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Wie geht’s? Teaching and Social Media

by Kristen

I’ve been having a problem with social media lately. Like most individuals in my age group, I have a facebook account. And like all good Curry grads, my settings are up so high that you can’t see anything about me unless you’re my friend. My students haven’t looked for me (to my knowledge) or tried to friend me, and I intend to keep it that way. My primary use for facebook is to post interesting articles that I’ve read, and to communicate with friends and family back in the States (for which it has been invaluable). However, I always find myself pausing whenever I want to post about work on facebook (and on this blog, for that matter).

Social media is an outlet for people to celebrate, publicize, and seek help for issues in their lives. My life is teaching, so naturally I want to post about my teaching, including both the ups and downs. But with recent incidences like an Ohio math teacher getting suspended for posting a picture of her kids with duct tape on their mouths and other stories I’ve heard of teachers getting fired over facebook posts, I’m loath to even post a comment seeking advice for how to get my kids to keep quiet and focus on a lesson! And unfortunately, this has got me feeling a bit confused as to what to do, but also very alone in my profession. Because unless I tell someone about my problem face-to-face (which implies that I can find a good confidant even though I’m an ocean away from all my Curry professors and friends), then I’d better keep my public, online mouth shut (so to speak).

And so this has all got me thinking: Where is the line between “productive sharing” and sharing too much? 

What do I mean by productive sharing? In my Curry class on Contemporary Issues in Education, we read a book called Teaching 2030 that suggested that teachers could use technology to build their professional learning networks or guilds in an effort to become “teacherpreneurs”. What I imagined, then, was being able to ask my network everything from how to effectively teach conjunctions to how to get a group of energetic sixth graders to buckle down and pay attention for 50 minutes.

However, I don’t foresee that happening when any relatively negative comment I have (like the Ohio teacher’s ”Finally found a way to get them to be quiet!!!”) could be used against me on any public, online platforms. I could keep my comments all positive, like “how great it is that Johnny finally learned the difference between an adverb and an adjective” or that “I shared a heart-warming moment with my homeroom over cookies”. Unfortunately, all of that just seems so false.

The truth of the matter is that teaching is hard, and if you’re lucky, you’ll have a few heartwarming moments in your day to balance out or (if you’re lucky) erase the frustrating, mind-boggling, and tear-your-hair-out moments. It also feels so incredibly false to only talk about the good stuff, as if I would be perpetuating every Hollywood myth that teaching is like Dead Poets Society and Stand and Deliver. Parents (and administrators) should know that teaching their children isn’t always a treat. I believe that suggestion cheapens both my job and shortchanges the child.

I suppose in this sense, it’s a bit like parenting these days. People always tell you to have children because the good moments outweigh the bad. They never talk about what happens when your child ends up less than perfect. I’m thinking here of We Need to Talk About Kevin — an excellent book that I actually got to read for fun (gasp!) over the winter holiday — and of the woman who got lambasted by social networking sites after she compared her son to Adam Lanza, the Newtown, CT shooter, in her blog. After all, children are innocence incarnate, according to those wonderful Romantic poets William Blake and William Wordsworth, and it seems to be an idea that we’ve held on to since then. To imply otherwise makes one cynical (as I might be) or a monster (as the post-CT blogger was called). Perhaps I’m taking this a bit too far, but it would be interesting to compare the number of positive media portrayals of children against the negatives, and see how this affects the attitude of the generation of parents-to-be.

What, then, is the real problem? Is the problem that some people (and teachers in particular) don’t know where to draw the line when it comes to sharing about their workplace? Or is the problem something deeper: that we don’t want to deal with the negative aspects of children, especially in school?

What do you think?

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Wie geht’s? On Student Travel

by Kristen

One of the things that I feel my school does really well is student travel. It’s pretty much engrained in the curriculum.

For example, at the beginning of every year the 6, 7, and 8th graders go on a two day trip. The point as far as I can tell is to foster a community feeling about the teachers and students and to give them experiences outside of the classroom. They will take a longer trip at the end of the year as well, along with the 9, 10, 11, and 12th graders. This is in addition to the day trips that various teachers take them on, and trips they go on for sports.

I just got back from a four day trip with the 12th graders to Berlin. The purpose was for them to give their final class presentations and add a sense of weight to them by having the presentations done outside of school. Of course we got to tour the city, as well, which was great for the international kids (and me) who had never been to the country’s capital before.

There are two separate ideas here about student travel that I like. The first is using student travel to build experience and foster a community atmosphere. I loved being able to get to know my 8th graders outside of school. I think it reflects this idea that school is about learning both in- and outside of the classroom (though this theme could certainly be carried through the school year a bit better). It also reminds us of the importance of getting out, experiencing new things, and challenging our comfort zones (we went on a ropes course at the beginning of the year!).

The second idea is using student travel to add weight to assignments. Instead of presenting papers or debates in the school gym for the umpteenth time, how cool is it to get out of town and make your presentation in the nation’s capital? This purpose may be a bit of a stretch, but I think it’s worth exploring the way that travel can aid in the motivation that students have for learning.

Of course I say all this with the disclaimer that I work at a private school in Europe. Students pay a lot of money to go here, and that money funds the trips. I saw a similar phenomenon when I worked for a student travel company. The kids who got to go on our big, cross-country, educational trips were the ones with teachers who could organize the kids and who had enough money from their parents to go. It’s also somewhat easier to cross a border in Europe than it is in say mid-Western America. 

But I don’t think these students are the only ones who should have that opportunity. I’m thinking now about The Freedom Writers Diary. No matter what you think of the book (and I have a lot of mixed feelings about it), Erin Gruwell described the amazing effect travel had on her students by getting them out of their school and their neighborhoods and showing them another part of their world. She organized smaller “trips”, like dinners at nearby hotels, and longer trips to Washington, D.C. and NYC. These experiences helped to challenge their assumptions about their world and their school, which helped to broaden their horizons. I still remember my school trips to an old homestead/museum where we made butter ourselves, and to a French restaurant at which I got to practice my French and immerse myself in cuisine. These little trips helped to reinforce my learning, while the big ones to D.C., NYC, and even Paris showed me new ways of life that challenged my preconceived notions about people and nations.

I realize that in the grand scheme of education, student travel falls somewhere below the arts and languages on the priority scale. But if the benefits can be so great, then shouldn’t we make student travel a priority rather than a luxury in education?

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Wie geht’s? How do we deal with the “kids who can’t learn”?

by Kristen

How do we deal with the “kids who can’t learn”? This is a question that I’ve been asking myself a lot lately.

In the States, I spent my student teaching in a “collaborative classroom”. This was where the school (or society?) put the kids with learning and behavioral disabilities who needed extra attention and remedial reading and writing instruction. At the time, I hated this form of “tracking”. However, now that I’ve started my first year of teaching, I can appreciate how hard it would be to try to deal with these students and with my “at-level” or even “gifted” kids all in the same room. Hard? Yes. Impossible? Certainly not (with support or changes to the way schools function).

At my current school we do things a little differently. Because of my experiences student teaching, I was handing one “SAP” class this year. SAP stands for Student Assistance Program (although my students fondly call it “Super Awesome People”). Because the school is so small, I only have a handful of students with minor problems (I say this in comparison to my kids last year) ranging from ADHD to mild Autism. We meet between two and four times a week, and I try to provide them with extra support on assignments and other “good student” skills.

However, something has been irking me about the way the class is set up. Usually I spend so much time trying to get them to sit still and work on assignments that were due three weeks ago, that I never get time to review the essay writing skills needed for the upcoming assignment or the organization and planning skills that they all so desperately lack. I also spend a good deal of my time supporting subjects like science and math, which, let’s face it, is not ideal coming from an English teacher. I really love my kids and I love helping them, but isn’t there a better way?

Here are a few of the questions that I’ve been struggling with:

  • Why does the education system feel the need to stick all the “struggling” kids in the same room, and tell one teacher to help them?
  • Why not give them extra tutoring time with their subject area teachers or even with their gifted peers?
  • What message do we send to these kids when we take them out of other subject classes and stick them all in a room together? And what affect does this have on their self-esteem and motivation after 1, 3, 5, even 10 years?
  • Are we really being responsible educators by pushing them to learn information exactly when and how we tell them to, always pushing them on to the next grade and through the assembly line, instead of making accommodations?

 
What have your experiences been? Or do you have any answers to these questions?

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Book Review: Stop Stealing Dreams

by Kristen

What is school for?

This is the question that Seth Godin asks in Stop Stealing Dreams. Godin, an American entrepreneur and author, describes what school was for  (mostly what we learn in Curry’s “Issues in Education” class) and what school should be for in this 125-page manifesto. Best of all, he’s made it free to read and share in whatever format you choose.

The basic gist of his manifesto is that school was an assembly line created to churn out factory workers and office drones. However, these jobs are disappearing. What our businesses and our economy needs are cooperative, inventive thinkers who can function without a manager breathing down their necks in a job that may not have a clear description. For the first time in history, we don’t need people telling us how to do things, because we have the internet that puts information at our fingertips. Thus, there is no longer any value to rote memorization. What we need are flexible schools that cater education to the student, and teachers who act as guides by helping students access information. School should  be a place where students are encouraged to discover information based on their interests and at their own pace. School work should encourage collaboration and cooperation, instead of the individual, because that’s exactly what we ask employees to do in the real world. Thus instead of measuring test scores and checking off multiple choice questions, schools need to start measuring experience as an indication of student success.

Perhaps the idea that I connected with the most is the myth that great performance in school leads to happiness and success. I experienced this myself on making the transition from high school to college. I played by the rules, I graduated 4th or 5th in my class, but I didn’t get a free ride to college like I’d imagined. Not only that, but after doing well in college and paying my way through by waitressing, there was no job just waiting for me at the other end. This may have been true a generation ago, but it’s no longer the case today.

I believe that we as a society and as educators set up some very unreal expectations for our students, and I see the harm it causes everyday in my students. Just last week I spent 45 minutes explaining to a student why he didn’t get an A on his first paper of the term. He was very distraught, so I asked him, “Why do you want to be a better writer?” He responded that he wanted to get good grades. Frustrated, I asked, “What I’m getting at is: What do you want to do when you grow up?” He told me that he wanted to retire when he was 55 and have a family. When I pressed him further, he replied, “I want to do something worthwhile.” When I asked what, he had no answer. I found this encounter very disheartening. Our students are so trained to get the good grade, that they miss what it’s all for. And that’s the underlying message that our schools are sending them.

In the words of Seth Godin, ”Are we asking our kids to collect dots or connect dots?”

Recommendation:

  • 5/5 stars
  • Highly recommended for any teacher, administrator, parent, student, or high school dropout (i.e., everyone)
  • Plus, it’s short and free (which is ideal for busy teachers).

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Wie geht’s? Know your students

by Kristen

One of the first things Curry teaches us is to “know your students”. It’s a great philosophy, and one that I teach by. I know that it pertains to students as individuals, but I also found it true for students as a whole. And when I made the switch from my student teaching in Cville to my first year at an international school in Germany, I really had to readjust my expectations.

In Cville I had two sets of kids: the “honors” students who came from upper-middle class (mostly white) backgrounds, and the lower SES kids who were mostly mixed race. These kids were my biggest challenges, as they were coming from homes where there wasn’t a place for them to study, a healthy meal to keep them going, and sometimes even a stable parent to support them. For them, school was often just the thing they did during the day to see their friends, and they didn’t think it would take them anywhere.

At the international school, most of my students have a loving family and a large bank account, and they value the education that they’re receiving. Clearly I had to readjust my way of thinking. Oddly, some of their behaviors are the same. I still don’t always get their homework, but instead of the reason being that they just didn’t care to do it or never have a materials, it’s because they had soccer and after-school music lessons and couldn’t fit it in. Or perhaps they already had 3 hours of homework in science and math and had to prioritize.

I think the biggest difference is that while my students all have physical homes, they don’t really have one place that they can call “home”. Many of them have lived in multiple countries over the years, and don’t identify strongly with one over another. Or they may have one parents from one country and another parent from a different country, but may never have lived in either. The best example I can give you is this: A student* at our school is ethnically Japanese. However, she was adopted by one parent who is German and another who is American, and spent the majority of her young life in India. She speaks Hindi, German, Italian, English, and Japanese. So what culture does she identify with the most? She’s trying very hard to make friends with the Indian girls at school, as she identified with that culture the most. Unfortunately, those girls don’t seem to like having her around or really see her as “Indian”.

Like this young girl, my students are privileged in a way that most of us will never know, and yet they can be so lonely. And like most middle schoolers, they are wacky, but also so shy when they have to make the switch to a new school for the umpteenth time. And most of my older kids can be slightly clueless about the problems of poverty, classism, and intolerance that exist outside of their bubble. Still, they can be entirely too serious about their academic life. They are all these things at once, and I continue to find out more as I scratch further and further beneath the surface.

I’ll leave you with this final example and question that I had the other day.

In my quest to “know my students”, I discovered that the reason why one of my students* didn’t turn his essay in on time (it was 5 days late) was because his weekends and after-school time are taken up by drama. Not only that, but his family returned to their home country and he remains here because the drama school that he was admitted to is very prestigious. Nevertheless, I was annoyed that he didn’t send me an email asking for an extension (which I would have gladly granted regardless of his situation). Someone even told me, “Don’t be too upset with him; his life is very hard”. I ended up accepting his paper, though I couldn’t help but feeling that I’d somehow “cheapened” what it means to have a deadline.

I imagine it is very hard indeed to be an ocean away from your parents and to be either studying or practicing non-stop. Still, something irked me about the situation. After all, some of my kids in the States didn’t have parents or even homes to go home to, or they were too busy worrying over younger siblings or after-school jobs to turn assignments in on time. Their lives were just as hard. Should deadlines not have applied to them either?

And so yes, we all have to know our students and make exceptions when they’re needed. But where do we draw the line? Does my talented, lonely international student deserve a break anymore than my underprivileged, worried students from the States? Somehow I suspect that “knowing your students” has as much to do with knowing yourself and knowing society as it does your students.

What do you think?

(*Note that some details have been changed to protect my students’ identities.)

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Wie geht’s? Learning German

by Kristen

Prior to moving, neither my husband nor I could speak German. I’d taken roughly 8 years of French in high school and college, and he’d just taken a year of German in community college and another two years of Japanese. Given our experience studying languages and our deep-seated belief that you should speak the language of the country in which you live, we committed ourselves to learning German about as soon as we landed. Read More

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Wie geht’s? Welcome to School

by Kristen

It’s been almost two months since I’ve moved to Germany, so I thought I should write an update on my job search and what I’ve learned about the schools here so far. As I said in my last post, I found a Curry alum who works in the international school that I’m interested in. While there currently aren’t any openings for an English teaching position, she suggested I start by subbing and doing other work to get myself known in the school. That way when a position opens up, I’ll more than likely to be the first candidate since I’ll already be familiar with the students, staff, and parents (this is what she did 20 years ago when she first moved here in much the same situation as me — small world!). Read More

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The Ron Clark Academy

by Kristen

If you haven’t heard of the Ron Clark Academy yet, then you have to check this place out! It’s a private, non-profit middle school in Atlanta, Georgia that’s got a pretty fun take on education. A coworker of mine recently shared this video with me, and it shows some pretty enthusiastic teaching (and learning) going on!

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Online Learning: Beyond Teaching in the Classroom

by Kristen

This past semester I decided to apply for a paid internship at a local student travel company, mostly because I needed the money. As it turns out, the work I’ve been doing has been extremely fascinating and is providing me  a view of education outside of the classroom. My job is two-fold: I upload coursework for students to take online after their travel experience, and I write some of the coursework that they’ll take. I tend to separate the two, because they require two different areas of focus. The first requires me to think about what looks good for a consumer (the student), and how I can make the delivery of content engaging. The second part of my job requires me to come up with lessons that extend their traveling experience and challenge their thinking using information and assessments that are both diverse and accessible. The later, of course, is the more traditional roll of a teacher. Read More

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