Process Analysis: How to Break up a Fight

Last week during a department meeting, I heard an angry shout in the hallway. In a flash, I morphed into the intrepid fight-stopper that hides inside this mild-mannered English teacher. I flew to the hall, my orange sweater flapping like a cape. As it turned out, the shout had come from a good-natured exchange between a student and Mr. Woods. No fight this time. But had there been one, I was ready.

Step One is to act. If a teacher stops to think, to weigh the consequences and possible outcomes, she will at best lose precious moments; at worst, she’ll decide not to intervene. Any teacher unwilling to stop a fight can lay this essay aside right now and go back to shopping on the Internet. I believe our job includes protecting students from harm. A fight is harm.

Once committed to step one, a fight-stopper will, at the first sign of a scuffle, launch Step Two, which is to dive between the contenders. While school protocol likely instructs teachers to avoid positioning themselves between snarling students, the best way to halt a flailing fist is to create a barrier. Furthermore, deep down students want someone to break up their fight. If a teacher steps in, the pugilist will instinctively pull his punch. Furthermore, if the teacher’s adrenaline is peaked, she won’t even feel a glancing blow. Regardless, it will hurt less than, say, an hour of Wednesday’s PD. Remember, the teacher who breaks up a fight is Superman, and Superman isn’t afraid of a bruise or two.

Once wedged between the combatants, Step Three is to block the line of vision. If Punch and Judy are still looking at each other, they’re still fighting. Break their eye contact by turning one away from the other and proceeding quickly to Step Four: calming with words.

I’ve found murmuring “There, there, Sweetheart...Oh dear, Pumpkin...Everything’s all right, Precious...” and similar sweet-nothings will coax the Incredible Hulk back to Bruce-Banner sanity. For one, it shocks him. He’s expecting to be upbraided, not to be lulled by a grandma voice. Second, the student is more likely to accept guidance (“Let’s walk-”) and less likely to sock you in the jaw if you’re calling him “Sweetie.”  This is the same psychology used in painting the opposing teams’ locker rooms pink. It does a wash on the testosterone.

Step Five is the walk. Without some distance between Rocky I and Rocky II, they’ll be back at each other’s throats before you can wail “ADRIENNE!” I’ve seen burly teachers escort fighters with a headlock or a firm grip on the elbow, but I adhere to a continuation of the grandma approach. Put an arm gently around the student’s shoulders, or pat his back. Kindly link his forearm. Any touch should be soothing and calming, not rough or aggressive. The goal here is to de-escalate, and that is better done with dandelion fluff than thistles. I encourage the student to breathe in, breathe out. I assure him everything is going to be okay. (I’m careful not to divulge that “okay” means three days of OSS.) While walking, I lean in, saying “Are you okay?” and “I’m so sorry--,” which is shorthand for “I’m so sorry you resorted to physical violence.” As long as the words are leveled in palliative tones, they’ll do the trick: calm an out-of-control child.

The walk, ultimately, leads to the principal’s office, where  Step Six is to remind the student he is safe. As his adrenaline devolves into the shakes, I play flight attendant, asking if he’s comfortable, offering a drink of water. If I’ve done this right, my gentle response has disoriented our hallway Achilles. I’ve tapped his heel. By the time he visits the principal, he is a lamb again, wondering why he ever fought in the first place.

Working hard or hardly working?

Our superintendent cautioned us that not all students would thrive in a Student-Directed atmosphere. I will say that a few seem to flounder without explicit direction from me each day in student-directed Journalism Production (JP).  But I also have several students producing far more than they did last semester in the teacher-directed Intro to Journalism course.

Each week my Student-Directed students report out on their learning and productivity. I use Google Forms as a quick way to get their feedback. I like to change the questions I ask from week to week to help Friday Form feel more like a conversation than a time clock. This week I included this question I hadn't asked before:

"Do you put as much/less/more effort and time into this class as you do your other classes?"

These are the responses I've received so far:

• Either as much or more depending on the week. I work on EON [Eye of the Needle] outside of class at least twice a week.
• I feel like I haven't done a ton lately in here but there are some weeks I'm in here more than others.
• I put A LOT more time in this one then my others. I really enjoy this class. I come in every study hall and work.
• I put in more effort in this class than most classes. I usually dont do much in other classes and I feel like I am more productive in this class then most others.
• I put in quite a bit of effort since I like working on the yearbook and want to make it great for my friends who are graduating.
• I put in just the same effort if not more in Journalism because I know people want to have a great yearbook.
• I put more into this class then I do my other classes.
• I would say I put as much effort into JP as I do into other class. Maybe even a little more because I often do things outside of school for JP. I just think some people work less because of how "relaxed" the class feels.
• More
• more
• More, I never do math outside of class.
• The same or more because I work on it in study hall.
• Yes I did, because I worked on the story outside of class as well as my other classes.
• yes i do put the same effort
• Yes, because I'm always checking on the backside [of our website] or working on stories and constantly thinking about journalism even when I'm not in class.

I will use their responses as the starting point for face-to-face conferences on Monday. I will show them their answers, then ask them to explain WHY. 

Measuring the Learning

I (re)learned something about cappuccino and doors and balance this week. Did I learn an "A" or an "F"?

LIST #1
Some of the things I observed students learn to do this week:
1) Write March 16 instead of March 16th (AP style).
2) Upload pictures to the journalism server.
3) Make arrangements and interview the superintendent.
4) Adjust the camera settings when pictures are blurry.
5) Understand the meanings behind slang expressions before using them publicly.
6) Access and decipher the "Google Analytics" behind our web site traffic.

LIST #2
Some of the on-going efforts I observed students work on this week:
1) Edit each other's writing for clarity and mechanics.
2) Find effective, polite ways to tell each other to get to work.
3) Analyze pros and cons of various approaches to news coverage.
4) Consider ways to focus on an issue rather than on an individual.
5) Spark their internal initiative flames.
6) Choose to step up to "save" a story when another student dropped the ball.

Would you like to put a grade on that? I suppose I could put a check mark by the items in list one when a student shows me he/she can successfully do the task. But in Journalism (real life), we can't agree on the definitive list of skills to put on the check list. Furthermore, who's to say if a student knows how to access analytics this week he/she'll remember how three months from now? Is short-term learning valued as much as long-term learning?

My second list is even more problematic. These are skills/mindsets developed over years. Item #2 stymies teachers--and principals!--every day. I am writing this blog right now because I'm avoiding a stack of research papers I need to grade (Item #5). We may grow more comfortable and confident in these tasks, we may develop strategies that have higher chances of success than others, but I'm not willing to say anyone fully masters this list.

My son, a math major who is currently earning teacher certification in New Zealand, shared some thoughts on grading after receiving a 9/10 score on a classroom presentation this week:

My son's thoughts re-boiled my ever-simmering struggle with grading. I love watching students learn, and I like to think I'm good at nudging them along. But I have never relished attaching grades to students' learning. An SDL classroom opens up possibilities for re-defining how (if?) a grade is calculated. More on this next week...I'd love to hear ways you make grades meaningful in your classrooms.

"Courage to be less helpful"

I sense a recurring theme in my SDL experience, and educator/blogger Peter Pappas captures it with this directive: "Teachers, have the courage to be less helpful."

Last night I was sharing SDL thoughts with my son Max, who is working on his education license in New Zealand, where he will teach math.  We talked about how small children learn as they struggle in their play. The learning is in the effort, and the caregiver who can't resist the urge to grab Barbie and stick those claw-like plastic fingers through that miniature sleeve has robbed the child of the learning.  I don't know how many times my children came back from the farm shed, disgruntled because they'd been welding or pounding something and their helpful dad took over their project (to improve it, of course). We must remember that "theirs" is better than "best."

Teachers have my husband's well-intentioned urge to smooth the learning--and the cost is ownership, which I'm coming to believe is the peak of the SDL hierarchy. 

This week, again, I see my SDL thinking seeping into the more traditional classes I teach. I'm reading my comp students' research papers right now, and I have to slap my own fingers when my pen tries to re-write another sloppy sentence.

Research projects, awaiting corrections or sincere reading?

That's not to say that modeling doesn't have its place. But my eyes are opening to the many ways we hobble students' real learning in the name of helping. Highlighting unwieldy sentences, or marking them with a question mark tells the students I had difficulty understanding. The job of re-working the sentence to communicate with their reader is then theirs. 

But backing off my role as Sentence Perfecter involves risk. My students will be sharing their papers with "real" readers (as opposed to their "fake" reader: me) after their final revision. So in refraining from polishing their writing (grabbing the welding wand), I will allow some less-than-elegant prose to be read by our community members. And this calls for courage on my part: courage to be less helpful.

Trusting the Process

When I introduced SDL to my students five weeks ago, I told them that while they were free to explore learning in the modes and means of their choice, we had three classroom responsibilities:
 

Þ   We have the responsibility to publish and promote AHSneedle.com (news site).

Þ   We have the responsibility to produce and promote the Javelin (yearbook).

Þ   We have the responsibility to adhere to legal standards of student press.

Under the huge yellow umbrella of journalism that graces my wall, I've posted these SKILLS FOR THE 21^ST CENTURY that dominate our learning:

CRITICAL THINKING

PROBLEM SOLVING

COLLABORATION

LEADERSHIP

AGILITY

ADAPTABILITY

INITIATIVE

  

ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT

EFFECTIVE ORAL COMMUNICATION

EFFECTIVE WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

ACCESSING & ANALYZING INFORMATION

CURIOSITY

IMAGINATION

During the first weeks of class I watched my student burst out of their cages. They wanted to make video and paint ceiling tiles and design t-shirts, and figure out how the button-making machine worked. They started blogs and made some posters and stickers. A lot of this felt like Art-and-Crafts time. My rooms were strewn with poster-paint and glitter. This didn't look like a newsroom.

But I trusted the process and reminded myself that what we were sacrificing in news production, we were reaping in ownership and enthusiasm. My hungry students were telling me through their project choices that they are starving to create and play. They crave glue guns. They long to make things. THINGS.

Last week, after teaching a three-day journalism lesson to 5th-graders, two of my SDL students came to me with a problem. In preparing their lessons for their students, they turned to our news site for examples of incorporating student quotes. What they found there disappointed them. They told me that our news coverage had fallen off since the beginning of SDL--in quantity and quality. I reminded them that we had been working on other things, but agreed that our raison d'etre was, indeed, student journalism. "Everyone needs to write stories," they said.

On Friday we had no school, but the girls came in and organized their plan for holding our news site to a higher standard.  They've committed to taking on editor responsibilities (which then frees up our seniors to finish the yearbook), including story idea generation and assignment.

They wrote up the expectations for news contribution and coverage and developed the system for selecting and assigning stories. Together we sent out an email explaining the changes.

This shift of emphasis from craft center to newsroom needed to happen. But I love how organically it transpired. The ownership is huge. The commitment is personal. I'm anticipating good things.

First Prize! Hamster Cake!

If you could award only ONE hamster cake for classroom excellence, who would win it? You, for your spectacular teaching? Or your students, for their spectacular learning?

Hamster cake!

I suppose this doesn't have to be an either-or proposition; excellent teaching and learning are hopefully two sides of the same coin. But while "teaching" my Student-Directed classes these past weeks, I'm having a wee identity crisis. Mainly, I'm realizing that in my years' quest to be a rock-star teacher, have I let slide opportunities for students to shine as the best LEARNERS possible.

You see, I've built a fat ego around my teaching ability. I can not only lead that sloggin' horse to water, I can make him want to drink the stagnent slime awaiting him at the brink. (Wait, I can transform stagnent slime into sparkling ginger ale!) Dangling modifiers? Booyah! Lie/lay? Done! Want to document a research paper? Analyze a poem? Interview a reluctant witness? Pow! Bam! Whack! You need it taught, I'm your gal: persuasive speaking, interpretive reading, essay writing, beanbag juggling! Nothing I like more than to break down a task and TEACH it!

And the more interactive the better: my students use play-dough to learn phases of revision; they use colored blocks to better understand how clauses fit together; we use markers and kites and gobs of paper--plus GoogleDocs and GoogleForms and Twitter and Jing. And puppets. And hop-scotch. We write for real readers and we annotate texts collaboratively. I know how to get a room of sullen, awkward adolescents to engage in SUSTAINED HIGHER-ORDER CONVERSATION about the a writer's rhetorical methods! I deserve that hamster cake!

But "teaching" in my Student Directed classroom forces me to put my role in quotation marks--and to re-think how to best help students learn. I may be good at driving my students from ignorance to knowledge, but if my room is Student Directed, I'm no longer at the wheel. They are. And my goal must be to keep the power in their hands.

This means I have tamped down my razzle-dazzle "Let's do this great thing MY WAY!" teaching show and found--surprise?--my students stepping bravely onto the stage. Meghan is writing a blog that is utterly delightful. Josh is producing tech-help videos for the journalism department. Lisa organized the yearbook sales over conference times. Sierra and Lillie taught a three-day lesson to fifth-graders.

Because they are polite young people who have been trained by 11 years of teacher-directed teaching, they are inclined to use my ideas if I offer them. And this is a danger, because each time they tilt toward my (very good!) idea, they sacrifice a bit of ownership. And students' ownership of the learning is the key to Student-Directed Learning success. Nothing fizzles enthusiasm faster than a teacher puffing her way in. This means I have to submerge my teacher ego. I have to re-frame my goal. I've got to stop fighting for the hamster cake.

Meet Passion's kissin' cousin: Bossy! - Week #3 in an SDL classroom

It's Sunday night, and I'm tired. I spent seven hours at the school this weekend with my SDL students, working on the yearbook and painting ceiling tiles. All told, ten students contributed between two and four hours to their projects in the past two days. My students' investment in the class is high.

But we also had some snipping this week.  On Friday, our "Eye of the Needle" video team squabbled over whether or not to write a grant to purchase a better computer for their video editing. (This is almost laughable! They're fighting over whether or not to write a grant?!) The tech guru is frustrated that his computer at home has better editing capability than the ones in our lab and wanted to find a way to get a new computer. The producer of the show pulled on the reins.

"We've only made two videos. Hold your horses," she said.
"We've made three."
"But we've only uploaded two."

Their voices were tense, but they weren't yelling.

If this had not been a SDL classroom, I may have intervened right then. I saw some territory of compromise I could nudge them towards, and I was pretty sure I saw motivation for their respective positions more clearly than they did themselves.  I saw a power struggle between two very bright and strong-willed students who are vying for control of the most exciting project they've tackled in years.

But I want my kids to learn by doing and to experience problem solving as organically as possible. So I asked some questions to steer them back to more stable ground (What is it you want our computers to be able to do? Would you be willing to see if tech support can help us with solutions?), but I didn't pull rank, and I didn't tell them what to do.  They mumbled agreement to let the topic rest for the weekend.

On Saturday the producer left this note on her week's report:"I hope we get along a little better as a team this week. There was a little tension throughout the week that could have been avoided by all of us." I was pleased to see her ownership in the phrasing "by all of us."

If students are invested in their projects, if students own their work, they'll generate passion. And passion is a close cousin to bossy. Wish us luck. I'll report back next week.

Who gets the credit? - Week #2

“There is no limit to what a man can do so long as he does not care a straw who gets the credit for it.”
--Charles Edward Montague

A cluster of students (started as two and has grown to six) is making a weekly video for our news site. I am bursting with pride for the work they are doing and the exponential growth in quality of their product from Week #1 to Week #2 (to be released Monday).

But I can't take the credit--which is my biggest slice of ah-ha from Week #2. I get huge gulps of identity from my students' learning (which, as their teacher, I'm in the habit of taking credit for). For example, when a parent says "My son learned so much in your class!" I have mentally twisted that to be "I get the credit for your son's learning!" 

SDL turns that on its head. I am still a teacher, and I'm working behind the scenes to soften a bump or rev an engine, but my sally into SDL requires me to relinquish center stage. #BlockThatMetaphor

Consider my Eye of the Needle news team. (Our news site is The Needle, a diminutive of our school's yearbook The Javelin, based on our mascot as Trojans...so yes, there is meaning in the name.) The team's first video was filmed, in part, from a laptop. This meant that all of the weather information appeared backwards in their film. And because they used a corner of the journalism lab for filming, there was an artificial tree and a hamster cage in the background. The student interview was a mixture of flat, bland, and fake.

What do these facial expressions say about learning attitude? Click HERE to watch their show.

Oh, my teacher-heart beat pitter-pat with all I was prepared to teach the team about improving their news show this week! But I never got the chance. Without so much as consulting me, they reserved the ICN room and lined up the technology integrationist to teach them to use the SmartBoard.  On two separate occasions Hannah gently told me we'd have to continue our conversation at another time because she was working on deadline. I happened to see a script for their MUCH IMPROVED student interview questions lying by the printer. My biggest contribution this week? I found them a better tripod.

On Friday the kids fill out a report to keep me in the loop, and in response to my question asking if he'd like to meet to discuss grade/productivity, Travis wrote: "Im to busy and im doing fine!" (Evidently he's also too busy for punctuation and capitalization, but that's another matter--)

The Eye of the Needle team is doing not only the learning, but the teaching too. Frankly, they get all the credit--which is how it should be.

Learning from Week #1

I'd like to think room 408 has always been a welcoming, invigorating learning environment. But what transpired during our first four days of SDL opened my eyes to a whole new level of student ownership/engagement.

On day two (Wednesday), I planned to continue my introduction of how an SDL classroom would operate. (We hadn't yet discussed how they'd be graded!) But evidently the six words they latched onto from my day-one spiel were: "You will direct your own learning." They burst into the room announcing their projects and ideas. One wanted to prepare a journalism lesson for 5th-graders; two wanted to interview the new teacher; another wanted to work on making the classroom more "our own" by painting ceiling tiles. I hadn't realized how hungry students are to take control. Here I was at a fork in our road, barely 24-hours in. Would I praise their ideas but tell them to hold their horses until we had more guidelines in place? Or would I step aside? My response to their enthusiasm would say one of two things: 1) Wait. Let's do things my way, or 2) Let's roll! I went with #2, submerged my "teacher," and felt myself swept along (not in front of) their momentum.

By the end of the week (day 4) my students had begun calling themselves "the production team." They've designed t-shirts, held a press conference, conceptualized a mural for our wall, and written stories about jazz band, Pink-Out, the new teacher, and a big game between two schools with connection to ours. One student set up a blog, another is working out the logistics of writing an advice column (which involved teaching herself to make Google Forms). Two of my busy bees are producing "The Eye of the Needle" (a video re-cap of our news site--AHSneedle) and had already taped a mock-up by Friday.

I admit we are in the honeymoon phase. The pace of week one was breakneck. We're either going to crash and burn or rocket into the stratosphere. Here are my random notes:

1) Loved how L stepped up to help B with interviewing.
2) Loved how the Eye of the Needle team is including their classmates.
3) Concerned about how a couple ideas generated in one class period were dissed by others. I'm playing mediator.
4) I worry that my standards of quality work might be more picky than my students' standards. Whose do we use?
5) Of my 25 students, five or six will need help starting their engines. Must remember to bring jumper cables.
6) My primary content in this coming week will be interpersonal skills. Think I'll teach a few kids about "third point."
7) Each day I am posting suggestions of ideas/projects/tasks that they may want/need to tackle. No one has jumped at my suggestion to develop a system to keep others up to speed on our projects. I'll do this myself today.
8) Only one student (who carries a 4.0) has asked about grades.
9) My editors will have to step it up to keep pace with the SDL production team.

I'm eager to hear from others out there who are teaching in SDL or PBL classrooms. Give me your suggestions/reflections!

Opening Questions for SDL

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR A STUDENT-DIRECTED CLASSROOM

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. –Oscar Wilde

1)   What kinds of learning situations occur naturally?

2)   What do you want to understand, produce, or know how to do?

3)   How can WE (classmates/teacher) help you do that?

4)   If what is being taught is not inherent to the goals of the students, it will be forgotten.  What are your journalism goals?

5)   How do you learn best?

6)   What is your best learning environment, and how can we make this room/school fit everyone’s needs?

7)   Is it possible for us to have a few general rules for all—and individual rules too?  If so, what “rules” do you need to help your productivity?

8)   Are you worried about grades? What is your criteria for your best work? Is it reasonable to expect a person’s “best” at all times? Hmmm….

9)   How will we deal with the reality that some kids will put more time and energy into this class than will others?

10)  What will be our interpersonal expectations?

11)  Your questions:

Why Student-Directed Learning?

WHY SDL?

·      We learn best by doing, not by listening.

·      We learn when we want to learn.

·      Finding “the flow” is more important than ANY content.

·      Reproducing “the flow” is key to learning/living (and loving learning and living).

·      The learning is cognitive-based, not content-based.

·      SDL is transformative learning.

WHAT YOU MUST KNOW UP FRONT ABOUT SDL:

·      We will make mistakes. We must do so fearlessly.

·      You have permission to take control of what and how you want to learn.

·      You will determine how you want to be evaluated.

·      This is an experimental class.

·      SDL is supported by ACSD administration.

YOUR TEACHER’S FEARS:

·      What if this doesn’t work?

·      What if we don’t get the paper/yearbook produced?

·      What if no one wants to do the things I think they should?

·      What will I do if people play games and tweet all hour?

·      What if this feels like complete chaos?

·      What if this class sucks all my energy and I have none left for teaching Comp?

YOUR TEACHER’S HOPES:

Þ   This is exactly the way I’ve always wanted to teach.

Þ   I have fantastic students signed up for JP.

Þ   SDL “fits” JP perfectly.

Þ   I have some really good ideas for “sunlight and fertilizer.”

Þ   SDL gives us permission to UNLEASH our learning—see how far it goes!

GUIDELINES FOR 408 SDL

1)   You must be excited to come into this room to work each day. If you are not, we need to figure out why. This room MUST be yours.

2)   Berryhill’s job is to help you find your interests, think about how to make decisions, and understand how to approach a problem.

3)   This is a garden of learning. Berryhill provides sunlight and fertilizer. You are responsible for stretching your roots.

4)   JP is an apprenticeship: Learn by doing with help from mentors.

5)   Let Berryhill know where you are and what you’re doing at all times.

6)   If you’re going to be late/absent, text Berryhill.

7)   Be kind; be polite.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Þ   We have the responsibility of publishing and promoting AHSneedle.com.

Þ   We have the responsibility of producing and promoting the Javelin.
We have the legal responsibilities associated with producing student press.