The Perseverance Process

The Search Institute's Webinar series on improving grit in academic situations is available online through their archives. The next live webinar (free!) is on December 3rd at 1:00 Eastern time covering Student Support Cards to bolster perseverance, but the webinar archive can be accessed at your convenience here:
Perseverance webinar Archive.
The Search Institute provides resources for parents and teachers looking to maximize student outcomes and relies on the research of Carol Dwek.

Classroom Equality Plus Service Leadership?

I started my teaching and coaching career as a capital L Leader, with very clear ideas on how things should be done and who should do them.  Maybe that was a result of the challenges in Detroit- crazy public schools plus an equally crazy boat club for a total of eight or nine hours a day of weird.

But, this year I've made a few resolutions.  One is that I will do my best never to reword a student's statement in class.  Another is that I am trying never to tell a student he or she is wrong, but find a way for that realization to happen independently.

I stumbled across this NPR blog entry on Facebook this morning (NPR's blog is the absolute best about Facebook by the way).  It details a student run classroom, similar to but different than Harkness.  It's very thought-provoking:

Subverting the System: Student and Teacher as Equals

Combine that with Greenleaf's classic The Servant as Leader and you have a fundamentally different kind of education.

The Servant as Leader

A Commentary on Plagiarism

I heard this commentary Tuesday on NPR.  Geoff Nunnberg is a linguist @ UC Berkely and had some interesting points on the recent charges of plagiarism that have been swirling around DC lately.  I'm not sure where I stand on honor versus literary etiquette, but I'm thinking.

Of course, it may well be a commentary on freedom, given Paul's political leanings...

http://www.npr.org/2013/11/12/244760001/did-rand-paul-commit-plagiarism-or-just-a-faux-pas

Even taken together, the charges didn't seem to amount to that big a deal - just a matter of quoting a few factual statements and a Wikipedia passage without attributing them. But as Rand Paul discovered, the word plagiarism can still rouse people to steaming indignation. Samuel Johnson called plagiarism the most atrocious of literary crimes and, actually, the word itself began as the name of a real crime.

In Roman law, a plagiarius was someone who abducted a child or a slave - it's from "plaga," the Latin word for a net or a snare. That connection was first drawn by the first century poet Martial, who accused a rival he called Fidentius of stealing his works in order to garner undeserved praise. Martial compared Fidentius to a man who wears a toupee and others have depicted the plagiarist as somebody who shines in stolen plumes.

The offense can be quite straightforward. Joe Biden was forced to withdraw from the 1988 Democratic presidential primary when he was caught lifting autobiographical passages from the speeches of the British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. That was classic plagiarism; Biden wasn't just helping himself to Kinnock's literary children, but to Kinnock's childhood as well.

But in the higher precincts of cultural criticism, plagiarism has come to seem more cloudy and complicated than it once did, as it jostles with imitation, homage, allusion and postmodern appropriation. And technology has compounded the possibilities - so much stuff out there to repurpose, so many new ways to adapt and transform it.

What do we say when A Tribe Called Quest samples the guitar licks from "A Walk on the Wild Side?" Is it the same as Rossini working Mozart motifs into "The Barber of Seville," or is it something wholly new? But nuances and complexities are set aside when it comes to pedestrian forms of expression like term papers, news reports and political speeches, where plagiarism is greatly simplified.

Technology has played a role here, too. It may have made plagiarism easier to execute but it has also made it easier to detect. Time was when spotting literary pilferage could take some serious detective work in the library stacks. Now you just dump a passage into a search engine and run it against everything that's out there. Or you can just let some software do it for you the way some universities do.

Along the way, the practical definition of plagiarism has become more cut-and-dried than ever before. It doesn't matter what you copy or where you take it from, or whether it was deliberate or accidental. Not long ago, Time magazine's Fareed Zakaria and Fox News' Juan Williams were both obliged to apologize profusely when they published columns with unattributed passages copied word-for-word from other sources.

It made no difference that the passages in question were just bald factual recitals or that the copying was almost certainly inadvertent, most likely the work of a research assistant. Cut and paste, you'll be disgraced. And now Rand Paul is being pilloried for a couple of similar offenses, particularly for a speech in which he quoted verbatim the Wikipedia plot synopsis of the 1997 movie "Gattaca" without attributing it.

That doesn't seem quite as grave an offense as the literary larcenies of Joe Biden. Wikipedia isn't an individual author, just an anonymous collective project. And its prose has all the beauty of a pile of scrap lumber. Paul could hardly be accused of trying to shine in stolen plumage. Still, by modern definitions of plagiarism, Paul clearly crossed the line.

If you're going to use a Wikipedia synopsis, you should run it through a Mixmaster to the point where nobody could Google it up and see where you got it from. But considering the nature of offense, the condemnations were pretty severe. Theft is theft, people said, echoing Martial's vilifications of Fidentius. A journalism professor from Paul's alma mater Baylor announced that if it had happened in one of his classes, he would have failed the student and asked the university to investigate a possible honor code violation.

I'd just soon leave honor out of it. These aren't like those classic cases of literary theft; they're just infractions of the conventions we're bound to adhere to. But that doesn't make them trivial, as Paul implied when he said he was being hounded by the footnote police. Whether the copying itself was the work of Paul or of a staffer, he has to take personal responsibility for the cluelessness of that response.

The rules for quoting and attributing can seem arbitrary at times, with little connection to the respect for intellectual property that originally motivated them. You could think of them just as a kind of literary etiquette. But etiquette is just what comes of reducing moral principles to the explicit codes of conduct that govern our civil life.

Paul may not have been guilty of dishonesty, just cavalier disrespect for the rules. You don't put on the feathers of another, not even the drab ones that you find lying around on the ground.

PDC Webinar Carol Dwek: Changing Mindsets, Motivating Students

Webinar: Carol Dwek—Changing Mindsets, Motivating Students (November 5, 2013)

Carol Dwek presents her research concerning fixed mindsets (belief that people are born with a level of “smarts”) and growth mindsets (belief that the harder you work, the smarter you become) in students. She discusses how these two frames of mind are developed and how to encourage students to adopt a growth mindset. Why do many talented kids seem to “hit the wall” while those who appeared much less capable early on pass them by? How can praise be a bad thing? The Q and A gives practical ideas for encouraging a growth mindset.

This webinar can be accessed on demand for the next four months here: ARCHIVE

The email address is STONER@BLAIR.EDU and the password is webinar.

The Power of Patience

A thoughtful and evocative article about slowing down in the classroom, giving students time to focus, and teaching them that patience and "immersive attention" are imperative skills for lifelong learners.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/11/the-power-of-patience#article-images

Make Just One Change

Make Just One Change by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana is game changer in my classroom.  At only 176 pages, it lends itself to an easy summary: Teach students to ask their own questions.  The authors' premise is grand enough that their work goes beyond the realm of education and into healthcare and mental health, parent and family engagement, voter engagement, and microdemocracy.

The authors set up a very simple system for creating an environment full of inquiry and creativity.  First, I introduce the Question Focus, or QFocus, which is essentially a prompt.  For my current unit on World War 1 and the New European Imperialism the QFocus is: Competition between industrialized European states.  Using that prompt as a springboard, plus some prior knowledge from reading around the topic, pairs of students began to ask questions.  The rules for this stage are powerful in their brevity.

1. Ask as many questions as you can.
2. Do not stop to discuss, judge, or answer the questions.
3. Write down every statement exactly as it is stated.
4. Change any statement into a question.  

The second and third rule relate to each other in an incredibly powerful way.  On a whim, I asked both WCIV sections if their teachers often rephrased or tweaked the statements they offered in class.  Every hand went up.  I then asked how it felt when that refining process occurred.  Every student felt "dumber", "less valued", "upset, because I meant what I said."  The overwhelmingly negative reaction to something I always considered helpful in a goal-oriented classroom was incredible, and I promised them I'd try never to do it again.  

As of now, my WCIV sections have worked with a partner to develop an open and closed version of each question (60+), whittled their options to three refined questions, and chosen one on which to write a paper.  The paper marks the second assignment where the students have designed and produced their own work.  The strange thing is the extent to which I have to let go of the room- it's not easy or natural for me, but, hey, they're the ones in school.  It's nice to bump into something so good, I just have to remind myself, "Do this."  

The Right Question Institute

PDC Webinar October 23: 'Sell' More to Students

Webinar: Daniel Pink on How Teachers Can ‘Sell’ More to Students (October 23, 2013)

Daniel Pink reminds us that anyone trying to teach, persuade, or convince another is “selling” a product. In this “Age of Information Parity,” teachers need to develop the three new ABC’s of selling: Attunement (seeing from another’s point of view), Buoyancy (staying afloat in a sea of rejection), and Clarity (differentiating the meaning from the noise). He gives “quick, cheap, and actionable” suggestions for increasing creativity in group dynamics by decreasing the appearance of power of the leader and discusses the value of falling near the middle of the extroversion--introversion scale to better relate to others. He shows the consequences of relying on others to be motivated to participate as opposed to the results obtained by eliminating barriers to participation.

This webinar can be accessed on demand for the next four months here: Archive

The  email address is STONER@BLAIR.EDU and the password is webinar.