Where are you coming from?

As the Writing Realized staff finishes up a second round of consultations with a group of nursing students, I'm reminded of a very important consideration when it comes to our students.  It is easy to come to the table with big expectations for our students and there is nothing wrong with demanding excellence.  In fact, we owe our students at least that much.  It can be easy to forget, however, that each student may be coming from a very different place.

I reviewed a paper for an online student, today, who was kind enough to send me a note to say how much she appreciated both my comments and my approach.  She felt less assaulted by the criticism because of the spirit and tone in which it was presented.  Part of the process involves a Jing presentation, so the student actually heard my voice giving her guidance as she watched the computer screen scroll through her paper.  It was very gratifying to hear that she was encouraged by my feedback rather than discouraged or overwhelmed. 

I forwarded the exchange to her professor who then informed me that this student is a stay-at-home mom, homeschooling her kids while she finishes a graduate degree in nursing.  Wow!  She has a lot on her plate!

Learning and writing come together in a very personal journey.  All week long, I have been working with students in the lab who really are confused by how to write scholarly papers.  Some of them are traditional students and others haven't been in the classroom for years.  It would be easy to make the jaded assumption that the traditional students have just been lazy and never bothered to learn certain things or that a non-traditional student might not be cut out for college or graduate work.  The truth is, we don't always know where they are coming from or what goes on in the background of their lives.

The students who have really chosen to be here, to participate in their learning, will come with open arms and at least partially open minds.  If they are in the lab, whether it is because the professor requires it or not, they are here for a reason. They have come looking for guidance in their journey. They willingly open themselves up to our criticism so that they may meet another milestone, conquer another challenge. 

It is a pretty powerful thing to see a mind open up and see what is possible. It is even more powerful to have been invited to the show.

The Digital Revolution— Not an End, but a Means

 This post was originally published on a personal blog on October 18th, but I thought it was still relevant here.


At the SCBWI Southern Breeze WIK conference this weekend, I had the great pleasure of attending four truly relevant workshops.  One presentation, in particular, altered the course of a significant grudge I have held against e-readers and tablets.  I'm no luddite, but some things are just sacred.   Rubin Pfeffer, former Senior VP of children's publishing at  S&S and currently an agent at East/West Literary Agency, gave the specter of E-Publishing a whole new look and eased some of my anxiety that I may have missed my chance to publish the way I had always dreamed—as a real, paper and binding book.

He started by taking us through the development of media through history, from radio to film to television to the internet, and pointed out that while technology has changed, none of these vehicles for creativity has gone into extinction.  To the contrary, such revolutions have brought about innovations that have not only created enormous opportunity but expanded the media in ways that reach an even broader audience.  With e-books, enhanced e-books, and apps, the possibilities are staggering.

I know, I know.  At first I felt that technology cheapened our enterprise, that it somehow denigrated the sanctity of the book.  I still feel a little twinge of that pain, but I truly believe that the book as we know it will not die, not completely.  The way we publish in general, however, will definitely change.  Contracts, marketing, development.  The business model simply must change.

As I listened to Mr. Pfeffer describe how the new technology is evolving and what implications it has for our creativity, I started thinking of all the new possibilities and mourned the fading biblio-empire a little bit less.  Change is difficult...and inevitable.  We will all go through some growing pains, but I hope they will be truly growing pains.  That we will stretch ourselves a  little more and seize the opportunity to connect with our audience in ways that will enrich their relationship with literature and maybe even whet their appetite for more.

It will not be long before the number of e-books sold outpaces the traditional paper book, but that does not mean an end to good books.  Technology is simply a means by which we can share our stories with even more readers.  If their eyes are glued to a glowing screen and their fingers agile at finessing a touch pad, let is meet them where they are, where we can engage them in a variety of ways.

I can imagine the terror that those first screen actors felt when silent movies gave way to the talkies.  Some embraced the revolution and honed a new side of their craft, while others slinked away into obscurity.  Think of how much richer the experience is, how those who embraced it discovered a new voice.  I will always cherish my romantic ideal and dream of holding that beautiful hard-bound book in my hands, but I will also relish the knowledge that my story is in the hands of the young people for whom I wrote it, in whatever way it reaches them.

I would rather have my kids' eyes locked on a screen that leads them through a path of beautifully sculpted words and into challenging revelations than one that dulls their mind and entrances them with the likes of a giggling sponge or lowers them into the mire of some alternate universe that claims to be "reality tv."

Proposals — A Road Map for Learning

Several undergraduate students have come through the Writing Realized labs this week asking the big question, "How do I write a research proposal?"  Professors in the social and applied sciences will be well-versed in the basic components of a research proposal because they spent several years in graduate school learning how and practicing that skill.  Undergraduates, on the other hand, are just getting their feet wet, even at the senior level.  These students are just learning how to dissect journal articles for things like independent and dependent variables, methodologies, and statistical significance.

Now you give them a topic, or allow them to choose one, and tell them, "Write a proposal."  That's it.  that's all the direction they have.  Holy cow!  What do they do now?  If they look up information on writing a proposal or use the examples they have explored for your class, they see the list of basic components and choke.  "Do I need a section on methodologies?  Am I supposed to do an experiment?  Do I need to have null hypothesis or an operational alternative? (psst...what are those?)" 

It is easy to forget how overwhelming such a task can be for beginners, especially if they don't know if they are writing a "concept" proposal or an applied research proposal. 

It all comes back to the instructor writing the assignment well.  If you do not give your students specific information, they cannot give you what you want.  They all have the basic idea of a literature review by now.  But what separates a proposal from a literature review?  Many of your students cannot answer that.  When you tell them to "write a proposal," what exactly are you expecting of them?

The Writing Specialists don't have those kinds of answers. And the professor cannot assume that the "ideal structure of a proposal" has been taught to undergraduates even if they are in your senior seminar.  When it comes to a concept proposal, some of the specifics are particular to the professor or to the department.

A proposal is an amazing opportunity for students to learn not only about the content, but about how they think.  Give them the tools to guide that thinking to a productive end.  This is where the students learn about research, about ideas, about the impact of exploration and writing to learn as well as finally formulating an interesting perspective on an issue.  That is the goal, right?

So I will offer a few suggestions:

• If your department expects students to write specific types of proposals, put together some guidelines and examples and post them on a department website or wiki.  This would give students a location for important information as well as lend some consistency to departmental expectations.
• Give your students a hand-out that explains what is expected for the assignment.  You might list necessary headings, length, required components, etc.
• Forward your assignment to the Writing Specialists in the Writing Realized labs so they can better assist your students.

Remember that your students are here to learn.  They have a destination in mind, but it is up to the professionals to help them chart their course and collect what they need to arrive there safely. Give them a road map.  They still have to fill the tank with gas, follow directions, and take in all the sights on the way there.  Sure, they may have to fix a flat tire somewhere along the way, but at least they will know where they are supposed to go.

RIP, Steve Jobs: 1955-2011

Today, the internet is flooded with tributes to Steve Jobs, who passed away last night.  When I heard the news I wanted to cry as if I had lost a close friend.  There are several reasons why the news hit me this way, but I'll name three:


Steve Jobs was a pioneer who defined the world I lived in precisely at the time of my "awakening."  I was among the first students who learned about computers on an Apple back in the late 1970's, when the Apple had just opened the door to personal computing for everyday people.  In college, the little Mac brought the world of computing into my dorm room and eventually made my old electric typewriter, dropped and busted by a "friend" during senior finals, obsolete.  I was exactly the audience who grew with the company, who saw a true pioneer, a genius, define the way people interacted with computers.  He personalized them with an uncanny intuition for how people think.  Not just smart people...all people.  "Visionary" almost seems too hackneyed to describe his gifts.



I would not be the writer/teacher I am today.  While some people may still prefer to grab a pen and a legal pad and write out their manuscripts in long-hand, I simply could not function without my MacBook Pro.  A pen or pencil could never keep up with my mind when it comes to writing down my stories and ideas.  The computer keyboard at least lets me stumble through the mistakes or type stream-of-consciousness in a way that lets me put it all together with ease later.  My Mac is far more forgiving than a legal pad...and far more durable as well as versatile. Because of my "insanely good" Mac, I have an online community that keeps me sane and never lets me give up. I have a tool that has supported and inspired my creativity both in my writing and in my teaching. 



My faith in people, in the world, in the wonder that is life would be missing something without Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Wall-E, UP, and all the wonderful Pixar films that owe so much to Steve Jobs.  All due respect and a standing ovation to the writers, but the realization of their vision, what so many of us writers dream of, comes largely from the tools that Steve Jobs offered. For my kids and myself, the simplest emotions still have immeasurable magic.


As I awakened to my own potential gifts and set my feet on a road with no one particular destination, the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, it has all been there over the years to give me direction. Technology that was more than useful, more than personal.  It was art. And as I discovered the beauties of parenthood and pondered the simplest questions only to realize they are the hardest to answer, Pixar showed me a lifetime of wisdom in less than 90 minutes.  Like so many others of my generation and younger, I can't help but wonder, will it ever be the same?

Thank you, Steve Jobs, and Godspeed...

Writing Prompts

As teachers, we ask our students to write for all aspects of learning (at least we should)—processing information, exploring research and its implications, applying new concepts, and of course, evaluation. With all the constructs and content in our own heads, sometimes it can be difficult to step outside of ourselves and see the assignment from the students' point of view. Here are few things to consider as you compose a writing assignment, big or small.

1. What do you actually want the student to do with this writing?  Is this something that will help him in learning or assimilating the information or applying concepts?  Or is it for your benefit, so you can learn something about the student and/or his process?  Or, are you going to evaluate the writing for specific, critical objectives?  Your goal should be clear to the student for several reasons.  Not only will it set the tone for the student's writing, but it will also help you and the student achieve the outcome you are looking for. 
2. What are the stakes? Does the student have a clear idea of why he is writing?  He should have opportunities for exploration and writing to learn with no significant risk to his grade.  If a student has a clear sense of purpose, he will have less anxiety about the process whether it is a formal essay for a grade or exploratory notes for his own learning.  But make sure he has ample opportunity to use writing as a tool not just a performance and be clear about what is at stake.
3. What are you asking the student to tell you?  When you are writing a prompt for your students, it is easy to fall into the teacher-brain spasm mode.  You know exactly what you are looking for in the response, but you may not have actually indicated that to the student.  If your prompt is formulated too generally, sometimes your students can't decide what you want. Students can sometimes be overwhelmed and paralyzed by a prompt that is too general or vague.  On the other hand, if you truly just want the students to offer anything they can support, be clear about that as well.  Let them know that there is no "right" answer.  Is there an implied "master text" that you will hold their responses to or are you really looking for anything they have to offer?  Keep in mind where your students are coming from in terms of their knowledge and experience and be sure that your questions give them enough direction to satisfy your goal for the assignment.
4. Have you set a clear context for the writing?  Do your students have a point of reference from which they can launch their writing?  You may have to set up a sample scenario or a little background information to put them in that place and give them a sense of audience and purpose.  You can reference a common experience or something specific from class.  While the actual topic may not be familiar to them, the point of origin should be.  Be clear about what is "prompting" this writing.  Perhaps they are sharing notes that other students should be able to read and follow logically.  Maybe they are writing a brief personal essay just to give you a sense of their skills and experience. Or maybe they are exploring a new concept and trying to apply it.

I have heard many teachers complain that their students did not give them what they asked for.  It is possible that nobody was paying attention, but more than likely the prompt simply was not clear enough to the students.  The more they understand about what is expected, the more comfortable they will be with tackling the problem and the more willing they may be to take risks and go beyond the basics and break new ground. 

Writing should not be punishment, but that is how a lot of students feel.  Most of the writing they have done is for assessment, which usually spells out where they have failed more than where they have succeeded (no matter how many positive notes you wrote on their paper).  Let students look at writing as a tool, as a means to an end rather than the end itself, as a way to express themselves honestly and confidently.  The next time you sit down to create an assignment or a writing prompt, think like a student who wants to do good work.  Give them what they need to succeed.  And remember the basics:

• Audience
• Purpose
• Expectations
• Stakes

The Misplaced Power of the Standardized Test

At the recent Save Our Schools rally, Matt Damon spoke eloquently about the value of teaching, real teaching, and its supremacy over standardized testing. There is no pat answer to the problems our public schools face every day, but one thing is clear—tying funding and evaluation to standardized testing is NOT improving learning. Period. It creates a culture of fear and anxiety rather than a culture of learning and innovation. It sacrifices valuable teaching days to the administration of a battery of tests that have only a meager connection to the learning that is and should be happening in the classroom and beyond. Learning is not memorization or mastering the tricks to the test. It is application, contextual understanding, inspiration, creation. That is what real-world learning asks of us.

Welcome to Our New QEP Cohort 2011

We have an energetic new cohort of QEP faculty and the 2011-12 academic year promises to embrace the Writing Realized phenomenon with gusto. As I walked around the room, I could almost hear the wheels turning with new ideas inspired by small technological revelations. At the heart of it all is writing to learn. Just a few crumbs of advice:

Be patient — with yourself and with your students as you explore the many new avenues to learning.

Be Adventurous — explore what's out there, ask any question, try something new, take a risk.

Be Inspired — by your students, by your colleagues, by your own passions, by the little things.

Facebook...a Learning Network?

Our workshop topic this week was actually reflective writing, but our conversation ultimately ended up at the same questions we ask every day:  "How do we get our students to take charge of their learning and become an integral and active part of it?" 

We talked about modeling the behavior for them, incentives that will encourage them to do the work, and all those things that seem to have little impact on the already less motivated students.  And yes, even grades won't motivate everyone. With the advent of the internet and the super-connectivity it has spawned, learning seems to be more a matter of "connecting" than it ever was before (literally and figuratively), so let's take advantage of that.  Okay, so some students refuse to blog or participate in a discussion thread because it's too daunting or confusing or time-consuming...now what? What about meeting them in a place where they already feel comfortable and empowered?  Yes, I'm talking about Facebook.

Facebook has over 500 million active users.  The average user creates 90 pieces of content a month (comments, links, photos, etc.).  And 50% of those users log on every day.  Talk about a meeting place! Most of your students are probably already online and on Facebook every day.  And now, students of all ages are beginning to use social networking as a part of their formal education.   Check out 100 ways to use Facebook as part of the learning process here. 

Imagine.  You create a profile and a course page.  You friend every student in the class and engage them in conversation by posting comments, links, pictures, notes.  The possibilities are staggering. The point is, FB is easy to set up and infinitely accessible.  The party has already started; you're just opening up another room to party in. 

Worried about privacy issues, feasibility, cyberphobia?  I'll tackle that in the next blog entry.

Writing with Purpose

In our workshop this week, we discussed the use of rubrics.  Some teachers hate them because we tend to be harder on our students when we use them and they lack a proper nuance that accounts for aspects of writing that are less quantifiable.  However, a rubric can also help the teacher formulate their assignment more clearly for the students.  If we pay close attention to the purpose of the assignment and communicate that clearly to our students, we may get more readable results.

Putting aside grammar issues, students come to us with a broad variety of educational and life experiences.  Some colleges attract the most academically prepared students while others serve a population that has had far less rigorous preparation.  Let's face it, just because they are in college doesn't mean that they understand how to learn...but they want to.  The QEP mission is to enhance learning through writing and technology, and part of that mission involves helping our participating faculty design clear and meaningful assignments to enhance learning.  To do that effectively, we may have to set aside our preconceived understanding of what our students have brought to the table.

Those with a strong academic background have internalized the unwritten/unspoken expectations that usually come with a college writing assignment.  There may be no specific audience mentioned and only general guidelines as to what should be included, but these students understand how the assignment works because their brains have been through this exercise before.  Think of it as muscle memory.  They've done it before, and now they can stretch it to the college level.

Students who come from a "looser" academic tradition (for lack of a better phrase) may have the ideas, but they have no real concept of how to express them or even what aspects of the issue are appropriate for the assignment.  They have no understanding of structure because they have never been asked to work that way.  Though we hate to admit it, some have managed a "seat of your pants" education prompted by the pressures of NCLB and its manic "teach to the test" mentality or simply by poorly run or ill-equipped schools.  They may have learned how to take the test, but have they learned? The reality is, these are our students too.

If the assignment asks a student to "discuss" a topic, does the student really understand how to do that? In some cases, no.  They might have a basic sense of what "compare and contrast" means or know what it is to summarize, but the more subtle modes of exploring a topic may not be in their toolkit.  As higher level educators we may take this for granted at times.  So while our assignment parameters are perfectly clear to us, our students might need a little more explanation to help them succeed.   

Practice, structure, and conversation.  We can set our expectations high and we absolutely should or we are doing a disservice to our students. Those with less rigorous academic experience need to learn the structures, practice them, and talk about all of it with peers and professionals.  It is a process, not a punctuation mark.  By giving these students more opportunities to develop their learning skills as well as their writing skills, we prepare them not only for academia, but  for the world after college.

Authentic Learning, Collateral Knowledge and the Importance of Audience

As a teacher, I've given a lot of thought to making learning meaningful and relevant for my students over the years.  I say "learning" because that is really what I hope I am teaching them—how to learn.  Of course making the content relevant is part of that process, but it's not always as easy or obvious as it sounds.  Whatever the content, there needs to be a sense of active, authentic participation for the students that will help them truly internalize the concepts and make it part of their own system of knowledge.  There is plenty of literature, as well as debate, about authentic learning, pedagogy, and assessment, but I want to consider just a few brief points.

AUTHENTIC LEARNING TASKS

After an extensive literature review of educational scholarship on "authentic learning tasks,"  Jan Herrington, Ron Oliver, and Thomas C. Reeves identified 10 key characteristics of authentic learning activities.  I am going to cherry-pick a few that really seem to meet the mission of the QEP program at ASU:

1. Have real-world relevance. Are ill-defined, requiring students to define the tasks and sub-tasks needed to complete the activity.
2. Comprised of complex tasks to be investigated by students over a sustained period of time.
3. Provide the opportunity for students to examine the task from different perspectives, using a variety of resources.
4. Provide the opportunity to collaborate.
5. Provide the opportunity to reflect.
6. Can be integrated and applied across different subject areas and lead beyond domain-specific outcomes.
7. Allow competing solutions and diverse outcomes.

In general, students engaged in these sorts of tasks are looking for answers, not "the one right answer." They are actively participating in the process, which makes the learning not only more authentic, but more personal.  Moreover, they are asked to collaborate and reflect, which gives them the opportunity to connect to other learners and share information as well as building their own meta-cognitive skills, which better prepares them for the reality of life after academia. This is how people continue to learn and work after school is over. Will there be someone out there to always give them the right answer if they get it wrong?  Will they know how to look for the answer or explore the possibilities and narrow it down to the reasonable answer?  Not if we don't practice it.  Life is not a bubble sheet.

COLLATERAL KNOWLEDGE

I don't know if anyone has used this term before, but it seems to fit the phenomenon that accompanies good teaching strategies. In the NCLB panic that has left school systems across the country diving into into the CYA bunkers of the war on illiteracy, collateral knowledge has been sacrificed in the name of self-preservation.  Yes, thanks to vague language and misguided implementation, NCLB has lead many educators to "teach to the test" rather than to facilitate learning in order to cover their asses and get satisfactory numbers on the standardized test. But have the student's really learned anything through that approach? Or have they simply been drilled on certain facts and constructs that will evaporate ten minutes after the test is over?  In one particularly horrific example, a school system has mandated a "concept education" approach, which strips a course like English Literature down to a cataloged list of naked concepts taught out of context.  Students may read a chapter of THE GREAT GATSBY only as an example of some theme, but they will never read the novel as a whole.  Once they have written a paragraph about the dangers of wealth or the demise of the American dream, they move on to something else without ever really seeing the concept at work.  It's a meaningless blip in a catalog of disconnected terms.

If the learning is authentic, the knowledge is permanent. If you look at the really good teachers who have continued to facilitate learning in the classroom and use creative, student-centered approaches, the students will learn the content and they will perform well on the tests.  A good case in point is an interdisciplinary course taught by Carl Rosin and Paul Wright at Radnor High School in West Philadelphia.  While the course was not labeled as an AP course, Rosin and Wright encouraged their students to take the AP Language and Composition test simply because they realized that the course material seemed to be compatible with the test.  They did not teach to the test, but offered another application for the knowledge the students would gain from taking the course.  They scored exceptionally well across the board.  That is collateral knowledge at work.  It is sustainable and transferable.

AUDIENCE

No matter what the content area—science, social studies, English—students must write.  It's a life skill and an integral part of the learning process itself.  However, many writing assignments come to a student, laid out with all the do's and don'ts and word limits, etc., but fail to clearly identify the audience.  The reasonable assumption is that the audience is the teacher, and the teacher alone.  One way we can make these learning tasks more authentic is by defining and utilizing a variety of audiences.

To  get a feeling for how my students think and write and to learn a little more about their life experience, I asked my ENGL 1102 students to write a "This I Believe" essay for NPR.  Their audience with the NPR audience, not just me.  I encouraged them to get personal and shared some examples from the NPR website.  I was amazed and thrilled with the essays I received.  Not all of them were beautifully written or well organized, but they had guts.  The students had used writing to face issues that were tough or funny or uncomfortable or sad.  They still had to follow some basic grammar guidelines and word-count restrictions, but they explored.  Themselves.  After I handed their papers back, I read aloud my own "This I Believe" essay, which I had written the day before.  That simple act transformed the classroom.  It changed my students' attitudes, just a little, towards writing and literature and perhaps even why they were there.  We went on to examine the relevance of great literature like HAMLET and "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and other challenging pieces and they saw something personal in it.

Oh, I'm guilty of assigning those essays that assume the teacher is the only audience too, but over the years I have tried to pay more attention to that and offer more meaningful parameters.  Having students teach each other is a powerful strategy.  You might have them write a children's book about a topic (a very difficult task, indeed!).  One business professor asked his students to write up a business conceptualization.  Students could contact an existing business or make up their own business and write up a plan to maximize profits, quality, service, efficiency, etc.  In the science room, you might give them a conference to write for or a demonstration to a specific group of people.  Invite the outside world into the process and give your students something authentic, something real, something personal. Something sustainable.

Flipping the Paradigm

Our QEP staff meeting today focused on three primary issues:  Connectivism, JiTTs, and Flipping the tradition classroom model.  All three of these elements mingled together for some fascinating insights into the potential of a fully realized learning experience for both students and teachers.

We chatted a little bit about what QEP is trying to accomplish and immediately dove into applying some of these questions to an actual class syllabus.  We brainstormed together and came up with a lot of ideas to integrate JiTTs into the coursework and "flip" the class from a professor-led lecture model to a professor-facilitated learning model. This is the truly exciting part of re-imagining the nature of the classroom experience.  Flipping puts the onus on the students and holds them even more accountable for their own learning while actually encouraging a much broader and more practical understanding of the content.

One of the major points of contention from the resistance to this strategy is the question of student motivation.  How do we get them to do the work?  I know all too well the proportion of college students who rarely open the book or attempt the homework.  They figure if they show up to class (sometimes), listen to the lecture (maybe take notes), and regurgitate what they memorized, they are learning.  They cram for the test and write the major papers the night before they are due.  And that is what comprises the bulk of their grade. Is that real learning?  Or is it simply adding and shuffling note cards in a vast catalog of information?

It got me thinking about our particular students and why they have chosen college. Is it to fulfill a dream and become x, y, or z?  Is it because their parents said it was that or the military? Is it because they simply can't get enough knowledge?  If I posed the question to them, I imagine a fair number of them would shrug their shoulders and say, "'Cause..."  Period. Well, perhaps I'm not really that jaded.

I guess one JiTT idea I might attempt the first week of class would be to ask the students to write (in a blog or discussion thread) about why they came to college.  Why are they here?  What do they expect to get here?  Where will they go when they are finished?  If they are honest and offer more than a knee-jerk, superficial response, we can find out quite a lot about our students, and this is where we connect.  Why is education relevant to ME?

You don't have to be a science major for biology to be relevant to you in some way.  You don't have to be a writer for literature to resonate with you.  But we are all learners with a variety of personal experience and knowledge that we bring to every subject. And what really makes content relevant?  How we put it to use.  When we wallow around in it, splash about, trip over it and fall face first in a big fat mistake.  And there is the professor, at the ready with a life-preserver in hand.  If we are really only "experiencing" content outside of the classroom, who is there to guide us?

If we flip that model, the student is gathering content information and reflecting on it outside of class.   It's when he comes to class where he has a chance to manipulate it and apply it with the guidance of his professor that he really comes to understand its meaning and relevance. Now the professor can guide the student's active experience with the content, connect with him in the process and even expand his own understanding.

Back to motivation:  If we make the students more responsible for their learning, shouldn't we put more grade-weight on it too?  Of course JiTTs cannot be graded as "one-right-answer" assignments, but they can be evaluated for their level of participation and depth of exploration.  It's an interesting premise, and one that will most likely take some getting used to.  But it does seem that in the current situation, we are asking for a different kind of mastery when we give a student a grade based solely on 3 essays and 2 exams.  What is he mastering—the card catalog or the content?  I don't think essays and exams are wrong, but perhaps the structure and timing of their administration as well as their prescriptive value is not as effective as we have come to accept.  Obviously we need some way to assess knowledge and expertise.  As a society, we need to know if a doctor is competent or an engineer is qualified, and that is another discussion.  But it may be time to re-think what we mean when we say "learning."

Problem Finding

As a teacher of gifted students, I prepared my class every day by offering them opportunities to find problems.  I did not give them a question to answer or a list of problems to solve.  I gave them a spark, an uncomfortable idea to ignite that relentless itch that wriggles under their skin and begs for attention.  It was up to them to find the problem, articulate it, attack it, and explore the wreckage of their onslaught.  That may sound a bit dramatic, but gifted learners are particularly adept at and drawn to finding problems as much as solving them.  What many educators may miss, however, is that almost all learners, gifted or not, retain far more content when they have to find a problem and truly experience it first.

Many of us grew up in the tradition of lecture, notes, test, essay, and reams of questions laid out for us to answer.  All hail the Scantron sheet!  If we were lucky, we resisted the temptation to doodle or write notes to our friends while the teacher spewed his vast catalog of facts and homework questions and we wrote down what we thought was important in order to memorize it later and vomit it all back up on our beloved scantron sheets to earn a passing grade.

Ideally, however, grades are not the motivating factor, particularly in higher education.  We would all hope that learning is the goal, though the reality of our students' mindsets and social/academic pressures may suggest otherwise.  For now, we'll leave the issue of motivation for another post.

So how do we break away from the old receptacle notion of students as empty vessels into which we pour knowledge?  This is the point in such conversations when I often launch into pointing out the Latin roots of the word "educate" and remind everyone that we are drawing our students "out" rather than filling them up.  But let's start with shifting our perspective a little.

• Invite them to find problems

Okay, who read that as invite problems?  Raise your hand... Now take my hand and don't be afraid.  Problem finding does tend to be what pedagogical theorists like to call a "higher order learning skill" but why not at least try it with all of your students. When I taught Ayn Rand's THE FOUNTAINHEAD to gifted high school juniors, I often started class by posting a quotation from one of her many controversial texts and asking them to free write for 15 minutes or so.  These brilliant nuggets of philosophy often addressed difficult ideas like morality or love or selfishness.  The students had to respond to it from wherever they were in their intellectual evolution.  Then we discussed what they came up with, which mostly involved their own questions as well as the answers they came to.  Now we were ready to tackle the text.  The true learning had already begun.

• Promote Experiencial Learning

You may be familiar with the educational models of David A. Kolb, Maria Montesorri, Jean Piaget, and Rudolf Steiner.  They all looked at learning as an experience rather than an event.  It is a process that takes its roots deep inside the student and continues to grow as long as it is fed and nurtured. Both writing and experimentation are activities that engage a student with the topic.  By writing, I don't mean jotting down notes from a lecture.  I mean truly thinking on paper, manipulating ideas, possibilities, questions, problems in new ways that make the topic more meaningful to the learner.  Those who teach hard sciences rely on lab experiments to solidify information or problems presented in lecture.  But consider using writing to launch their inquiry instead of reserving that solely for grade assessment.  Even mathematics is primed for experience and questions.  Reflecting on their initial ideas and early attempts at finding and solving problems nurtures those concepts and keeps the learning growing.    

• Model it and never underestimate the power of a question

No matter how basic a student's initial perception of the subject is or how simple his questions may seem, that is his starting point.  You have to allow him to find himself in the problem. So you may present them with a situation or a statement to consider, but you can also ask a question to get them thinking.  But it is a particular kind of question: ONE THAT HAS NO RIGHT ANSWER.  This is how learning happens.  It's not a plug-in to keep the operating system moving; it's writing the software and hard-wiring the real knowledge, the experience. 

As a QEP Writing Specialist, of course I encourage educators to use writing to facilitate learning.  Asking students to find problems and write through their experience not only teaches them about the course content, but it also teaches them how learning works.  It invests them in the process and makes it more meaningful to them by allowing them to work from the inside out. 

If we use writing only as a means of evaluation, then we are wasting its tremendous potential as a learning tool and it becomes nothing more than the hammer that pounds another nail in either the coffin or the scaffold.  Research has shown that writing is an integral part of the process of learning, yet many educators continue to use it only as a measure.  Consider it as the essential tool that helps students find problems and truly experience their learning, which sows those seeds of knowledge we really hope will grow.  And that, after all, is the whole point of education.

Huck's Audience

With all the flurry over the recent attempt to sanitize Mark Twain's ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN for young audiences, one important element of the question seems to have gotten lost. Who was the intended audience? For that matter, consider the newly released film version of Jonathan Swift's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. It is being marketed as a fun "family" film, but Swift's work was carefully crafted political satire aimed at adults.

Now look closely at Twain's book. Consider when he wrote it, not only in terms of the historical time period but also in terms of the stage of Twain's own life.  Though he may have envisioned a boy's adventure book when he began writing it, his novel became something very different by the end.  The end of Reconstruction, the introduction of Jim Crow, and a flood of lynchings as well as personal tragedy led Twain to put the half-finished manuscript on the shelf for seven years before he finally picked it back up. And when he did, he came at the novel from a very different place. There is far more darkness in his tale than today's young people would understand. Does that mean they shouldn't read it? No.

However, it does mean that we should treat it as what it is.  This book has been a point of contention on school reading lists for decades primarily because of the language, yet teachers want to share this eloquent indictment of Southern Honor and Post-Reconstruction realities with students of all ages. Why? What abiding truth resonates with the young reader? I think the problem is that many teachers don't really answer that question, if they ask it all all, before they plunge in with a group of unsuspecting 8th-graders.  Does a popsicle-stick raft really demonstrate an important theme in the book?

I'm not saying we shouldn't include this in our school reading list or ban people from teaching it.  I'm just saying don't be careless with it because you think it was meant for kids to read and learn a lesson about racism and don't let a sanitized version of the text lure you into a complacence that fails to address the true issues in the book.  An adolescent main character does not always mean a book was written for kids.  Is THE LOVELY BONES a book for young readers?

You can look around and find a host of classics that have been turned into graphic novels or abbreviated versions for young readers and that is not a bad thing.  We teach books written for adults all the time.  But if you wish to teach a book like HUCK FINN, don't assume that because one offensive word has been extracted or painted a different color that it is somehow more relevant or more acceptable to a young audience.

Kids can learn a lot from HUCK FINN.  Don't boil it down to a single word and don't assume that it was written for kids.  Think about those abiding truths you want your students to glean and start there. After all, if we want them to learn how to think about the hard questions, we have to be good models and ask them ourselves.

"Light Out, Huck, They Still Want to Sivilize You"

Yes, it's time for another round of literary sanitation in the name of political correctness.  If you haven't heard, an English professor at Auburn University is protecting us from ourselves in order to preserve a classic for generations to come.  How does he plan to do that?  He has replaced the word nigger with the word slave in Mark Twain's ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN.  All 243 times it appears.  His hope is to make the book more palatable and less taboo to parents, teachers, and young readers alike in order to preserve a classic.

While I understand his aim, I have mixed emotions about the ramifications of such a cleansing.  My guts tightened and my brain shuddered when I heard the news.  Who would dare?  But I'm sure many teachers have grown weary of explaining and testing the cultural climate before attempting to teach the text and have abandoned it altogether in the name of job security.  It's a delicate business and believe me, I understand. But there is something more to this issue beside censorship and the political conscience of a modern audience.  For me, it's as simple as integrity.

I taught HUCKELBERRY FINN in the 90's and my students truly "got" it.  Now, keep in mind, I didn't just fling the book at them and dive into it without any context.  That would be ludicrous.  But then teaching any classic without context is not only asinine, but borderline criminal.  In his New York Times article, Michiko Kakutani sums up a crucial point here:

Never mind that today nigger is used by many rappers, who have reclaimed the word from its ugly past. Never mind that attaching the epithet slave to the character Jim — who has run away in a bid for freedom — effectively labels him as property, as the very thing he is trying to escape.

I was teaching high school juniors at the time, and when I announced our next project, several sighed and said, "We already read that in 8th grade."  These were gifted students, mind you, and they had little tolerance for repetition let alone something that has been dubbed a "kid's adventure story."  Yes, that is how it was presented to them the first time around.[shudder] Of course I set them straight and then presented the historical and cultural context, complete with disclaimers about language.  Also consider that the demographics of this school were 49% caucasian, 48% African American, and 3% other (Indian, Iranian, etc.) Moreover, the socio-economic scale reached from the poorest to the wealthiest (children of pro football players and heart surgeons, etc.) who made their own cliques to often surprising ends.  When we had finished, several students remarked that they had read a completely different book. They had no idea that that is what the book was about.  They loved it and each one of them took in the truth that they found there.  


Prof. Gribben hopes to introduce more young people to Huck by sterilizing part of the very social comment that Twain was addressing.  Of course we have seen the term pass through different usages and through its evolution, we have cringed and cursed at the sound of it.  But what is really at the heart of good literature?  Truth.  No matter how ugly, uncomfortable, or embarrassing, if we seek it earnestly, we shall find it.  As teachers, isn't that a large part of our job, to help our students discover their understanding of the world and its naked truth?  


The primary problem is not the text.  The problem is that so many teachers get it wrong.  If you think that boiling down a social commentary like HUCKLEBERRY FINN to nothing more than a jaunt on the Mississippi, than you should not be teaching it to anyone.  The rich, beautiful, harsh story says so much about Twain's understanding of a country that had just come through a firestorm, not unscathed, not instantly wiser, and certainly not romantically mussed up, but truly, brutally scarred.  This isn't a book about friendship and acceptance.  This is a book about honor and truth and clarity.  Where is the honor and truth and clarity in eviscerating the text and subjugating the context? 


In the end, Huck doesn't necessarily see all slaves as equals, but he does see Jim as a man—an honorable, brave man—and a friend.  Mark Twain simply asked that we look at him, that we look at ourselves, that we see this country as it was, warts and all and consider the truth.  Don't look away now because it makes you uncomfortable.  You'll miss the most important parts.