Kclemmons’s Blog

Bill mentioned last week that this week’s topic was a difficult one, and I would have to agree.  I had a hard time deciding where to start, but once I got started, I had a hard time stopping. 

The idea of committed knowledge is hard for me because on one hand, I understand the idea of believing in something just because you do.  My religious beliefs would fall into this category.  It doesn’t seem at all strange to me to accept what I believe in unconditionally, and to believe because of faith.

However, on the other hand, the idea of believing in other areas just because someone tells you that it is what you should do is scary.  I can see from the outside looking in how obviously wrong some beliefs are to me, but people on the inside don’t have that same viewpoint.  This concept is what led me to thinking about the story of the blind men and the elephant, an ancient parable where all of the characters felt a different part of the elephant and came away believing that from their experience alone, they knew what an elephant resembled.  We consider our own perceptions, and what we intake through our own senses, as valuable information.   We use this to construct knowledge.  But what if our perceptions are flawed, as in the parable?  Is this partly how stereotypes are perpetuated?  Is this one source of racist ideas?  I know this is a big jump, but in some way, this seems connected to me.

My next connection went to the idea of visual perceptions, and how illusions trick our minds into thinking things are different than what they seem.  Many students like to look at these and play with the images, so they seem like a way to point out the idea of how things may be different than they seem.  I’m trying to work out how to use this connection to the idea of deeper levels. 

While I was looking into some information on illusions, I came across the name Al Seckler, who is a cognitive neuroscientist who specializes in this area.  His wikipedia page gave me some interesting background information on how he was member of the Freethinkers movement, which is as far from “committed knowledge” as you can get. I guess my connections are actually opposites, but that’s okay because I’m learning about things I wasn’t expecting to. I feel like this week’s learning journey took the long way around.

And to top it all off, my connection to Al led me to a video showing some examples of his work with visual illusions, and it happened to be from the TED site, which we know is one of Ryan’s favorite sites.  I had just finished watching his post of the week, and within an hour or less, I ended up there myself, through a completely different path.  And while researching Al, I ended up on the Edge.org site, and read about “black swans”, which I had never heard about before Ed’s post.  I’m fascinated by all these cross-connections, and how what we are doing really does start to fit together.

The Acquisition of Language

After going out and finding a topic to discuss for this week, I realized I could have talked about a related topic that I have a more personal interest in.  When my daughter was born three years ago,  the hospital gave me a brochure from the Infant Cognition Lab at the University of Illinois.  I was interested and had the time, so I took my daughter in to participate in their studies.  I was fascinated that they could do studies of infants as young as 2 months old to begin to understand how infants learn and comprehend the world around them.  We participated in these studies for several months, and eventually “graduated” to the Language Acquisition Lab.  Also another fascinating place because I was so impressed by how the research students develop ways to investigate the process of how toddlers aquire language skills.  While I was in the room during all the studies, I still can’t fully explain the tests because I almost always had my eyes covered.  This was to assure that my daughter did not pick up any visual clues from me.  Anyway, it was very interesting to hear the researchers explain their theories and what they were looking to prove through their studies.  I would highly encourage others to participate in similar opportunities if only to promote further knowledge on how children learn.

Alright, this week’s topic (or I guess actually last week’s topic) is kind of an interesting one to think about.  There were so many great posts on the wiki.  I was particularly interested in being reminded of Behaviorism in relation to the training of animals, and also in Rita’s topic about intrinsic and extrinsic motivators.

The post about vending machine crows reminded me of when I was a kid and my parents would take me to a place called “Rockhome Gardens”.  It’s sort of an old, recreated village, and one thing I remember was the machines that you could put a quarter in to make the duck play a piano, or the hen dance.  I did, but I also remember feeling bad for those poor animals sitting in that box all day waiting to do their thing. 

Another interesting connection this week is that my class is reading the novel “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH”.  If you’ve never read it, it’s about an advanced civilization of super-intelligent rats that were taught to read as part of a laboratory experiment.  They escaped and started their own colony, but feel guilty about living by stealing from humans, so they make plans to move again and start another colony where they totally provide for themselves.  The Behaviorism training these rats received worked pretty well for them, and my students are always intrigued by the homes they build for themselves.  (I guess it also didn’t hurt that they received steroid injections to make them a little stronger than normal rats.)  I just thought this was quite a coincidence that this was the book we happened to be reading this week.

As far as the topic of Behaviorism relates to education, I can’t imagine going a single day without using some aspect of it during my daily work.  It’s just second nature to use rewards and praise, as well as punishments of some sort to try and control the happenings in your classroom.  I’m not by any means a control freak, but it’s just who we are as educators.  (Not over the top like the Power Education posting!).  Anyway, there is always the controversy over whether it’s okay to take it a step further and reward students for doing the things you want them to do.  Rita’s post made me revisit this whole idea again.  I think the important thing is that you find a balance in what you do.  There are things my students work to earn in my classroom (Pizza parties, game days, etc.) yet I don’t believe they need, or deserve rewards for everything.  I also can see the point that this takes away the incentive to do things just because of internal motivation.  But there are some students who truly need help finding the motivation to do what is expected of them.

And this brings me to thinking of using Behaviorism concepts with my own children.  It seems that these days I use a lot more of the positive reinforcements and rewards with my 3 year old, and a lot more of the consequences/punishments with my 14 year old.  Could it be that it’s because he’s a teenager?  (I’m just kidding…he’s really not that bad!)

When I sat down to work on my homework yesterday, I was surprised to see that I could not access the University of Illinois website. At first I assumed something was just wrong with my computer or my connection. I then went to check my e-mail, and once again was denied. I quickly started checking other sites, and they all seemed to be working, so it seemed strange to me that the things I wanted to do were the ones I couldn’t. Obviously I could live without checking my e-mail right at that time, and, if truth be told, I could survive for a long time without being able to check it. However, it fits that old cliche that you want something more if you can’t have it. It makes you stop and realize how dependent on technology our system and our way of life has become.

This carried over into today as well. When I got to school, I quickly checked to see this morning if my e-mail was working, and it was, so crisis solved. However, things soon took an interesting turn. About half-way through my morning classes, our principal came on the intercom and informed us that we were in a “Code-Red – Stay” which essentially means that for some reason we need to keep our children in our rooms with the doors locked, away from windows, blinds shut, huddled in a corner of the classroom out of sight. I’ve never had to actually do one of these before, thankfully, and I wasn’t sure if it was a drill or not, but obviously we proceeded as if it was the real thing. About 10 minutes later the principal came on the intercom to let us know that he was sending an e-mail to us to let us know how to proceed from this point. I walked over to check my computer, and of course, once again e-mail was down. So now I have 22 students looking at me wondering what is going on, and I’m as confused as everyone else. After about 10 more minutes, the principal came back on the intercom and asked that students stay in the rooms while all teacher come to the gym for a meeting. What?!? Have you heard of such a thing??? We are supposed to leave over 250 students unattended while under lock down? That was when I knew for sure that something was really going on, and this wasn’t just a drill.

Anyway, the lock down was brought about because someone reported seeing a student take a gun out of their trunk in the high school parking lot, which is right next to out elementary building. They didn’t see the person take it with them into the building, but to be safe they called our superintendent, who then issued the lock down. After returning to our classrooms, we stayed this way for another 15 minutes or so, and were finally cleared once it was determined that the gun that had been spotted was actually only an “air-soft” gun, and that there wasn’t any violence intended.

Classes went back to normal, or as normal as they can after you’ve just spent 30 minutes or more wondering what kind of attack is about to occur. And I was left thinking once again about our dependence on a technology that can let you down at crucial times.

I know this seems unrelated to this week’s topic, but believe it or not, I do have a connection to be made. I have a student in my classroom who suffers from extreme emotional issues, and something like a fire drill can completely set him off. In fact, there are no surprise drills for him. He is ALWAYS notified ahead of time because he reaction to the event is one in which he would probably have to be carried from the building. He’s small for his age, but he’s still a 6th grader, so that would be a little difficult for me to do on my own. Other than his extreme anxiety and nervous disorders, he is a pretty normal kid. He’s very bright, but can be set off by things that you would never imagine. He has been with this group of students since the start of his school career, and it is amazing to see how nurturing many of his classmates are to him. If they see that he is getting upset or worked up by something, they take it upon themselves to go and comfort him and try to talk him through the issue. They work hard to distract him if he is thinking or worrying about something. An example would be a couple of weeks ago someone showed up to test the fire alarms and Daniel had not been warned ahead of time, so he had no time to prepare himself. An announcement on the intercom that let us know to expect to hear the alarms intermittently was all it took to set him off. He was crying uncontrollably, and curled up in a fetal position. Immediately his “protectors” took over and you could hear them saying things to try and comfort him and to bring him out of this state.

Well, needless to say, I was very worried about Daniel during today’s lock down. Even though there were no loud noises involved, I was certain the idea of something violent possibly happening, and the fact that we were sitting in the back corner of our room with all the lights out, was going to be a disaster for him. I was trying to figure out what to do if he started crying uncontrollably because I had the safety of all of the other students to worry about as well. Amazingly, though, he held it together remarkably well. I think he knew that we were all there to protect him, and I also think he knew how important it was to keep quiet for all of our sakes. After everything was finished, he did have a little crying spell, but I was so relieved that it hadn’t happened earlier that it didn’t even seem like an issue. I just think this is a great example of the compassion that students can show for one another, and how they can learn to be accepting of people who are different under the right circumstances.

Interesting new experience this past week in trying out the software for our learning elements.  It was one of those times that after having watched it be explained, I was a little intimidated to try it.  And after the discussion in class last week about things that weren’t working, etc., I wasn’t sure how things would go.  Thankfully my first attempt with it worked well…I’m so glad I had listened to others talk about their experiences first so that I had a few tips to consider.  The most important thing I picked up about it from last Tuesday’s session was that Internet Explorer is a bad browser to view it in.  That’s what I was going to use, but after seeing the results and hearing about the issues, I switched to Firefox, and haven’t had any of those issues.  My only problems haven’t been with the software at all, but rather with figuring out what some of the components mean.  For example, what exactly do we mean by Pathways? 

All I’ve done so far is input the information I already had from the placemat, which would be the activities.  I now need to go back through and add the other important stuff, like my objectives, and the processes, etc.  I love how easy it is to re-order the activities.  It also helps to see them in a linear view so that I can make sure that I have things lined up in the order I would actually teach them.  You lose sight of that view when you put them on the placemat and they are scattered according to the different domains they fall into.  Anyway, my experiences with it so far have been very positive.

Our wiki this week was a post about the beginnings of recognition, and I used the area of multiculturalism to search for an article.  This is one that immediately jumps to mind when you think of how teachers often just superficially touch on different cultures and call that an attempt at multiculturalism.  I teach in a K-6 building and I’m reminded of this every year when various “cultural” celebrations are held in the primary hallways. Just a couple of weeks ago a parade was going on in the hallways in honor of the Chinese New Year, and in a couple of months, Cinco de Maya will be celebrated.  That’s fine, except too often our students only get these brief experiences of other cultures, and they are left to think that that is all there is to that country to know.  In literary terms, our exposures to other cultures often result in flat characterizations rather than dynamic, round characters.

My post this week was an article written in 1994 by Richard Brodhead, the president of Yale University on the debate over multiculturalism.  Even though this article was written 15 years ago, most of it could have been written last week, which is sad to say.  I did learn a new term for the idea of these brief exposures that we provide our students with to other cultures.  He refered to this technique as “Epcotization”, which is in reference to Walt Disney’s Epcot Theme Park.  That’s the park that lets you “visit” 11 countries in a day, in a brief, whirlwind tour.  While I definitely enjoyed my vacation to that park, and I could use a little of that Florida weather right about now, it’s sad to think of that in comparision to our teaching about other cultures.

“None of us is as smart as all of us”

“Inclusion isn’t about disability, inclusion isn’t about schools;
inclusion is about what kind of a world we want to live in together”
Mara Sapon-Shevin

During this week’s work, a topic that interested me most was the idea of looking at the word inclusion in a much broader sense than I usually think of it.  I’ve always only thought of it in relation to mainstreaming special needs students into the regular classrooms, but the articles and readings I came across made me realize that inclusion means including everyone, and making them all equal in their learning status, in the classroom.  It’s a much more difficult idea than it first seems, because it means that we need to think of ways to educate our students to be accepting and tolerant of all sorts of differences in our students. 

A sidelight from this was also by the same person I quoted at the top of this blog.  She is a professor of inclusive education at Syracuse University, and she has interesting ideas as to why there shouldn’t be “gifted education” programs.  She argues that a disproportionate number of gifted students are upperclass white children, and that we are creating a two-tier education system which means first class education for the highly intelligent, and second class education for the rest.  Her own daughter qualified for a gifted program, and she turned it down and was quoted as saying “I would never have wanted to raise a child who thought that she was better or smarter than other people.”

I’m looking forward to class this week to hear other opinions on this week’s topic.

Civics & Education

This week’s topic ended up being very interesting to me. It was one of those kind of searches where one click led to another, and before I knew it I was fairly deep into the topic, and each click had me thinking along a different route.

I was really glad that I decided to look up more information on the author of the original author that I referenced because his more recent publication really put things into context for me. His method of listing different levels of citizens was very helpful to me. I was struggling with understanding what he meant by a transformative citizen until he brought up the examples of citizens who stood up for what they believed in during the civil rights movement, even though what they were doing was illegal. My students and I had just finished reading the novel that I used for my placemat project right before Christmas, and it dealt with this time period. In doing this novel again, I want to be sure to draw attention to the actions of these citizens and incorporate how their actions were appropriate even though illegal. I think this would be a great discussion starter for use with my students. This is an angle that I think would be appropriate to go back and include in my next revision of my placemat.

Wow, it seems like it has been a long time since the last class, but in reality it has only been a few weeks.  It’s good to be back with everyone, truding forward toward our degree. 

This week has been very strange for me.  Because of the weather we’re experiencing, and the extreme cold, we haven’t had school since last Tuesday.  Wednesday through Friday were “snowa segment  days” which will have to be made up in June.  While I enjoy the days off now, I’m going to regret it when June comes and the weather is nice but we’re inside.  Oh well!  Plus, still no school tomorrow because of the holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  Wow!  The students will be a little wild after an unexpected 6 day break.

Anyway, on to the topic of work and education.  Just the other night I was watching some news program and there was a segment about how many college graduates now wish they hadn’t attended college because they have huge debt, and with the state of our economy, they are unable to find a job in their chosen fields.  The program mentioned that students in the lower 40% of their high school classes should probably just skip college because they will probably not be successful there, and it will just be a debt they will have to try to pay back after dropping out of college.  How depressing!  The “gist” of the segment was that students are being encouraged to go to college, and in fact are told that they can’t be successful without doing so, and in reality this is just not true.  They proclaim that a bachelor’s degree is the new high school diploma, and since so many receive one, it doesn’t really help you that much. 

I couldn’t help but think about how discouraging that would sound to someone just out of high school who is trying to determine their future path.  There is always the pull to just go into the workforce and begin earning money.  I do realize, of course, that college isn’t for everyone, and that many people can be successful without a college education.  But, as an educator and a life-long learner, I can’t imagine telling someone that furthering your education would be a waste of your time.  I guess it depends on the person and the circumstances.  It was just a strange news segment, and it left me feeling a little disturbed.

Reading some of the articles for this week on the early workforce were also a little disturbing.  How depressing to think of doing the same repetitive thing over and over, day after day, week after week, etc.  And to think that that was all you were thought to be qualified for.  Remind me of this if I start to complain about my job!   

For some people, this is still the life that they lead, either by choice or by necessity.  Seems strange to realize how little some things have changed in this period of time, and it makes me grateful to realize how much other things have changed.  Now we just have to figure out how to introduce substantial change to our education system…I guess that’s what this course is for.

Thankfully my 14 year old son wasn’t watching the news with me the other night.  I can just see how that would be one more argument for his side about how school is a waste of time, and he would learn more just living life.  (He’s actually a good student, but only because of pressure applied by me!)  Do any of you have middle school students?  Any words of advice?  His dislike for school has seemed to develop over the last two years, which coincides with his movement to the junior high.  And I can relate to his issues because for most of his day, he is in classrooms that are very didactic in nature.  And attempts at group work and group projects result in him bringing home the entire project to complete because his “partners” don’t want to do their part.  It’s hard watching this from the side.

Ooops!  I seem to have digressed from the topic at hand.  Oh well, isn’t that the nature of blogs?  Anyway, I was serious when I said advice on the raising of teenagers is welcome!

Have a wonderful week, and I’ll talk to all of you on Tuesday night!

Experiencing the new!

The students in this picture are working on weighing a mummified apple slice to see how much its weight had changed since the last time they checked it.  They were in the middle of a unit on Ancient Egypt, so of course the topic of mummies came up.  We discussed why and how mummies were made, which led us to the point where we had to try it out.  Students weren’t sure what to expect when I told them we would be mummifying something in class.  A few with weak stomachs were worried!  They loved checking on their “mummies” at different stages in the experiment, and they were amazed at the results.

Applying Creatively

These ladies are displaying their final projects after a unit on Author Studies.  Students were able to do an in depth research of their favorite authors, and choose a way to present this information to the class.  The students in this picture summarized the knowledge they gathered about their authors in boxes designed to look like one of their favorite authors.  Inside the boxes they put items that told the story of the author’s life.  During “Children’s Literature Week” they took their boxes to lower grade classrooms and told their stories about the author’s lives. 

Applying Appropriately

For the last 8 years, our school has held a Veterans Day Assembly to honor local veterans in our community.  My 6th grade students have taken an increasingly larger role each year in organizing and presenting this assembly for the community as well as the other students in the building.  Students write essays, present skits, and decorate the hallways in a fashion designed to show the respect that our veterans deserve.

Reflective Thinking

We have an optional “Lunch Bunch Bookclub” that meets and discusses three different books each year.  Students that want to join follow the bookclub format and agree to read a certain number of chapters by each meeting date, and then come together to discuss the book.  A teacher is present with each group, but it isn’t a teacher-led discussion. The students take the lead and talk about what they liked or didn’t like, their feelings and reactions to certain characters, their predictions and their connections to the story, etc.  These are so much fun to sit back and listen to.  The teacher is also reading the book with them, and can take part in the discussion, but must refrain from “taking over” the discussion.  In order to monitor this, we have sometimes tape-recorded the sessions to listen to them later.  This is a good tool to use to help you critique your teaching style.  The girls in this photograph were showing drawings they had made after reflecting back on the previous week’s reading of “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.”

Cooperative Learning

The students in this photograph were reading a selected chapter from a novel we are currently reading as a class-”The Watsons Go to Birmingham -1963″ and they were working on creating a script to present this chapter through Readers Theater to the rest of the class. Cooperative Learning is something that happens a lot in my classroom for many reasons.  A majority of the students work best when they have others that they can bounce ideas off.  Input from others can stimulate their thinking and help them to look at things in ways they might not have thought of before.  It also causes them to have to be flexible in how they do things since it isn’t only up to them.  Most students like the social aspect of learning with others, and I enjoy having them work together as long as they can buckle down and get the job at hand done.  It’s training for life because most of us have to be able to get along with co-workers as adults, and we have to practice the fine art of compromise. 

There are, of course, some students that especially struggle with this process.  They are by nature loners, and prefer to work in solitude.  Sometimes I allow this, but sometimes they have to be able to work with others to complete tasks, so there is compromise involved on my part as well.

Wow!  I can’t believe I actually got this figured out…the first ones from our class looked so nice, so they made it look very easy…maybe it’s not as hard as it first looked.

The learning journey I’ve been on for the last few weeks has certainly been exciting.  I’ve been contemplating going back to school for a while, but it always seemed like it was never the right time because of all of my other time commitments.  Once I made the final decision this spring, however, I’ve been very anxious to get started.  My enthusiasm was dampened a little when I read all the course descriptions, and I felt a little overwhelmed with everything we would be covering.  I wasn’t even sure what some of the descriptions meant.

I was a little hesitant about our first practice connection session, but everything turned out to be easier than it looked.  The only thing I remember about the first couple of sessions in Elluminate was that it was hard to concentrate on everything at once.  I had experienced all of these media separately, but not all at the same time, and I felt a little like a student with ADD because I was having trouble focusing. 

PBWiki was a breeze to catch on to, but Wikimedia was a little less user-friendly.  The chance to read comments from our classmates on our posts and our entries has been enjoyable.  It’s kind of like being a little kid and receiving notes or mail from your friends.  Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!

What’s been the most interesting, however, is our connection with all of our classmates.  I truly wasn’t excited about that part because I wanted to just be able to work on my own at a time that worked best for me, and the weekly synchronous sessions seemed like they would be a pain.  However, I wouldn’t be getting the same sense of my classmates if we didn’t share this time together.  Also, I like that the Australians have some experience with this already, so they seem to really know what they are talking about.  It’s very interesting to hear them talk about this from the point of view of someone who has already done it.  Thanks for all your input! 

Definitely the high-point of my journey this past week was when Kim L. and I worked together through Skype.  She was very helpful, and it was just fun to do it this way.  Just one more thing we have experienced that I never would have thought of doing before this class started.  (By the way, Kim…you didn’t tell me you were still in your PJ’s!  Don’t you like my exciting Saturday nights?)

Anyway, now I’m just anxious to see how far this class will take me, as well as the classes to come!