Bigger than my stomach

I have a bad habit.  Or maybe not so much of a habit as an estimation-impairment.  OK, that’s not really the best way to describe it.  It’s like, well, sometimes, my parents, seeing me as a child loading my plate with tons of food that they knew I’d never finish, would comment that my “eyes were bigger than my stomach.”  I would try to prove them wrong, but to no avail.  They were right, I had no idea how much was really appropriate for my hunger and the size of my body.

I still do that–but not with food.  I get so excited about having a baby that I fail to think about how much work it’s going to be and get swamped with unpreparedness.  Or I am so excited to try a new lesson idea or activity failing to understand how much work it is actually going to take and spend hours rushing to finish everything in time.  (I do it the other way around too, like panicking about how hard it is going to be to drive to Milwaukee to see a show at the Pabst–where is it, where will we park, how long will it take, etc–when in actuality it’s easy as pie.  Or taking the baby to the apple orchard (all that talk two weeks ago made me want to go so badly ) with us this year and having a great time despite my panic and apprehension before leaving.)

This week was one of those times.  I never felt that it would be easy, but I have been thinking about my ‘hypothetical’ evaluation pretty consistently over the past month or so for two reasons: this class; my own classes at SEHS.  I am trying to integrate Moodle into my classes even as I write this, and therefore am trying to plan this evaluation in concert with what how I want this to work.  I have a lot of ownership here, so I figured that three questions I want answered should be no sweat.  And I guess they wouldn’t have been if I only had three questions, but I don’t.  I have a hundred questions.  I’ve never done this before.  I’ve got no background.  I’ve got no history. I don’t know where this is going to go or if it’s going to work.  Patrick saw right what I was doing, and asked if I “want there what [I] have here” at CTER.  Yes I do!  I love what we have here, and I want to emulate it as much as I can, but I have only been doing this for 8 months now, though never once in the exact capacity that I am doing with my students.  I’d like to think I’m pretty good at synthesizing information, but there’s no question that I have no place thinking that I know how to do this well.

So, thinking of the three questions that could really nail the marrow of what I want to happen in my classes was hard.  I came up with the following:

1. How has an authentic audience of peers and a greater focus on writing in class affected student writing?

Really, thinking back over the summer classes, I have wanted to make sure that I use technology only that will help enhance learning for my students.  I think that Moodle is one of those tools.  I’ve written about this a hundred times I’m sure, but I am constantly trying to find a way for my kids to get their writing out to more than just me.  When kids don’t like writing anyway, asking them to do a bunch of it for a one ma audience is hardly motivating.  I’m sure that my teaching style would be VERY different if I only had one student per class a day.  (yes, I’d love it, but I think the point I am trying to make is that I would not be nearly as worried about making mistakes and having everything polished off, as long as I had a decent relationship with the student.)  Anyway, asking students to post their work, never knowing who from their class is going to read it should have a positive effect on their motivations.

2. How has Moodle affected students’ ability to work, think, and discuss independently; does it prepare students to apply their knowledge to the classroom?

My pre-AP students are not very responsible right now.  Printers are breaking left and right, computers are getting viruses on a daily basis, and folders are being left on kitchen tables at an alarming rate.  I need my kids to get past that for a lot of reasons, and I think that this could be a good way to do it.  Everything is there–no loops, no surprises.  The kids will have plenty of advance notice that assignments are due, and they will have plenty of individual time to do them.  I want to see how much of a difference this makes on their levels of responsibility.  Also I want to see if they can learn to apply their knowledge to their writing that they do in class–this is just bonus goodness.

3. Have the occasional foibles of technology been offset by the advantages for students and teachers?

As Jennifer has already experienced, and I am dealing with a bit, there are plenty of issues when using high tech in junior and senior high schools.  It’s a new way of working and therefore will cause some problems as all new programs do.  But, once the kinks are ironed out and the results are in, will it even matter that 3 students took 4 months to get their accounts on Moodle?  Hopefully not.

 

Pushing Rocks

I should start carrying a notebook around.  I always seem to get inspired when I’m miles away from my home–usually in the car or on a walk or in an orchard.  Out and away from home, my mind wanders around, ending up in random, exciting places that I am so sure I will remember.  Yeah, never happens.  But if I had a notebook-a small one with a pen attached because there is no way in the world I would remember both things-I’m not sure that writing while driving (“Honey, can you hold the wheel, I’ve got an idea…”) or walking around in nature is quite where I am at the moment.  I want to write and write and write, but I also want to enjoy the meandering my mind does when I’m driving, or the fleeting thoughts that run through my head when my wife and I are happily strolling through nature, or the great first lines (I had one in college I made myself remember, “fish  food, like flakes of skin off a sunburnt back” that I never knew what to do with…) that runs down my chin while picking apples from the tree.

Anyway, wits aside, this has been another exciting week in the life of a student of evaluation.  I have been very excited about AI and its potential to get people talking about the good things that are happening around them.  I think I am a pretty positive person but have been in some pretty negative situations before that were really depressing.  Everyone seemed to sit around and complain about what was wrong, and what they hated, and what should have happened.  At the end of the day, no one was any wiser, no changes had been made or even planned, and it was pretty evident that people were unhappy in general.  How great would it have been to have a facilitator there who would have asked all of us to think of what was working!!  What we wanted more of in order to keep the good stuff going!!

Now, there are some people from these former situations who would be so used to complaining that the opportunity to look at the bright side might be less than appealing.  That’s one of the neat things I learned from the Gervase Bushe article I read.  He pointed out that sometimes it’s necessary to let people get their complainy fix, then use that as a jumping board to focus on what they like.  It helped AI seem more real as a tool by looking at possible pitfalls and addressing them.

Thanks to my classmates, I was also able to think about AI in few additional capacities–one of Matt’s articles discussed the fact that innovative groups are more successful at AI.  This made sense to me, since AI is itself innovative.  While I think that AI could be effective in most situations, I was interested to think about the fact that it would have varying degrees of success.  This in turn led me to wonder about the staying power of an AI infused evaluation.  One of Hannah’s articles got me thinking about this since the evaluation was explained, but the results and changes weren’t.  So I began to wonder if it was like a home improvement show where a group comes in and fixes everything and then leaves and a year later, the home is back to the same mess it is in.  I guess this doesn’t have much to do specifically with AI as with evaluations in general, except that AI is taught as an ongoing process.  This makes it that much more important to think about how to not only change and grow, but how to maintain an attitude that longs for change and growth.

creative commons image courtesy of ricoeurian

I was curious about how this week’s assignment would be overall, but here at the end of the week, I am really happy with it!  I liked reading more about AI, and I liked being exposed to countless other articles that dealt with AI.  For some reason, writing my annotations felt like, to rip off a great simile from Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory throwing rocks in a stream.  Loud, clunky, choppy, heavily punctuated.  I’m not totally sure why that is–fatigue from teaching? pressure to be succinct? I hope I revised them to a decent level of coherence?  I kept thinking that pushing rocks around is a form of meditation in my sister country, Japan–that made the revisions more fun!!!

Over the summer there was this frantic ___ that drove everything I did–getting the house and everything ready for Seijiro (née ‘The Baby’), taking the summer classes, dealing with closing out the school year, then the crash course in parenting, the visits to and from family etc.  It was insane, late, sleepless, non-stop, and really pretty exciting.  Everything was high priority and due any minute.  I think that’s why it’s taking longer than usual to get my rhythm this year than in the past.  I am learning how to be equally as busy, but in a more structured way.  The center of my work day is no longer from 10 pm to 4 am.  I sleep more now.  I have a schedule I adhere to.  It’s such a different busy.  I kind of miss that frantic.

I am happy to still be busy though–I am really enjoying the classes I’m teaching this year.  I have co-teacher for the first time and working with him is an exciting challenge.  Too, I am teaching a creative writing component in the stead of the narrative descriptive unit I am usually teaching at this point in the year–so that is exciting.  Plus, I am also finding a lot of pleasure learning about evaluation.  Maybe it’s hokey, but I think about what I like most about teaching, and try to model my teaching so I get more of that!  I am also thinking hard about how I could get my students talking about my class, then use that data in conjunction with our district curriculum to create a better classroom.  I wonder if it would work to use components of AI in group meetings like we talked about in Tom’s class last spring…

Well, I think I’ve blathered on long enough for now.  If you’ve made it this far, thanks!  If not–no worries, I don’t always read my work after I publish either ! おやすみなさい

 

Formatively Speaking

Yay.  I’m so excited to get back on WordPress.  I got really geeked out for 3 entries this summer, and thought (and hoped) for sure that I would become a blogging fool.  Alas, that was not the case, so the fact that we will have to blog at least once a week is very very exciting–in fact this may be just what I need to continue blogging like I should, especially since WordPress is so nice looking.  And I love when I log in, it tells me I’m already cool

A bit about me: my name is Luke, and the most exciting tidbit I can share right now is that I am a new father (after years of hearing “Luke, I am your father,” it’s finally my turn, though our son’s name isn’t Luke).  He is the coolest little boy in the world, and my wife and I are completely enraptured by watching him grow up.  Also, I like riding scooters, mostly because they’re cheap and cool–I have a old Vespa that is about the most fun thing in the world.  And though I  have hardly read any books over the summer, I have a long list of things I plan to read (I am inspired and awed by the exponential growth of Kona’s Shelfari!!!) My students have already given me Rant by Chuck Palahniuk and The Host by Stephanie Meyer to read.  Plus, I have been dying to read What is the What, Harry Potter 7, and Bastard out of Carolina.  And someday, I hope to live in the Pacific Northwest so that my parks aren’t surrounded by freeways!  Among all of this, I am working on breathing techniques to help me get through fatherhood, teaching, and grad school .

Where I teach English, we are very excited about low-stakes formative assessment in the classroom, and small-stakes summative assessment.  Basically, we are shying away from grades based primarily on daily homework assignments and a unit test.  We are hoping instead to create smaller, more frequent assessments.  I would love to learn how to create more effective assessments and evaluations of student progress.  Another thing I would love to do is to have my students keep portfolios that I could evaluate at the end of a quarter/semester and assign a grade based more on progress than on my expectations.  Having created my first porfolio ever last spring in Tom’s class, I would love to gain the knowledge required to successfully evaluate a body of student work.  I guess that I am garbage at grades and grading, and am excited to learn about creating effective evaluations that are fair for my students.

 

The Orientation Express

I never know how to start blog posts. Should I say, “Hi”, or just begin typing my ideas? These little things are what hang me up (like the 45 minutes I spent choosing a username, “Hmmm, will azingeragain sound lame? Creative? Narcissistic? Clever?” and the 20 minutes on a design template, “Honey, is this pink flowery one too feminine?”). Once, I get going however, I tend to be hard to stop.

Yesterday, I met some of the students and staff from my cohort in CTER 11. It was great. I’ve really enjoyed the program so far, and I love being able to take CTER courses while in my boxers…er, umm, I mean, the comfort of my own home. I love what and how I am learning, the assignments that have us using web 2.0 tools, and that I can take new knowledge right into my classroom. In fact there is very little that I don’t like about the program.

The only thing I miss about traditional classes is the face to face time with my peers: the chance to mingle around a room and talk with people after class; go out for coffee or cocktails; come back to my place and play Mario Kart until 2:00am. But a) My metacomprehension is good enough to know that, since this is an online program that I applied to, these opportunities would be limited and b) instead of meeting a bunch of people from my district, I get to meet people from all over the country. Let’s hear it for silver linings!!!

Anyway, Monday was a great chance for that f2f time and I really appreciated how friendly and exciting everyone was! Thanks to all for making the trip well worth it!