Ken Burns – Telling stories and manipulating your kids

One of my earliest memories of useful discipline-specific staff development was not organized by my school district or building. It wasn’t organized by my building or department chair.

It was designed by Ken Burns. Yeah. That Ken Burns.

The guy who directed and produced the awesome Civil War documentary that first aired in 1990.

I learned more about the Civil War and how to teach about the Civil War by watching that nine part series. Ken used amazing images, poetry, oral history, biography, and music to tell an incredibly interesting story. I began to realize that a big part of being a highly effective teacher of history is the ability to tell a great story. And more importantly, I realized that a big part of my job was to help my kids learn how to tell their own stories.

A recent article highlights a video that has Ken describing a bit about the process of telling great stories. It’s a sweet five minutes. Two things that stood out for me.

1. Ken says that a great story is the same as a mathematical equation. One plus one equals three: 1+1=3. A great story is greater than the sum of its parts.

2. Ken also uses a word that I’ve been using for years. And it’s a word that bothers some teachers. The word is manipulate. I love that word and I think we need to use it more when we talk about teaching and learning.

I starting thinking about manipulating the brains of history students several years ago while reading a great book by James Zull titled The Art of Changing the Brain. Zull suggests that a teacher’s job is to re-wire the brains of students so that new learning takes place. One way to do that is through positive manipulation of emotion.

So when I heard Ken Burns talking about using really good stories to manipulate how people respond to content, I got this deja vu / heard this before sort of moment.

The video is a nice reminder of what teachers can be working on between now and the start of school next fall – researching and perfecting great stories. Creating an emotional connection between content and kids so that their brains are re-wired.

Manipulation. It’s not always a bad thing.

Are you an under-taker or a risk-taker?

I heard a presentation several months ago about different types of organizations and how the culture of those organizations can impact their success. It seemed to me that these descriptions might be applied to teachers as well.

Jaded Mrs. Krapappel from "The Simpsons"

The Under-taking Teacher – Always Looking Back

The under-taking teacher is someone who is always looking backwards. All they ever seem to talk about are the “good old days.” They miss out on all of the good things happening today in education because they are always looking back to yesterday.

The kids were better. We didn’t have NCLB. Parents were supportive. I only had two preps.

The problem with being an under-taking teacher is that any decision teachers like this make are based on what has worked in the past:

it was good enough then, it’s good enough now.

And, yes, we can learn from the past but you can’t live there. You have to live and adapt to where you are. Kids are different, parents are different, technology integration is important and the world is different.

Too many teachers today are spending their time and resources lamenting the past when they should be adapting to the future. What has worked in the past may not work in the present because the audience has changed. The question most under-Taking teacher asks is “why can’t we do it the way we used to?”

The Care-taking Teacher – Always Looking Present

Satisfied econ teacher from "Ferris Bueller"

The care-taking teacher is always concerned with pressing issues. They are busy and often have decent lessons but that they can only focus on the here and now.  Decisions by these kinds of teachers are based on immediate needs. The number one question seems to be “what do I need to get done today?” Much of what they do revolves around the demands of NCLB and state tests.

For the most part, care-taking teachers are pretty comfortable. And they’re not necessarily bad teachers, but as long as they have enough supplies, support from the administration is just okay and no one bothers them, most care-taking teachers seem to settle in and count the days until their 85 points.

After all, they’re tenured. Why worry too much? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The problem is that they are seldom very excited about teaching and so their students aren’t that excited about learning.

The Risk-taking Teacher – Always Looking Future


Erin Gruwell of Freedom Writers fame

The risk-taking teacher is always looking forward. They believe that the best is yet to come. They invest a lot of time and effort in learning new things today so that they are better prepared for doing better in the future.

Risk-taking teachers seek to be cutting edge. They want to learn more about how kids learn and to use all available resources to make kids more successful. They’re almost always involved with local, regional and national history organizations, they look for better reading and writing strategies and they wrestle with technology questions.

One of the reasons that we as teachers don’t take risks is our fear of failure. We’re afraid that our state tests scores won’t be good enough or that we’ll look silly in front of kids or that the technology won’t work or that we’ll get calls from parents or . . .

But we also know that failure is often a prerequisite to success. Teachers take risks because they understand that screwing up is not necessarily a bad thing. Risk-taking involves possible failure. If it didn’t, it would be called Sure Thing-taking.

The question a risk-taking teacher asks is “what do I need to know so that both myself and education in general are better in the future?”

I think we’re probably all three at different times of the year. I can still remember years ago complaining that the district was trying to install some sort of new-fangled network laser printers when my handy-dandy 9-pin matrix printer was working just fine. And in the middle of January, it can become very easy to just assign worksheets.

But I also think that we all know which teacher we’d want for our own kids.

So . . . what risks will you be taking next year?

How NOT to teach World History in the 21st century

Really?

You’re kidding, right? This is the way we want to teach high school World History?

A recent article in the Washington Post describes the current thinking of history teachers at Westfield High School in Fairfax, Virginia. Titled “Curiosity is banned at Westfield High,” the article highlights one of the documents given to students called “Expectations of Integrity.” The document instructs students:

Students are only allowed to use your OWN knowledge, your OWN class notes, class handouts, your OWN class homework, or The Earth and Its Peoples textbook to complete assignments and assessments UNLESS specifically informed otherwise by your instructor.

That’s not all. Students can not use anything they find on the Internet. They are not permitted to discuss their assignments with friends, classmates, neighbors, parents, relatives or siblings.

Well . . . what about people you’ve never met? The instructors have that covered:

You may not discuss/mention/chat/hand signal/smoke signal/Facebook/IM/text/email to a complete stranger ANY answers/ideas/questions/thoughts/opinions/hints/instructions.

Violations of the “Expectations” will result in the proverbial death penalty – a zero on the assignment.

Seriously?

Yeah . . . I get it. Kids can plagiarize and text answers and go to Shmoop and do all sorts of “devious” things by taking advantage of current technology. And, yes, some sort of updated AUP and plagiarism policy is appropriate in any high school class. But there is so much wrong with this particular kind of thinking and teaching that I’m not really sure where to begin.

How about we start with just one?

Collaborative learning improves divergent thinking, encourages innovative thought and generates new questions / solutions. I’m no rocket scientist but I’m going to suggest that the opposite of collaborative learning – the atmosphere that apparently exists in World History classes in Fairfax – ruins divergent thinking, discourages innovative thought and generates no new questions / solutions.

In his recent book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, author Steven Johnson discusses the seven “patterns” that can be used to develop great ideas. Almost all of the patterns involve some sort of collaboration and sharing of resources. Johnson gave a brief overview during a recent TED talk as well as in a much shorter tease that’s making the internet rounds:

Robert Marzano’s research on what works in schools documents the effectiveness of cooperation and collaboration on learning.

cooperative learning has an effect size of .78 when compared with instructional strategies in which students work on tasks individually without competing with one another (individual student tasks).

That’s the equivalent of a percentile gain of 28. Not .28. Not 2.8. That’s 28 as in 14 times two.

Sir Ken Robinson has spent quite a bit of time researching and discussing the ways that education in general and teachers in particular can improve. Much of it has to do with allowing students to be creative and learn from each another and from outsiders. In a recent short talk, Robinson describes what’s really going on at Westfield:

Our children are living in the most intensively stimulating period in the history of the earth . . . and we’re penalizing them now for getting distracted. From what? Boring stuff at school, for the most part.

And I’m half a continent away from Virginia (both physically and apparently pedagogically as well), so I don’t have the complete story. Maybe the teachers have a very good reason for locking down how kids interact with content and others. Maybe there’s a purpose behind working so hard to control access to information, control thinking, control behavior.

But I just have to ask – do we really want to teach like this?

Three Cups of Tea – Be a part of it

Educate a Girl – Change the World

A year or so ago, a great video clip came out from the Nike and Novo groups about something called the Girl Effect. It highlighted the incredible power of educating girls in developing countries.

This morning, I had the chance to listen to Greg Mortenson, author and subject of Three Cups of Tea. If you haven’t heard the story yet . . . quick Cliff Notes version:

• Guy tries climbing tall mountain in Central Asia, fails and ends up in small Pakistani village hungry and sick. Villagers care for him, he pledges to come back and start a school, specifically a school for girls. He does. Goes on to help start over 140 schools, most of them for girls. Guy also begins working to educate others about the danger of landmines, especially in Afghanistan.
  

  Greg with students

That guy is Greg Mortenson.

Since 1993, Mr. Greg (as he’s called in Central Asia) has worked diligently to improve educational conditions in third world countries with a special focus on girls. The Girl Effect in actual practice . . . through his organization Central Asia Institute.

The book, Three Cups of Tea, is his story. A villager told Mr. Greg,

The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time, you are an honored guest. The third time you become family.

So now that he’s part of the family, his goal is not to help people but to empower them. Greg says

there is a big difference. Helping people is us doing and them listening, empowering people is us listening and them doing.

And specifically he wants to help empower locals around the world build schools for girls.

Educate a boy, educate an individual. Educate a girl, educate a community.

The cool thing?

You can help. And it’s simple. All you have to do is get out your cell phone.

• Text to 50555 and enter “CAI” to quickly and easily donate $10 to Mr. Greg.
• Greg is talking today at the Blackboard World conference and Blackboard will match your donation.
• 85% of donations are applied directly to CAI programs
• Don’t want to use the cell phone method? Try Pennies for Peace, a great way for you and your students to get directly involved.

The cooler thing?

The Girl Effect.

One worksheet at a time

My 8th grade daughter was heading out the door last week on her way to school. And she was obviously not that excited about it.

But bless her heart, she attempted a bit of humor to lighten the mood:

I’m off to change the world, one worksheet at a time.

I laughed but also felt a twinge. She’s already figured it out:

Just survive four more years. I might learn something but it’s more likely that most of what I’ll do will be busy work.

The solution? Make t-shirts.

My daughter claims any and all intellectual property rights.

Other solutions? Find things for her to do outside of school, encourage her online writing and her art work and calmly push for change in her school.

K-12 solutions? More hands-on instruction, more problem-based learning, more primary sources, more 21st century skills, more authentic assessment. And no, they’re not easy.

But you know what? My daughter’s worth it.

Schmoop is good

Shmoop

To give someone (often, a student or child) an encouraging nudge in the right direction. Yiddish origin.

i.e. Hannah is a decent student, but she needs a little shmoop to get started on her homework.

In the Web 2.0 world, Shmoop equals a great web site that publishes free online social studies and literature study guides. There are currently over 800 published guides with 34 new guides online this week. Shmoop’s mission?

To make learning and writing more fun and relevant for students in the digital age.

Shmoop will make you a better lover (of literature, history, life). See many sides to the argument. Find your writing groove. Understand how lit and history are relevant today. We want to show your brain a good time.

Each guide contains overviews, resources, web sites, opposing views and more. The history guide, The 1950s, for example, is broken down in nine sections:

• Intro
• In Depth
• Timeline
• People
• Did You Know
• Best of the Web
• Citations
• Test Review
• Opinions

Shmoop also provides iPod Touch / iPhone apps, Facebook support and lots of other ways to connect information with people. While Shmoop is obviously designed for students, they have also put together a nice teachers’ page that

Shmoop impresses me because it is intentionally about learning, and the joy of learning, not just about passing courses and jumping through educational hoops.

– Paul Hamilton

But who’s writing the guides?

David Siminoff – Literature lead:
Honors in English from Stanford; studied English literature at Oxford; MFA from USC School of
Cinema and Television; MBA from Stanford; published author and award-winning screenwriter

Nate Gillespie – Shmoop History lead:
Ph.D. candidate in US History at Stanford; MA and BA (with distinction and honors) in
History from Stanford; founding director of Stanford History Graduate Memory Project; winner
of Stanford Centennial Award for Outstanding Teaching of undergraduates

Get a nice overview of the site and possible uses here.