The 12 Days Of Making

**sung to the tune of Jingle Bells The Twelve Days of Christmas**

On the First Day of Making, my students made with me
An unfinished blueprint or three

On the Second Day of Making, my students made with me
Two safety gloves
And an unfinished blueprint or three

On the Third Day of Making, my students made with me
Three fresh plans
Two safety gloves
And a more finished blueprint or three

On the Fourth Day of Making, my students made with me
Four falling builds
Three fresh plans
Two safety gloves
And a more finished blueprint or three

On the Fifth Day of Making, my students made with me
Five Well Made Things
Four falling builds
Three fresh plans
Two safety gloves
And a more finished blueprint or three

On the Sixth Day of Making, my students made with me
Six bases laying
Five Well Made Things
Four falling builds
Three fresh plans
Two safety gloves
And a more finished blueprint or three

On the Seventh Day of Making, my students made with me
Seven switches switching
Six bases laying
Five Well Made Things
Four falling builds
Three fresh plans
Two safety gloves
And a more finished blueprint or three

On the Eighth Day of Making, my students made with me
Eight grades a-sloping
Seven switches switching
Six bases laying
Five Well Made Things
Four falling builds
Three fresh plans
Two safety gloves
And a more finished blueprint or three

On the Ninth Day of Making, my students made with me
Nine chances taking
Eight grades a-sloping
Seven switches switching
Six bases laying
Five Well Made Things
Four falling builds
Three fresh plans
Two safety gloves
And a nearly finished blueprint or three

On the Tenth Day of Making, my students made with me
Ten minds a-leaping
Nine chances taking
Eight grades a-sloping
Seven switches switching
Six bases laying
Five Well Made Things
Four falling builds
Three fresh plans
Two safety gloves
And a nearly finished blueprint or three

On the Eleventh Day of Making, my students made with me
Eleven triers trying
Ten minds a-leaping
Nine chances taking
Eight grades a-sloping
Seven switches switching
Six bases laying
Five Well Made Things
Four falling builds
Three fresh plans
Two safety gloves
And a nearly finished blueprint or three

On the Twelfth Day of Making, my students made with me
Twelve dreamers dreaming
Eleven triers trying
Ten minds a-leaping
Nine chances taking
Eight grades a-sloping
Seven switches switching
Six bases laying
Five Well Made Things
Four falling builds
Three fresh plans
Two safety gloves
And a perfect finished blueprint or three

If you like this post and the other posts on this blog you should know I’ve written three books about teaching- He’s the Weird Teacher, THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome), and the just released A Classroom Of One. I’ve also written one novel- The Unforgiving Road. You should check them out, I’m even better in long form. I’m also on the tweets @TheWeirdTeacher.

Whose Pacing Guide?

I don't want to panic anyone, but I just realized that we're a third of the way through December.

"But Doug," I hear you shout. "It was September just last week! School just started! I haven't even handed out the planners yet!*"

I know, my friends. I do. I am not sure how it happened either. I'm currently developing a theory which involves my classroom being some kind of TARDIS. This would explain the time thing and how they fit so many students in- it must be bigger on the inside. 

No matter how it happened, it did happen. It's already December. Which means it's basically Winter Break. Which means *starts hyperventilating* we're halfway through the school year. Friends, there is no way I'm halfway through teaching my kids everything they need to learn this year. They need to learn so much. Fourth grade is hard. And I just got finished teaching fifth grade, so I know where they need to be at the start of next year and we're not there. I guess we can see it over the hill. If we stand on a ladder. On our tiptoes. 

But it also feels like we've learned so much!

This is one of the most basic challenges at the heart of teaching. You can lead a child to knowledge but you can't make them stand in front of the fire hose and drink as much as they can as fast as they can. Kids learn at their own speed. All thirty-three of them. All moving at their own gait. A non-constant one. The kid who was running yesterday seems to have developed a severe limp. We were on pace for a second there. 

Ah, there's the word-Pace. As in, "The pacing guide says you should be teaching division of decimals right now, why are you still on rounding whole numbers?" I'm not blaming district-issued pacing guides either, because I live in the real world. I understand that districts have to have a standard pace of learning because there's a lot to get through in a year. I don't see some malicious intent in a standard pacing guide. I see bureaucracy and CYA and an honest attempt to help teachers**. I think they help too. Yes, I need to move my kids at their own pace, but I also need to be moving forward. We can't wait for everyone to be 100% with us on everything. There's too many kids for that. The district pacing guide is a nice anchor to reality, reminding me that though I would like to spend two more weeks on this topic, I've got a lot more to do and I need to move on. I see you waving your hand back there claiming that this is the perfect case for digital differentiation and you and I both know that's just a fancy way to say digital worksheets assigned by a computer. You know how Amazon is able to say, "I see you mentioned Frank Zappa on Twitter, would you like to peruse our wide selection of Zappa-related products?" That's the exact algorithm that powers student-paced computer programs. It ain't personalized, it's just a program, and the kids are the product/test subjects.

My personal pacing guide never lines up with the district pacing guide. How that impacts my teaching depends entirely on how much of a stickler my principal is, and how well my kids are learning at a pace I find reasonable. And what I find reasonable, like everything else in teaching, is completely flexible. I will take longer on this lesson than the book suggests because my kids need it, and I will shave a day off this lesson because come on, this is so boring. I love the freedom to do this and recognize this is not everyone's reality. I taught in a scripted "You vill be on zis page on zis number at zis time! Ve haff vays of makink you teach." I wanted to chew holes in desks. If that's you, you have my sympathies and I suggest the older desks, better flavor. This has all gotten gross now. Moving forward.

On top of all this is the honest reflection which tells me I always feel like this in December. I never feel like we're as far along as I want to be. I never feel like we're doing the work we should be doing yet. I never feel like we've done enough writing, enough building, enough creative math work (I actually feel like I'm doing pretty well with this this year), enough difficult reading. I always hit December feeling depressed that I'm not as good a teacher as I think I am and my students aren't learning as much as they should be. But I cling to those hints that I'm wrong. I cling to seeing responses I hadn't seen before, creativity that is new, thinking around corners that hadn't been thought around. Hell, sometimes I just cling to when that one kid got out his journal, sharpened his pencil, and got to work without having to be told a half-dozen times because that is a massive improvement. Teaching is a long game with uncertain successes and we take what we can get because this job is amazing and it's also brutal.

Whose pacing guide matters? In the end it's not the district pacing guide, and it's not my internal pacing guide. It's each student's pacing guide. Part of my job, our job, is to help develop that. This is a conversation I have with my kids all the time. "Are you doing fourth grade work?" But I follow it up with, "Remember, your fourth grade work is not the same as his fourth grade work or her fourth grade work. Are you pushing yourself as hard as you can? Are you growing?" We need to teach that internal conversation. We must teach reflection strategies. I tell a story about when I was a lifeguard and we would do swim workouts. No one cared if I was making the time standards because I was a swimmer. They weren't setting times that were challenging for me. They cared if I was sucking wind at the end of every set no matter how much rest I got because I was swimming to improve myself, not to meet the time. Just like the RappSheet (yes, that was his nickname, yes he earned it, yes he was a great guard and amazing with the Mommy and Me Aquatot classes) on the other end of the pool who missed every single time time standard and so never had the chance to stop swimming the whole workout. He did every lap I did, and worked just as hard. His pacing guide was just as strong as mine. Gazelle or grunt, it doesn't matter as long as you are pushing. 

It's December. We haven't done enough yet. But we've done a lot. And though it doesn't feel like it, there's plenty of time to grow yet to come.

*who has two thumbs and a stack of planners on his back table?

**I've been in districts that were out to get us too, so this is a blanket statement, but one of those blankets with holes in it.

If you like this post and the other posts on this blog you should know I’ve written three books about teaching- He’s the Weird Teacher, THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome), and the just released A Classroom Of One. I’ve also written one novel- The Unforgiving Road. You should check them out, I’m even better in long form. I’m also on the tweets @TheWeirdTeacher.

A Textbook Case of Media Matters

"I love it when a plan comes together."
- Hannibal Smith

There are few things more fun in teaching than seeing a possibility in something, putting all the pieces in order, and then it all working exactly how it is supposed to. Nothing ever goes off without a hitch, that's the assumption. Mr Murphy of Murphy's Law fame is always there, waiting for an opportunity to upset the apple cart. When he misses you it's a great feeling.

Last week we started a story in our textbook called "Coming Distractions: Questioning Movies". The story is a non-fiction look into the making of movies, from CGI and special effects to the unreality of certain situations, to editing, to sales and messages. It was those last two that interested me the most. Unless you ask my students. They'd tell you it was a toss up between those two and the special effects sections. But, in my defense, if the book brings up the first JURASSIC PARK in its special effects section you're basically honor-bound (for my Canadian and British readers- "honour-bound") to find the T-Rex car attack on YouTube and look at the masterful way it combines practical effects, puppets, models, and CGI *cough andwhythatmakesitbetterthanthemorerecententriesintheseries cough*. Also I got to show them a side-by-side of Andy Serkis doing Gollum live and what it looked like in the final product. Again, the story brought this up as a specific example, so I was just supplementing what the text was giving my kids. Adding context, as it were.

We got to dig deeply into how movies and television shows are sold to you, and the messages that are put into the text and subtext of the media the kids are consuming. This, as far as I'm concerned, should be a lesson we teach constantly from year one of school. We teach them food nutrition, watch what you put into your bodies. Not to judge, but to be education. Same with media. Here are the ways you're being sold things, here are the messages implicit in this, here's how to see them so you can be an informed consumer. I picked on Pepsi quite a bit because it's an easy shorthand to take a sip of my coffee, pretend it's a Pepsi can, and talk the kids through, "What's it mean if you can see the label?" Turn my mug. "Now you can't see the label. Now what's it mean?" And on to "Do you think the character is a cool character? Has he been good looking and smart and funny? And now he's drinking Pepsi? What's the message?" Then following it up with, "Now that good looking, smart, funny character you like is solving his problems by punching that other man in the face. Now what's the message? Is it different than the one Pepsi is sending you?"

The moment we started going through the story I knew I wanted to end the week one way and one way only- With a video chat with a media expert. Lucky for me, I know one. Julie Smith is a college professor and author of Master the Media: How Teaching Media Literacy Can Save Our Plugged-In World. This is an excellent book not only for teachers but anyone who consumes media and wants to be smart about it. Highly recommend. Julie and I are friends through the twitter box and though we've talked a lot we've never actually met. We'd never even video chatted. I shot her a message on Voxer asking if she would be willing to jump onto a Google Hangout with my kids to talk about what she does as a way to give them a real closing to the story/introduction to the wider world of media literacy, and she said yes as soon as she got it. Because Julie is awesome. We picked a time, after doing the complex math that time zones require, I gave her some basic ideas to talk about, and it was set.

That morning I brought her book in to my class, because of course I own a copy of it, to introduce them to who Julie is, read them the back of the book to give them an overview of what she was going to talk about, and then we brainstormed some questions to ask her. This is always a fun little gamble. Tell thirty-three nine- and ten-year olds to make up questions to ask a speaker. You know your kids. You are picturing the kids that will ask the question no one on Earth could answer right now, aren't you? I'm not making fun of that kid, deep, specific curiosity is good. But often speakers agree to Q&A without knowing what they're agreeing to. Which, you know, mean it'll either be very enlightening or very interesting or very entertaining, or all three.

First, Julie talked about media literacy, touching on many of the subjects my students would be interested in and understand, keeping it at a fourth grade level without talking down to them. As a college teacher she was a little nervous about talking to younger kids, but you wouldn't have known that having watched her. She even dropped a funny fake headline on them that she'd mocked up to show them just how easily realistic-looking images can be created and dispensed through the interwebs.

My kids asked excellent, interesting questions. And Julie gave fantastic, thoughtful answers. She talked about the Netflix model vs traditional TV and why there are no commercials and what that means. She talked about the Netflix algorithm, something my kids had never thought about and it completely blew their minds. "What do you mean, Netflix knows everything I'm watching? Holy cow, it does! That's how it tells me what other shows to watch! NETFLIX IS SPYING ON ME USING NETFLIX!" Welcome to privacy concerns in the 21st century, my friend. She hit them with password tips and tricks, like thinking of it as a passphrase or passsentence rather than a word. I might have written this one down too.

And her closing was dead-on perfect exactly what I wanted my kids to hear even though I at no point told her this- Watch who is in the media you consume. Who looks like you? Who sounds like you? Who is missing? Ask questions about what you see. Demand to be represented in the media around you.

After Julie's talk I had my students walk-and-talk to reflect on what they'd heard, because moving is good for thinking, ya know? Then we sat down and everyone wrote down a few ideas on their own of what they learned or thought was interesting. Then they shared in their groups. THEN we got Chromebooks out and hit up a Padlet I created to share our reflections. Which was a great way for everyone to see what everyone else was thinking and got a lot of, "Oh yeah, that too!" moments.

Textbook to Speaker to Reflective Padlet. All great tools in the classroom, all with specific purposes, and useful. There's no reason to throw any out because you'd be throwing out potential ah-ha moments and deeper lessons than any one of those tools alone would allow. There's nothing quite like seeing a path you can take your class on that cuts a straight line though all the learning goals of a specific unit and uses a variety of tools. That kind of creativity makes this job great. And getting it to work just makes me hungrier to do it again and again. Every time (even the plans that don't survive contact with actual students).

If you like this post and the other posts on this blog you should know I’ve written three books about teaching- He’s the Weird Teacher, THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome), and the just released A Classroom Of One. I’ve also written one novel- The Unforgiving Road. You should check them out, I’m even better in long form. I’m also on the tweets @TheWeirdTeacher.

The Most Disruptive Student In My Class

I am the most disruptive student in my class. It's not even a contest.* And I don't mean disruptive in the business-speak "I'm a disruptive innovator" way that whitebread, milquetoast dudes say right before inventing the bus.

I mean I am a disruptive student.

I am the noisiest student in my class. I don't mean that in the "most of the talk in the classroom comes out of my face hole" way, though sometimes that is true too. Let's be honest, I'm the teacher, I should be talking more sometimes. I've got 33 kids this year, I need to stand in front of them and talk on occasion. What I mean in this case, however, is that if there is a high degree of volume coming from my classroom, odds are good that either I'm perpetrating it or I started it. I can't help myself. Sometimes the spirit takes me. I know there are teachers who are able to teach quietly. I've heard talk of them and their magical ability to speak quieter, causing the students to lean in and hang on every word. I've tried it, I have. It works about as well as trying to play a quick game of Monopoly. No matter where I start, I will end up at 11. I blame theater training, because it's easier than saying I can be obnoxiously loud if the mood takes me. I learned to PROJECT to the back of the theater. It's here where I mention that, though I took a lot of theater classes I have never actually been cast in anything. Except plaster that one time, but that was completely different. If my class is working quietly, I will be the one to ruin it. Not to stop them to move on to something new, but because I can't help myself. Without wanting to, I'll say, "Wow, you're all working so quietly. I'm very impressed." And that ruins it.

Which leads me to the next example of how I'm the most disruptive student in my class: There is not a walk too far to make a joke for me. Even a joke my students won't get. Especially, sometimes, a joke my students won't get. Doesn't it get under your skin when someone keeps going for the joke, every joke, and when they reach the joke they start digging into the joke like beneath it is the previously undiscovered remains of a joke from the Paleolithic Era, Clownasaurus Classicus? And the only person amused by this expedition is the person leading it, dragging 33 students behind him? Well, 32. There's always at least one student who is going to discover Andy Kaufman and Monty Python on YouTube in four years and suddenly everything about why no one else thinks they're funny will become clear? I love cracking myself up, and I probably do it a little too much.

And this leads directly to the next example of how I'm the most disruptive student in my class- I've never met a tangent I didn't like. If I'm teaching something and a word or phrase lights up a section of my brain, we're all getting on the bus and taking a field trip to those lights to figure out what's going on over there. I can't resist. These might end at a quick YouTube trip or Google Earth or a brief personal anecdote or a riddle. Don't you know that student that raises their hand in the middle of a lecture and, even though you're going to call on them because their voices matter, you know that whatever is about to come out of their mouths has a 78% chance of being completely unrelated to the topic at hand? A student who is a future question asker at a ComicCon. "I have a question. Well, really a two part question. Actually, it's a comment and a question. But first, a story." I can be that student in my class.

And the last reason I'm the most disruptive student in my class (on this list, but not in a grander list covering all the reasons because at some point your bathroom break will be over and you'll stop reading this on your phone), would be how often I misuse the furniture. The first thing I do when I get new desks is break them, taking legs off, adjusting legs as high as they'll go, whatever. I love teaching from atop a student's desk. Not because of that Robin Williams movie, I'm pretty sure I'm the only teacher alive who has never seen it. But because a desk is there, it's standable (that's a word now), so it shall be stood on. I will pretend that it's because it helps focus the mind wonderfully, when your teacher is standing on your desk or a nearby desk, and I do it as an engagement strategy. But it's not really that, not at first. It's because standing on desks is fun and it allows me to be more *stares into camera* dramatic. Also, it means that on occasion a desk will wobble precariously and I get to test both my balance and my ability to not curse out loud in class. Cat-like reflexes, friends. The cat is Garfield, but still.

"Now Doug," I hear you say in a British accent because I've been watching a lot of Doctor Who recently. "Why would you tell us all this? What does this have to do with being a good teacher? Is there a point to this list of buffoonery?"

First of all, dear reader, well done. How often does one get to use "buffoonery" in a sentence? Secondly, as I tell my students, everything that happens in this room has an academic point. Then I look at them with my Most Serious Teacher Face™ and repeat solemnly, "Everything." Let's take a second pass at that list, shall we?

I'm the noisiest person in my room. Because I'm modelling behaviors I want to see. I want my kids to talk. I want them to talk about what I want them to talk about, normally, but I want them to talk. I get loud not because I'm shouting at them or because I am shouting over them, but because when I get excited about something I get louder. And I genuinely love teaching this stuff. I get excited, and I get louder about it. I want them to see that. Let's be frank (you can still be whoever you are if you'd rather), I wouldn't be able to not let them see that because I'm not good at keeping that stuff on the inside. It shows a freedom of communication, options for communication, and I can also model ways to control those things. Yes, I love being loud about stuff, but that means when I am still and quiet it gets their attention beautifully. I also want them to feel free to think of an idea and bring it up. Hold that thought, we'll come back to it.

The joke thing? Tell me it's bad that students see their teacher laugh. Not at someone else, but at something he finds genuinely funny. Or something he tried to make funny and failed. "Oh, jokes can model failure, Doug?"  Aye, my friend. If my history with jokes are any indication. Remember, everything has a reason. Jokes help you find joy in anything, jokes are social lubricant (some of you giggled at lubricant, I know you did, and how dare you, this is a teaching blog). I want my kids to try bad jokes. And then I want to model for them the When and Where of those jokes. There's a lot you can learn from trying to be funny when funny is not the right choice. We're learning more than curriculum here, I saw someone say that in a book once or a thousand times. And when the class does start to click, when we all are getting the jokes, when we've got inside jokes that confuse adults who come into the room to observe? Golden, right there.

The tangents? Where do you think creativity comes from? All my best ideas come because I've trained my brain not to reject paths out of hand. Does that result in dead ends? Sure, sometimes. But, because I've gotten that muscle pretty well trained now, more often than not it results in, "Wait wait wait....oh...ohhhh...ok hold on. Instead of what I just said, let's try this instead." And I can trust that "this" will be just as good, if not better than the original idea. It happens in class, and it happens in planning. The team I work with right now is great for this because we are great sounding boards for each other. Tangents turn into rainbows with gold at the end of them. I live for that gold. Remember that thought from the noise thing I told you to hold. Bring it back. Think about students doing this too. I want them making connections. Make connections wildly and with abandon. How can you link this to that to this? You can't automatically do it, you've got to train that. Which means I've got to let it happen in my class. I do it for my kids, and then I let them do it for themselves.

Which is important here, especially with these first three- I'm talking a lot about what I'm doing and not so much about what my kids are doing. Cardinal sin, because the kids should be the focus. You have to trust me when I say the kids are doing just as much as I am and more. It's all coming together. I'm not disrupting their learning. I'm not attacking my introverts (introverts love to point out when they don't think you're thinking about your introverts, and I love you guys, but let's be clear that hyperbole is funny). It's spice and seasoning and voice.

And abusing the furniture? That's easy- See tools as tools, to be used how you need. I control the tools in my room, and not the other way around. I recognize here that this is very site-specific. But I started doing alternative seating not because I saw a conference session on it. I was struggling with a class, I was chatting with the brilliant and wonderful Jess Lifshitz (follow her if you're on Twitter, oh my Gods follow her right now) about what she was doing, she mentioned the alt-seating she was trying, and I ran with it. Took legs off desks that day. Went to Goodwill for pillows and stuff that day. Started a Donors Choose for wobble stools and whatnot that day. Changed my classroom. Because I saw the furniture in my room the same way I see my textbooks, my pencils, my computers, my cardboard- as tools to bend to my will, and the needs of my students. Because "How can I beak this to make it work" is a positive statement and one I want my kids to take away from my class. Just because something looks one way doesn't mean it is. Just because you think something can't do something doesn't mean it can't. Oh, those sound like metaphors. Hmm.

Oh, also if you say something that reminds me of a song lyric I will sing that entire song. I'm gonna pretend the academic reason for that is that students should be exposed to Queen and Metallica at an early age, and not because I'm literally physically incapable of not doing that.

So maybe I am the most disruptive student in my class. But maybe that works for me, and it works for my students. Plus, see how I'm calling myself a student the whole time, connecting with the whole "always be a learner thing"? Kids notice that too. Being disruptive has helped me be the teacher I am. To see rules as suggestions and all things as a path to the most important thing- The Learning.

Bam, stuck the landing.

*Ok, that's not true. Sometimes it's a contest. I teach upper elementary, after all.

If you like this post and the other posts on this blog you should know I’ve written three books about teaching- He’s the Weird Teacher, THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome), and the just released A Classroom Of One. I’ve also written one novel- The Unforgiving Road. You should check them out, I’m even better in long form. I’m also on the tweets @TheWeirdTeacher.

Oh, Oh, Mr Robertson!- A Weird Teacher Mailbag Post

I'm gonna sit down to write in a few hours. I wonder if this will work-

Send me a tweet with a teachery question I should answer in the blog. If I get a few I'll do a Q&A blog post using the questions.

— Doug Robertson (@TheWeirdTeacher) November 13, 2018

I've wanted to do a Mailbag-type post for forever, but part of doing that is assuming that people have questions they want to send to you. In short, it depends even more on how important you think your opinions are than a normal blog post. But they're also a lot of fun if the questions are good and the answers are either funny or sharp. It was with trepidation that I posted the above tweet, hoping it wouldn't go unresponded to for three hours. Great for the ol' ego, that. But I should have trusted the community. It looks like I got a couple of pretty serious questions, so there's probably not going to be much tomfoolery. We'll see what happens.

There is now data to show that a school w/ a GSA (Ed. Note- Gay Straight Alliance) has less bullying reported by all students in all groups. Embracing those seen as different makes for a better atmosphere. Do you think embracing your weirdness sets a tone in your class of acceptance and tolerance?

— Brett Bigham (@2014ORTOY) November 13, 2018

 Absolutely! Especially because I don't see it as embracing my weirdness. To quote Frank Zappa, "I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird." I honestly still don't see it as being weird when I'm looking from the inside out, I only see it as weird when I'm trying to see it from the eyes of others. I'm just being me. Now, I want to be super duper clear here that I'm not drawing a straight line from "I'm kinda weird to other people" to "that prevents the bullying of gay students", nor am I calling being LGBTQ "weird" in any way. It's just the place I start when I think of things like this because it's where I get placed by others, and it's something I embraced. But it's pretty easy for me to embrace. Straight white guy, so yeah, call me weird, oh no, I'm so persecuted. You got me right in the privileges.

All of that said as kind of a preamble, I hope it does. I hope that in being comfortable in my own skin, and in talking about that with me kids, I am modelling a mindset that my students can take as their own. And part of that weirdness is decentering things that are "normal". Specifically, openly. Letting the kids say what they think and then talking about it. It starts as simply as when my boys come into the class and someone calls them my daughters, another kid will correct him and he'll say, "Well they've got long hair!" Then the whole room looks at me, then back at the kid, and he corrects himself. If there's time we chase that conversation a little longer. And hopefully that changed an attitude.

I think what really helps set the class tone of acceptance and tolerance is that I say, on the first day, and on the regular after that, that everyone is welcome in our class, everyone is cool, and anyone cutting someone down for being "different" will not be tolerated. It's the quickest way to have a Very Serious Talk In The Hall™. And then I back that up by being as who I am as I can be and encouraging the kids to do the same. Fourth and fifth grades are wonderful for that, they are learning who they really are.

Is it better to have longevity in “a” school (and thereby have a reserved seat in the staff room) where kids look forward to getting (or avoiding) you vs changing schools/districts/regions every 3/5/7 years as @HargreavesBC has suggested

— Ian Landy (@technolandy) November 13, 2018

I'm in a unique position with this question, which I think is a very important question that all teachers should think about. Because once you're settled in to a place it's hard to leave. And I don't mean that in a dismissive "You're too lazy to try to move" way, but in a "moving across on that pay scale is hard to give up because pay ain't great as it is" way.

I've taught in three states, four districts, five schools. I learned a ton from my time in Southern California, Hawaii, Southern Oregon, and Northern Oregon. I wouldn't trade any of it for anything, even the two truly awful years, one in Hawaii and one in Southern Oregon. Neither of those, it should be said, were because of the students. Hawaii was because of the team I was on (read more about it in He's the Weird Teacher), and Southern Oregon was because of the worst vice principal you've ever seen.

This much moving has given me an incredible view of the grass on the other side, and it's not any greener. Every school has issues, every district has issues. Some are worse than others, and they all have their own special weirdnesses that are more or less tolerable. But, after all that moving, I feel justified rolling my eyes when someone complains that the district is doing "the worst thing ever" because they've got no idea how good they have it. Seeing the world of teaching helps you see all the ways kids and teachers are the same yet different, how communities work with schools, and gives you, I think, a much deeper pool to fish from. Moving makes you more flexible. It forces creativity. It's also super hard. I've been the new kid five times.

And it's really cool to have kids excited to be in your class, to watch them move through the grades, to see them grow up. I'll never see the students I had my first year again, probably. Which sucks, because I really want to know how they ended up. I've got students in Hawaii graduating high school, going to college, and I don't get to be there when they come back and visit Kaleipouu and marvel at how small everything is now. I worked with a guy in Hawaii who purposefully changed schools every three to five years. Great teacher. But I also worked with people who'd been in their grade level, in their class, for fifteen years. As long as you're still growing and adapting, whether you move or not is up to you. I love moving around. But I'm also now a homeowner for the first time, my kids are entering school, and I absolutely love the school I'm at right now. I have no urge to move. Now, if my principal ever leaves that might change.

So my short answer to that question is- New teachers should move a bunch if they can. Teachers who feel themselves getting stale should move a bunch if they can. But I get why that isn't feasible.

How do you help students who just don't want help? You've tried different strategies, plans, communication with parents, etc., but the Ss just does what they want and doesn't care about trying or getting help. At what point isn't it your fault?

— Jessica Hunsberger (@MissHunsberger) November 13, 2018

Oh man, I'm getting easy questions, aren't I? Whew, this is a question I think all of us struggle with all the time. I have had this exact conversation with the brand new teacher on my team this year, because he's having a rough time with it to.

Here's my take- I think 90%+ of teachers are breaking their asses for their students. I think a lot of professional professional developers make it sound like a lot of teachers aren't working as hard as they can because it helps them justify what they do or how they talk down to us. I think some people are working harder, not smarter, but most teachers want what is best for every kid in their class. I hope. To tie this into the last question, I've worked with a LOT of teachers now and I have known very few who did got give half a care and were counting days. When most of us see the kid being asked about, we exhaust every avenue we can think of. Maybe it comes down to how many barrels you're willing to reach the bottom of? But they've all got a bottom.

I think teaching and learning is a two-way street. We, being the trained adults, are in the driver's seat. Most of the responsibility rests on us, but the kids gotta wanna. We have ways to help them wanna, to motivate, but, to quote Robert Heinlein, "You can lead a child to knowledge but you cannot make him think." When I have a student that I just can not reach I will not stop trying, but I will also try to accept in my head that I have done and am doing everything I know how. It's like being in a bad relationship. Before you've broken up with That Person, you run through what you have done, and if you decide that you have done everything in your power to help the relationship work and it still doesn't, it's time to break up. Like all metaphors, this falls apart on closer inspection because I wouldn't break up with a student, but I would try to know that it's not my fault. It's a reflection process. Have I done everything in my power to help this kid? Will I continue to? If those answers are yes, then it isn't your fault.

That's why I started this answer by talking about how hard I believe most teachers work- I don't think there are many of us that would just give up and cut kids loose. I know I've got rose-colored glasses on when it comes to that, but I'd rather not think all of us are like that goddamn school where the teachers dressed up like The Wall, because you know they're cutting kids loose mentally left and right, and they were an outlier who should be fired and stripped of their licenses. I'm much more willing to declare an adult a lost cause than a child and cut them loose with no compunction.

Short answer- You know yourself, and I know it's not an easy conversation. Trust yourself, don't ever stop trying to help the kid, don't give up hope, but know sometimes other other person has to choose to open their hand.

As a white man leading a twitter ed chat, how do you ensure that all voices and viewpoints are addressed, either in blog topics or during chats (and by voices/viewpoints, we're excluding those who SHOULDN'T be given a platform), esp. considering who usually joins the chat.

— Thomas Mision (@shadow_uzumaki) November 13, 2018

I have a hard time with this, I'll be honest. I try to be intentional. The fact with my blog is that it's a one man show. Over 200+ chats, maybe ten or fifteen have been written/moderated by someone other than me, and all of those times have been because I invited the person or they volunteered. I take full responsibility for the chat topic, the questions, and how they run.

The audience I write chat for can be summed up as "people who think most chats are staid echo-chambers". They come, I assume, because they like what I've got to say and want to participate in the conversation. I don't shy away from hard topics. The ninth chat talked about guns and school safety. The nineteenth was about Ferguson. By not tying the chat to a grade level, a subject, or my books, I have the freedom to pivot to whatever I feel is important. When it's a topic I don't know if I should cover as a white man I'll reach out to a friend for their voice instead, not to be a Good White Man Helping Others, but because they know better than I do and I want to learn and listen. Sometimes that involves the other person writing a post and I write a post about the same thing and posting them together. And sometimes, like with the Kavanaugh post from a few weeks ago, I was intending to ask a woman to write about it and then realized they were doing all the talking and really it should be a conversation from a dude to dudes about the behavior of dudes. I need to be constantly intentional about what we're talking about.

I know my regular chat consists of white people, but that means I can have these conversations knowing they're here for it. They've stayed for "What If Narwhals Were Students In Your Class", they've played along to "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", but they don't run when "Ferguson", "Stick To Teaching", "#MeToo", and "Charleston" come up. I think, and I'm not positive about this, it works because the fun ones help create a community of safety and trust, so that when things get heavy everyone knows everyone else. The chat has never been a quiz, and when someone tries to give an answer that would be acceptable in some other chats, I and others push them on it. We don't get to be safe be quoting other people and calling it good. I think it works like that in a classroom too. I can get things out of my students that are harder because they like being in the class. Part of the fun stuff built a foundation we can put harder things on top of securely. I will also listen to feedback about the chat without taking it personally. It's mine, and it's a community that has built up around it that I'm proud of, but I in no way think it's perfect. Valid criticism is valid. Disagreement isn't the opposite of positivity.

As far as ensuring people show up to the chat, I've got no idea how to do that. I just write about what's interesting and hope, after 200+ chats, others do too. And I'm proud of who comes, I think it speaks to what we're building. I won't tweet out specific invites because literally no one likes that except for people who are so self-important they think they should be invited to a chat, and no one needs that attitude mixing in.

Mostly, I pay attention to what I'm writing about and who is coming to talk about it, and try to push myself which often leads to pushing others. And if it has pushed some away because that's not their kind of chat, I will wave if I notice they've gone. Because there's a lot of chats out there that avoid anything that could damage The Brand and screw that to the moon.

One more, I think.

I’ve got one: I love humor in the classroom. Some students, however, have a very “mean” sense of humor (their jokes poke fun at others/consist of inside jokes that isolate others) - how does one thwart this while still maintaining your sense of fun? 🤷🏻‍♀️

— Jennifer Leban (@mrsleban) November 13, 2018

 Shut that nonsense down right away. This is a great question, because people will hide behind, "It was a joke man, lighten up". So it's all about point of view and the butt of the joke. It's actually a pretty good writing lesson if you spin it right, and an even better empathy lesson. "Why do you think this is funny? What was the purpose of the joke? Why do you think he didn't think it was funny? Now listen to his reason, and don't argue with him about it." It's amazing how many people will hear someone say "That joke was hurtful" and respond with "No it wasn't." This ain't a Python sketch.

My class humor has to boil down to Laughing With vs Laughing At. Which are we doing? How intentional is it? This is important, because a lot of my fourth graders just want to be funny, but funny is hard and they don't know how the machine works and a lot of people end up getting sprayed.  Kids have to be taught what's funny and when. We can't expect them to just know. That doesn't mean I'm the final arbiter of funny, nor does it mean the ways different cultures deal with humor has no value, but there are lines, and that first sentence in this paragraph draws them pretty plainly- Are we Laughing At or Laughing With and does everyone agree on your answer?

I've got to be aware of it myself because I am not above cracking a joke at someone's expense. It's probably gonna be someone who is so far up their own self-serious bottom end that a fart will clear their sinuses, or a Nazi. But I can't do that in front of my kids. A lot of my jokes in class are self-depreciating, or self-aggrandizing. Either way, I'm the punchline, and no one gets hurt. Until the kids think it's ok to mock Mr Robertson because he does it, and then we talk about tone and purpose and respect.

Like a few of the other questions here, this one really comes down to explicit conversations about respect and empathy. Humor in the classroom works only if everyone understands that we're all cool here, and being cool means not trying to hurt anyone else. We're all in this together. We can have a few laughs, get some learning done, get the serious work done, and mix it all up into a complicated classroom stew that probably smells a little funny, but what else do you expect when you cram 33 fourth graders into a room after PE?


Well that was fun. A low question count meant I could take time and go into them with some detail. And these were some heavy duty questions. If you, dear reader, have a response that differs from mine please throw it in the comments section and let's continue the conversation. Also, if you think this Oh, Oh, Mr Robertson! concept has some legs and you have a question you want answered in a blog post email it to me at theweirdteacher@gmail.com with Oh Oh Mr Robertson in the subject line.

If you like this post and the other posts on this blog you should know I’ve written three books about teaching- He’s the Weird Teacher, THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome), and the just released A Classroom Of One. I’ve also written one novel- The Unforgiving Road. You should check them out, I’m even better in long form. I’m also on the tweets @TheWeirdTeacher.

Watch Me Work

https://mythoblogy.com/argus-panoptes/

Why would the vampire make a terrible teacher?

Because he has no reflection.

*pause for laugh*

I recently was given the opportunity to observe a second grade class and a kindergarten class, and those two teachers observed my fourth grade class. The three of us are a core group of teachers trying to implement a program at my school, one that is being implemented all through the district, who's aim is to help teachers improve not through evaluations but through observations and reflections which are driven by and asked for by the teachers themselves. It's completely voluntary and teacher-guided. There are no evaluative aspects to it aside from those the teacher chooses to put on themselves. Nothing goes to admin. It's purely a way for teachers to work with other teachers to improve practice. I think it's a great idea, which is why I'm a part of it. 

There are two possible ways to go about this. The first is the teacher videos themselves teaching a lesson, and then that teacher and one of the three of us take some time and we watch the video. The teacher sets out what their goals for the lesson were, how they think it went, and so on. Our purpose is non-evaluative. We ask guiding questions only, helping the teacher reflect. 

The second is observations. And this can be split into three types- either the teacher is observed with the purpose of reflecting with the group after the observation and in that way learning about their practice. Or the teacher is observed by other teachers who want to learn from that teacher, after which a reflection still occurs but with a slightly different goal. Or the teacher observes others with the goal of stealing ideas to better improve their own practice. OR some combination of those three, which is predetermined by the teacher with the help of us, who are guiding the observations.

Now, personally, I prefer the first way. I feel that the best way for me to get better at teaching is to actually see myself teach. This, I think, best allows me to strip away any ego or artifice and see what I'm doing while having to explain to myself and someone else why and how it worked. With all the evidence right there in front of me. But that's me, and I know myself well enough to know that it's unsurprising that the one that speaks to me is the one where I get to watch myself. Read into that whatever you please. I know who I am. 

That is in no way to say I don't see the value of observations, be they to learn, to demonstrate, to reflect, or to steal. This can be just as powerful a tool. But the observation I did with the second grade and kindergarten teacher had me wondering something based on the conversation we had afterwards. The conversation, by the way, is equally as important as the observation, if not more so. How often has someone come into your room for some reason, watched, left, and all you got was a nice note, "Thanks for letting us come in! It was great!" Yeah, that's not helpful at all. You were there, give me feedback. Feed me, Seymour! 

In our conversation both the second and kindergarten teacher mentioned that, while they enjoyed being in my room and observing me teach, and the conversation helped me, they felt there wasn't as much they could take from my room to apply to their own. At least not directly. And that makes sense, especially for the kindergarten teacher, I think. There is a multiverse of difference between how a kindergarten classroom has to be run vs the myriad ways a fourth grade classroom could be run. My room is very loosey-goosey, especially compared to many other rooms. I'm working hard to instill a sense of independence in my kids and, as such, there's a lot of freedom practice that simply isn't developmentally appropriate for kinders. Yes, I can see you in the back waving your hand to tell me that kinders can be independent and I know that. I live with one. But a room of 30 of them needs a level of structure that is not as necessary in fourth grade. I don't think this is that contentious a position to take. So while she liked what I was doing, they specific things she was looking for during that observation, like routines, did not jump out as brightly to her as things she could adapt to her own room. Certainly not like things we saw in the second grade room. 

And the second grade teacher also had a harder time seeing routines in my room she felt she could adapt to her own room. But, and I want to be clear there is zero judgement in this statement and I have the utmost respect for how this teacher does her thing, she and I are very different teachers. Her room is super organized and clean and there are expectations in her room that are not important to me in mine. Doesn't make me better, doesn't mean that I'm suggesting she's not a good teacher. We're different. 

I, however, saw things in both the kinder and second grade rooms that I thought I could adapt to my own. They both had incredible transitions. The kids were on top of it. Not that mine aren't. Mine are just...louder about it. After fourteen years of teaching I've accepted that is a Me thing, not a My Students thing. The kinder teacher, thirty seconds after we got into her room, told a student who was trying to tattle/tell another kid what to do, "I boss myself, I help my friends." As soon as she said that I, out loud, said, "Ohhhh, I'm using that tomorrow!" Then I got shushed by a five year old. The second grade teacher's room had a station rotation that I've always wanted to do, but never felt organized enough to truly put into practice deeply. I saw how she did it and it started the old mind a bubbling about how I could break it and rebuild it in mine own image. 

The second grade teacher and kinder teacher, however, said they saw a lot in each other's rooms they could use. 

This is my question. Or series of questions and subquestions. And I'm not sure there are correct answers.

• Is it better to observe up or down in grade level? For example, if you teach 4th grade is it better to observe 5th or 3rd? 
• At what point, if any, does the gap become too large to be useful? Could a high school teacher mine things from a kinder teacher, and visa versa? If the answer to that is no, then at what point working backwards would the gap be effective?
• Even with the ability to see your bias, call it out, and know it, are there some rooms or teaching types that you simply would not get much out of? For example, if you are a hyper-organized fourth grade teacher and you come into my room, and you're a mature adult who is able to see the value in things done differently than your way, would that be more or less effective for you than coming into a room taught by a teacher who aligns closer to your own style? 
• (My initial response to this one is it's better to see something very different to get as wide a view as possible so you know as much as possible, but is that actually better for my practice? Wouldn't it be easier, and therefore easier to implement in my classroom, if I watched someone who was closer to my own style?)
• Is it better to observe or be observed in order to improve your practice, assuming the conversation afterwards is open, honest, goal-driven, and reflective.

I think teachers talking to teachers about teaching is the best way to get better at teaching. It's better than any expert or professional development could possibly be, with the caveat (which I may have disagreed with as recently as last year) that first the teachers have at least some training in how to have those reflective conversations. Yes, I know how to talk to teachers about teaching, I know how to help student teachers become better, but reflective conversations with peers, conversations with specific purposes and goals, those are harder than they sound. 

If you like this post and the other posts on this blog you should know I’ve written three books about teaching- He’s the Weird Teacher, THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome), and the just released A Classroom Of One. I’ve also written one novel- The Unforgiving Road. You should check them out, I’m even better in long form. I’m also on the tweets @TheWeirdTeacher.

NOW That's What I Call High Quality Math Engagement

As a reflective educator who is constantly trying to prevent his ego from overwhelming his sense of skill, it's important that I recognize that the biggest flaw in my I'm A Creative Teacher shtick is my math instruction. I'm not a bad math teacher, but I'm also not coming up with all kinds of fancy ways to teach it that are crazy engaging and nifty like I am for the more language arts-based subjects. My math instruction is effective, but more workmanlike. As such, my goal for improvement the last few years has been math instruction. When I go to a conference I always choose at least one math-centric session in the hopes that I'll grab up something good. The last time that happened was at iPDX when I saw one half of the Classroom Chef team, Matt Vaudrey, run a wonderful session on discourse.

It's happening again.

At the end of the school year last year my principal sent an email to the 4th and 5th teams asking us if we'd like to participate in a summer math training. I agreed and spent three days in a library at a nearby elementary school getting some strong math discourse knowledge dropped on me. Also a lot of binders that should be Google Drive folders. Which...whatever. That's my hang up. Then I went away and set up my classroom, trying to remember all the stuff I learned and find ways to implement it.

But that was not all. Oh no, that was not all.

What's you biggest complaint after a professional development, dear reader? Clarification- After a good professional development. If you're anything like me (and if you are, congratulations on being so attractive, smart, and modest) the thing you think most at the end of a big PD is, "That was great, but one shot isn't really enough. Regular refreshers and supplemental trainings would really help this be usable." Friends, be careful what you wish for.

I'm not complaining. Not really. But that summer math training came in a package that included regular trainings/math studio days during the school year. I didn't realize this. It might have been in the initial email I skimmed. Either way, I'm having to take one or two sub days a quarter to go to a school, meet with the trainer and my group from the summer, get trained up, and watch some sample lessons in a math studio class. Yes, I can see you in the back with your hand up- A math studio is a specific class in our district that has been earmarked as the one where the teacher will specifically be using these strategies and when we have a training we will also observe her class being taught. So it's both classroom and practical. Really, it's everything you'd want out of a training, save for the sub day thing. But if it makes me a better math teacher it's worth the time this year.

And it's paying off.

I tell you all that as a preface because it's important to me that we see the value in trainings like this, and it's important to me that cool ideas that aren't my ideas are not passed off as such. We're all stealing. Trust me, I try to let you know when something works that I've thought of whole cloth. Or I will as soon as that happens. I 100% stole this project from the math studio class and modified it to suit where my fourth graders were at.

There should be number block representations in that last column, dunno what the computer did with them.

We were working on addition and subtraction, along with place value and representing numbers. This was a few weeks ago, for those of you overlaying your math pacing guide with the time of year. I'm not that far behind. I created the above four by five grid of math problems represented in the traditional way, as word problems, in expanded form, as place value charts, and in number blocks (not pictured because of some weird computer glitch). Also, for those of you looking closely, there are one or two mistakes in there. Total accident, but they actually played into what happened next so I'm ok with my mistakes.

I printed sixteen copies of this sheet, one on each color of paper I could dig up in the copy room. So 16 copies because a) that creates groups of two students, mostly, and b) I was shocked I could find 16 different colors of paper in the copy room so I went with it. Then I cut the little squares out, paper clipped each color together in no particular order, and put the paper clipped squares into envelopes. This took longer than I'd prefer, but sometimes you gotta suffer for your art and all that inspiring meme-fodder. Then it got fun.

I love presenting projects to my students like this- I had them partner up. Then I held an envelope up without speaking for long enough that they were salivating at the thought of what might be in there. It works, it's all in the presentation. And I proclaimed, "Within these envelopes are small squares! These squares are related in some way! Your job is to organize them! This i all the direction I will give you! Tallest person from each group, come to be and receive your envelope!" I love giving non-specific directions. 

Students immediately started pulling all the cards out and doing that thing students do- Not being thoughtful or organized at all in their initial look at the cards. Just flipping them over at random. Pushing them around. Going much too fast. Slowly most pairs reached the same conclusion and hands waved, "We're done!" What do you think they had done, dear reader? Did they grid it out? Of course not. They made five piles. A pile for each different kind of problem. When three groups did the same, which I'm totally going to pretend to have expected, I stopped the whole class. "I see lots of you organizing the cards into similar piles. Yes, that's organizing them. No, that's not what I want. Keep trying."

SO MUCH math discourse, my friends. It started naturally. They had to have it. They had to start talking to each other about what they were seeing. "Oh wait, this one equals 1,349! I saw a thousands block...look! These are the same. No, see, because blah blah blah." Some groups got it faster than others, of course. Some floundered. To those I suggested maybe a short walk around the classroom would be in order. Not to steal ideas, of course. Just to see. 

Soon a group was done. Almost. "Mr Robertson, we've still got all these blank ones." 

"Hmmm," I say. "Interesting. Blank ones you say? Do you think those are in there on accident?"

"...no?" the students reply. They know me by now. They know the class mantra this year is, "Everything Has A Reason."

"Hmmmm," I say again, nodding and pulling at my chin. "I wonder why they're there. Good luck." Then I walk away, mentally rubbing my hands together like a Bond villain right after the world's greatest super spy stumbled into my trap again. And I listen with my Teacher Ears for the, "Ohhh! Look look look! This row is missing that kind of problem! And this row...OH! OH! Mr Robertson! We figured it out!"

Bwahahaha. I love teaching without saying anything. 

Once enough groups had figured it out Phase Two went into effect. The groups had to pair up with another finished group. Then switch sides. Group A looks at Group B's card grid, and Group B looks at Group A's. Then Group B has to explain to Group A what they see Group A did. Group A has to listen without interrupting, then they are allowed to ask clarifying questions. Then it reverses. In the parlance of the internet- Much discourse. So math. Very disequilibrium. Such thinkings. 

To be clear, this whole process took the entire math block, just over an hour. And some partnerships didn't finish. But they still got to talk to another group and see what was done. 

The kids loved it so much, and I was so blown away by how well it worked, that I determined I would do it again. So last week I built one for multiplication. You can see that below.

Again, no idea why the graphic representation isn't loading, but trust me, it's cool.

This one was greeted by cheers from my kids. Yes, I said it. They were so pumped. I wish I could be all chest poundy about this, but all I'm doing is finding something that worked once and hoping it'll work again. The only credit I take it seeing that it was a good idea, modifying it, and then chasing the dragon a second time. 

This time, just because I like playing with fire, I invited my principal in. She wanted to see what I was learning from the training, and she never gets invited into classrooms. She's always got to schedule something for an observation or whatever. But she's got the soul of a classroom teacher still, so it's fun to ask her to come in. 

It went even better the second time! They knew the trick going in this time, so everything went much quicker as far as grouping the cards, even with it being multiplication and my making some of the relationships between cards a little more unclear. Instead of making them group up, though, I used what seems to be every teacher on social media's tool de jure, The Grid of Flipping. (I swear, if you even think Fl!pGr!d on twitter their social media team will smell it and send you a dozen Stepford-like helpful tweets. I'm good, back off.) I set up a grid, set the video time limit at five minutes, and had the kids explain their thinking to the camera on their Chromebooks. Then they needed to watch at least two other explanations and reply to those with sentences like, "I like that you", "It's interesting that you", "When you did x I was y." 

At the end of all that we talked about the habits of mind and the habits of math discourse that we used during the game (I called it a game, a rose by any other name can still trick students into thinking it's a game), which was also valuable. Kids talking about when they used reasoning, when they used mistakes and perseverance, when they used modeling, and so forth. I am not too modest to say that my principal was blown away. She praised my kids for their work and their thought, she gave me some nice pats on the head, and my kids were jazzed.

So much so that at the end one girl raised her hand and asked if we were going to do it again when we finished division. I told her I was thinking about it but that I was also thinking, now that they seem to be experts at it, what if I gave them twenty blank squares and they had to set the whole thing up? Friends, remember, this is a math lesson. It's a heavy lift math lesson. There's a lot of cognitive load happening. It's not easy. And what I'm proposing is even more difficult than I think they expect. But they were so high on math at that moment they cheered the idea. I'm not making that up, I wouldn't lie to you. I would tell you if a collective groan went up, but it didn't. 

I laughed at/with them and told them, "I'm so excited that you are so excited about this. I'm also so excited that you all decided to react like that while the principal was in the room, so that's for that."

I love getting deeper into mathematical discourse and finding creative ways to increase the cognitive load my kids are carrying, while also making them more independent and helping them see themselves as mathematicians. 

If you have any questions about the projects I wrote about here, math studio, ideas to make my math instruction better, or anything else, please leave a comment, shoot me an email at theweirdteacher@gmail, or send me a tweet at @TheWeirdTeacher.

If you like this post and the other posts on this blog you should know I’ve written three books about teaching- He’s the Weird Teacher, THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome), and the just released A Classroom Of One. I’ve also written one novel- The Unforgiving Road. You should check them out, I’m even better in long form. I’m also on the tweets @TheWeirdTeacher.

Sketchnoters of the Lost Ark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdnA-ESWcPs

This is a story about how I finally internalized what it means to accept my students and what they need rather than holding my ground and making sure they always did what I thought they needed. But, because it's me, there's a trip to get there. It's a good trip, there's a whip and a hat and an idol. Come with.

Innovation can be planned. Brilliance can come from meticulous attention to detail and not letting the smallest detail go unnoticed. See every Stanley Kubrick and James Cameron film for examples of this. See the teacher down the hall who really knows the curriculum front to back and builds lessons like you've never seen, down to the minute, and then manages to pull them off more often than not.

People like me love saying that accidents are where real learning occurs. That it's the unplanned moments where flashes of brilliance are allowed to come through. That boundaries and constrictions, self-imposed or otherwise, can lead to real creativity.

I'm also reflective enough to constantly wonder if I'm justifying my own peccadilloes by saying all that. That being the case, I'm pretty invested in this particular line of bovine excrement. I do believe in the beauty of limitations and the value of forced creativity. For myself and my process, the end of my rope is where I find a lot of my best ideas. Accidentally. Or not. Luck is preparation meeting opportunity, so sayith Roman philosopher Seneca, quoting American philosopher Oprah.

My go-to example when I talk about this is always JAWS. One, because it's one of my favorite movies, and two because it's literally the perfect example of this. If the shark had worked, if Robert Shaw hadn't been a drunk, if Steven Spielberg hadn't gotten screenwriter Carl Gottlieb to be on set and live with him during filming, if Richard Dreyfuss hadn't panicked about his career and decided to play Hooper, and again, if the shark, THE TITLE CHARACTER, had worked, JAWS wouldn't be the classic it is. It had to go wrong in order to force Steven Spielberg to think around every corner and create a truly terrifying adventure in which you don't see the title character at all until over halfway through the movie, but you don't need to.

In this case I would rather use a different example. Still, oddly enough, a Steven Spielberg film though. This time I want to talk about RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, the first (and best, followed by Last Crusade then Temple of Doom and that's the only three, fight me) Indiana Jones movie.

This is a story that everyone who is a fan of the movie knows, it's been told over and over, but to be sure everyone is on the same page, I'll recount it one more time. First, watch the scene in question.




HE SHOOTS THE GUY! Perfect. Except not what was planned. They storyboarded a huge sword fight between Dr Jones and Giant Sword Guy. Giant Sword Guy, this is true, trained for three months for this fight sequence. And there should be a big fight. That's what happens in these movies. The good guy, being the good guy, has a fair fight. But Indy instead has a perfect character-defining moment and, with patented Harrison Ford annoyance, pulls out a gun and shoots Giant Sword Guy dead. No fight. Why was there no fight? Because Ford was incredibly ill with food poisoning. He couldn't do it. So they improvised and instead of a marketplace-spanning sword fight that, in hindsight would had hurt the fight with the Giant Nazi At The Plane later in the movie because of the repetition, we get a five second reaction that no one who saw the movie will ever forget.

Totally unplanned. Complete on-the-day rewrite to fit the situation. Nothing to do but what you can and hope it works out.

A few years ago I had a student who would not stop drawing in class. Constantly doodling. Every time I turned around her paper, journal, whatever, was covered with art. We had All The Talks, my friends. All The Talks about time and place and I promise I'll give you a chance to draw and grrrr please do what I'm asking and go to recess so I can pull my hair out trying to find yet another way to convince you to stop drawing all the freaking time and focus. Until finally I gave up. I ran out of ideas. My barrel, it was empty and I had no more barrels to go to. I had her stay in for a second from recess, not as a punishment but for another chat, and I said, "Ok, draw. I don't think I can stop you without having to be some ridiculous version of a teacher that I don't want to be. So draw. But please, draw what we're talking about. I'm fine with you drawing, but if we're talking about the story, draw the story. If we're doing math, draw the math problems. Deal?"

She looked so relieved and agreed. I sent her away, not sure if I was doing the right thing, worried I was giving a student permission to space out with no consequences, but also thinking about who she seemed to be and trying to trust both her and my end-of-the-line instincts.

And it totally worked! She was on task. She did know what was going on. She drew and stayed with us. Her mom came to me near the end of the year an told me that no teacher had ever tried that with her before and it was the first time she really felt connected to school. I take no credit for this, it was a last ditch accident. Sketchnoting might have been a Thing at this point, but I didn't know it existed until five years later at ISTE. When I saw it I had that gratifying moment of, "Hey! I do this too. I didn't know I could have named it though!"

A last ditch accident tied to one other thought. She was a really good artist. Practice makes perfect and all that, right? And in my head I could see her getting famous. A gallery opens and she is interviewed by a major outlet. She's asked if she had a teacher who helped her. Here time timelines diverge.

In the darkest timeline where the interviewer has a goatee, my former student sighs and says, with steel in her voice, "I had a teacher who refused to let me draw. He put his foot down. I draw like this to show him how wrong he was."

In the light timeline she smiles and says, "I had a hard time with drawing too much in school. Until I had this one teacher, my favorite teacher, probably the best teacher I ever had, or anyone ever had (this is my imagination, remember). He helped me use my talent for my education. It helped me continue to draw."

Obviously I'm self-aggrandizing for humorous effect (as far as you know), but those scenarios did play into my decision. I'm glad they did. I think about her all the time, every time I see a student who isn't fitting in to the learning the way I'm expecting. She allows me to trust myself and every student after her that they will find their way to the learning, I just need to make sure the barriers are removed and the bridges are in place.

Total accident gave us one of the most iconic Indiana Jones moments ever. Total accident helped me define who I am as a teacher. 

Accidents are good. Take that Cameron.

If you like this post and the other posts on this blog you should know I’ve written three books about teaching- He’s the Weird Teacher, THE Teaching Text (You’re Welcome), and the just released A Classroom Of One. I’ve also written one novel- The Unforgiving Road. You should check them out, I’m even better in long form. I’m also on the tweets @TheWeirdTeacher.