at the two extremes because they have taught me a lot lately.

Some students (as a generalization, this seemed to be more true of some of the young women in my class) adopted school as a very large part of themselves: they spent their free time doing school-related activities, they defined themselves by their marks and therefore experienced even a slightly low mark as a failure of self, and they put school above everything else in life. This view of school was positive in some ways - the students who saw school as an extension of themselves had more commitment to work hard and generally set and met high achievement goals. They produced excellent work which met each expectation I had outlined precisely. This view, however, also posed challenges for those students - they tended to put school above learning, and tended to be more concerned with what was on the test than what they were curious about. They also put a great deal of stress on themselves - when failure in one assignment means to be a failure as a human being, it is clear where the stress and fear of failure comes from. I am worried both about their personal health living with that stress, and the limits on creativity that the fear of failure places.

Other students (again, as a generalization, the students on this end of the scale tended to be some of the young men in my classes) saw school as completed unrelated and disconnected from their life: their conversations even in class rarely centered on any school activities, low marks didn't phase them, and they didn't see value in learning for their life: school just got in the way of life. This way of looking at school was positive in several ways: the students had no fears of failure to squelch their creativity, the students were motivated by authentic tasks only, so their way of thinking challenged me to make my assignments and problems highly relevant to their lives - a teaching practice that I think is very important for all the learners in my class. The students who didn't see value in school for it's own sake were like a sounding board for me to make sure that my questions were truly relevant to them. Unfortunately, the disconnect between school and life was problematic as well, especially in the area of responsibility. These students had an unstated belief that if they fell behind or missed an assignment, it was fully the teacher's responsibility to make sure they were caught up. These students were rarely taking the opportunity to improve their learning skills because they had trouble making the connection between becoming good learners and becoming successful contributing global citizens (whatever that means to a young man who just wants to go huntin', and doesn't yet realize that he's learning an important skill of providing for a family). I am worried for these students too. They have so much potential, but they will need learning skills and a stronger sense of personal responsibility for completing work to reach that potential.

But after all those student observations, it really wouldn't be fair to finish this post without looking at things from the other side of the desk. Who teaches students that school should either take over life or be completely disconnected from it? In one year, it could be me in those shoes.

I'm on my way to becoming just one of the many white female teachers that every boy and young man sees in front of the classroom as he grows up. Why should he connect school to himself, when the whole institution is clearly a "girly" thing? Starting in elementary school, where the proportion of female teachers to male teachers is even more ridiculous, boys see plenty of female role models engaged in learning and teaching, but very few men. I think that their thought process - that school is not related to their gender - flows reasonably (though very unfortunately) from their observations.

Also, I think there is a common thread between the challenges faced by students who embrace school as synonymous with their personal identity and students who see little connection between themselves and school. That common thread has a lot to do with the set up of our schools: removing students from life into an institutionalized building in which it's hard to give learning context.

For example, think of our art classrooms which are located in a factory/institutional setting? It's true that VanGogh did produce some great art while he was institutionalized for insanity, but I can hardly see that as an ideal location to do art! I'd love to exchange art classrooms for art apprenticeships. I would expect that there are many local artists who would be happy to pass on their love of art by taking on a small number of students as apprentices. Of course there are logistical challenges - would it be possible to find enough varied placements for students to try many different kinds of art? And the uniformity and standardization of education would be left floundering, no doubt. But students could be with real artists doing art that matters! At the very least, the art classroom needs to be incorporated into the community - otherwise, what is the point? It's far more valuable to learn colour theory by designing and painting a mural for the kids wing of the local hospital than to colour in boxes on an exercise sheet, which will be dropped in the garbage immediately after class. It's far more valuable to learn perspective by designing and building a stage set with a false sense of depth for a local theatre than to do the three standard practice exercises in one, two and three point perspective. The list of ways to connect the art classroom (even if true apprenticeships are not feasible) to the community could go on and on, and I hope to make use of as many local opportunities as possible when I teach.

It's not just art classrooms, however, which need to be relevant to community life. The same connections to the real world can and should be made in every class. Physics is an especially wonderful subject, since it truly is a description of how the real world works. In my first practicum, I had the opportunity to try various ways of building connections with students. It's a nerdy past-time, I'll admit, but I do love writing funny Physics problems about real people, so on my first day, I surveyed the class to find out what their hobbies, interests, and goals after high school were. Then, nearly every example, homework, quiz and test problem was about them. I used the activities they told me they enjoyed, and wrote practical problems that they encounter in their everyday life, particularly in the activities they find the most fun. It's a nice first start at making connections because it's very easy to do. Rather than copying out the irrelevant problem copied from a textbook which can't possibly relate to a unique class: "A projectile of mass, m, is launched with an initial velocity of 100m/s at an angle of 15 degrees. Where will it land?", it takes just an extra few minutes to write a problem: "Bill shoots a 0.5kg bullet with an initial velocity of 100m/s at an angle of 15 degrees. Will it hit a deer standing 0.6km away?" I got very positive feedback from the students about using them in the problems we worked through, and they tended to pay more attention and make more problem solving attempts when they were the star of a problem. It's an easy strategy to make connections with real life, and it worked well, so that is definitely a keeper.

While it was fun and helpful to use relevant problems, however, I don't think that simple strategy is enough to fully alter the conception that school is either disconnected from life or consumes real life. Students need to do more than just solve problems about their real life; they need to use their solutions in the world. It requires a lot more time and energy, but I want to give my students opportunities to do things that matter. They could design a system of solar panels that we will purchase for the school. I want my students to invent a small energy efficient stove to be used on camping trips. Physics is truly ideal for such practical applications, in which the completion of their school project actually makes a difference in their life, because the real world is exactly what Physics strives to explain. I really want to focus on those meaningful applications in my teaching.

When we connect the classroom to the community, not only do students, who feel that school is irrelevant to life, begin to make motivating connections, but also students, who consider school to be their life, can see a broader goal for learning than simply good grades.

And in my opinion, that's where education gets very exciting.