Serendipity happens!

Right in the middle of the school last year I had a lark of an idea.

It had been one of the least productive and most distressing school years that everyone I know had ever endured. Masks were tiresome, physically and socially. Student engagement was painfully strained. Academic work was difficult to accomplish. It was a most unpleasant time to be in school.

And I don't know whence this idea came, but I thought 'hey, I should analyze and explain the really bad joke from our morning announcements.'

It started as me screencastifying a really lousy slide (with a small window of me, on video, in the corner).

I took some real comedy theory, sillied it up a little, played it straight as joke explanation and my colleague put it on show.

Twenty-two installments later, we've added a superhero, are in the middle of an episodic story, my colleague spends an hour or two editing each 3-minute episode, we've incorporated students and the choir into the story, and almost everybody loves it.

Our goal for this year...get students to take over production, so we're starting that process right now.

It has been great fun. More importantly, I think it helped us all have a little bit of joy in a difficult season.

One student recently told me, "I don't like [the show] because I don't think it's that funny, but I appreciate that you do it. It's been good for the school...kind of bringing everybody together a little."

So here's S3 E03 of JotDA Guy.
It's a retrospective--starting with that very first episode, and adds a little more to our on-going story. (Listen for the fantastic musical interlude near the end.)

Committee Work

This is a lengthy post about the work of the committees that are creating and sustaining our class procedures and culture, but I want to give an example of the kind work the committees are doing.  Yes, I give shape to the work and the meetings, but students are responsible to do that work and make relevant decisions in the area of their committee's responsibility.  

Work for Friday, 9/23

Rules--

At the end of Friday, 9/23, the rules you have given me are what I will work with as our rules.

Besides the issues of tardy, phones and talkative disruption (which they discussed previously), don't forget 
No earbud
no hoods
Politeness and courtesy; no “sucks,” “shut up,” or “stupid,” besides the typical ban on school inappropriate words.

Negotiable:
Disciplinary response to all of these things, including teacher response and class response; ways to encourage “self-discipline.”
Established times to use phones, etc.,
Established times for social activity
Established times for “student voice”

Discipline--

Friday, I hope you will have a clear outline of ways we can create and encourage self-discipline.
You should coordinate this work with the Rules Committee.

• Discuss the ways you think the class can cultivate (create, develop, sustain) self-discipline.
• Discuss the ways that we and I should respond to lapses in self-discipline.
• Talk to Rules Committee about their work, which includes

Create draft (proposals that are not necessarily final) for rules regarding

• Phones being out in class
• Tardy
• Student talk/disruption

On Friday, I'd like to see a list of ways we can do this self-discipline work, including a list of the disciplinary responses to rules violations.

Curriculum--

By the end of Friday, I hope you will have a document outlining our general schedule for The Boys in the Boat...a document or slide I can post for everyone in your class period.

(Academic) Data--

On Friday, please review the self-assessment and Wilma Rudolph inference work I sent you. 
Do you see any differences between self-assessment and class performance on Wilma Rudolph?
Explain.
How do you think we're doing with inferences?
Explain.
Do you think we need to practice with inferences?
Explain.

Write all this up in a document.

Social--

By Friday, make sure any surveys you've created are available for completion.
If you have already posted and students have responded, prepare a presentation of your findings.

• Copy the data (I can show you how), paste in a document or slide
• Explain what you think the results mean.
• Suggest responses for us as a class

Social Media--

I haven't seen any presentation outlines, so I'm wondering if you need a little support.
For your first presentation, please make sure you address/answer at least these issues/questions.

What is social media?  (Define, give examples, briefly describe how/why teenagers use it)
How much do teenagers use it?  (Be specific, number of hours per day or week, or some other measure that we can all understand.)
How many teenagers use it? (percentages)
What do experts say about its effects?  (describe and explain)
Anything we should do about those effects?

I hope you'll be prepared to give this presentation on Wednesday, 9/28.

We'll have some time to work on this Friday.

Liaison to Admin--

By Friday, please see or make an appointment to see somebody in Administration.
Principals or Campus Supervisor

On Friday, circulate among committees to hear what they're doing.  Take notes for next meeting with Administration.

Governing isn't easy

Today, we read a couple articles on growth mindset.

This one is advocacy, encouraging commitment to growth mindset.  It's the kind of article that can sometimes feel burdensome to teenage readers.  It comes off too school-y and pushy.  It's right, has good points...just kind of pedantic in the delivery.

This one is a personal story of perseverance.  Ta-Nehisi Coates learning French is a bit more engaging and relatable.  

Plenty of students acknowledged that growth mindset was part of their progress and improvement with a musical instrument or in a sport.

So that allowed me to remind them that our committee work is new and a bit confusing, and therefore takes some sustained commitment in order for us to get better at it.  To put it another way, growth mindset actually is important.

The committees are indeed advancing the work of governing their classes.

Sure, the Rules committee hasn't covered every rule as thoroughly as we need, and more specificity in some of the rules is necessary, but they're working at it.

And almost every Social committee has designed a survey intended to find out how students are "feeling" about school and our class.  They don't love the district-wide survey we've been taking for years, so they wanted to develop their own.

The Curriculum committees are planning our reading and work for The Boys in the Boat, and I heard one member declare to her fellow members, "This is complicated."  But they're doing it!

The Liaisons to Administration are meeting with principals to keep them posted on what the rest of the committees are doing.

The Data Committee is gathering whole-class academic performance data, starting with self-assessments of key skills.

The students are, in other words, taking a kind of responsibility that I have not even been able to cultivate in prior years, when using more typical patterns of culture and order building.  (Let me be clear, I'm not saying those typical patterns don't work...these new ones work differently, and so far they seem to work a bit more richly.)

I'm pleased with the progress, not so much for the specific outcomes they've generated but for the work at the process.

Self-Governance Committees

The Committees that will govern our classroom met today for the first time, and I'm excited for how it all went.  

As you can probably imagine, things started slowly.  A lot of committees were trying to figure out what exactly they were supposed to do.  That seems normal to me!

Once they got going, many groups seemed to take on their tasks with diligence and enthusiasm.  A colleague told me he heard students talking (positively!) about the whole thing while they were in his room.  That's always a good sign.

The Social Committees were particularly interesting.  Many of them seemed eager to create some sort of way--a survey of their own?--to gather information about how their own class was doing.  They're not so excited about answering the same survey--twice a year, every year--from the program the district bought.  But they did seem willing to pursue their own information.

The Rules Committees were (often) talking about things like how to manage phone usage in class.  After I told them that my preference for phones is ZERO and I know theirs is higher than that, they got focused on how to get some phone flexibility I could live with.

The Discipline Committee really should be called the Self-Discipline Committee, as I want them to help us all cultivate our self-management capacities.

The Social Media Committees started in on developing presentation materials for us.  They are responsible for creating material for the class to consider the effects of social media on the brain and on community. 

The Data Committees didn't have a lot to do yet.

The Curriculum Committees started mapping out our first unit.  One group had a spirited discussion about when to start the unit and how long it should take.  Another group said, "This is a lot of work."   I told them, as I told every class, that I'd be happy to run everything myself...and then things would be the way I want.  But I think they might enjoy and benefit by this involvement. 

Nobody expressed much interest in me taking back over.

Finally, the Liaison to Administration Committees.  Some of them started circulating around to find out what the rest of the committees were doing, so they could report to the principal.  One curriculum already asked their liaison to ask the principal about whether we could move our i-Ready reading assessment in order to start our Boys in the Boat unit earlier.

I have a lot less authority than I used to have.  And they stepped up to take over.  I had one student--out of 35 groups-- come and say his committee mates weren't doing anything.  I saw one other committee that I think squandered their time.  Other than that, most seemed productive.

33 out of 35...I like that.

I surveyed students at the end of the hour.  There is some confusion/uncertainty about what we're doing, but I think it's a) not wide or deep and b) is healthy or worthwhile confusion, which we can work through.

Next meeting--Thursday.

Poetry

 

To borrow from Captain Renault (from Casablanca), I'm shocked, shocked to find so little enthusiasm for poetry!

99 of my students responded to this survey. 

I like to read poetry--Blue and Red are some form of Agree.

72% say So-so to Strongly Disagree

They like to write poetry even less!  83% say So-so to Strongly Disagree!

And plenty of them have an "I don't get it" feeling when they do read poetry.

Almost 70% feel like the don't get it Half to All the time!

So we started with pretty straightforward poems.

Where I'm From, for which they could fill in a template.

Next, we read Billy Collins' Introduction to Poetry

Introduction to Poetry, by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

With this we talked about imagery, sounds, tone and mood.  We also decided that our personal experience of the poem is the point.

Next, we read...

Autobiography in 5 chapters, by Portia Nelson

I
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost....I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

II
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But, It isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in. It's a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault. I get out immediately.

IV
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V
I walk down another street.

Almost everyone agreed that walking down the street was a symbol.

The walking was generally agreed to be a symbol for "making your way through life," or "being in difficult relationships," or "struggling with problems," or "addictions."

The hole was problems, obstacles, mistakes, bad habits, addictions, and the like.

91% agreed that the author learned through the process.

With respect to Theme, I asked students to finish the sentence, Life is...

They said:

hard

hard and you need to find a way and not get stuck

Full of bad habits that people struggle to get out of.

Life is full of mistakes, Learning from your mistakes can take a while but it happens eventually.

Life is a hole

full of mistakes and people may sometimes make them but they'll learn from them after a while

life has difficulties that you have to avoid

Life is repetitive.

Confusing

life is full of bad habits and you can overcome the mistakes.

Life is full of mastakes and getting into bad habits and changing your thinking can break those habits and and help you though those mastakes.

I don't know.

Life is cool.

addicted

Life is like walking down the same road everyday but sometimes if there is a problem or not you need to take a different path than you always do. Life is about adventure and you don´t need to do the same thing everyday and you might need to take the risk and try something new.

life is like a big hole do not go down the same hole there is always another way

Life is a maze

hard and there's full of mistakes you need to learn from.

Life is like the path, many holes will come up, and we might fall in, but if we don't learn on change we will never move forward on the path.

Life is a mess

hard but you have to make the right decisions.

finite. and you should make better choices and not ruin yourself.

life is when we dig our own holes that we don't see until its to late or until we don't acknowledge it

Life is full of bad habits, but if you eliminate the problem it will change your life.

life is learning from your mistakes

full of problems.

Life is trying to find new ways to break old habits to improve your life.

Life is full of problems that people seem to always fall into.

Life is repetitive, but we can change that.

Life is a cycle, don't get stuck in a bad one.

Life is full of decision making and finding out whats best for yourself.

to not repeat the past/ to not fall into the same mistake again

A street with a giant hole, that every time you try something new you fall in, but it's your choice whether you want to crawl out or not, and if you do, ask you want to continue what you are doing, or if you want to finally move on.

Life is a learning experience and after you make the same mistake over and over again you learn to stop or do something different

Full of obstacles, that you (nearly all the time) have the power to take responsibility for and fix, even if it may take a long time to do. But the problem won't go away if you choose to ignore it.

Life is a street with many obstacles. These obstacles may seem tempting, but will slow you down. You may have made it a habit of running into these obstacles, but you must learn to avoid them.

Life is tough, because she only learned from her mistakes by repeating it and doing it over and over until she learned.

full of mistakes that have been made we have to learn to stop making them

Life is built on improvement and sometimes it is up to you to fix it yourself.

Life is kinda like a street when you walk down it there could be a bunch of holes or problems that you could fall into and you have to learn to move around those holes or to learn to fix problems that are happening.

Life is like a city, with many streets leading to different desitinations, some with more holes than others. But humans are stubborn, and so we keep putting ourselves in the path of holes.

Life is like a sidewalk. You can choose where you want to go and what you want to do, and you can learn from your mistakes. If one path doesn't work for you, take another one next time.

Life is like a city different streets are problems or people that we struggle with or make us happy so we have to pick the right streets to walk down and avoid the bad ones

Life is something full of bad habits and dark places, but there are also ways to avoid these and overcome them.

Life is full of bad decisions. Its easy to take the bad path and not be able to get yourself back out.

"Life is full of mistakes but we will figure out a way to move past them eventually."

Repetitive

Life is full of bad habits

life is full of mistakes that you will make but you can fix

Everyone in the world.....

Life is full of opportunity for mistakes and you have to take action to properly bypass them.

Life is full of obstacles/mistakes but you can't keep doing the same mistakes that give you obstacles

Life is like a repeating pattern, you choose the same path but it isn't always the right path.

challenge and we need to beat our mistakes and get up and overcome them

life is good

Life is like a sidewalk sometimes there may be things that get in the way but you can always find another way around those things.

what you make it out to be.

there is always more than one solution but sometimes you cant see

a road you walk on, no matter what you always get a choice of which road

life is hard you spend most of your time trying to break bad habits to become a better person

The message of this poem is basically it is trying to get you to know that the person is walking down the street.

Life is merry-go-round (keep repeating so that's why I put merry-go-round).

making mistakes and avoiding them the next time

Life is controlled by your decisions and self-discipline.

Finding out what you have done wrong and fixing it.

a loop :(

a roller coaster

a confusing mess

Life is a big problem

Life is leading you to a new direction.

A big hot (confusing) mess.

life is a constant pit/hole of mistakes

she makes a lot of mastaks all her life

Like falling down a large hole and having to pick yourself up.

like school

Life is full of giant holes, just don't fall in them.

Life is short and you only get one chance, don't try to spend your life trying to get to something that isn't reachable and get something within reach

about trying new things. In the poem the author repeats saying i walked down the same street and she repeats like multiple times, but then at the end she says she walked a different street that could show that they're doing something different and or recovering from addiction

like a seen or unseen hole in the sidewalk.

Life is full of its ups and down you just need to know if your the one who is going to make it better

about making mistakes to get better and learn from them.

Life is something that everyone has to live threw some people have it harder than others but everyone has its challenges in life but most people alwasy learn from those challenges even if it takes sometimes

Meaning

Life is limited its not always going to be there so you need to make it the best time, in the time that you have.

to keep a look out for the "holes"

The message is you need to just stop doing the thing that hard in your life if it's in your control. You need to realize whats going on and just stop it.

Life is difficult

Life is like a giant hole that you can fall into but you can easily avoid bad things by walking on a different street.

Life is walking down the street everyday, running into obstacles over and over again until you learn to change and walk a different street.

Life is never easy.

full of mistakes and obstacles but you can learn from them to not make them again.

Life is like walking down the same street with a giant sink hole until you find a new street

A short path with one big challenge that must be overcome.

a journey that you learn from.

puzzle.

Life is a path that you might love but sometimes in places and in the end it is dreadful and sad.

Life is hard and there will be obsticles but that doesn't mean you give up

life is hard and you will make the same mistakes until you learn to go down a different path.

Life is learning from past mistakes.

Life is filled with stuck points.

Conclusion of the short poetry unit tomorrow.