Guerrilla Teaching

"Guerrilla warfare is the unconventional warfare and combat with which small group combatants use mobile tactics...to combat a larger, less mobile formal army." -Wikipedia

It is an undeclared war, but battles are being waged daily. And just when you believe your side is winning...

Skirmish #1:
zemote @ericolson Looking at: "TED | Talks | Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? (video)" (http://tinyurl.com/2z3op4)

dmcordell @zemote Tried to open "Do Schools Kill Creativity" at school. Blocked by firewall. Does that answer the question?

zemote @dmcordell I think you answered the question perfectly :)

iteachcomputers @dmcordell - THAT is the definition of irony!



Skirmish #2:
dmcordell @Digimom Very fluky firewall:kids can get to YouTube(I can get to Twitter/no gmail or Reader)but humor, incl some political cartoons,blocked.

Digimom @dmcordell HUMOR is blocked by your firewall? I would tell you that's hilarious but then you wouldn't be allowed to read this!


Talk about irony: after telling Digimom that YouTube was freely available, I went online to add a clip, that features Guy Kawasaki explaining his 10/20/30 PowerPoint Rule, to my Blackboard account. Without warning or explanation, YouTube is now blocked. Teachers in our district have no override privileges, so we must request that the IT unblock specific sites for specific dates and class periods. Assuming, of course, that he is in the building and available to assist us.

I found a university site that had the video embedded in a blog posting. Since the clip did not come directly from YouTube, it remained unblocked and available for use.

Therefore, I may be embedding video clips for instructional use in my blog. Like this sequence of self-portraits of Vincent van Gogh: totally school appropriate, unavailable because it's on YouTube.

I will never knowingly expose my students to inappropriate resources, but I WILL enrich their learning experiences whenever and however I can.

It's a battle many of us fight daily. Our small successes represent great victories for our students.

*Note: I had trouble embedding videos on blogger, so I've created a rough & ready site at Tumblr, Guerrilla Teaching Resources. It will do...for now.

Thanks to @garageflowers for the suggestion!

Something of Value

"Value is what people are willing to pay for it." -John Naisbitt

Our elementary principal broke up a crime ring last week.

She happened upon some 2nd and 3rd grade students, participants in an after school activity, who were "stealing" from the library. The object of their villainy? Not books, but the old sign-out cards still found in some of the volumes.

A few years ago, we automated our library. Each book now has a barcode. Consequently, new books don't have pockets with cards to record borrowers. The now-obsolete orange and blue cards have been gradually discarded. But some remain, in the Books That Should Be Weeded, which haven't been checked out in years. These artifacts have somehow become an Object of Desire.

Administrative questioning revealed that the little darlings were not only pulling books off the shelves to search for remaining cards [no wonder our shelves have been such a mess lately!] but they have been trading and SELLING these bits of cardboard!

After delivering a stern lecture (while managing to somehow keep a straight face), the principal took the booty to her office. She shared the story with us the next morning.

The cards do hold a certain fascination. They retain the shaky signatures of students, some of whom graduated years ago, and bear dates ranging from the early '90s to the beginning of the millennium. Occasionally a child will spot an older sibling's name, or, more rarely, that of a parent.

I am now in possession of a few hundred of these relics. They have no extrinsic value, but they were something of value to the children who laboriously searched for them. Perhaps I'll distribute them for bookmarks or as rewards for good behavior. Our little society of students has found these cards to be desirable. I will deal with them in their own coin.



"Final Exam Flash Cards" by atlguitfiddle

Twitter Poll for the Future Mr. & Mrs. Burell

"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person." -Mignon McLaughlin

dmcordell @cburell @katb @all Clay made remark about only getting married once. So Twitter poll: how long have you been married? In Sept 35 yrs.for us.

njtechteacher @dmcordell 20 years in September.

peneli @dmcordell 1 year 9 months... 2 years end of May for us. but then we dated for 8 years first.

garageflowers @dmcordell We're the new kids on the marriage block: married 4 yrs, 3 mos.

ethanbodnar @dmcordell zero

petrock @dmcordell RE: twitter poll on marriage - ~7.5 years.

“Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.” –Shakespeare

Meme: Passion Quilt

"School's over... but learning isn't"

Thanks to Christine Southard who tagged me for this "passion quilt" meme post.

The rules are simple.
1. Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
2. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about...and give your picture a short title.
3. Title your blog post "Meme: Passion Quilt" and link back to this blog entry.
4. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

My Picture
This is a picture of emptied lockers on the last day of school. I use it to symbolize the fact that formal classes have ended...but learning never stops.

My Passion
I am passionate about lifelong learning, for students of all ages.

You've been tagged:
I'm passing this meme onto five like-minded teachers and/or tech savvy librarians:

Cathy Nelson South Carolina teacher/librarian

Julie Lindsay Qatar Information technology

Kate Olson Wisconsin teacher

Doug Johnson Minnesota teacher/librarian

Judy O'Connell Australian teacher/librarian


"Only passions, great passions can elevate the soul to great things." -Denis Diderot

Thinking Blogger Award

"Thinking Machine 4" by tj.firer

Twitter has been a joy and a revelation for me. After initial resistance to what I felt might be yet another trendy online distraction, I cautiously ventured into the Twitterverse, and "stepped into the light."

I've found a supportive network of teachers, techies, and just plain interesting people from around the world. One of my new friends is Anne Mirtschin, a teacher at Hawkesdale P12 College, in Victoria, Australia.

"@murcha" uses the power of social networking to enhance and extend her students' learning. Her blog, On an e-journey with generation Y, was created as a journal to document this journey.

Anne has been kind enough to give me a Thinking Blogger award. I thank her for the honor and can honestly say that I have learned as much or more from her as she has from me. But isn't that the whole point of our brave new collaborative world?

About the award.

The participation rules:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).
In addition there is a note: “Please, remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking! ”

So, for 5 blogs that make me think:

• Students 2.0 Who is more important in the realm of education than the stakeholders, the students? This innovative cooperative blog lets us hear their voices and engage in a dialog about their concerns.
• Beyond School Clay Burell leads the fight against "schooliness" by constantly challenging his students - and his readers - to seek creative ways to move education into the 21st century. He is currently based in Korea, but his beat is the world.
• Not So Distant Future Carolyn Foote was one of my earliest online mentors. She exemplifies all the best qualities of a modern teacher/librarian.
• Assorted Stuff Tim Stahmer, an Instructional Technology Specialist in Virginia, combines observations about the state of public education with "comments on instructional technology, blogging and the read-write web (aka Web 2.0), various forms of media, digital rights and fair use, a very small dab of politics, and the everyday oddities of life that pop up." He is always interesting, entertaining, and informative.
  
• Tech Thoughts by Jen Jen Wagner offers practical advice on educational technology and invites teachers to participate in a variety of well-constructed, fun-to-do internet-based classroom projects. And her warm and friendly personality makes the digital world a much nicer place to visit!

Thank you, Anne, for sharing the award with me. It made a gloomy winter day a lot brighter!

"The world is round so that friendship may encircle it." -Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Great Expectations

"Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has great expectations." –Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

To our parents and grandparents, the American Dream meant that, through hard work and a good education, young people could match and exceed the success of previous generations. Effort, determination and a college degree were seen as the keys to prosperity in adult life.

In some respects, the American Dream seems to have shrunk to an American Illusion.

A 2005 study published by the National Center for Education Statistics reported that

"more than two-thirds of students who were high school seniors in 2004 expected to complete a bachelor’s degree, and 35 percent planned to get a graduate or professional degree. But nearly two-thirds of the students who expected to get a four-year degree had not mastered intermediate level mathematics concepts as 12th graders, and nearly a third could not consistently solve simple problems based on low-level mathematical concepts."

In The Ambitious Generation: American's Teenagers, Motivated but Directionless, Schneider & Stevenson suggest that adolescents are extremely ambitious but "find it very difficult to fulfill their dreams." The authors believe one reason for this disconnect is that the transition to adulthood takes much longer, an "elongated transition" that postpones the onset of maturity, making decisions "overwhelming and less than meaningful" for high school students.


This is the illusion and the dilemma: students are desiring, expecting to be successful but are not emerging from formal schooling equipped with the skills to do so.


Arthus, in a posting on Students 2.0, flatly states that the current educational system is to blame, since

"every young child wants to grow up to be a successful citizen. Nobody is born hating learning—they grow to hate it through successively being treated as if they should hate it."

Rather than trying to "lock students into" learning, he wonders,

"What if ... schools taught students to make their own tools? If students are never taught to hate/fear learning, they will not shy away from learning opportunities."

Guest blogger Bill Farren, expresses similar sentiments on Beyond School:

"This made me reflect again on the current state of education: Why are we subjecting kids to an educational system that, for too many, dulls the senses, erodes natural curiosity, and forces kids to choose grades over learning, all in the quest for a high-paying job that will not necessarily make them happier or healthier? If someone wanted to create a system to reduce well-being for all, they need look no further than the current educational approach found in most schools."

Are student expectations unrealistic? Can the current educational system equip young people with critical skills necessary to be successful in our modern world? And what, after all, is success: how do we now define the American Dream?

I'd be interested in hearing your opinions.



"The quality of expectations determines the quality of our action." -Andre Godin

"Stairway" by Wolfgang Stoudt

As A Twig is Bent

"As a twig is bent the tree inclines." –Virgil

Virgil's quote is very apt for students. It applies equally well to their teachers.

Few would argue that there needs to be some measure of technology embedded in our curriculum. Reports like Tough Choices or Tough Times, new standards from the AASL (American Association of School Librarians) and ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), Thomas Friendman's best-seller, The World is Flat: all detail the types of literacies our students will need to survive and prosper in the 21st century.

The question remains, what needs to be taught, how will it be taught, and, most importantly of all, who will teach it?

We have a number of intelligent, energetic young teachers in our building, many of whom did their student teaching here. These new educators are interested in learning how to use technology tools to deliver content, but they didn't arrive with prior knowledge beyond how to access and use research sites online. Taught and mentored by older teachers who were not themselves fluent in the new literacies, many education majors are as much in need of instruction as their students.

Today, I looked at the courses required for an education major at SUNY Plattsburgh, the alma mater of many of our teachers. While graduates of the program are expected to "endeavor to practice effective pedagogy, reflect critically upon teaching and the learning process, and exemplify ethical, human and democratic principles within a complex, technological, global society" it is impossible to judge from the course descriptions exactly how, or even if, this goal is accomplished.

New teachers, trying to establish their careers, obtain tenure, pay off crushing student loans, and complete the NYS requirement for a graduate degree within a set number of years, have enough to do without learning new technologies they should have already mastered.

The tree can be bent crooked or bent straight. But either way:

"A twig is bent while it is green.” -Turkish Proverb

"Let's stop pretending" by streetoftrees

Unsuited to Age Group

parent: a father or a mother; one who sires or gives birth to and/or nurtures and raises an offspring -Wikipedia

Each year the American Library Association compiles a list of the most frequently challenged books. A challenge is defined as a "formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness." And Tango Makes Three tops ALA's 2006 list for "homosexuality, anti-family, and unsuited to age group." The award-winning picture book, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, is based on the true story of two male penguins parenting an egg in the Central Park Zoo, New York City.

Loudoun County, VA recently joined the list of school districts that have pulled this book off library shelves, although copies are still available in the professional collection at 16 elementary buildings. In other states, the book has been moved from the Easy section to non-fiction or may only be checked out with parental permission.

A few of our teachers are doing research units on penguins. I've shown them "And Tango Makes Three" and explained why it is considered controversial in some districts. The book is shelved in our Easy Fiction section and will remain there unless and until it is formally challenged. No titles have been removed during my years as SLMS and I don't anticipate any great outcry over Tango.

We have many variations on the concept of family in our school, and I don't think the children will be shocked by the story of two loving penguins sharing parenthood. Envious, maybe, but not shocked.

"It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons." -Johann Schiller

"IMG_2610" by cyfer13

My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys

"I grew up a-dreamin' of bein' a cowboy, and lovin' the cowboy ways." -Willie Nelson, My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys

They were my childhood heroes, the gallant knights of the plains. Soft-spoken and well-mannered, they were slow to anger but always ready to defend the weak and the powerless. The code they followed was based on moral rectitude rather than the rule of law.

There was a nobility in their largely nomadic life. Wandering from place to place on horseback, the cowboy/heroes fought villains, rescued ladies in distress, and righted injustice.

In the early days of TV Westerns, the protagonists were invariably clean in thought, word, and deed, careful to avoid vices like smoking, drinking, and swearing. They rarely indulged in even a chaste kiss with a grateful lady. Their clothes were neat, their teeth gleamed, spurs shone silver in the sun.
Hopalong Cassidy was the original Man in Black, but we knew he was a "good guy" from the moment he began speaking. Singing cowboys like Gene Autry (an Army Air Corps colleague of my father's) introduced us to some of the traditional ballads of the open range.

There was a King of the Cowboys and Queen of the West. Sky King took to the air to track the bad guys. The Lone Ranger donned his mask; the Cisco Kid wore a sombrero. Straight shooting rancher Annie Oakley reminded girls that women could also be strong and independent.

The "cowboy virtues" were recreated in other times and places. Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, Davy Crockett: all were cowboys in spirit if not in fact.

Their aim was true, their hearts were gold. They were loners with a mission. They were my earliest role models, those Western cowboys - and cowgirls - of the 1950s.


"I'm a roaming cowboy riding all day long,
Tumbleweeds around me sing their lonely song.
Nights underneath the prairie moon,
I ride along and sing this tune.

See them tumbling down
Pledging their love to the ground
Lonely but free I'll be found
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.

Cares of the past are behind
Nowhere to go but I'll find
Just where the trail will wind
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.

I know when night has gone
That a new world's born at dawn.

I'll keep rolling along
Deep in my heart is a song
Here on the range I belong
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds." -Sons of the Pioneers, Tumbling Tumbleweeds





"William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy" Wikipedia

The Brass Ring

brass ring: An opportunity to achieve wealth or success; a prize or reward; a thing worth catching. The term comes from the practice of giving a free ride to the person who succeeded in snatching a ring out of a box while riding a merry-go-round. [Slang, late 1800s] -The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms

In this instance, the picture came before the concept. I knew that I wanted to discuss "reaching for the brass ring" but in what context? The answer came when I read Chris Lehmann's "What About the Other Days?"

Chris recounts a conversation about student assessment, in which he said

"I've come to realize that, as an educator, I am more interested in what kids can do as opposed to what they know."

When a colleague argued the importance of preparing young adults for high stakes tests like

"the SATs, the LSATs, the MCATs... serious tests and serious days that can forever alter the path of a person's life"

Chris countered with

"...those are three days in a person's life. What are we doing in our schools to prepare kids for the other 20,000 days of their lives?"

Comments have begun to appear on the site, and a discussion about the goal of education is starting to take shape.

Doug Johnson wonders

"Are some days more important than others?"

while Carolyn Foote gently reminds us that

"We need to teach students to think. That is what will prepare them for both those '3 days' and the other 20,000."

Don Lafferty suggests balance is necessary:

"Some combination of teaching to the test and...giving students methodologies for critical thinking is the best recipe for success in the current structure."

This conversation is just beginning. Why not stop by at Practical Theory and help construct an answer as to how we can best help our students grab the brass ring in life?

"Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in." -Abraham Lincoln

"Capturing the brass ring" by Woof Nanny