Office of Teaching and Unlearning

Preparing for Session on Science, Social Justice, and Writing for Change

2012-04-10T11:51:00.001-07:00

I'm incredibly excited--and humbled--to be facilitating a session at the 2012 Urban Sites Network Conference in Tulsa this weekend. (USN is a collaborative group within the National Writing Project. I am a member through the local Philadelphia Writing Project.) It is my hope to interrogate the connections between science, social justice, and writing for change.

I must admit that I'm somewhat apprehensive about facilitating the session. While I've done quite a bit of thinking about the issues involved with linking social justice and science, I've yet to establish a clear vision of how the linking of science and social justice should occur in my own classroom. For two years now, I've co-facilitated a session as part of a graduate-level course where we've worked with social justice lesson planning with pre-service science teachers. Those sessions have raised more questions for me and have forced me to reconsider some of my nascent ideas.

My thinking on the subject of social justice in the science classroom has been informed by Angela Calabrese-Barton, a number of examples of science and community connections showcased in National Science Teacher Association publications, and news articles from Philadelphia and around the country that describe projects undertaken by students and their teachers that pertain to community concerns and solutions. Even James Baldwin, in his writings about what it means to be educated and what it means to educate students, provides a perspective from which I might begin to make sense of social justice in the science classroom.

My search for resources has included searches for literature about problem-based learning, culturally relevant teaching, place-based education, educaitonal equity, authentic Inquiry, and educating intellectual, moral, and civic character. There seems to be no clear image of what teaching and learning with an eye toward social justice looks like in the science classroom. And that's to be expected, I suppose.

I will arrive at the conference with more questions than answers. I hope that my colleagues are comfortable with a conversation rather than a specific blueprint for marrying science and social justice. Despite my apprehension (or because of it), I am excited to be a part of the conversations in Tulsa this coming weekend.

Below I have included some of the questions and goals for the session. I'll post at some point about my ideas for making sense of the levels and ways of engaging in social justice learning in science. I have a framework in mind that's still taking shape. And I will also include some more thoughts on specific readings. Here's a glimpse:

Session Overview
Science as a discipline provides opportunities for students to explore issues that directly affect their communities—and to investigate solutions to global and local challenges. Too often, however, education in science lacks a sense of place and a commitment to social justice. Might education in science require as much attention to ethics and history as it does to mathematics and memorization? Asking questions, making observations, collecting data, analyzing results, and communicating findings can provide authentic opportunities for students to strengthen traditional and twenty-first-century literacies, engage students in learning that is relevant and related to their lived experiences, provide spaces for cross-discipline collaboration in schools, and introduce students to the possibilities of political and social change. The purpose of this seminar is to address how science in the classroom—and in the community classroom—provides opportunities for students to write to learn, collaborate with peers, and develop a sense of agency. The session will include as many questions as answers. Educators in all grade levels and in all disciplines are invited to join the conversation.

Guiding Questions
Is there a place for social justice in the science classroom?
How might linking science with social justice provide spaces for student to engage in authentic and meaningful science learning?

Session Goals

Explore rationales for using social justice as a lens through which to learn science and to write
Consider continua related to engaging in social justice learning in a classroom and associated challenges/implications
Examine projects and ideas that involve learning in science, writing to learn, and a commitment to social justice
Articulate a set of beliefs about the possibilities for using science and social justice as catalysts for learning and writing

Agenda
1. Responding to a text
2. Beginning with introductions, questions, and context
3. Exploring examples
4. Considering continua of engagement and connections
5. Generating lesson, unit, and course ideas
6. Articulating a position from which to move forward

Questions and Ideas about Science Teaching and Learning

2012-03-12T17:17:00.002-07:00

What does it look like to teach science? To learn science? For the past five years, I've been haunted by these inextricably linked questions. And I'm certain about one thing: I don't know what either looks like. But I have some (educated?) guesses.

This winter, I was forced to distill my thoughts and questions in a syllabus for an elementary science methods course. This course, the first I have ever taught, is for first-year teachers in Philadelphia classrooms. I'm now working with my second cohort of teachers since last week. There's a lot to say about the course that I plan to write about later.

I am writing here to share some of the ideas and questions that I've chosen as points for departure.

Below are some of the key ideas we're considering. The key ideas are followed by questions. I offer the key ideas, not because I think they represent the gospel truth about science teaching and learning. I offer them, instead, as possible catalysts for discussion. The discussion may lead us (or only some of us) to reject the key ideas. (Keep in mind the context of Philadelphia schools: time for science teaching is often limited by administrators concerned about PSSA testing. Some of the key ideas respond directly to this environment.)

Key Ideas for Science Teaching and Learning

Science is not a supplemental or optional subject that is secondary to reading and writing; instead, science provides a purpose for reading and writing, a purpose that is too often missing from literacy classrooms and curricula.
Observations of the natural world constitute the foundation of science and should be the foundation of a science classroom.
Making inferences based on observations and prior knowledge is generally part of all content areas in school and is specifically the basis for advancing scientific understanding of the natural world.
Science learning does not have to begin with defining terms and looking at examples; instead, it can grow out of student exploration and inquiry.
Science involves making sense of observable cause and effect relationships and making predictions based on these relationships.
Experimental design often (but not always) relies on the identification and isolation of variables.
Examining cause and effect relationships is generally a part of all content areas in school and is specifically a key enterprise in science.
Scientists extend the reaches of scientific understanding by asking questions about the natural world.
Students are naturally inclined to ask questions and should be encouraged to do so in the science classroom.
Asking questions in science and in the classroom can often lead to making predictions and generating explanations (called hypotheses in science).
Science is not a supplemental or optional subject that is secondary to mathematics; instead, science provides a purpose for using numbers in the first place, a purpose that is too often missing from mathematics classrooms and curricula.
Observations in science often come in the form of measurements and numbers.
Teaching through inquiry provides authentic opportunities to analyze and interpret data.
Recognizing patterns and making sense of patterns is part of all disciplines in school.
The natural world is full of patterns that humans seek to make sense of through science. Students can and should be provided with opportunities to discover patterns and develop systems of classification based on their understandings of patterns.
Students are (or should be) expected to construct arguments based on evidence in multiple disciplines in school; science provides hands-on opportunities to hone this skill.
Scientific investigation and understanding of results in explanations that attempt to describe and predict events in the natural world.
Attempts to explain the natural world should be supported with evidence.
The universe is connected and can be thought of as a single system or explored as a set of connected systems.
Learning in schools too often proceeds by breaking up knowledge into disparate pieces and does not provide opportunities for students to actively integrate understanding into frameworks and systems.
The universe is vast and often phenomena are too large, too small, or too distant to touch and observe directly; models must be used in the place of direct observation.

Questions About Science Teaching and Learning

How might providing opportunities to make observations and inferences be a way to engage students in learning science?
In what ways does science provide an authentic purpose for learning to read and write?
What is developmentally appropriate for my students?
What is science literacy and how are schools addressing it?
What are the characteristics of science learning that is driven by inquiry?
In what ways might students strengthen reasoning skills through hands-on exploration of cause and effect?
How might our prior training and administrative pressures conflict with the practice of using inquiry in the classroom?
Which kinds of questions are part of the inquiry classroom and which are not?
How can the science classroom provide spaces for students to make sense of the abstractions and symbols that constitute mathematics?
What does it mean to analyze data?
In what ways might opportunities to discover patterns and develop classification systems provide spaces for students to use science skills (observing, inferring, asking questions, isolating variables, and analyzing data)?
How might a teacher scaffold learning experiences to help students construct arguments using evidence?
What opportunities and challenges face teachers who seek to develop critical thinkers in their classrooms?

*A final note about the purpose and goals of the course: The course is an introduction to teaching science in an elementary school classroom. Our time together is limited and unfortunately does not allow us to engage with all topics as fully as we might need to. For instance, the literature on student misconceptions in science, social justice and place-based science education, student journals in science, and methods of assessment in science is extensive and provides numerous opportunities for consideration that could constitute individual courses. As we touch upon some of these topics (and others), teachers may choose to pursue other professional development opportunities to improve their practices and to consider these issues more deeply.

A Public Good

2012-03-11T16:39:00.003-07:00

Confession: I should be planning. There's a school science fair and guest entomologist on my plate this week. However, I was struck by a review that Dr. Diane Ravitch posted about two books on education reform. What precipitated was a brief discussion via comments on Facebook and a few unintelligible tweets on Twitter. Some of my comments on those platforms I've decided to translate into this blog post. Here goes...

In the discussion about education reform and "school choice," I am struck by the criticism of charter schools in the face of a looming yet untouchable topic: private schools.

Full disclosure: I started teaching five years ago through Teach For America (something I rarely bring up in conversation if you know me that well). I currently work at a charter school. I went to a private high school. I write here not to blindly defend the system as it is currently constituted nor out of some desire to defend my own professional and educational background. What strikes me are not Dr. Ravitch's overall critiques of charters or Teach For America. Indeed, I continue to offer quite a few arguments against the logics that created and undergird a program like Teach For America and the explosion of charters in what are largely urban centers.

In response to Dr. Ravitch's book reviews (which I feel sums up some of the criticisms of charters that I hear in general public/political discourse), I just need to raise this question: if charter schools shouldn't be allowed to "destabilize" the public education system (as Dr. Ravitch puts it), then why allow private schools, which reinforce class differences, presumably drain resources from a system that could otherwise be entirely public and shared, and live up to no public standard of accountability? Has the public school system not been destabilized all along by a class of individuals who preserve wealth and privilege in a system of schools that is out of reach for many? Is it fair to insist that any student who cannot afford private education must be forced to enroll in public schools that are mismanaged and underfunded?

Don't we already have a mixed model of "choice" when you lump in private schools?

It seems that those who vilify charters, ignore the presence of private schools. Indeed, unless I missed it, Dr. Ravitch makes no mention of the minuscule number of independent/private schools in Finland. (Are there any?)

If we're going to have the conversation about schools that remove resources from public schools and erode what might otherwise be a public good, then let's have it.

I find it strange to act as if this distinction between private and charter is natural and acceptable. it seems that the distinction between private and charter schools rests on the relative newness of charters when compared to private schools. Charters accelerate a problem that is otherwise created by a "this is best for my kid" mentality that drove the creation of private schools in the first place. So, now, we have groups of people who may not have the financial resources to enroll children in private schools but who now have another choice. But academics (who send children to public/lab/well-funded schools--yes, this is ad hominem) criticize charters and pretend the system wasn't split before charters popped up. There's no "public" school if part of the public doesn't ever have to attend it. Further, the proposition that "private" money is separate from public money is untenable and dishonest.

When all children have to attend the same kinds of schools and therefore commit to a shared system of education, I will overlook the theoretical/academic challenges to charters in the face of real concerns of students and parents. It's almost as if the argument against charters seeks to keep one group of parents from voting with their feet while allowing other groups of parents to continue throwing money into high-priced private schools. I refuse to tell one parent that he/she must stick with one type of public school while another has the financial capacity to choose and create his/her own private oasis.

I suppose driving the conversation in this direction would then bring up issues of residential segregation that have been supported by the Courts and that reversed any promise of Brown. We'd have to truly address poverty as a system linked with unimaginable wealth. I guess it's easier just to leave those questions alone and focus criticism on families who are doing what private schools parents have been doing for decades.

Growing up, I sometimes wondered aloud to my mom--a committed, proud, unionized, and inspirational public school special education teacher--about why she would send me to a private school when it seemed like public schools needed commitment from the entire community. I think I'm asking that same question now. When will public schools become public and not just for one segment of our population?

Maybe my intellectual development has remained stunted since high school. That's certainly possible. Or maybe, what seemed common sense to me then, is just common sense now.

*I recognize that closing down private schools is off the table in the minds of many. And I'm not advocating for schools that all look the same. Instead, I am asking that we consider why we might think private schools shouldn't be up for closing and apply that same reasoning to charters. I think a number of class concerns come into clear view.

**I will not claim that charter schools are all better than public schools. Just as I would never claim that all private schools are better than public schools.

***Although I wasn't thinking about this when I wrote it, I certainly would apply this line of reasoning to vouchers. Philosophically, I really am opposed to the idea. However, it seems we've had a split educational system all along. Vouchers deepen the split.

Digital Learning Day: Blogging about science

2012-02-01T15:48:00.000-08:00

Today is Digital Learning Day. Colleagues across the country with the National Writing Project, Philadelphia Writing Project, and other education organizations are sharing stories about work that students are doing with digital tools.

In the midst of preparing for a robotics competition this weekend and parent/teacher conferences tonight, I've decided that I wanted to take part in the fun.

My honors biology and chemistry class needs your help.

Students are blogging for the first time about their independent science investigations. Students have been working the past few months to develop questions and experimental designs to test their science questions. You can view their nascent blogs here.

At our school, a few teachers use WordPress to work with students and develop their blogging skills. It's important to show students--who are all too often tweeting, messaging, and posting content online--about maintaining a responsible online image. As I teacher, I hope that students will make use of the proliferation of web 2.0 tools and to tap into the power of these tools.

I've been working with students the past three years to create independent projects in science. A number of students have competed in local and state fairs. This year, however, is the first time we have taken our work public. I'm not sure that the blogs are where I'd like them to be. But sometimes it takes diving in before you can understand fully the challenges and opportunities that exist, especially in the classroom.

It is a challenge to keep track of 120 different student projects. If you have the time, check in on a student's blog and leave him some feedback.

Also, if you're looking to learn more about digital tools in the classroom, check out NWP's Digital Is... website. I've previously posted on Digital Is... about using Google Docs with science fair projects.

Morning in Tiburon: Science as a Body of Knowledge and a Set of Practices

2011-10-29T18:29:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I was humbled to be part of a group of science teachers convened by the National Writing Project in Tiburon, California, to examine the National Research Council's recently published Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. The Framework is a precursor to the next round of National Science Education Standards. I am one of two teachers from the Philadelphia Writing Project here this weekend and one of 9 teachers total. My colleagues teach students in grades K-16 in Maine, Idaho, California, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Massachusetts.

As is tradition with the National Writing Project, we took time to engage with texts and write. I am including below some of my reflections from one activity today. I'm not sure all of the thoughts are coherent. They were prompted by a few lines from the Framework.

“Science is not just a body of knowledge that reflects current understanding of the world; it is also a set of practices used to establish, extend, and refine that knowledge. Both elements— knowledge and practice—are essential.” (Framework for K-12 Science Education, p.2-4)

As a science teacher, it’s too easy to flip through a textbook and think about the ways you can cover concepts and jazz it up so students learn it with a smile and a nod--or most of it. Certainly science is full of topics and theories and experiments that can be recreated and recounted through hands-on and text-based lessons. States of matter? Let's make ice cream. Classification? Let's sort jelly beans. Cells? Let's build a styrofoam model. All students need to know Boyle’s law, right? Let's dig in. And all students need to know about DNA transcription and translation. Hmm, I can use beads for that one.

But what happens when we educate an entire generation to memorize all of the science stuffed into the textbook and forget to develop the capacities of our young people to think, create, experiment, and investigate in ways that match what scientists did to develop the theories and concepts in the first place?

The practices of science—like developing questions, creating and critiquing models, refining research methods, and making sense of data—are so much more difficult to teach and don’t always result in a tidy statement or set of key points. Yes, even the textbook might include a quick chapter on "the scientific method." But reading that chapter won't help a student employ the practices that make science possible. Furthermore, a fact or law is easy to recite. A perspective, an orientation, a set of skills that can be employed in a variety of contexts may not be as easy to measure. In an political environment that rewards and punishes schools for bubbles on tests and for hammering home discreet, low-level objectives, it seems that scientific practices are just too difficult to deal with.

The problem is compounded by the rapid expansion of scientific knowledge that continues to take place (even if our textbooks are not updated quickly enough to accommodate new theories and ideas). With nanotechnology, genetics, and the discovery of subatomic particles that still perplex the scientists who are smashing atoms together deep in the Earth, there’s enough “new” science to fill a textbook by itself. The wealth of concepts, terms, and ideas is expanding.

Each year, when I begin with a new group of students, I often emphasize that science is a way of viewing the world. I suggest to my students that a teacher or class may have convinced some of them that they’re “not good at science.” I state firmly that it will be our goal to break down these notions throughout the year. Science is just a way of viewing the world; it’s a lens. Thinking back, I realize that each year, I'm talking about the practices of science, not the body of knowledge and facts. I wonder if a narrow focus on the body of knowledge is partially responsible for convincing some students that they’re not meant to pursue science or understand it.

In my personal crusade to extol the virtues of teaching students science practices, I am often met with concern that students aren’t “learning the content” that they will need in college. And indeed, I wonder if colleges reward the learners who memorize facts. Will my students be less prepared for college? Will courage to pursue new knowledge hinder a student who must otherwise memorize and regurgitate? Newton said that he stood on the shoulders or giants. So, am I ignoring the giants? Students can only stand so tall without a foundation. I can teach both, the body of knowledge and practices. But, let’s be honest, there’s hardly enough time in the day to address both, all the time.

So, here I am, left to make the best of the time I have to do both. Hmm...what to do about Monday's lesson plan...

Making the Most of Mitosis

2011-08-30T06:52:00.001-07:00

This is something I wrote for the Summer 2011 issue of the Philadelphia Writing Project Journal.

“Why not show your students images of mitosis—out of order and without labels and vocabulary—before you ruin it for them?” I posed this question to a new teacher. She was teaching a seventh grade science class during summer school. She had come to me for advice. And the advice I gave her surprised me.

Teachers like to talk. Teachers like to tell. Teachers like to spoil surprise and wonder, especially in science. Not all teachers are so selfish and dull. But certainly the weight of core curricula and the pressure of standardized tests with single answers can push a teacher to approach learning in a way that crushes questions and smothers opportunities for exploration. I have been in enough classrooms as a student to know what this suppression feels like. So have most students. Too often a teacher’s first inclination, especially in the first years of teaching, might be to provide a set of notes describing a phenomenon and defining the words needed to describe an event in the natural world. The teacher is too often a talking textbook.

The teacher is too often a talking textbook.

Mitosis, the process by which a cell with a nucleus creates two cells with identical sets of chromosomes, presents a ripe opportunity for a teacher to stand and deliver an outlined set of notes about Prophase, Metaphase, Anaphase, and Telophase. The teacher to students: “Here is what the great scientists have theorized. Here is what you need to memorize.” Introduce the key concepts, label a few diagrams, and prepare for a test on the material.

When I taught seventh grade three years ago, I devised mnemonic devices to help students remember what occurs inside a cell during each stage of cell division. (“Just think ‘middle’ when you see ‘Metaphase’ to remember where the chromosomes line up.”) I then made memorization more fun with some theatre. Students wrote scripts, made props, and acted out the stages to show how cells create identical copies of themselves. I still have some of the student-created props in a filing cabinet in my room, a token of what I felt then were excellent teaching methods. Mnemonic devices and student-created performances constituted a progressive pedagogy, or so I thought. But it was still textbook learning, just dressed up in student choice and multiple intelligences.

But it was still textbook learning, just dressed up in student choice and multiple intelligences.

Three years later, sitting with a pre-service teacher and planning a lesson for her summer school students, I did not mention the skits or the mnemonic devices. Instead, I suggested an approach that I had not attempted in my own classroom. Maybe it was the graduate courses I had taken, the books I had read, a conference I had attended, my work with the Philadelphia Writing Project, my own experiences teaching, or some combination of influences that compelled me to reimagine mitosis in the classroom.

Students should observe cells, at different stages of cell division, without labels and teacher-provided notes. Before scientists named the stages of mitosis, they observed movement and changes inside cells using a microscope, created tentative explanations for what was occurring, and then checked their theories against repeated observations. Might a student, who sees stages of mitosis, be able to describe what is happening inside the cell? Could a student put the stages in order based on her predictions about what is happening inside the cell? Would a student even be able to reason through the purpose of the movements of the inner parts of a cell to create a tentative theory?

Onion root tip 400x, Source: Elson, J.A. (2009). http://www.3dham.com/microgallery

A teacher might provide a student with a slide of an onion root tip and a microscope or with diagrams of a cell at different stages. Students can use these images to make notes and generate explanations. A teacher might not mention that there are different stages and instead might ask students what the images represent. A teacher might ask students to put the images in some kind of sequence and describe what the cell is doing. A teacher merely needs to provide the examples or models and students will do the rest. A teacher might encourage students to name phases or compare notes with a nearby group.

Diagram showing the changes which occur in the centrosomes and nucleus

of a cell in the process of mitotic division, Source: Grays Anatomy. (1918).

With a little bit of patience, a collaborative classroom environment, and the right kind of questioning, a class of students almost certainly can devise a tentative theory that would explain the process by which cells make exact copies of themselves.

State standards—and the rise of a national common core—dictate topics, questions, and content that teachers and students should grapple with. Teachers have (or should have) the space and intellectual freedom to determine how students will grapple with the ideas and questions addressed by standards. Science education literature urges teachers to provide students with learning experiences that reflect the ways in which scientists make sense of the world around us. As I learn more about my craft, I find that students respond to opportunities to theorize—and think.

Three years from now, I might file my new mitosis approach away with the scripts and mnemonic devices that I thought were so engaging just a few years ago. Time and experience will bear out what works and what needs improvement. I will experiment in the coming years.

For now, though, my working theory about teaching mitosis seems promising.
--
You can read more teacher writing in the Summer 2011 issue of the Philadelphia Writing Project Journal.

Saturday at EduCon 2.3: Student Voices, Publishing, and Digital Literacy

2011-01-30T10:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I was part of a group that led a conversation on taking student voices public--and digital. Our session was organized around the idea that there are a number of opportunities and spaces online for teachers, students, and even families to communicate, collaborate, and publish. These opportunities and spaces open up educational and ethical questions. I have previously written about using Google Docs in the classroom, specifically as part of science fair project creation.

Despite my experience with Google Docs, I came to the session with more questions than answers. What I discovered is that these very questions are at the heart of the educational experience. Why grapple with questions alone when these questions provide authentic opportunities to co-create and make meaning with my students? The moments when conflict and/or confusion arise are the very moments that teachers must use as departure points for learning. A few of these questions were raised in our session.

At what point in the writing process should students' work go public? Does one "publish" a final product or is public commenting and collaboration part of revision and reconsideration of our writing? How do different platforms allow for different levels of publication and sharing?

In terms of platform choices, we discussed a few during the session. Classes that use a Ning usually engage in closed, invite-only conversations within a teacher-created and moderated social network and message board. Classes that use blogs (Edublogs were plugged during our session, and I have begun to toy with Posterous) tend to operate on the other end of the public-ness spectrum, with work that is available to anyone. Classes that use Google Docs and Google Sites (which is where most of my energies are focused at the moment) allow for work to be public, private, and shared with a click and on a whim.

The point at which to make work public--or simply share it with other students or teachers--is of great concern to me with science fair projects. From a workload perspective, I simply need more eyes on projects as students edit and refine their work. With over 120 individual projects in the pipeline, colleagues and students can provide feedback that I am sometimes unable to offer. If students are not comfortable with the work they have done, though, is it ethical for me to send out links to unfinished work so that teachers and other students can view and submit feedback? While I can model and practice the type of feedback we might offer one another in my class, would I need to do the same for colleagues who might misunderstand the purpose or parts of our projects? This sounds like a topic that I should discuss with my classes. I have even envisioned opening up docs to mentors or community members who might volunteer to look through projects and provide feedback. What might happen if I open up our unfinished work to the community? When is work ever finished anyway?

The potential for collaboration and sharing of work is what makes Google Docs more than just a word processing tool. In the past, I have really only used Google Docs to address word processing needs. The questions about taking work public demonstrate the true power of online word processing applications like Google Docs. And these questions demonstrate just how much more reflecting and planning I need to do...

Resource Links
https://sites.google.com/a/boyslatin.org/sciencefair/

Example Google site that serves as an online portolio and portal for student science fair projects

http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/713

Description of use of Google Docs for science fair projects

http://www.google.com/educators/p_docs.html

Teachers and administrations talk about using Google Docs in the classroom

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/revisiting-google-docs-for-classroom-use/23721

Blog post describing Google Doc use in classrooms

Morning at Science Leadership Academy

2011-01-28T10:08:00.000-08:00

This is the first morning of EduCon 2.3. The conference is being hosted by the Science Leadership Academy here in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, because of aftermath of the "thundersnow" (as it was called by the local media), Philadelphia schools are not in session today. However, it seems that students disobeyed district orders to stay home and showed up in full force at SLA today.

After gathering my registration materials (thanks to the National Writing Project for supporting my attendance here), I took a tour of the school's facilities. The tour was led by two seniors who took great pride in the learning that occurs in this building. The students spoke of project after project that occur in each class. The students spoke of a set of values that inform every class and every class assignment, values that can be derived from the scientific method. The students pointed out that spaces in the building are flexible and are often undefined, which allows for uses that are limited only by one's creativity. While so many aspects of the tour open up possibilities for reflection, two threads stand out to me at the moment.

As a science department chair, I was struck by the way in which the courses are laid out over a student's four years here. Students during the first two years take an integrated biology and chemistry (NOT biochemistry though) course. One of our tour guides articulated the reasoning behind this: we are able to see how one discipline informs the other because the two are not really disconnected from one another. Her words. Students then take a physics course as juniors. Senior year is open to courses like science and society, anatomy and physiology, and engineering. This raises a few questions for me:

In a district where the 8th grade curriculum (which I have taught) and the 9th grade physical science curriculum (which I am currently teaching) mirror each other in a lot of ways, does it make sense to reteach topics in 9th grade that will then come up again in chemistry and physics classes in the following years?
Furthermore, why not cut out what may very well be a redundant physical science course in the ninth grade year and leaving room during the senior year to pursue a course that engages topics and students on individual levels?
In what ways does teaching an integrated biology/chemistry course open up possibilities for projects, labs, and applications that make chemistry and biology real and really fun for both teacher and student? I can imagine that the same "content" would be covered in a two year biology/chemistry course--and it would be covered in a way that breaks down superficial walls between the two disciplines.

Also, the SLA math and lit labs remind me of similar study spaces at universities where students and teachers tutor students who come to the labs for help. You can read more about the program here. Students tutor other students. Teachers come in to help, too. I had a ton of logistical questions about the program but I wonder if some kind of program could be implemented at our school. What might the possibilities be for an open study space for students to receive extra attention in subjects during their lunch period?

I also just finished watching a clip from a PBS documentary, part of which features the work being done here at SLA. I will definitely check out the full documentary when it airs in February, Digital Media: New Learners for the 21st Century.

Teachers: Curriculum Competition, Digitized African American Oral Histories

2011-01-02T18:51:00.000-08:00

Want to integrate digitized African American oral histories in your classroom? How about win an iPad, too?

I have written much about my experiences this summer with The HistoryMakers in Chicago through a NEH summer institute for teachers fellowship. I just received an email from The HistoryMakers outlining a curriculum competition for teachers (and student work). I have included a message from The HistoryMakers below.

In honor of the 2010 launch of The HistoryMakers Digital Archive (http://idvl.org/thehistorymakers) – we’re holding a 2011 Curriculum Competition for all K-12 educators and their students!

The Challenge

Use The HistoryMakers Digital Archive to create innovative, unique, educational curriculum to teach African American history.

The Product

Send in your intent to enter the competition by Friday, January 28, 2011 and then your curriculum, the resulting student work, and a cover letter describing the experience by Monday, February 28, 2011. View the competition guidelines.

The Prizes

Educators can win an Apple iPad, a LCD Projector, or a $100 giftcard to Barnes & Noble. Students will be awarded $50, $40, or $30.

For more information, check out the attached guidelines and the flier. Spread the word and start brainstorming!

You can access the competition guidelines here.

No More Birminghams: Examining Violence and Nonviolence in the Modern Civil Rights Era

2010-07-30T12:17:00.000-07:00

Today, I was able to share some of my work with colleagues at The HistoryMakers NEH summer institute for teachers. I was impressed with the work presented by my peers and certainly look forward to getting my hands on the resources they have created! I am including below the unit plan that I created as part of my final project from the summer. I look forward to your feedback.

Gathering Resources, Unit Planning: Modern Civil Rights Era

2010-07-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

As part of my work with The HistoryMakers and the NEH summer institute, I am required to create two lessons that incorporate oral histories and primary sources. Because my time here has been so rich with new knowledge and ideas, I have decided to couch the two lessons within a larger unit framework. I am in the process of creating a working draft of the unit which I will post in the coming days. Before I share some of the unit, however, I am posting some of the resources that I have found this month that will help shape my unit and that would provide guidance for any course in American history that covers the 1950s and 1960s. I am including the resources below as well as a description of how these resources might be useful to students and teachers.

Oral History Interviews

The HistoryMakers digital archive (http://www.idvl.org/thehistorymakers) provides a first-person commentary on the acts of violence and nonviolence during the Civil Rights Movement. These commentaries were recorded within the past decade and feature some of the African Americans involved (then and now) in efforts to achieve racial equality. Students will be introduced to interviews that characterize not only the acts but also the ways in which these acts were viewed at the time. Students may also see how the acts are viewed today, in retrospect, by African American historical figures.

Freedom Rides

John Lewis remembers an attack on the Freedom Riders at bus station in Birmingham

http://www.idvl.org/thehistorymakers/iCoreClient.html#/&s=6&args=5748

Nonviolence as a Philosophy and in Practice

Willie Barrow describes what a civil rights training session entailed

http://www.idvl.org/thehistorymakers/iCoreClient.html#/&s=6&args=8262

Ella Baker and SNCC

James Forman details SNCC's strategy for eradicating Southern segregation

http://www.idvl.org/thehistorymakers/iCoreClient.html#/&s=6&args=18463

Selma to Montgomery for Voting Rights

Joseph Lowery remembers the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march, 1965

http://www.idvl.org/thehistorymakers/iCoreClient.html#/&s=6&args=18898

Emmett Till

Ernest Withers discusses his experience covering the Emmett Till murder trial

http://www.idvl.org/thehistorymakers/iCoreClient.html#/&s=6&args=7675

Examining the Role of Youth in Political Activism

Otis Moss talks about going forward with the Civil Rights Movement despite fear and intimidation

http://www.idvl.org/thehistorymakers/iCoreClient.html#/&s=6&args=18986

Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam

Sonia Sanchez considers the contributions of Malcolm X

http://www.idvl.org/thehistorymakers/iCoreClient.html#/&s=6&args=7365

Other Primary and Secondary Sources

In addition to the digital archive, this unit outline references images, newspaper articles, and other accounts of events found in libraries, archives, and online collections. These primary sources provide rich sites for students to consider the acts of violence and nonviolence. Furthermore, it may become clear that perspectives were not in agreement over the course of the modern struggle for Civil Rights. Secondary sources will provide commentary on the implications of acts of violence and nonviolence. These sources should help students make sense of the events we will study and situate the events within the larger movement.

A frame remains [photo with caption]. (1961, May 18). Daily Defender, p. 13.

First aid needed [photo with caption]. (1961, May 18). Daily Defender, p. 12.

Primary Sources, Newspaper Photos with Captions

These two newspaper images show, albeit somewhat indirectly, the violence that white racists enacted on the Freedom Riders in 1961. One photo shows the charred remains of a bus that had been set aflame. The frame of the bus provides a backdrop for the profiles of two young African American men who sit beside the road. The second photo shows medical workers carrying a young African American man on a stretcher with bandages on his head. Neither image shows whites engaging in acts of violence. However, students will be able to infer from the photos the kinds of violence that were carried out by viewing the aftermath.

Alabama Hoodlums. (1961, May 17). Daily Defender, p. 11.

Arrest seven students 'Freedom Riders'. (1961, May 20). Chicago Defender, p. 2.

Dogs are treated better 'Freedom Rider' charges. (1961, May 17). Daily Defender, p. 2.

FBI probes bus riots In Alabama. (1961, May 16). Daily Defender, p. 1.

Primary Sources, Newspaper Articles

Four articles from Northern African American newspapers describe, over the span of 5 days, the violence that white racists carried out on the Freedom Riders in 1961. One article describes a puzzling arrest of nonviolent Freedom Riders, while another article more directly describes the negative treatment Freedom Riders received at the hands of police and military personnel charged to protect them. Taken together, these four articles describe the overt and less direct actions taken by angry whites in Alabama.

Birmingham story enrages New York. (1963, May 11). New York Amsterdam News, p. 1.

Birmingham's use of dogs, hoses on marchers termed inhuman. (1963, May 8). Daily Defender, p. 4.

Bull Connor out, Ala. students in: Birmingham gets new mayor as court rules against racists. (1963, May 25). Chicago Defender, p. 1.

Dogs versus human rights [editorial]. (1963, May 6). Daily Defender, p. 1.

Peace hinges on school children. (1963, May 18). New York Amsterdam News, p. 1.

Protest in 100 cities to assail brutality. (1963, May 8). Daily Defender, p. 3.

Racial testing ground. (1963, May 7). Daily Defender, p. 4.

World emits shock over Ala. violence. (1963, May 18). Pittsburgh Courier, p. 4.

Primary Sources, Newspaper Articles

Eight articles from four different Northern newspapers recount and provide commentary on the children’s marches organized by Civil Rights leaders in Birmingham. The subject of the articles is the police brutality, in the form of fire hoses and biting dogs, carried out on young children and ordered by Birmingham’s public safety official Bull Connor. Students will learn about the acts of violence carried out by police against the nonviolent children who marched for Civil Rights. Students will also see, as reflected in the articles, the moral outrage the brutality evoked from members of the American public.

Clark, K. B. (Ed.). (1963). The Negro protest: James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King talk with Kenneth B. Clark. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Primary Source, Interview

In this interview, Martin Luther King, Jr., elaborates on nonviolence both a tactical method and nonviolence as a way of life. King also differentiates between showing love toward an oppressor and showing affection. His words provide a rich source that student and teacher alike can use to understand, by looking at dialogue, King’s position, plan, and philosophy.

Columbia University. (2009). Civil Rights Era: 1954-1975. Amistad Digital Resource for Teaching African American History. <http://www.amistadresource.org/civil_rights_era> Accessed 23 July 2010.

Secondary Source with Primary Sources, Website

The Amistad Digital Resource provides an overview of African American History supplemented with videos, photographs, audio clips, and primary texts from the time period. The ways in which the resource organizes content, themes, times periods, and people provides a useful way for teachers to consider Civil Rights when developing units and lessons.

Cross, J. (Ed.). (2003). This far by faith. PBS.org. <http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/journey_4/p_1.html> Accessed 8 July 2010.

Secondary Source, Video/Website

PBS has published both a film and a website that addresses the Civil Rights Movement from the perspective of its nonviolent course. The website provides introductory descriptions of the major groups—Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE—that coordinated protests during the 1950s and 1960s. This site and video provide background and context for students and teachers to understand the time period and organizations that instigated in the name of equality.

Fairclough, A. (1986, August). The preachers and the people: The origins and early years of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Journal of Southern History, 52(3), 403-40.

Secondary Source, Periodical Article

Fairclough traces the context in which ministers in the Black Church rose to positions of leadership within the Civil Rights Movement. The piece provides a portrait of the time and the influences that can be useful for both teachers and students (using excerpts).

Garner, D. (2010, July 18). Mississippi invaded by idealism. [Book review of Freedom Summer: The savage season that made Mississippi burn and made America a democracy by Bruce Watson.] New York Times, C1. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/ books/19book.html>

Secondary Source, Book Review

While Bruce Watson’s book might provide more detailed coverage of the Freedom Summer in Mississippi, this book review pulls out some of the more surprising moments and memories from that fateful summer. Students might be engaged by some of the stories included in the review, especially the figures and facts that illuminate the political and pop culture landscape of the time period.

Hartford, Bruce. (2010). Civil Rights Movement Veterans [website]. <http://www.crmvet.org> Accessed 22 July 2010.

Secondary Source with Primary Sources, Website

This website provides a wealth of images from the Civil Rights Movement that can provide powerful points of reference for any lesson. The pages of this site show the personal perspectives of the struggle. One concern is that it may be difficult to determine the sources of some of the images. Further research might be needed for individual images.

Hoose, P. (2009). Claudette Colvin: Twice toward justice. New York: Melanie Kroupa Books.

Secondary Source with Primary Sources, Book

Claudette Colvin is often an unknown figure during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Her story demonstrates the importance of images and framing in political and social movements. This book, told from the perspective of Claudette, includes a number of primary source images.

King, Jr., M. L. (1963, April 16). Letter from Birmingham Jail. Reprinted online by Martin Luther King, Jr., Research & Education Institute. Annotations by Michael Wilson. <http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/ annotated_letter_from_birmingham> Accessed 20 July 2010.

Primary Source, Public Letter

King responds to direct criticism levied by white ministers in this iconic treatise on nonviolent action. This version of King’s letter is notable because it provides a useful set of annotations that explain Biblical, historical, and individual references in the letter. Students will benefit from an extended look into King’s philosophy that can be compared to other important political philosophy documents.

King, Jr., M. L. (1986). Nonviolence: The only road to freedom, 1966. In J. M. Washington (Ed.), I have a dream: Writings and speeches that changed the world, pp. 125-134. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.

Primary Source, Essay

King reaffirms his position and philosophy of nonviolence in the face of rising criticism of Black Power organizations. He assails the use of violence from both a practical and moral perspective and points out that all violent riots fail to achieve gains and suffer from being uncontrolled and purposeless. King goes beyond his reaffirmation of nonviolence and condemnation of violence to offer a plan for the future. Students may study this text as part of a lesson that examines the tensions between the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement and the growth of the Black Power movement.

King Center, The. (2010). Kingian principles of nonviolence. <http://www.thekingcenter.org/ProgServices> Accessed 21 July 2010.

Secondary Source, Website

The King Center website provides a glossary of key terms from the time period that can be useful to both students and teachers. Also, the site enumerates King’s principles of nonviolent action in a way that they can then be used to evaluate events in the Civil Rights Movement.

Lowery, C. D., & Marszalek, J. F. (2003). James Farmer, rider, described his experience in a Mississippi jail, 1961. In The Greenwood encyclopedia of African American civil rights, Vol. 2: From emancipation to the twenty-first century. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press.

Primary Source, Interview

James Farmer, a founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, recounts his experiences of imprisonment in Mississippi during the Freedom Rides. He and his fellow Freedom Riders were arrested for riding on an integrated bus and using the “whites only” facilities at the bus terminal in Jackson. He describes the general feelings of those who were imprisoned, alluding to the Biblical “forty days and forty nights” and describing the dehumanizing treatment. He also couches his experience within the larger movement that led to an overcrowding of prisons.

McAdam, D., & Tarrow, S. (2000, June). Nonviolence as contentious interaction. Political Science and Politics, 33(2), 149-54.

Secondary Source, Periodical Article

The authors of this article consider nonviolence from the perspective of a political scientist. Rather than consider the moral aspects of nonviolence, the authors discuss the strategic functions of a nonviolent program both within a larger democratic context and a nondemocratic context. Although the text considers the example of nonviolent actions in Birmingham during the Civil Rights Movement, it uses this period only as an example and attempts to examine nonviolence from a wider perspective.

National Endowment for the Humanities. (2002). Martin Luther King, Jr., and the power of nonviolence. EDSITEment. <http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=326> Accessed 8 July 2010.

Secondary Source, Lesson Plan

This lesson provides a model for examining King’s theory and plan of nonviolence. The lesson plan involves the use of primary texts written by King as well as photographs taken during the Birmingham campaign. The lesson also provides an opportunity for students to compare King’s philosophy and action plan to Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign against the British Empire.

Piven, F. F., & Cloward, R. A. (1979). The Civil Rights Movement. In Poor people’s movements: Why they succeed and how they fail, pp. 181-263. New York: Vintage Books.

Secondary Source, Book Chapter

Piven and Cloward provide a protracted exposition of the successes and failures of the Civil Rights Movement. The text is useful in that it reframes the period and allows a teacher to consider the movement’s shortcomings.

Raiford, L. (2007, December). “Come let us build a new world together”: SNCC and photography of the Civil Rights Movement. American Quarterly, 59(4), 1129-1157.

Secondary Source, Periodical Article

Photographs are powerful political tools. This piece examines the specific case of SNCC photographs and the ways in which these images influenced mobilization and public perceptions of the Civil Rights Movement.

Teaching Tolerance. (2005). Mighty times: The Children's March. Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center. <http://www.tolerance.org/kit/mighty-times-childrens-march> Accessed 20 July 2010.

Secondary Source, Curriculum Kit

Teaching Tolerance and its lesson plans for the Birmingham Children’s March provide a framework for considering the political action of young people in the Civil Rights Movement. Not only does the curriculum kit provide access to primary resources, but also it provides a range of high-order thinking questions that teachers can use to encourage students to consider the implications of the events in Birmingham.

Ture, K., & Hamilton, C. V. (1992). Black Power: It needs substance. In Black Power: The politics of liberation in America. New York: Vintage Press.

Primary Source, Book Chapter

The Civil Rights Movement is complicated by the emergence of Black Power. Teachers may shy away from covering the Black Power movement and may have a number of misconceptions. This piece provides one lens through which to view Black Power, in the words of Ture (Stokely Carmichael) whom is often recognized for using the phrase “Black Power” during a march with King.

University of Mississippi. (2005). Freedom Riders: The Children Shall Lead [website]. The William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation. <http://www.outreach.olemiss.edu/Freedom_Riders/Resources> Accessed 23 July 2010.

Secondary Source with Primary Sources, Website

Mississippi was a violent battleground for voter registration in the Civil Rights Movement. This website includes images, texts, audio clips, and videos that illustrate some of the stories of Freedom Riders. The website also provides a number of online and printed resources that can be used to study Mississippi Freedom events.

Upchurch, T. A. (2007). 1960s. In Race relations in the United States, 1960–1980, pp. 1-99.

Secondary Source, Book Chapter

Upchurch provides a useful timeline of major events that constitute the modern Civil Rights Movement. In addition to the timeline, the passage provides a textbook-like summary of the 1960s. This may serve as a useful secondary resource for students to use when considering the context of the events we are studying. The passage also acknowledges individuals, fashion, literature, and movies of the time period.

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. (n.d.) Teaching with documents: Lesson plans. Archives.gov. <http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons> Accessed 22 July 2010.

Secondary Source with Primary Sources, Website

This website includes electronic primary documents from Rosa Parks’s arrest in Montgomery (complete with finger prints, police report, and diagram of the bus), Brown v. Board (including the official “with all deliberate speed” court decision signed by Chief Justice warren), and the Memphis sanitation workers strike. In addition, this National Archives provide a number of templates that can be used to analyze primary source.

Younge, G. (2000, December 16). She would not be moved. The Guardian, p. 8. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2000/dec/16/weekend7.weekend12> Accessed 22 July 2010.

Secondary Source, Newspaper Article

Claudette Colvin’s story illustrates the power of perception in the struggle for civil rights. This article provides a useful summary of the forces that eventually led to Colvin’s disappearance from the main narrative of the Civil Rights Movement. While useful for teachers, this article could serve as a useful text for students to explore as they consider the tactics that were influential in the movements course.

X, M. (1965, February 14). After the bombing/speech at Ford Auditorium [audio file and transcript]. Reprinted online by Noaman Ali. Transcribed and edited by Malcolm X Museum and Noaman Ali. <http://www.malcolm-x.org/speeches/spc_021465.htm> Accessed 21 July 2010.

Primary Source, Speech

Malcolm X delivered this speech a day after his house was bombed. The speech provides a critical window into X’s changing political philosophy and describes his relationship to religion and political organizations. The website that published the speech also includes an audio recording of the speech that will come in handy in the classroom.

A Tree and Its Roots: Notes from Friday and on the Spirit of Carter G. Woodson

2010-07-18T15:13:00.000-07:00

"The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong."

--Carter G. Woodson

Friday was quite a day. As part of our coursework with the NEH summer institute sponsored by The HistoryMakers, we took a trip to 95th and Halsted to the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library of the Chicago Public Library system. The library branch we visited was appropriately named after Dr. Woodson, a man often called the “Father of Black History” for his dedication to the idea that black history is a subject worthy of study, celebration, and dissemination, especially if African Americans are to truly be emancipated from bonds both physical and psychological. Woodson's famous book, The Mis-Education of the Negro, outlines Woodson's philosophy. Throughout my time here in Chicago, we have visited a number of libraries and archives to learn about how they archive and share primary documents: DuSable Museum of African American History, University of Illinois at Chicago Library, Chicago History Museum, Northwestern University Library in Evanston, and Newberry Library. All of the libraries and museums had extensive collections containing primary and secondary accounts of history that could keep any historian engaged on most American history topics. However, the Woodson library is worthy of special attention for at least two reasons.

First, the library stands out because of its openness. The library staff described the diversity of visitors: documentary filmmakers, high school students participating in history day, graduate students completing research, and members of the community who are simply interested in learning more history. Yes, all libraries serve some of these same needs and patrons. But the Woodson library, because of its public status and community positioning, is simply the most accessible for even a teacher who may otherwise be hesitant to dig through library archives. I do not wish to overstate or blow out of proportion the differences between public/community libraries and other university/private/museum libraries and archives. Certainly the staff at all of the libraries and museums we visited in Chicago were incredibly helpful and friendly. I would (and will) return to some of the libraries to take a closer look at their resources. I just cannot ignore the openness that greeted me when I visited the Woodson branch. And from the perspective of a public school teacher, I felt most at ease in the Woodson setting. The staff's descriptions of the student research that occurs in the Woodson library left me wondering how I can set up similar research experiences for my students through the Free Library of Philadelphia system.

Second, the Woodson library and its librarians explicitly demonstrated its commitment to the Woodson philosophy of making possible and making public the study of African American history. This philosophy was made manifest in the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection, which we toured during our time in the library. The late Vivian G. Harsh, Chicago Public Library system's first African American librarian, established a "Special Negro Collection" when she was named head librarian at Chicago's first library in an African American community in 1932. Harsh built the collection with books, journals, manuscripts, and photographs donated by members of the community. The collection grew and began to garner the attention and support prolific writers and thinkers of the time. (Harsh is shown in the photo on the left with Richard Wright during one of his visits to the library.) When the Woodson library was built, the collection was moved to the new library and was renamed the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection.

As part of our visit, the archivist guided us through stacks that included a number of rare books. For instance, we saw books inscribed by their authors, like Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, that had made their way to the collection. (The photo on the right is of a book inscribed by Langston Hughes.) The archivist led out through rooms with personal papers and artifacts that had been donated to the collection by community members. It is important to note here that the library does not have a special budget dedicated to acquiring these kinds of materials like other university or private libraries might. Individuals out of generosity donate all materials. As part of our tour, we saw volunteers who were sorting through the donations, making sense of the materials, and cataloging the artifacts for future use. (See below the button from the 1960s that were out on a table as part of this cataloging effort.)

As we walked from room to room, we were introduced to the processes used to preserve the materials. I saw family portraits with Duke Ellington and Dwight Eisenhower. I saw Fannie Lou Hamer court transcripts. I saw newsletter for the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee and a flier for the Black Panther Party. The archivist and librarian, as part of a final part of the tour, even let us read and touch the first chapter and first draft of Langston Hughes's autobiographical The Big Sea--complete with the author's handwritten corrections! In The Big Sea, Hughes traces his development as a writer and thinker and addresses his travels from New York to Senegal, Nigeria, the Belgian Congo, Angola, Guinea, Italy, Haiti, Cuba, and France. I cannot wait to share the images of this first draft with my students, if only to demonstrate that even the greatest minds subject their work to scrutiny that often results in multiple drafts. We also saw an original manuscript of a Richard Wright ethnographic study of the Great Migration and Chicago, with his name and address typed clearly atop his submitted work.

On a final note, while I was both heartened and humbled by our visit to the Woodson library, I was also heartbroken when I thought about all of the cuts that libraries across the country are facing. Within the past two days alone, I have come across stories of libraries--and even programs that train archivists and librarians--that face crippling cuts. At my undergraduate institution, the entire LSU School of Library Information Sciences may be axed. There are no other schools in the entire state of Louisiana that train future librarians! (I will refrain here from addressing the myopic and misguided "leadership" provided by the Jindal administration in Louisiana.) On another front, the Free Library of Philadelphia only narrowly survived promised branch hour reductions and is celebrating. These are only two stories from communities that I hold dear. Based on my experiences, libraries are often the first to go when budgets are trimmed. After seeing the work of the dedicated staff at the Woodson library and after a visit to the grand Library of Congress just a few weeks ago, I cannot imagine our society without these keepers of history and centers of learning.

I think Marcus Garvey, contemporary of Dr. Woodson, put it best: "A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots."

World War I and African American Political History

2010-07-14T10:51:00.000-07:00

Today’s lecture continued with a discussion of World War I and the service of African Americans. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that black World War I veterans “will never be the same again; you cannot ask them to go back to where they were before. They cannot, for they are not the same men.” As part of the lecture, Dr. Arensen enumerated many of social and economic changes that accompanied a change in attitudes: churches grow in size and scope, black businesses increase profits and proliferate, and African American publications and cultural institutions flower. And when I taught this period this past year, I emphasized the changes in attitudes among African Americans.

However, the changing moods were not limited to African American. Following the end of World War I, there was a rising concern among white political leaders and collective white consciousness that such a large returning class of African American veterans would create a tide of revolution. President Wilson described World War I as an effort to make the world “safe for democracy.” However, historical account depict that America itself was not safe for democracy. In 1919, for instance, images and news accounts demonstrate that white aggressors (and those who are complicit in the aggression) carried out waves of violence against African Americans. According to today’s speaker, Professor Arensen, of the 79 black men who were lynched in a single year during this period, 10 of those were men in uniform. White fears boiled over in response to perceived footholds for achieving freedom.

While discussing the topic of military service as it relates to political consciousness, one of the seminar participants raised an important point about the World War I period and the experiences of black veterans overseas. Through their service in Europe, African American members of the military came in contact with other servicepeople of color fighting in French and British units. According to the Library of Congress “African American Odyssey” exhibit website:

“More than 350,000 African Americans served in segregated units during World War I, mostly as support troops. Several units saw action alongside French soldiers fighting against the Germans, and 171 African Americans were awarded the French Legion of Honor.”

Although language barriers might have prevented some exchanges, the men from different nations still had common experiences of fighting in the war and of existing within a Eurocentric culture on either side of the Atlantic. How might this contact have contributed to the changing consciousness of African Americans and influenced their ideas about struggling for rights after returning home? Because this idea is largely new to me, I must do further research. I welcome any suggested resources. (Note: the image with Lincoln and African American soldiers is a poster published in Chicago in 1918 by Charles Gustrine entitled "True Sons of Freedom." You can find it here on the Library of Congress website.

Finally, as part of the discussion period, another participant suggested that we read a poem by Langton Hughes that addresses the feelings of World War I veterans. I have included it below.

Will V-Day be Me-Day Too?

by Langston Hughes

Over There,

World War II.

Dear Fellow Americans,

I write this letter

Hoping times will be better

When this war

Is through.

I'm a Tan-skinned Yank

Driving a tank.

I ask, WILL V-DAY

BE ME-DAY, TOO?

I wear a U. S. uniform.

I've done the enemy much harm,

I've driven back

The Germans and the Japs,

From Burma to the Rhine.

On every battle line,

I've dropped defeat

Into the Fascists' laps.

I am a Negro American

Out to defend my land

Army, Navy, Air Corps--

I am there.

I take munitions through,

I fight--or stevedore, too.

I face death the same as you do

Everywhere.

I've seen my buddy lying

Where he fell.

I've watched him dying

I promised him that I would try

To make our land a land

Where his son could be a man--

And there'd be no Jim Crow birds

Left in our sky.

So this is what I want to know:

When we see Victory's glow,

Will you still let old Jim Crow

Hold me back?

When all those foreign folks who've waited--

Italians, Chinese, Danes--are liberated.

Will I still be ill-fated

Because I'm black?

Here in my own, my native land,

Will the Jim Crow laws still stand?

Will Dixie lynch me still

When I return?

Or will you comrades in arms

From the factories and the farms,

Have learned what this war

Was fought for us to learn?

When I take off my uniform,

Will I be safe from harm--

Or will you do me

As the Germans did the Jews?

When I've helped this world to save,

Shall I still be color's slave?

Or will Victory change

Your antiquated views?

You can't say I didn't fight

To smash the Fascists' might.

You can't say I wasn't with you

in each battle.

As a soldier, and a friend.

When this war comes to an end,

Will you herd me in a Jim Crow car

Like cattle?

Or will you stand up like a man

At home and take your stand

For Democracy?

That's all I ask of you.

When we lay the guns away

To celebrate

Our Victory Day

WILL V-DAY BE ME-DAY, TOO?

That's what I want to know.

Sincerely,

GI Joe.

Daily Digression: Reconstruction Reconsidered

2010-07-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

Today’s lecture, led by George Washington University professor Eric Arnesen, touched on the end of the Civil War and the tides of change that came with Reconstruction. Our goal was to reach the period of the early Twentieth Century and the political work of black trade unions. And we did indeed reach this period. But the extended introduction provided an opportunity to consider the place perspective in the creation of history narratives. W. E. B. Du Bois described Reconstruction, “The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun, then moved back again toward slavery.” Dr. Arnesen presented this quote. As he spoke, I began to wonder: How do history textbooks describe Reconstruction and how has this changed over time? I posed a question like this to our speaker. What I did not expect (but was elated to received) was a protracted response. I am including my interpretation of the response below.

At least three waves of history narratives have (re)characterized the period of Reconstruction following the Civil War. Following the end of Reconstruction, the narrative of textbooks and common historical perspectives of Reconstruction deprecated the period and assigned blame for its failure to the inept governing of African Americans. This view of Reconstruction is depicted in popular culture in Gone With the Wind and The Birth of a Nation. In the decades of the Civil Rights Movement, the Reconstruction narrative of textbooks attempted to bill the period as successful and a time of flowering progress. This new narrative sought to challenge the idea that Reconstruction was a failure because African Americans had rights and positions of power. Instead, the new narrative emphasized the successes of Reconstruction. African Americans were able to vote. Literacy rates soared. African Americans filled state legislatures and executive offices. Confederate states rejoined the Union and remain today. And the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution instituted rights for African Americans.

As the fervor of the Civil Rights Movement ebbed in the 1980s, a third wave of historical descriptions again reframed Reconstruction. The prevailing view: Reconstruction, while offering glimpses of hope and ushering in Constitutional change, was a failure. (Even the beacon of liberal scholarship, Howard Zinn, characterizes Reconstruction this way.) But the new narrative ascribed failure to a new cause. Reconstruction failed because of the overtly racist opinions and actions of elites and common citizens—not because of African American leadership and expansion of rights. The rise of lynching and the lack of response by white political leaders. The creation of the Ku Klux Klan. The transition of African Americans from the institution of slavery to the similarly oppressive system of tenant farming. In sum, the institutional and inculcated racism of the time prevented any true realization of African American freedom. The decades following Reconstruction resulted in one of the lowest points of racial equality in American history.

The implications of understanding how and why history is written are overwhelming. Historiography, the study of how history is written, provides an arena for educators to consider what they teach. I raised a single question during a lecture and received an extended response that demonstrates the complications that come when one tries to present history to others. I am reminded just how important it is to rely on primary sources and allow students to compare and contrast the details of the period. Yes, secondary sources can provide perspective and a framework for understanding what might otherwise be in a meaningless parade of facts and figures.

Finally, I do not believe that even my new informed views of Reconstruction provide me with a roadmap to teaching this time period. I suggest taking a look at Bill Bigelow's description of Reconstruction as a starting point to teaching this time period. Bigelow suggests a book by Eric Foner, Freedom's Unfinished Revolution: An Inquiry into the Civil war and Reconstruction. As is the case with most of his work with Rethinking Schools, Bigelow is able to provide a thoughtful and thought-provoking take on curriculum content. I found Bigelow's description on the Zinn Education Project website.

Resource Suggestion: Harlem Renaissance

2010-07-13T21:51:00.000-07:00

This week has featured discussions of early twentieth century African American history. The discussions we're having here in Chicago this week reminded me of a resource that deserves to be shared. A colleague of mine in Philadelphia let me borrow a book that proved to be invaluable this past year when my students and I learned about the Harlem Renaissance. If I had the funds, I would have purchased a copy of Harlem Stomp!: A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance for each of my students.

Far from a simple survey of a period, this 150+ page text captures the vitality and vivacity of a time when African Americans made some of the greatest strides toward self-definition and self-determination. Moreover, Harlem Stomp! is especially useful because it does not pave over the tensions and troubles of the period. While the stories, biographies, and images reflect the glitter and glamour of the age, so too do the photographs, content, and tone shed light on the glaring racial inequalities of the time.

Setting the tone for the ways in which the text engages the time period, Chapter 1: The Smoldering Black Consciousness, 1900-1910, latches on to the intellectual back and forth between Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois--in the very first major section of the chapter! My students used the opening pages of the initial chapter as part of an exercise to determine points of comparison and contrast between Washington and Du Bois's ideas about the best course of African American efforts to achieve equality. Artwork by Aaron Douglas that often graced the covers of The Crisis provides an aesthetic anchor from the very beginning. The first chapter alone demonstrates the rising African American confidence and acts of self-assertion at the turn of the century.

Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway, Augusta Savage, Alain Locke, Ella Fitzgerald, Chick Webb, and countless others all provide stories of passion and pride on each page. What makes this book such a gem is that it does not parade individuals along with little connection to context. Instead, each actor is part of the larger narrative that unfolds. Individual stories in this book provide a starting point for students to create biographies of major figures. (The book was so successful that when I assigned biographies to the class and allowed students to choose the figures they would study, I could invariably hand the book over to any student who expressed initial disinterest in beginning the project. "I don't want to do this, Mr. Smith." Within a few turns of the pages, the initially obstinate student would look up, with figure in mind, inspired by the stories told in the book. Each student was hooked.)

As I read Harlem Stomp! this past spring, I was stunned while reading about real estate and residential struggles that eventually gave way to Harlem as it was in the 1920s and 1930s. A massive power struggle between residents and real estate owners played out on the books pages. Indeed, I was reminded just have prominently conflicts over property influence politics of race and class. Similar topics, like the segregated nature of the Cotton Club, are presented faithfully and honestly on the books pages. In class, we were able to compare and contrast the exclusivity (based on race) of the Cotton Club with the more integrated Savoy Ballroom.

What spoke to me, and my students, so clearly was just how much the period of the Harlem Renaissance was characterized by black hope and pride. In 2010, students and teachers alike could use a strong dose of this same hope and pride.

Unit Plan Beginnings: Examining Violence and Nonviolence in the Struggle for Civil Rights

2010-07-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

As part of my work with The HistoryMakers NEH Summer Institute, I am required to create a pair of lesson plans that address the topic of the institute (African American political history) using the major tools emphasized during our time here (both oral history specifically and primary sources generally). Throughout the experience I am also reading texts as part of a university-like course. I am expected to draw upon this new knowledge in my planning.

I am including below an initial description of my final project. I will return to this final project throughout the coming weeks and share my progress. I appreciate any and all suggestions and comments.

Examining Violence and Nonviolence in the Struggle for Civil Rights

Introduction

History is filled with struggles over power. Often these struggles to maintain or gain power involve intentional acts of violence and nonviolent resistance. In the period of the 1940s through the 1960s, individuals and organizations consciously and intentionally chose routes of violence or nonviolence to achieve political goals. The period traditionally studied as the Civil Rights Movement (1940s-1960s) in the United States provides an opportunity for students to examine instances of violent and nonviolent action in a social movement. Specifically, leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., espoused and organized around the principle of nonviolence as a way to achieve political aims. Organizers and marchers, in general, carried out the principle in practice. In response to nonviolent demonstrations, white individuals, political leaders, and organizations opposing the aims of the Civil Rights Movement responded with violence. Throughout the Civil Rights Movements, images and descriptions of violent and nonviolent action and reaction provide a site for careful consideration that can help students understand changing (and unchanging) ideas within America at the time.

Instances like these in history allow for careful study of both the perspectives held during the time and spaces in which the violent and nonviolent actions took place as well as current perspectives. Student and teacher alike will use primary and secondary sources to examine historical and present-day perspectives on violence and nonviolence. Any period in American—and human—history allows for similar consideration of violent and nonviolent struggles for power. The unit and lessons described here are situated within a larger academic course for high school students that surveys American history. Within the course, I expect to consider struggles for power and the ways in which these struggles are viewed depending on perspective. Daily lessons within the unit on the Civil Rights Movement will center on specific events. Each lesson will last 55 minutes. I will create plans for only two of those lessons in which students will:

Examine descriptions of the freedom rides and the acts of violence and nonviolence that were involved.
Examine descriptions of the children’s march in Birmingham and the acts of violence and nonviolence that were involved.

Within each lesson, students will consider a number of questions: What do the documents show? What do the documents say? Are the actions violent or nonviolent? Were the acts embraced or denounced? By whom? What were the justifications for these actions? Whose perspective is taken? What were in the implications of the actions and images at the time? How might these actions and images be viewed today?

These two lessons will be part of a larger effort to understand violence in the history of the Civil Rights Movement as well as American history. The interplay and dialogue of violence and nonviolence will eventually lead to splits in ideology among individuals and organizations in the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. For instance, we will study the shift in action advocated by Stokely Carmichael. Those lessons are part of the larger unit.

Within the larger unit, students will consider other questions: How did individual and organizational views of violence and nonviolence change over time? Did individuals or groups decide to change strategies to achieve their aims? What is the role of the specter of violence in political struggles? What are the implications for students and teachers today who seek to be agents of change?

Objectives

Describe actors and acts of violence and nonviolence that constituted the Civil Rights Movement.
Compare and contrast multiple perspectives that describe a single act of violence or nonviolence.
Analyze the influence the acts of violence and nonviolence had on individuals, political leaders, and public sentiment.
Evaluate the effectiveness of acts of nonviolence during the Civil Rights Movement.

Essential Question

How did nonviolence in theory and in practice shape the Civil Rights Movement?

Skills

Critically evaluate primary sources, considering perspective and political motivations.
Organize and categorize events, actions, and actors to make sense of history.

Resources

The HistoryMakers digital archive will provide a commentary on the acts of violence and nonviolence during the Civil Rights Movement. Students will be introduced to interviews that characterize not only the acts but also the ways in which these acts were viewed at the time. Students may also see how the acts are viewed today, in retrospect. Finally, the video archive will allow students to hear individuals who were specifically involved in the Civil Rights Movement to speak of their experiences.

In addition to the digital archive, I expect to incorporate images, newspaper articles, and other accounts of events found in libraries, archives, and online. These primary sources should provide rich sites for students to consider the acts of violence and nonviolence. Furthermore, it may become clear that perspectives were not in agreement over the

Secondary sources will provide commentary on the implications of acts of violence and nonviolence. These sources should help students make sense of the events we will study and situate the events within the larger movement.

Key Terms

Students will encounter the terms listed below during the two lessons. More terms will emerge as I continue my research and develop individual lessons.

Power Violence Nonviolence Protest

Boycott Resistance Government Strategy

Civil disobedience

Chicago History Museum

2010-07-12T22:56:00.000-07:00

I'm a little behind with my posts. This week I hope to catch up on some of the lectures and trips from last week. One of my favorite moments from last week occurred when I stepped into an intimate exhibit at the Chicago History Museum. The new exhibit, Facing Freedom, just opened on July 4. The purpose of the exhibit is to examine the struggles for freedom that have so often marked American history. What struck me about the exhibit is that it not only presents stories of history that are sometimes left out of curricula and textbooks but also asks visitors to question the very lengths one should/could/would go to achieve freedom. And it pushes the visitor to consider what freedom is in the first place.

Several stories were featured: Japanese internment during World War II, the Pullman Strike of 1894, the organizing of the United Farm Workers, the struggle to end slavery in the Civil War, the fight for women's suffrage, and the stand of the American Indian Movement (AIM) activists at Wounded Knee. These topics are not without controversy. And the exhibit presents each moment in a respectful way that also raises questions about the limits (or lack of limits) that exist in the creation of a more perfect Union. Throughout the room, questions beg for consideration. Is violence a way to achieve freedom? What would you risk to form a union? How would you live if you lost your freedom? When do you have to fight to be free? And the entire exhibit radiates from a display with the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

I was fortunate enough to be able to speak with the creator and curator; she informed me that additions to the exhibit are forthcoming. I expressed my enthusiasm for the exhibit and suggested that efforts be made to create a traveling version. (Although I'm sure she was busy enough! and I doubt funds are easy to come by for such things, I still imagine sister exhibits in Philadelphia and Washington, DC, for instance.) You can read an article here about the exhibit published in Time Out Chicago.

There were other exciting aspects of the exhibit:

The front of the exhibit featured a multimedia component. Visitors can have their picture taken and it would then be integrated into a slideshow providing examples of actions individuals can take to protect their freedom.
Students could watch videos, listen to sound clips, touch objects, try on costumes, write in booklets, and view original documents associated with each of the moments in history.
Individual, government, political, economic, and social actions were included and compared, resulting in a rich presentation not dependent on the typical "heroes" associated with history textbooks.

Overall, I appreciated the open-endedness of exhibit. It told engaging stories but did not present acts as final or fulfilled. There was room for action to be taken in the future and space for individuals to commit to a more just future.

Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois

2010-07-12T16:31:00.000-07:00

Today’s session has been one of my favorites so far. It is often difficult to stay engaged during a daylong lecture. (We begin each morning at 9:00am and end at 5:00pm, with a few breaks.) I was attentive, in large part, because I was really able to connect with today's topic. I ended the school year discussing the early 1900s with my students; so, all of the ideas from today were fresh on my mind. And today was a time for me to engage with ideas and individuals in a setting outside of my classroom and outside of my own independent study. Christopher Reed, professor at Roosevelt University, led today’s lecture/discussion on Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. It was a whirlwind tour of a time when two great figures struggled (often in opposition of one another) in the name of racial advancement and equality.

Our reading list for the day was constituted by a chapter from Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk that discusses Booker T. Washington, two essays (one on Washington and one on Du Bois) from Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century, a chapter on race from Du Bois’s autobiographical Dusk of Dawn, a chapter on the NAACP from The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois, entries from The Crisis written by Du Bois, and a chapter on Booker T. Washington from the book Uncle Tom or New Negro?. The readings alone provided enough for a month’s worth of lectures. Packing it all into a single day allowed for innumerable avenues for examination.

One particular issue that continues to tug at my thoughts is a portion of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk in which he considers the contributions and limitations of Washington’s program. In his treatment of Washington's efforts, Du Bois writes that there are three forms the attitudes “of the imprisoned group” [read: African Americans in a racist America] may take and have taken in response to their oppression: (1) “a feeling of revolt or revenge,” (2) “an attempt to adjust all thought and action to the will of the [oppressive and powerful] group,” or (3) “an effort at self-realization and self-development” outside of views imposed by the group in power. Du Bois traces the development of (African) American history using this framework. His analysis is detailed and full of nuance. He extends his analysis to his present period ruled by Booker T. Washington. Du Bois is critical of Washington’s efforts to accommodate and assimilate at the expense of the political rights, civil rights, and the right to educate youth.

As I read Du Bois’s exposition of (African) American history, I imagined that extending his framework of the three attitudes would be an incredibly useful for students. In the classroom, students can use Du Bois’s three attitudes to categorize historical events and movements toward realizing civil rights and equality from Du Bois to Marcus Garvery, from Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X to Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama. How might one characterize King? What attitude did he adopt? One of insurrection, accommodation, or self-actualization? What of Malcolm X? An analysis like this would make any history course come to life and would encourage students to develop positions and build up arguments. I am excited about the possibilities for using such a powerful text as a lens through which one might make sense of history. Furthermore, the framework itself is ripe for analysis. Does Du Bois simplify and smooth over otherwise complex events and ideas?

Dr. Reed suggested that we pick up a copy of Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century, Volume 2, edited by Franklin and Meier. He described it as a serious, yet accessible, set of biographical essays. I must agree with his assessment after reading two chapters from the book last night. The two essays on Washington and Du Bois provided accounts of history that we very new to me. My close reading of both revealed areas for future study. I can even imagine bringing excerpts into the classroom. No textbook comes close to doing these two figures justice.

In closing, I am struck by memories of growing up as I reflect on the material and discussion from today. My mother grew up just outside of Tuskegee, where Washington built his Tuskegee Institute and his powerful Tuskegee Machine. I grew up not far from there myself. When I learned about African American leaders in elementary and secondary school, Booker T. Washington is one of the names that stands out in my memory. And, as we discussed today, he stood with two feet firmly in Alabama. However, my knowledge then (and up until just this year) was superficial and lacked any kind of investigation into his program—and its philosophical tenets and tensions. Indeed, as I see it now, Washington was just an empty figure on the pages of my school history textbooks. My personal reading in the past year, my lessons with students, and my work with the HistoryMakers this month have revealed a complicated man with vision and bravery in an exceedingly dangerous environment. According to our guest lecturer today, he was probably the most powerful African American who lived before the Civil Rights Movement. Yet, I knew so little.

And I knew even less about Du Bois. I cannot remember Du Bois specifically from my years in school. That frightens me and reminds me just how narrow my education and experiences are. (Thank goodness for experiences like this one through my NEH fellowship.) I was blown away this past spring as my students and I studied Du Bois, his debate with Washington, and his support of artists during the Harlem Renaissance. With that introductory knowledge, today I dove head first into a history of nuance and nonstop conflict as Washington and Du Bois went head to head over the future of African American political, social, and economic action.

US Census Data in the Classroom (Wednesday)

2010-07-07T08:41:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of a session led by Josh Radinsky, a professor in the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago. This is our third session with The HistoryMakers at the NEH summer institute. The topic: Investigating African American History Using GIS Census Data Maps. So far, I have been blown away by the sites available to teachers, students, and citizens that provide demographic information that can then be infused into history, science, math, and language arts classrooms. Students have opportunities to work with maps and data sets and generate written descriptions of what they see. Of course, there's so much more that can be done. I can't begin to cover it all here. But I will present a few of the resources as I learn about them myself.

The following images and data were generated by the US Census Bureau.

On the census website, there is an option to complete an address search on the left side of the page. I started by typing in the address of my hometown in Alabama and generated a map of my "block" (which varies greatly in shape and size from the types of blocks found in Philadelphia).

The image isn't so grand...(there are other sites I'll share that show so much more). But it certainly provides a starting point for understanding how the census regards a block and organizes the data it collects.

After typing in an address, you can choose to find demographic data (race, income, gender, age) by block or congressional district or school system or a number of other geographic boundaries. I am including below a table showing some data from my hometown school district.

Students can compare blocks or cities over a period of decades and use the data to understand how neighborhoods have changed. And this is only a beginning. There are other sites that provide opportunities to look at maps and compare changes in populations based on census data. Here's one of my favorites:

Dr. Radinsky (today's lecturer) created a website called GIS for History that integrates maps and census data specifically for students and teachers. There are even free lesson plans for teachers. One of the free lessons provides guiding questions and interactive maps that show changes in African American populations during the period known as the Great Migration. I have merely taken screenshots of some of the maps that show changes in population over time. (The darker the red, the higher the population of African Americans in these maps. The website provides a key that I can't show here.)

Population of African Americans in 1900

Population of African Americans in 1930

Dr. Radinsky demonstrated, using the maps, just how problematic the typical textbook narrative of the Great Migration is in the face of real census data from the time period. It is possible for students to walk away from a lesson on the Great Migration with a conception that African Americans completely left the South and resided in cities in the North. However, the maps shown above (and especially those on the site that you can zoom in on) show a much more complicated narrative. For instance, it appears that rural populations did decrease over this period. However, many Southern cities experienced increases in African American residents just as Northern cities grew. Students are able to zoom in and see more detail. Please visit the site to see for yourself.

There is absolutely no way that I can do the website justice with a few screenshots. On the website, you can zoom, click, and change the data instantly. I merely wish to show here just ONE way in which the website can be used to deepen and extend a lesson in math or history, for instance. Here is an example lesson plan for the Great Migration. In addition to maps, the site also provides examples of primary sources that relate to the Great Migration, letters written to the Chicago Defender at the turn of the century address from locations across the South.

Another site that provides a similar service is Social Explorer. Unfortunately, some of the cooler features require a subscription. However, there are plenty of free features available. For instance, I have included below maps--that I was able to "make"--that describe the percentage of populations in terms of race. The darker red areas show communities with a higher percentage of a particular race.

Percentage of population that is white in 2000

Percentage of population that is African American in 2000

Percentage of population that is Hispanic in 2000

These maps alone could be a starting point for a number of different classroom lessons. There is so much more than can be done with the maps in terms of levels of education or any number of demographic descriptions.

Our discussion in today's session also focused on the different iterations of the census and the ways in which the language used to describe race has changed through the decades. Even with the most recent census, there is little agreement about which terms are appropriate or even necessary. I'm sure there are plenty of teachers out there who took time to teach about the 2010 census. Dr. Radinsky provided us with a link to the very instructions and wording of each census dating back to the 1850s. This information could certainly inform any lesson on the census, on race, or on changing social constructions. The US Census Bureau also has its own site for teachers and students that includes census resources for the classroom.

Introducing the HistoryMakers (Monday)

2010-07-06T10:42:00.000-07:00

Today's schedule consisted of a tour of The HistoryMakers, both of the physical space the organization occupies on Michigan Ave and of the online archive that boasts thousands of digitized oral histories. The HistoryMakers is sponsoring the NEH summer institute that I am attending. From what I have seen of the archive, I have just been granted access to an invaluable learning tool that can easily be a source of discovery in the classroom. More on that later...

Everyone is quickly becoming friends. There are 25 K-12 educators here from schools in Florida, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, New Hampshire, Kansas, Maryland, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, Virginia, Massachusetts, Georgia, and Washington, DC. Today I found out that one teacher grew up in Tuskegee, Alabama, which is where my grandparents live and where mom mom grew up. Another teacher works in a school system just 15 miles from the city of my birth in Florida. These connections, although somewhat superficial, are only a beginning. I expect great professional relationships and friendships to grow from my experience here.

I've posted a few links about the NEH institutes and about this specific institute hosted by the HistoryMakers. However, I have not taken the time to elaborate on the organization and its growth. I doubt that I can do the organization and its founder, Julianna Richardson, justice here. Julianna guided us through the offices of the nonprofit she founded more than a decade ago as a creator of and repository for oral histories of African Americans.

Julianna recounted her experiences in theatre, business, and the world of cable television to explain the forces that converged and that allowed her to build a dream from the ground up. Julianna's vision to is record over 5,000 interviews in the coming years. What struck me was how unwavering Julianna is to completing her vision. She talked of layoffs and the inability to tap into grant money because of its limits and because there appears to be, from her experience, little interest in the recording of African American history. The HistoryMakers has had the most success raising funds, not through grants or foundations, but by sponsoring "An Evening with..." events with figures like (the late) Eartha Kitt, Smokey Robinson, Colin Powell, and Della Reese.

All of Julianna's work has produced a treasure-trove of multimedia interviews the recount individual experiences and that speak to the richness of African American (and American) history. You can access the HistoryMakers Digital Archive by registering...for FREE.

The search features seem simple at first glance. However, there are a number of options hidden within the site. I suggest starting your search and digging from there. One of the most ingenious aspects of the archive is that the videos are all transcribed and searches that focus on words and phrases allow you to watch a video from the point at which the word or phrase is used. There's no need to watch an entire interview. Instead, you can skip directly to the phrase or word you selected! And you can read along as you listen.

Below is a screenshot of the search results for the phrase "Harlem Renaissance." The search returned 30 interviewees and 49 stories in which individuals referenced the Harlem Renaissance.

You can see the titles of interview segments. And when you click on an individual interview, you are instantly able to watch and view the transcript.

Below is a screenshot of the video and transcript of an interview with the late Dorothy Height.

Another ingenious quality of the archive is that you are able to search not only for terms directly spoken by the interviewee but also for inferential references that have been indexed by the archive organizers.

I'm only beginning to look into all the archive has to offer. There are options to click on a map and see interviews that reference specific locations. There are options to view interview segments that address certain themes. I encourage you to check out the interviews. And through the month I will be reporting on my efforts to create a unit plan that integrates these oral histories.

First Day of NEH Summer Institute

2010-07-04T16:00:00.001-07:00

Happy Independence Day. I left the city where it all started (Philadelphia) yesterday for a month-long institute for teachers in Chicago. While I will miss the fireworks and celebrations in Philadelphia, I certainly look forward to the experience that I will have this July.

A few months ago I applied to, and was accepted into, a series of summer institutes for teachers funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. From the list of choices, I selected an institute that focuses on African American Political History. The institute lasts four weeks and is organized by the HistoryMakers, a nonprofit in Chicago with a mission to collect, archive, and digitize over 5,000 interviews with African Americans. You can read more about the institute here. And I will be posting more throughout the month about my experiences. To kick off my notes from the summer, I am including below an excerpt from my application to the summer institute. It speaks to my views about education and is a reminder to me of what I intend to accomplish in the next four weeks.

W. E. B. Dubois once described how it felt to be a “problem.” Dubois, writing about a person’s, people’s, and nation’s tortured troubles with race in the twentieth century, speaks just as clearly today about education in Philadelphia. I teach American history and integrated science to 103 eighth graders at a K-8 elementary school six miles from Independence Hall. Over eighty percent of our students come from low-income households, one in nine is learning English as a second language, and fifteen percent receive special education services. Our school is labeled, stigmatized, publicly shamed, and positioned in a state of “corrective action” because of failure to improve standardized testing scores. My students and school—according to pages of federal and states laws, Congressional and judicial transcripts, newspapers and magazines, and statistics-laden reports on education, the economy, and public policy—are a problem. And so am I.

I am a problem in at least two ways. First, I am a relatively new teacher in a struggling school. Students like mine in schools like mine are more likely to be taught by individuals like me who lack classroom experience and extensive training in the disciplines they teach. As a third year teacher, I am painfully aware of the challenges that face me, and my students, because of my inexperience. Neither facial hair nor tie can fool students who keenly ask questions about the role of Native Americans while European colonists established slavery all while boldly and cleverly eliciting details about my personal life. And as much as I emphasize the importance of raising questions and conducting research over the memorization facts in my classroom, I sense a palpable, collective uneasiness among my students when I am confronted by a question for which I have no immediate answer. Determined not to be another brush stroke in the portrait painted by statistics on inexperienced and under qualified teachers in our nation’s poorest school, I am acutely aware of the problem that my presence presents to students.

Second, I am a problem simply because of the forces that have shaped my (un/sub)consciousness. Dubois describes a double consciousness experienced by African Americans. As a white male from a middle-class, Protestant family in Alabama, I have developed not a double-consciousness but an unconsciousness, a blissful ignorance bolstered by a myth of meritocracy and a lily-white version of history. James Baldwin, bell hooks, Lisa Delpit, and Paulo Freire have each done their parts to awaken me from my slumber. But now, as aware as I may be about systemic and entrenched racism, I remain a potential threat to my students because of unintentional and subconscious acts and outlooks that carry the same destructive force. Indeed, unseen racism and privilege can often wield devastating power. It will take unending effort to overcome these threats.

The more I learn about human history, the more I am convinced that my students and I are swimming in a violent vortex of consequences that are not wholly of our making. In Philadelphia, where pen and paper made plain the idea that all men were created equal, it is today evident just which of my neighbors are not considered to be men at all. I am confronted not only by the ills of structural poverty but also by my own mistaken notions that eagerly explain away the pain that I see. Young children of color are criminalized and teachers become willing witnesses. Administrators tout zero-tolerance policies and maintain a zero dollar library budget. Residential segregation nullifies Brown as separate and unequal schools reinforce existing gaps in achievement.

With all of these problems, both my own and those of the context in which I teach, how might I make sense of what I must do in my classroom? Furthermore, how might I create a classroom in which my students have the agency, the audacity, and the academic training to make sense of and address the history of which we are all a part? How might we use our knowledge of history to build a future?

I am applying to your summer seminar for teachers because it offers me a chance to examine history from a perspective that disrupts the history that I once learned in school and the ways in which I learned it.

I have established a record of using teacher communities such as yours to improve my practice. In four formal settings, I have undertaken extensive inquiries into my practice that required documentation and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, written reflection, and sharing with colleagues. In just two and a half years, I have created a portfolio that examines a social studies unit I designed and implemented about the collision of American and European cultures at the end of the fifteenth century as a fellow with the Philadelphia Writing Project; I have written and presented a paper that scrutinized my efforts to explicitly teach observing and making inferences in a middle school science classroom as a student in the Graduate School of Education at University of Pennsylvania; I have published a multi-part description of my efforts to implement a check for understanding technique as part of an e-mentoring fellowship with the National Science Teachers Association; and I have engaged in a year-along reflective cycle that focused on creation and implementation of objective-based lesson planning and assessment as a new teacher in the Teach For America program. These are only four formal inquiries. Each day, each interaction with a student or colleague serves as a ripe opportunity to engage in personal and professional growth. I hope to demonstrate the diversity of my connections to teacher networks and the dedication I have to fight against forces—individual, ideological, or systemic—that deprofessionalize, disempower, denigrate, and dumb down the process of teaching and learning.

If I am to best serve my students, I must actively examine my positions, beliefs, and explanations of the world around me. Passively acknowledging that my predispositions, training, and outlook can influence my actions, both conscious and subconscious, is not enough. I must identify, question, and modify my mindsets and actions in a never-ending effort that will often be painful and easy to resist. In a city where school buildings bear the names of courageous thinkers and activists but where the curricula include meager mention of courageous ideas or idealists, I continue to seek out spaces where I can carry out a pedagogy that empowers students and emanates from the examination of multiple perspectives.

Looking Back: My Experience with the Philadelphia Writing Project

2010-02-10T09:32:00.001-08:00

Applications are now out for teachers to attend the Philadelphia Writing Project's summer invitational institute. The release of applications has prompted me to reflect on my experience last summer with PhilWP. Below are some of my thoughts from the summer. (I originally submitted this as part of my final portfolio.)

This past August, I discovered “a new and strange ally” that will haunt me—and help me—in my daily efforts to examine the world around me with the one hundred eighth graders. Margaret Wheatley (2002) names the ally: “a willingness to be disturbed.” In the School District of Philadelphia, teachers, students, and families are often in need of allies. It is not possible for me to be too picky at this point in my nascent teaching career; strange or not, an ally is always welcome. Thanks to my experiences with a group of committed educators in the Philadelphia Writing Project, I have become acquainted with the multiple disturbances that constitute the bulk of my experiences in the classroom and in the halls of a crumbling structure that looms on a hill in North Philadelphia. These disturbances certainly have been present since I first stepped foot in a classroom—as a student. And disturbances continue to tug me in all directions as I attempt to maintain my balance in the classroom each day. However, my experiences this summer provided me with an awareness of the true nature of the disturbances that stand in the way as I stand alongside my students in our common pursuit of knowledge and personal growth. Lisa Delpit (2006) describes one of the most disturbing aspects of the context in which I teach: “There is much talk about the ‘problem’ of urban education, much research to study the problem, and many policies enacted to address the problem but little belief that anything will really ever change” (p. 220, emphasis added). It is out of the belief that great and meaningful change can be had that I do what I do each day. And this belief in change drove me to participate in the summer institute. The following pages are an attempt to identify, question, and make sense of the disturbances that have come into focus since summer institute.

Before I joined with teachers at the summer institute, we were asked to read Fences by August Wilson. This play served as a touchstone throughout our time together in August at the Philadelphia Writing Project. As I look back on what I have accomplished—and what I have planned to accomplish—on my classroom this fall, I realize that themes and ideas in Fences have been an influential force. The play is at times a disturbing one on a number of levels. This summer we examined gender, race, wealth, and societal structures that cause distress in individuals and families. These same issues are major themes that cause distress in our schools. While I might have been aware of the roles that gender, race, wealth, and societal structures play in my classroom, my awareness was heightened and educated through the work of August Wilson. I hope to return to the play with my students this year in my social studies class.

I am teaching American history, which includes the themes of gender, race, wealth, and societal structures from the colonization of the Americas by Europeans and the enslavement of peoples native to the Americas and Africa all the way to present day America. August Wilson, writing about a fictional family during the Civil Rights era, provides a lens through which to view history and illustrates some of the same struggles that have characterized American history. I have already written a proposal (which was funded just last week) on DonorsChoose.org to receive a class of Fences. I look forward to integrating the play into our study of American history. The written journal entries and the activities that we used during summer institute will provide me with a starting point to integrate the play into our social studies class.

Implementing a play like Fences into my classroom does not come without challenges. The district proscribes a set of learning objectives and a textbook that administrators expect will govern all social studies classes. Using Fences is quite a detour from our textbook. Even discussing the text in summer institute created moments of tension amongst adults. What will it look like in my classroom for me, a white male raised in the South, to use the play in a classroom of African American, Latino, and Asian American students? What challenges will occur when we discuss a period in history somewhat foreign to twelve-, thirteen-, and fourteen-year-olds? How do I make connections to current struggles experienced by families in America? How do I deal with the connections that my students make themselves that I may not completely understand because of my place in the social structure? There are quite a few points from which disturbances can, and certainly will, emerge when I implement the text. It is my hope to take lessons from current efforts to enlarge the standardized curriculum and to recognize stories that are sometimes ignored in classrooms.

The Philadelphia Writing Project provided me with strategies and paradigms through which to view the educational experience. I have been able to implement some of the lessons already in our unit on the convergence of European, African, and American cultures in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Included in this portfolio are examples from lessons and projects that I have implemented in my social studies classes. Writing has been a major component since school began. I have tried to create a space in which we examine any human produced artifact—journal entries, monuments, artwork, textbooks, television shows, websites, and children’s books—as a text from which meaning can be derived for the reader. The summer institute provided me with both ideas and the confidence to launch into what I feel can be a provocative and troubling examination of the beginning of European domination of the Americas.

My eighth graders and I have examined Christopher Columbus using a wide range of texts in an effort construct diverse and alternative meanings. Approaching social studies in this way is instantly a challenge to the monotone version of history often promoted by the district’s planning and scheduling timeline and the district-sanction textbook. However, I cannot at this moment imagine teaching the subject matter, and the discipline, in any other way. For example, students may feel more comfortable with a piece of artwork or with a children’s book than a textbook. Placing them side by side and in juxtaposition will allow for students to strengthen skills of comparison and contrast, synthesis and analysis. Using a variety of texts allows for multiple junctures at which students might approach the learning goals that I have set out for the class. I cannot help but feel a sense of excitement at the opportunities available to us when multiple voices are heard and examined, both the voices of the texts that we read and the students who write about their experiences and ideas.

We began our unit by watching a cartoon featuring Christopher Columbus, which eventually led to an introduction to literary giant Washington Irving and the creation of an American myth about Columbus’s efforts to prove that the world was round. I took pictures of the monument for Columbus erected on Columbus Boulevard in Philadelphia and provided a chance for students to reflect on the portrayal of Columbus by the monument’s creators; we carried out a similar exercise by looking at a set of doors in the United States Capitol that features twelve images of Columbus. We compared the narrative of our textbook to the narrative of Columbus provided by Howard Zinn in his People’s History of the United States. We then integrated journal entries written by Columbus himself, a letter about Columbus written by a Native American author, a website that provides a description of the Taino Indians whom Columbus met, and a children’s book called Encounter that tells of Columbus’s arrival from the perspective of a Taino child. (Using a children’s book to teach history and writing was a wonderful example of the kinds of ideas that I have been able to implement thanks to the summer institute.) We charted what we learned and the questions that were raised as a class each day. We created journal entries from the perspectives of a Spanish explorer and a native American. And we have since concluded this portion of our unit by designing our own monuments that attempt to tell the story of the Taino and Christopher Columbus in 1492. Students were able to take what they learned and craft a new, unique text that can teach history to others. At no point, for better or for worse, have we completed any worksheets for standardized test preparation during this unit. However, I can honestly say that this unit is deeply grounded in standards that I examined before the year began. My approach seems to be in line with an important point raised in Because Writing Matters: “Creating high standards alone is not sufficient to improve learning in schools; it is the teacher who makes them come alive in the classroom” (NWP & Nagin, 2006, p. 73). I have made every effort to make history and the standards come alive this year.

What I have described is not an exhaustive list of texts that we used in our study, but the enumeration should demonstrate the diversity of sources constituted our educational experiences. My experiences with the Writing Project have pointed me in this direction and also direct me to constantly examine the choices that I make in my classroom. Just as any use of Fences might be a risky endeavor so too is my decision to delve deep into the story of Columbus using such a wide range of texts full of possible points of disturbance. How might my presentation of the time period and the actors merely replace the Eurocentric narrative provided by the textbook with an equally problematic narrative that I have created myself? In what ways have I silenced voices and privileged others? What might I still not know—and I suspect there is quite a bit—about the time period and the forces since that have shaped how the historical narrative of Columbus? Have I been insensitive of students in my class who identify with the Taino? (One website we studied suggests that sixty percent of the population of Puerto Rico have genetic information passed on from the Taino?) How might I sustain this kind of unit planning, which has required a great amount of outside reading and collection of related texts and which began before summer ended?

Other questions and points of disturbance certainly exist. If I continue to embark on a study of history using the methods and lenses that I used during this unit, how much resistance will I face from outsiders, students, families, teachers, administrators, and my own personal biases? Bob Fecho’s (2004) description of his English class in “Why Are You Doing This?” suggests that I very well may have to grapple with objections and obstacles that might otherwise be avoided if I adopted the planning and scheduling timeline without hesitation. At this point, however, I am willing to endure and hope to provide opportunities for my students to raise these questions before they become bottled up.

My unit on Columbus and the related questions intersect with concerns about standardized testing and its domination of the curriculum and culture of our school: “…The goals of education should consist not only of cognitive outcomes, but also of affective criteria… [however,] there seems to be a perennial concern with standardized achievement test results and with relative standings on the body of facts deemed relevant to education” (Ryan & Powelson, 1991, p. 62). Concerns over standardized testing dominate discourse in education and were the subject of a presentation led by my collaborative inquiry group this summer. I hope to engage in deeper and extended reflection about the role that standardized testing will play and should play in my classroom. So far, because social studies is not a tested subject, my social studies lessons have not been subject to scrutiny by outsiders. How might this change? There are suggestions that if social studies ever becomes tested that it will change the subject completely as it has reading and math: “The fact is that real learning often can’t be quantified, and a corporate-style preoccupation with ‘data’ turns schooling into something shallow and lifeless” (Kohn, 2008). I honestly believe that I have been able to dig deep and breath life into my classroom this year.

The preceding reflection has provided me with an opportunity to dig into a few of the layers that still obscure the educational process. I must continue this process. Wheatley (2002) writes, “It is very difficult to give up our certainties—our positions, our beliefs, our explanations.” It has become apparent, thanks in no small way to this summer’s proceedings, that if I am to best serve my students, I actively examine my positions, beliefs, and explanations of the world around me. Passively acknowledging that my predispositions, training, and outlook can influence my actions, both conscious and subconscious, is not enough. I must identify, question, and modify my mindsets and actions in a never-ending effort that will often be painful and easy to resist. Connecting with educators through the Philadelphia Writing Project has, and will continue to, provide a starting point for me to uncover and actively modify my classroom and my practice.

References
Campano, G. (2007). “We are strong and sturdy in heart. Immigrant students and literacy: Reading, writing, and remembering (pp. 45-51). New York: Teachers College Press.

Delpit, L. (2006). Lessons from teachers. Journal of Teacher Education, 57, 220-231.

Fecho, B. (2004). Why are you doing this? In Is this English?: Race, language, and culture in the classroom (pp. 71-90). New York: Teachers College Press.

Kohn, A. (2008, September 10). It’s not what we teach, it’s what they learn. Education Week, 28(3), 32-26.

National Writing Project & Nagin, C. (2006). Because writing matters: Improving student writing in our schools. Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass.

Ryan, R. M., & Powelson, C. L. (1991). Autonomy and relatedness as fundamental to motivation and education. Journal of Experimental Education, 60, 49-66.

Reflections on Homework, Standards

2009-10-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

I am participating in the National Science Teachers Association Fellows program for new science teachers. One component of the fellowship is participating in an online mentoring and peer collaboration forum. I am including below a few of my responses to a thread about homework and a separate thread about teaching using standards.

Homework
I emphasize the importance of homework as a tool to practice what we have done in class over the amount of points student receive. To help make the connection for students about the importance of doing homework and practicing/applying what we have learned in class, I will provide a DO NOW on the day of a quiz/test and ask students to reflect on the number of homework assignments they completed (which means that they did not copy it from a friend) and how they think this practice--or lack of practice--will influence their performance on my quiz. I try to emphasize that the students with higher scores tend to be the students who are engaging with the homework outside of class. Maybe, though, I might be placing too much faith in the power of homework to prepare students...

Another ritual with homework for my students is the weekly packet. The homework packet often includes assignments that connect to one another and that build toward the end of the week. There is a bonus page for students who wish to engage in more challenging work on their own. I don't collect the packets until the end of the week...but each day, I have students take out their packets and reflect on whether they are managing their time well or whether they are waiting until the last minute to complete their work. I am trying to teach time management and longer-term commitment to a process than I am daily you did it/you didn't do it homework checks. (Also, students who have commitments to family or after school activities don't have to stress if one evening is full of extra events that would otherwise keep them from completing their homework.)

Standards
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Quote from a teacher named Paula:
"I need to use more demos/labs; however, sometimes the point of the lab seems lost on the students, they are just having fun."
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Yes, this is probably one of the central concerns for me as a science teacher. At times, the standards can be dry and removed from everyday experiences. On the other hand, labs and demos can be so much fun yet students don't make the connections to larger science issues and concepts. How, then, do I use labs and demos to provide points of reference for science standards and use the standards to provide my students with scientific language and lenses with which to view and make sense of what we see and touch in the classroom? This is an ongoing and painstaking process...and it is at the heart of what we must do. I actually emphasize my thoughts on this subject when I teach: "You experience this or that every day. Science provides a common language for you to describe and make sense of what you experience." Then, I do my best to have students describe (i.e., write) about the labs using the academic language that we are learning. It, in the end, is the goal for students to be able to articulate the connections themselves. I can't do it for them by describing the lab in science terms. Therefore, I have to model what it looks like to describe a lab/demo phenomenon in terms of the standard. And then I have to provide opportunities for students to do this themselves, which allows me to provide feedback and push them in the right directions.

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Quote from teacher named Cara:
"I think gathering resources and figuring out what is best to use is a trial and error thing. Sometimes it seems like the activities/resources I spend the most time on and am the most excited about are "lame" to my students, while the ones I just grab and think "this is ok" are the ones that my students are most interested in. For me, this has varied from year to year, pending on the interests of the individual students and their groups, current events in the school/community/nation/etc, and also upon class size. Some things were just so much harder to pull off with larger classes that I had last year, compared to my smaller ones this year. Past experiences have taught me what to change and I'm never afraid to ask the kids how I can make an activity better....and of course they are quick with suggestions!"
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Cara brings up a point that I think is very important to consider. My first year of teaching was fraught with frustration, trial, and error. Year two, I was able to take the things that worked, tweak what didn't work, or sometimes make wholesale changes to organization, emphasis, and hands-on approaches. The issue is whether I can develop multiple ways for multiple students to develop an understanding of the discipline and the concepts as I frame them in my classroom. It often takes practice and time to discover what works, when it works, and for whom it works. This year, my third, I am teaching a new grade with new topics, and I feel as if I am in year one all over again. I am determined to push through and do my best to develop multiple points of context for my students to grasp what I feel is important...but at this moment every lesson is overshadowed by "Well, I know I'll change THAT next year!" Furthermore, developing lessons for the first time on these topics means that it is more difficult to diversify how I set up my lessons because I need a solid foundation to begin with. I look forward to having this year under my belt so that I can focus on differentiating and diversifying how we grapple with the 8th grade science standards in my class.

Another note on trial and error and the standards: I have found that I must create a unit plan that begins with the standards and that then goes in two simultatneous (and often maddening) directions. First, I have to create some kind of coherence for the unit and the standards by creating an overarching question and by identifying 2-4 key themes. This question and these themes help me keep the standards and the unit itself in perspective. Second, I have to take the standards and unpack them on a very minute level. Every standard includes scores of hidden terminology and topics that require enumeration. I have to define key terms msyelf, map out how a standard might unfold on a day-to-day/experience-by-experience basis, and create a set of assessment questions that I can use to determine whether students learned what I intended them to learn. By going through this back-and-forth, large-idea/small-idea process, I am able to keep the standards in perspective.

More on Writing and Science

2009-08-20T18:57:00.000-07:00

I often spend a little bit of time thinking about the nature of science, how it is similar to other disciplines in our academic institutions and how it may differ. As an undergraduate student I chose to study politics and communication. Coming to the middle school classroom via an alternative certification route, I am quite aware that all too many students in schools like mine (in low-income, urban neighborhoods) are taught by science teachers with little credentialing in the field and with even less experience.* Because the odds are initially stacked against me and my students, I have sought to learn more about science, as a discipline, as a way of thinking, as a lens through which to view the world.

If scientists are not willing to think beyond common conceptions, hone in on observations that might have otherwise been deemed irrelevant, or simply imagine something before unimagined, then Carl Woese might not have discovered archaea, an entire super-branch of organisms distinct from eubacteria and eukaryotes (which includes all fungi, plants, and animals). He did this only 30 years ago and fundamentally changed our understanding of how life might have originally existed. Galileo was derided for what others might have labeled "flights of fancy." (He risked excommunication for voicing his theories.) Darwin is still derided by some. Although discoveries, hypotheses, and theories are based on some kind of empirical observation, it is often impossible to escape that humankind at any given point does not know all nor does any single woman or man. Therefore, some leap of faith or assumptions must be made simply because of our human limitations, faults, predispositions, biases, and imperfections. The initial narrowness of science is necessarily complicated and widened by the imperfections of the scientists that put it into practice!

Futhermore, it is virtually impossible to conceptualize the cell without using metaphors and models. We use creative essays in my class to try to grapple with how the organelles in a cell function. Plate tectonics, while based on observable evidence, can only be understood through metaphors and models. The plates that make up the Earth's crust are just too massive to be studied at one time. Speaking of big...let us consider space! We rely on art (photos taken by tons of satellites that detect different kinds of electromagnetic radiation) and science fiction to understand and push our thinking about this infinite wonder. The opportunities for creative thought and creative explanation did not pass Woese, Galileo, and Darwin by; they embraced the chance to push other's conceptions of the world and often had to use metaphor and analogy to do this. To some, these efforts and theories might have even seemed (or remain) quite fantastic and unbelievable.

Science is necessarily more complicated than I and others often want to let on. I am forced to present only an overview, a mere introduction of science to my students because of its vast complexity. Some aspects of the problems with theorizing and the issues that arise when humans work toward perfection in understanding I am unable to breach in my class at this time. However, I am unafraid to push my students to employ creativity and out-of-the-box thinking in a discipline that is often thought to be quite the opposite. Dogma can be dangerous in any context, especially in science. Creativity is a wonderful counterbalance.

There is much more that can be said on this subject by many others far better versed and able to communicate than I. However, I hope that I was able to clarify, in some small way, some of my thoughts on the connections between science and writing.

*Note: The National Science Foundation describes inequalities plaguing schools in low-income communities with regard to teaching and learning science: science teachers in high-minority and high-poverty schools are 1) less likely to have a master's or higher degree and to hold full certification, 2) less likely to teach in their field of study, and 3) more likely to have only 3 years or less of teaching experience (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind08/pdf/c01.pdf)

Teaching Without Learning?

2009-08-20T18:45:00.000-07:00

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear, does it still make a sound?” Alfie Kohn uses this quote to open his essay “It’s Not What We Teach, It’s What They Learn” and to throw back the curtain that so often shields the process of teaching and learning. So often, Kohn writes, educators are content to describe how well a lesson was taught while ignoring--or even disparaging--how the lesson was perceived and put to use by students. Indeed, upon deeper reflection it is very powerful to consider the implications of the idea that there is no teaching if there is no learning.

I have read or been told, more than once in my professional training, that there is no such thing as teaching, only learning. At other times I have read or been told that there is no way that teaching and learning can be torn apart. And it seems that Kohn agrees in principle with these perspectives on teaching and learning. However, no matter how many times I have read and have been told this idea, my experiences outside of teacher education classrooms and beyond the pages of education literature have presented me with a contradicting message. So often, as Kohn describes, one tries to describe a lesson as successful even when students perform poorly onassessments or demonstrate deep misconceptions. It is instructive to notice that while teachers of teachers can repeat ad nauseam that there is no teaching without learning, teachers continue to reject this very lesson! Teachers, even when “taught” the idea, do not necessarily alter core beliefs and actions when they enter their own classrooms and reflect on their own lessons. How ironic that it is so difficult to “teach” and “learn” this idea, this lesson about the connection between teaching and learning. It seems, if Kohn and others are to be believed, that there has been little teaching of teaching and learning because such little evidence exists that teachers have learned.

Something is keeping teachers from learning this important lesson. How can this be addressed?

While Kohn suggests that teaching and learning must be considered in tandem, he also emphasizes an important nuance that I described above: teachers do, for better or for worse, perceive teaching as an entity separate from learning. Teaching, then, must in some way be different from learning if only because it is perceived and treated that way. Kohn takes time to express just how important perception is when it comes to understanding what learning is. Perception and perspective of the student (in this case, the teacher) must be taken into consideration when teacher educators attempt to “teach” about the inextricable link between teaching and learning. If we, as a teaching community, are to finally accept (read: learn) that teaching does not occur without learning, then it is important to understand why we refuse to accept it. Kohn presciently points out that blame for students not learning is placed on the shoulders of students when teaching and learning are separated. Only when teachers take full responsibility for student achievement will teaching and learning be paired together in teachers’ minds. I am left to wonder, however, if the current drive to test students more, tie teacher pay to test scores, and name and shame “failing” schools and teachers will only drive a deeper wedge between common conceptions of teaching and learning if only because teachers will require a coping mechanism for all of the pressure. Teachers are, in general, made of strong stuff. The often-punitive measures associated with accepting blame for a lack of student learning may very well test teacher mettle and hinder a change in teacher mindsets.

One of the consequences of testing is that teachers are not the only individuals empowered with information about student learning. In a vacuum, it is possible to imagine that teachers, armed with empirical feedback about the depth of student knowledge, could make adjustments to their practice to precipitate deeper and fuller student understanding of specific concepts and skills. However, this does not occur in a vacuum. Other individuals, outside of the classroom, rightly or wrongly can also take this data to reward or punish teachers. In the vacuum scenario, a teacher might be quite willing to take in the feedback and assume responsibility for student growth and learning. This, I think, would require that teachers not make excuses for student learning and accept, as hard as it might be, the weight of their charge.

When punishments and rewards levied by others enter the picture, I imagine that it is more difficult to take on the full weight of responsibility for student learning. The responsibility alone is quite heavy and difficult to bear. Instead of strengthening teachers to work inwardly and with peers, a punishment and reward system of "merit" (which seems to be the next stage of statewide assessment structures) creates an environment of fear and may very well invite risks to be taken that circumvent the intents of the testing system and that do not benefit students. The intention of those proposing merit pay is based on an efficiency wage theory (Shulz & Tanguay, 2006, p. 72), suggesting that incentives can be implemented to improve teacher quality and the "output" of student test scores. This system is proposed, not out of faith in teacher abilities, but out of frustration of poor student performance; faith is placed in the ability of the market to improve teacher quality (Hursh 2007, p. 15). When teacher's should be empowered to take responsibility for student learning it seems there is a push to disempower.

I may very well be over-exaggerating the effects of linking testing with teacher quality. Fundamentally, I can see of no other way to conceive of what goes on in a classroom. In the context of other forces and influences, I am concerned about the unintended consequences of policies that seem to be en vogue. The question, as it appears to me, is how do we build a culture of teachers taking full responsibility for student learning while not implementing a system in which fear of social reprimand reigns? Fear of failure and of not doing the most for one's students should be enough to encourage the taking on of responsibility, under the right conditions. Additional fears imposed by misguided policies just might create an environment of resentment and demoralization. As I stated in my original post, I have a lot of faith in my colleagues around the nation who work tirelessly to ensure that students learn to live and live to learn. But I am concerned if faith in great teachers devolves into one of distrust and a desire to punish.

Finally, I have largely failed to address the issue of what kinds of learning we are even talking about. I am not even sure that the original article to which I was responding addresses the issue of what kinds of learning is tested and privileged. This issue presents quite another set of questions and concerns when one considers teaching and learning as well as the implications of testing.

When I took time to edit the preceding paragraphs before publishing my thoughts, my eyes caught a set of words that I had written: “the process of teaching and learning.” My very decision to use the word “process” instead of “processes” demonstrates that, somewhere deep down, I think of teaching and learning as one entity, inseparable in action and indescribable when one is held in isolation from the other. Yet I also must not reach too far into my own past to latch upon some memory, some statement that I made about a “good lesson” that just did not result in the student learning that I intended. What a vexing problem. What a fundamental concern. What a lesson to be learned.

References
Hursh, D. W. (2007). Marketing education: The rise of standardized testing, accountability, competition, and markets in public education. In E. W. Ross and R. Gibson (Eds.), Neoliberalism and education reform (pp. 15-34). Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press.

Kohn, A. (2008). It’s not what we teach, it’s what theylearn. Education Week, 28(3): 26-32

Schulz, E.R., & Tanguay, D. M. (2006). Merit pay in a public higher education institution: Questions of impact and attitudes. Public Personnel Management, 35(1), 71-88.