Eduholic

Is there a circle of hell reserved for writers? Cause right now, I’m deep in it. I type this with flames licking my fingers to apologize for the fact that I haven’t posted in a while. Plus I’m midway in my life’s journey and feeling it (sorry, some of my tenth graders are reading the Inferno.)

Anyway, here’s the tale of woe. Last summer I had an article accepted at the Washington Post Magazine (that was the good part). In 4000 words I would turn this blog’s predecessor, “Certifiable?”, into a magazine feature chronicling my pursuit of National Board Certification. By agreement with the editor I held off with the ending to see if I passed. I didn’t (but that’s different bad news).

I wrote most of the piece this summer, loyal readers may remember, while teaching a George Mason graduate course for teacher-researchers and other educators who wanted to publish. One thing I forgot to tell them: be careful what you wish for.

The piece was slated to run this spring, but my editor called a couple weeks ago and told me it was going in this February. I finished it up and sent her the copy (still pretty good news).

The bad news kicked in when I checked my email on returning from a trip to Ann Arbor, Michigan to see my niece’s bat mitzvah last weekend. A long page of all caps from the editor explained, more or less, that my ten-pager just wasn’t quite what she was looking for. I had to rewrite it. Fast.

So, this Monday, instead of catching up on the old blog, hanging with the fam, and thinking about civil rights, I holed up in the manzone for about 12 hours and got ‘er done. Ouch. Felt like an all-nighter at college, except it was an all-dayer. And then some. Turns out the editor wanted more canoe in the piece, an idea I had pitched at our original meeting 6 months earlier. Zounds.

It was pretty rockstarish the next day when the Post photographer showed up at my classroom and shot a bunch of pix of me with the kids. I wore a tie for the second time in 15 years. On my free period he had me posing like Rodin’s thinker on a hunk of canoe wood.

Yesterday, a new round of comments from her and another six hours of frantic typing by me: three after school until my eyes were blurry, then a few more on the laptop at home as I sat in the rocker in my son’s dark bedroom long past the time he’d fallen asleep.

Now the sun’s come up again, and I’m still not done. I’ve got some time after school today before I head off to teach night school at the community college, so maybe I can finish this round of changes. The problem is, by this point, my writing has turned to mush. I don’t know what to leave in or take out, I can’t tell if it’s her voice in my head or something I thought of myself. And I have a nasty cold. This time my head probably really will pop like a grape. Grey pulp all over the screen. Deadline blown.

This all puts me in mind of something my dad used to say. He himself retired as the editor of the editorial page of the Washington Post after a storied forty year career (and no, he didn’t land me this piece; in fact, I’m pretty sure this current editor doesn’t know who he was). Anyway, he explained his job like this, “An editor is a mouse training to be a rat.”

It always sounded apt, even though I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. I imagine he heard it himself from some cigar-chomping editor at the city desk (you know: hard-boiled, heart of gold, despised dangling modifiers).

I actually really like the lady I’m working with at the Post. The revisions she suggests make sense; I just wish I had more time (and that she’d bump my rate to a buck a word). Anyway, let me leave you with the 500 word lede that got axed from my original draft. Someone ought to read the little guy. If you want to read the new opening, check out the Washington Post Magazine Feb 17.

OLD LEDE

I stood in front of a room full of parents on a Wednesday night two Septembers ago, imagining, for a moment, that the adults crammed into the small wooden desks we call “one-armed bandits” were tenth graders again. The years faded from their faces: the man with the power tie thumbing his blackberry was a tousle-haired kid fidgeting with a video game. The helicopter mom scribbling in her day planner was a cheerleader making notes in looping script.

Just as quickly as it came, the image faded. These were not my students; they were my students’ parents. And on my fourteenth back to school night as an English teacher, I had just ten minutes to tell them how I was going to give their child a top notch education in my class that year.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” I began, trying to project just the right mix of professionalism, warmth, and competence. “Are you ready for the quiz?” There was a sprinkle of nervous laughter. Locker banks and hand-lettered posters on the wall brought them back to their own school days, from seventh grade gym to diagramming sentences on the chalk board. The familiar surroundings belied the fact that what and even how they learned decades ago bears little resemblance to today’s steroidal versions of reading, writing and ‘rithmetic. The truth was that many of these parents hadn’t quite understood the homework since their child was in elementary school.

“I’m looking forward to an exciting year,” I continued, and headed into my shpiel about the syllabus. The parents seemed pleased to hear that their kids would write a lot, and were interested when I told them about a grant-funded project to build a dugout canoe in our English and history classes.

Finally, the kicker: “I also want to let you know that this year I will be attempting to get an advanced professional certification called ‘National Board Certification.’ As part of that process, I will be studying your child’s work carefully, and at times I will video tape the class.”

There was a beat of silence. Running through their minds, no doubt, were questions: Shouldn’t he already be certified as a teacher? Is this going to help my kid? Who’s going to see that video? Knowing my ten minutes was nearly up, I concluded: “You may have questions about this, and I’ll be glad to talk to you later. You can also follow the process on my blog on Teacher Magazine online. Thanks!” I handed out a hard copy of the first post to my online diary, called “Certifiable?” In it I asked, “Am I nuts? Can I do it?”, and compared the looming challenge to a snow-capped peak against a clear blue sky. My reason for scaling this mountain was, “Because it’s there.”

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I’m just starting Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 with 9th graders. Eventually, we’re going to do a simulation. The paperwork for an actual book burning was a hassle, so instead we’ll simulate a book challenge hearing, with kids playing various parts including “concerned parent,” school librarian, administrator, etc. (the kids without a set role will be members of the school board, charged with listening to the evidence and writing a decision). Don’t tell the students, but I think the book we’ll put on trial is Harry Potter.

For now I want to write about the “anticipatory set.” You know, what I do in the beginning to hook the kids. Instead of diving right in with the censorship angle, we’re approaching by a side route that I think might prove interesting.

Bradbury himself stated, in a recent interview, that he had never intended Fahrenheit to become the poster book for book banning, since he originally wrote it as an anti TV screed.

That’s right: the prolific sci-fi author was less interested in Montag dousing piles of manuscripts with kerosene than with Montag’s wife Mildred, doped up on sleeping pills and adrift in the world of the imaginary family that lived in her “wall screens.”

In the novel, her inevitable overdose and his horror at the blasé medics who pump her stomach, along with a precocious teenage girl’s questions about his job, propel Montag to (gasp) read the books he’s supposed to be burning.

This brings me to the media journals, our warm up assignment. Last week I issued books and assigned the first chunk of reading. Along with that, I asked students to keep track of all the media they consumed for seven days.

I tried to keep a chart myself, too, just to make sure it would work. The categories were user-friendly enough (Date/Time/Form of media/Content/Purpose oractivity), but what struck me that I simply hadn’t realized when conceiving the assignment was that life itself, all of a sudden, has turned into a near constant stream of media bombardment.

Take Saturday, for example. I met a friend for coffee in the morning, a Brit who was listening to BBC1 in his car when he picked me up. We looked at my resume and related materials on a laptop in the coffeehouse while rapping about jobs.

When I got home, the kids were still in PJs watching a Tom and Jerry DVD, so I slipped downstairs to work on an article that’s running in the Washington Post soon, clicking into my blog to cherry pick some phrases.

By noon, we had to get the boys out of the house to stay out of the cleaning lady’s way, so we drove to my parents’, cranking the radio in the car on the way over to drown out some back seat bickering.

After bagels at my parents, the boys played (nicely) upstairs, and I hung out reading the paper. I’d already gotten through most of the Post, but they had the Times too.

Soon, it was time to drive home and let Will get his nap. Jack was worn out from a late Friday night, so we put him in front of the TV for some down time. In the meantime, I snuck down to the manzone to download itunes for the new Xmas nano.

Later, we whipped up family dinner at home and watched Second Hand Lions, a pretty funny flick with Michael Kaine and Robert DuVall as crotchety old man who live in the boonies (with no electricity).

After bath and bedtime with the boys—I read the New Yorker by flashlight when I was putting Jack to sleep-- Courtney and I channel surfed our way into the last half of Out of Africa before dozing off.

I may have left out a dog walk or two, but there you have it. A not untypical day in the life of a regular guy. Right? Maybe I should have made the assignment to record times kids are NOT consuming media. After all, my day was cover to cover and I don’t even play video games or instant message.

I’ll make you a deal: keep consuming me, and I’ll report back about how much and what type of media kids crammed into their busy lives last week beyond reading the first 68 pages of Fahrenheit 451.

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Diane left a comment last post asking for more information about the wikis my 9th graders are using to develop their science papers. (Check out “Workshop of the Gods” and a few previous posts for the nature of the assignment if you’re new here.)

I’ll try to flatten this thing into two dimensions in this post; you can’t get to my students’ work because it is based in blackboard, our school system’s online learning system. (I don’t have any great ideas about where to put your own class’s wikis if you want to try this at home and don’t happen to have blackboard or something like it, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t hard to find free and user-friendly wiki-hosting cites in cyberspace.)

Let me preface this how-to with the caveat that I’m winging it, and have asked the kids to help me along as we travel through this new-to-us territory. My basic plan, which seems to be working so far, is to use a class wiki as a model, instructing kids about new pages to add to their group wikis as we make our way through this evolving project.

There are 17 groups, by the way, so this structure is important to me from a management point of view. I want to be able to rapidly dip into each wiki and find what I’m looking for without navigating creative architecture for each group.

That said, and with my blessings, kids are adding pages to their wikis beyond the ones I require as they see fit. It’s a tool that they intuitively grasp and wield far more creatively than I—I’ll share an example of that adaptive use, but first, here’s the text from the no-frills home page so far from the model class wiki. (Material pulled from our wikis will be presented in italics).

This is a homepage that will serve as a template of sorts for your individual group wikis.
11-26-07 Experiment Proposal. This needs to be complete and submitted by___.
12-4-07 Literature Review Works Cited. Go here for a collection of articles that show the current state of the field we are researching. NOTE: This is the old "Literature Review" page. We changed the name and it is now going to serve as our works cited for the review itself, which has its own page below.
12-13-07 Literature Review. Here is our group's lit review. See the assignment sheet under Assignments for further details.
12-20-07 Comments for revision of "Findings" section of literature review. 3 specific suggestions for revision from each group member should be posted here.

Each underlined assignment title is, of course, a link to a new page where I provide a format for that section. For example, here’s the text from the last one, “Comments for revision of 'Findings' section of literature review." I asked them to create this page after a writing workshop during which the groups were “jig-sawed,” so each group member ended up getting feedback from different kids.

Group member #1's name here.
1. First suggestion for revision.
2. Second suggestion for revision.
3. Third suggestion for revision.
Group member #2's name here. ETC

Here’s an actual example from one of the groups where each member has posted three ideas for revision of their science paper based on the workshop. There’s an intro at the top of the page by the self-appointed leader in this task. (I’ve changed all student names).

This page holds the comments on our Summary of Findings from the workshop on Thursday December 20, 2007. Group members, don't forget to add three comments that you received from the workshop. Check the example wiki for how to do it. ~kitty

Bart
1. I noticed that some of the findings were a little brief. In particular our second could use some expanding on.
2.The last sentence in the fourth finding is very badly constructed. It says: "Temperature and salinity also can have detrimental effects on coliform levels in a watershed." I really don't know what this means at all. High or low temperatures? High or low salinity? Also, what does detrimental effect mean? Does it mean and increase or decrease in coliform? It was just very ambiguous.
3.Also, in one of the findings a sentence reads: "The total coliform amount was much higher than the total fecal coliform amount", which makes absolutely no sense. EDIT: Ok, I now understand what was meant by that, I'm just going to clarify it.
4. Not about the findings but in the introduction (which I wrote), our hypothesis says if fecal coliform increases, turbidity increases. Yet the title says effect of turbidity on fecal coliform. I think turbidity should be our IV so I'm going to change the hypothesis.

Bart especially did a good job of following my instructions to be specific about where changes need to be made instead of just saying vaguely, “Needs more evidence.” And for the most part, I think their comments capture meaningful student-generated feedback.

Here’s an example of another way the wiki is being used, this time by kids who didn’t follow my directions. I couldn’t find a section anywhere on their wiki for Comments for revision of "Findings", but I did find this long strand of dialogue on a page they called “Discussion.”

wallace--I'm first to get here... so I'm going to do some research on possible topics and if I find anything I'll put it here. We need a group leader. My email is -- and my aim is --. (note... I originally had this in the main part)
--I was thinking of doing the oysters experiment that was rejected but with a different organism... possibly a plant. Also wikipedia says oysters are macroinvertebrates, so half of mr. rosenfeld's reason for rejecting it is gone. --wallace
-- I think it would be hard to find an organism we could buy... or collect... -- wallace
-- the other idea I thought was good was to measure water quality in streams with/without dams, but I have no idea how to find dams... -- wallace --we could always go with an impossible idea and change it later but I want to make sure no one else has something good-- wallace
________________________________________
Thanks for the source, Mike, but we need it cited and annotated, and where's Arnie?? (Speaking of Arnie, and his "Wallace can slack off...", I think I'll go by that and say this: Wallace did our proposal originally, I did the final (a complete redo, so just as much work), so I think Arnie and Mike should do all the sources)
We only have one source so far. An acceptable one, but we need MORE! I'm turning in the proposal tomorrow. Arnie, Mike: bring whatever you have, annotated.
As for the group leader, I'll volunteer for the role: you'll get a testimony from 3 Kilmer students last year that they would have failed eCybermission were it not for me :) We can talk in school tomorrow.
My email's --
-Isolde
(edited)
________________________________________
-wallace
I have 1 article and am getting a second... need 2 per person I think...
oh and you can delete pages... on right menu... I can't post 1st source I got , turned it in...
________________________________________
I can't beleive I missed that...
Still looking for any word from Mike...
-Isolde
________________________________________
Arnie - What are you asking about? (format and who wrote it)

If we want accurate measurements of light exposure we can buy a lux meter on ebay for around $10. Assuming it's not broken, any brand should be good to 3-5%.
-Isolde
________________________________________
I already posted my summaries on the link from Home >> empty page.
I think all of the articles are supposed to be on one page, so if we could move those...yeah.
By the way, light intensity is measured with "uEinst. m-2 s-1". So far, no luck on finding out what that is.
-Arnie
________________________________________
uhh... I'm not going to pretend I know what that is and argue with you, but it seems like that's a formula for something about light. What concerns us is very simple: lux is a measure of light intensity at one point. (There are many related terms: I beleive luminous flux is the same, and lumens, or total luminous flux, is the total amount of light from a source. But all that matters to us is simple lux)
-Isolde
________________________________________
again...if you write on this page, put your name after it so i know who you are.
and no, it is a measurement. There aren't any variables in that little blurb...the 'u' denotes 'micro' and m (meter) and s (seconds) are pretty easy. The Einst. and negative numbers are confusing though. (/wallace/ the negative numbers are negative powers. like m^3 for area but in reverse. wierd to think about s^-1 though /wallace/)
By the way, props to Mike for sticking my summaries on separate pages.
-Arnie
________________________________________
Sure, but what I'm saying is that we don't need to know - we already have an answer. Maybe it's the definition of lux, or candlepower, or a like measurement?
Arnie, what's your email?
-Isolde
________________________________________
--
I'm 100% sure it's on the intranet, but I already put it up on the home page, so no worries.
one more thing: Click here...yes? I think it's useful for general knowledge.
-Arnie
________________________________________
Yes, useful for general knowledge... can you find an "einstein" meter for $10 or less? I'm not saying its not useful or incorrect, just that it's now unnecessary.
-Isolde
________________________________________
Hey! I'll let you guys know the progress of the tech proposal (which I'll be heading). Mike'll be heading the lit reviews, so if you have anything, please run it by us first instead of working all independently. After all, you'll want to leave some work for us? Thanks.
-Arnie
________________________________________
So basically since the findings are due tomorrow, it's your last chance (not really) to tell me that you don't like them. Longer, shorter, better grammar, whatever you tell me to fix will be fixed.
-Mike

What I see here is ownership and problem-solving. Kids are working seriously at a task, and communicating effectively in part because of the medium itself. I wonder how many of you out there are also using wikis in your classrooms, and how. Drop Eduholic a note, and let’s figure out together how to best make these work in our (ready or not) 21st century classrooms.

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)