New Sections

In the Upper School, we'll all have a new group of students next week. There are advantages and disadvantages to mixing things up in this way, but a clear consequence is that teachers need to re-establish class expectations, just like we did in September. As Ellen never fails to mention, these first two weeks are an important window. It's always easier to start off a bit strict. I have concluded over the years that students like a bit of rigor in the classroom. It lets them feel that they are stepping up to something, instead of just carrying on in a comfortable slouchy way. It's a balance, of course. You want your classroom to be somewhere your students enjoy being.

I was reviewing the files that Heather created last year and came across a number of ideas for working with new students. Daniel sometimes groups the students in a few different configurations on the first day so that the class has seating options during the quint: students arrange themselves alphabetically by first name, alphabetically by last name and also in the order of their birthdays. During the first few days of class, Tim sometimes does a version of Two Truths and a Lie: students write down on an index card two facts about themselves and a falsehood. These can be read aloud and guessed at, several right away and the rest from time to time during the quint. I think I will avail myself of Scott's "Find Someone Who" idea: I will distribute index cards with names of figures we have studied written on them and have students find a partner whose figure is linked to their own: Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, for example, or Kaiser Wilhelm and Czar Nicholas. The pairs of students can then explain the connection. This enables us to do a warm-up while also reviewing the year so far. For me, it makes more sense to do this mixer on the second day of class. For one thing, the content of the curriculum is serious at the beginning of Quint III and the tone of our first meeting needs to reflect this. Secondly, having a focused and business-like first day is one of the ways I implement Ellen's September reminder about setting expectations. I find the energy at school tends to be high and loose enough on the first day without my doing anything to stir it up.

Student Evaluation

Having completed Teacher Evaluations, my thoughts have turned to student evaluation. Turns out, "student assessment" is a huge topic but a few general principles seem to show up in education journals and websites with some regularity. These include:

1) Grades with no explanatory feedback are of little value, but explicit corrective comments are powerful teaching tools.
2) Feedback is optimized when students are given opportunities to try again and get it right.
3) Feedback delivers the most value when it is prompt. The longer students have to wait, the less they get out of whatever comments we provide.
4) Rubrics help students focus their efforts and gauge their own success.
5) Involving students in the evaluation process increases its value.

I have to say, I think we're doing a lot of things right at Northwest. We've got principles # 1 and 2 covered and we're working on #3.

In terms of #4, I know I don't use formal rubrics very often. Heather and Suzanne developed one for analytic essays, which I sometimes use to show my students what distinguishes an "A" from a "B" paper. Grade 11 uses a kind of rubric with the research paper. Benji has developed an invaluable "Illustrated Guide" to essay writing and Daren just created an excellent primer on text analysis. None of these are exactly rubrics, but they all offer explicit criteria and some models for students to follow. And of course, there is the Essay Checklist! (All these can be downloaded from my Teacher Page, thanks to our colleagues who agreed to share them.)

I guess I am least sure of #5. Of course, conference offers a prime opportunity for informal self-assessment. Once in a while, I have my students submit a narrative self-evaluation on the back of their essay checklist: they assess the strengths and weaknesses of their papers and share any challenges that came up in writing them. This is a valuable exercise, but I think it might be the only opportunity for formal self-assessment that I offer my students. I am thinking about turning over part of my Quint II evaluations to the students' own comments, but I find myself hesitating--which is interesting. Why am I so reluctant to share this responsibility with the people it most concerns? Am I afraid they'll do a bad job?

Teacher Evaluation

Even though I should be used to it, I still feel apprehensive when Teacher Evaluation rolls around. At times, I have even entertained rebellious thoughts about this process: why should we entrust so serious a task to students who don't take it seriously? Why should evaluations be anonymous? Why should we have to submit these to our supervisors?

And these were just the internal rebellions...at times my rebelliousness has affected my behavior as well: last year, Peter and Amy's Peer Mentors created an updated Teacher Evaluation form. Several of my colleagues tried it out with their students but I didn't get around to making the switch. I suspect that on some level, I realized this more focused form might generate more focused feedback.

This week, I am experiencing the usual apprehension, but I have decided to embrace Being Evaluated this year--not so much because I am suddenly hungry for more focused feedback, but because I think there is a danger if someone in the position of evaluating others tunes out the experience of being evaluated.

Today one of my students complained about 3 points she'd lost on a recent test--a test on which her overall grade was a 92%. I have to admit, I was irked. 3 points? A 92? For this, I have to negotiate and defend?

Then I thought about how much criticism sticks in my craw: who is that? what are they talking about? It is tough to receive "negative" feedback when you have done your best--and yet this is the position students find themselves in all the time. So this quint, I am breaking out the Peer Mentor evaluation form. I am not expecting to receive more praise this way, but I am open to remembering what it's like to be vulnerable to assessment-- and to finding ways to make the experience of assessment as empowering as possible.

Thanksgiving Themes

Warning: this post has little to do with teaching Humanities. At best, it may have some relevance to Colonial North America and the phenomenon of nativism.


As we head into the holiday season, I am aware of the divide between my own experience and The Ideal Holiday which I see celebrated in commercial culture and public spaces. The disparity can leave me a bit unnerved.

Fortunately, there is NPR! While chopping away on Thursday morning, there was lots of great programming about Thanksgiving history on KUOW94.9, which I am going to summarize for you in lieu of presenting any original ideas.

What struck me in the themes of this programming is that Thanksgiving has always been an artificial celebration. It is true that the original settlers may have shared meals with indigenous people and may even have offered feasts of Thanksgiving. However, as good Puritans, the pilgrims would have been as likely to fast as to feast and might well have found the idea of a Thanksgiving "feast" a bit presumptuous.

In fact, the Thanksgiving holiday was an observance tirelessly promoted by a New England woman named Sarah Josepha Hale, who expressly intended it to be a didactic holiday promoting the virtues of an idealized New England life. To her, it was an important feature that the holiday would involve a return to the countryside and to a traditional domestic sphere where women had influence. (Hale opposed women's suffrage, though she was interested in expanding women's access to education and influence.) Hale pitched the idea of a national day of Thanksgiving to five successive presidents until she finally won the attention of Abraham Lincoln, who declared Thanksgiving a national holiday right in the middle of the Civil War--at a time when the nation was literally tearing itself apart. So Thanksgiving was created to simulate a sense of national harmony and unity which did not exist. This makes me feel so much better.

While my holidays may never resemble the Currier and Ives model, I am relieved to know that the Currier and Ives model was an idealized mock-up from the very start.

In Praise of Primary Sources

The other day, I spied a book on Daren's shelf: Aspects of Western Civilization: Problems and Sources in History, edited by Perry Rogers. As I was flipping through this text, I was reminded of the value of primary sources. Primary sources provide students with a strong particular viewpoint on history. Purportedly objective or blatantly biased, they offer a vivid picture of a slice of time. And best of all, many primary source documents are short--or can be excerpted.

Recently, we included a New Deal cartoon from one of Daniel's lectures on an 11th grade test. Students were asked to analyze the point of view expressed in the drawing: what issue is this artist referencing? what is the cartoonist's critique?

On a more sober note, consider the Balfour Declaration:

His majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

This single sentence is a goldmine of information which students can discover for themselves in a fairly short amount of time.

Decoding primary source documents can easily be turned into a hands-on collaborative exercise. Besides their inherent value, primary source activities offer a low-cost way to reduce homework load on any given night. They support all kinds of productive classroom activities that require no preparation for the students--and they can really animate material presented in lecture.

The Avalon Project at Yale Law School has a huge selection of primary sources from 4000BCE to now. I have a few other sources for primary sources in the "Random Great Stuff" section of my Teacher Page, though these are mostly geared to the 20th century. The ABC-CLIO database that Nancy is test-driving this year includes primary sources for almost any unit. Our Northwest School Library also has (among other things) a multi-volume set of primary source documents entitled Daily Life through World History in Primary Documents and a Witness to History series which features lots of primary sources as well. See Nancy for other primary sources.

Experienced Teacher Retreat

When I applied for this retreat, I was imagining I would come away with 25 practical ideas which we could all immediately implement in our classes. It turned out not to be that kind of retreat. It took me a while to adjust--what? no homework?--but once I'd settled into the reflective mode, I appreciated it deeply.

The heart of Menucha Retreat Center was built in 1927 by Julius Meier, founder of the Meier and Frank Department store, as a country retreat near Corbett, Oregon. Herbert Hoover and FDR both stayed there and the place has such an old-fashioned feel that you expect to see Harry Hopkins at breakfast. (There's a speakeasy in the basement.) Twelve of us were there representing eight schools, led by our own Jen Kulik and her colleague Sallie Warmath from Salt Lake City, Utah. Neighboring schools included Overlake, Lake Washington Girls Middle School, Westside School and The Little School. Our focus during the three days was on reflection: our journeys as teachers, our current challenges and the reasons we stay in education.

One of the most useful activities for me was a workshop in the "professional portfolio." I had never thought much past resume and references, but this group seemed familiar with the professional portfolio. This includes a regularly updated resume, with some of the following headings:

• Education, starting with BA
• Job History, starting with most recent
• Special Interests
• Relevant Experience
  
• Related Training
• Skill Sets
  
• Successful Projects

Jen shared that she maintains a word document called "The Big One," in which she maintains a record of all professionally relevant experience and qualifications. She draws from this list to customize resumes for specific opportunities.

In addition to an updated resume, a professional portfolio might also include: a Statement of Teaching Philosophy, student feedback, a sample assignment or two, syllabi/course descriptions, certificates of attendance at relevant professional conferences, photos, playbills, anything that gives a sense of what you offer as a teacher. Happily, we had some time during the retreat to draft a Statement of Philosophy or personal Mission Statement to articulate what we set out to accomplish in our work. It was very valuable to reflect on my work as a teacher and those elements of it that are most important to me.

I am also grateful to have had the opportunity to step back a bit from the pace of teaching and to be reminded of its importance. I feel proud to be part of this important work--and to be in the company of such fine colleagues.

I hope to make some time at an upcoming Department Meeting for all of us to write Mission Statements as teachers. Don't worry: these won't be published anywhere but it's useful and kind of refreshing to be reminded of our ideals. One of the participants shared that she does in fact keep her Mission Statement posted near her desk and on her computer. She reflects on it often, changes it sometimes and refers to it to be inspired and guided as she creates her classes.

Marking Meaning

I came away from my visit to Annie Wright impressed with the usefulness of making organization explicit. I saw four classes that day. All of them in one way or another took advantage of themes, summaries and lists to organize and reinforce learning.

In terms of lists, three of four teachers explicitly specified their goals for the class. Three had a "Plan for Today" posted on the board. Two reinforced this with an announcement at the beginning of class. These simple gestures reinforced what the teacher was trying to accomplish.

In watching a class on the Book of Genesis, I got a sense of how much themes help students find meaning in material. As a student, it is easy to wade into a reading assignment and not know what is important. Providing students with themes helps them to organize and make sense of what they are reading.

The History Department at Annie Wright has 7 Themes that they work with when exploring historical material:

1. Patterns of Population (numbers and migrations)


2. Economic Networks of Exchange


3. Uses/Abuses of Power
   


4. Haves/Have Nots


5. Expressing Identity


6. Environment/Technology/Science


7. Spiritual Codes/Ethics

It was clear that the class had established these themes early in the year...so no explicit definitions were offered the day I was there. However, I saw that having categories helps students find their way in unfamiliar material: the students went through the text (a fairly short reading assignment: Genesis 1: 27-30) in small groups and identified passages that reflected or referred to these themes in some way.

Then at the end of class, the teacher and students summarized what the class had discovered. This too reinforced what they had learned. The teacher reminded them to continue to think in terms of the 7 themes while reading over the weekend. In this way, the students are acquiring a habit of thinking about these ideas when reading historical material and are learning to consistently look for this kind of information, to ask: what does this text show about the way X thought about ethical behavior? About the way power was shared (or not shared) in this society? About the way they related to their environment and used technology?

Most of the core Humanities classes have a set of questions at each grade level: i.e, "Who should rule?" in 10th grade and "What is the relationship of the individual to the state?" at 11. These questions/themes are a Good Idea and we should be sure to keep them in play.

Harkness Skills

In my last post, I described the philosophy behind the Harkness Table. It was clear from watching classes at Annie Wright that the students knew this philosophy and were consciously trying to enact these principles in their conversation. To describe a Harkness Table in action:

The conversation is almost 100% student driven. The teacher sits at the table with the students, asking an occasional question but mostly just observing and making notes. During the conversation I observed, the teacher was 100% un-bothered by moments of silence, some of them lasting longer than I usually allow. When a moment of disagreement verging on confusion emerged during the conversation, the teacher sat right through it, obviously paying attention but not jumping in to clarify. It was also very striking that the students in this class almost never volunteered a comment without referring to the text to support their contribution. I will sometimes let my students refer to Lord of the Rings or Oprah if they appear to be making a genuine attempt to illuminate a relevant idea. In this class, that never happened. Every comment included textual support:

"On page 71, column B," the author says..." or
"Going back to Mariah's comment about p. 68."

The students actually talked like this. Students were also trained in structuring their conversation.

"Adding on to what Michelle said..".
"The passage on p. 70 confused me because..."
"I think the importance of Cathy's point is also shown on pg. 68"
"I actually disagree. I think the real reason is on p. 72."
"I think we may have skipped over something." (Student adds point.)
"I think we might be getting off-track. X happened for a lot of reasons." (Student then summarized the conversation so far.)

Students actually said all of these things.

After 30-35 minutes of this, the teacher stepped in and asked the students to summarize the conversation: what were the major themes and ideas? It was at this point that he clarified the confusion that had emerged 10-15 minutes earlier in the discussion. He then asked the students to evaluate the conversation: what grade would you award yourselves and why? When one of them suggested a B+, he disagreed, pointing out that three students had not said a word during the class. One student pushed back and said that although some were silent, most had done a good job of "always digging deeper" in the text. It was clear that all the students would all get the same grade for the conversation. This self-evaluation was the end of class.

I will end by adding a list of the skills that the Harkness method wants every student to exercise in class. Some of these are quite self-explanatory, but students might need to be explicitly taught language for some of these things:

• organizing, leading the conversation
  
• summarizing, re-stating or clarifying the text
• citing specific quotations or passages from the text
• asking a question about the text
• commenting on the text, giving an opinion or reaction
• making a suggestion about the text or discussion
• summarizing discussion up to that point
• analyzing text or a comment or the whole conversation up to that point
• reacting to comments
• answering comments
• re-starting discussion
• filling in a gap
• arguing a point, disagreeing
• asking for new information
• asking for other comments, reactions
• comparing to other works

It was very striking to me how rooted in the text this work is. There was absolutely a culture of "Where's your proof?" "Where do you see this?" "Find it in the text." However, reading assignments are significantly shorter than reading assignments I typically give. For example, in one class I observed, students had been asked to read from p. 64-71; in another p. 1-10 and p. 17-20.

The Harkness Table

"Civilized discourse must be at the core of all good education and all full lives."

--Edward Harkness

Edward Harkness was an American oil magnate and philanthropist who generously supported medicine, the arts and education during his lifetime (1874-1940). His interest in education led to the development of the "Harkness Table" which Melody and I saw in action today at Annie Wright.

The Harkness Table is a kind of round (or oval) table discussion. It is not unlike a fishbowl, in that the teacher's role is very scaled back. The main difference between a Harkness Table and a Fishbowl seems to be the amount of explicit protocol involved. The students we saw today were highly trained in a specific approach to classroom conversation. The Harkness Table has clear philosophical underpinnings as well as specific skills which inform it.

I'll go into the skills in a later post, (they won't surprise you), but the philosophy is interesting and made a noticeable difference in the tenor of the conversation. What follows are the "cultural beliefs" that underlie this approach to class discussion.

1. Everyone at the table is an equal. Everyone's ideas are of value and interest.

2. Everyone can agree or diagree with everyone's ideas.

• These agreements/disagreements should be about the ideas, not the people.


• They should be made politely.


• They should be backed up by specific reference to the text to provide evidence for your opinion.
  

3. If classmates don't contribute, we need to help them do so (because we believe they want to.)

4. If classmates don't contribute, they may be behaving selfishly.

5. There should be little or no silence.

6. The discussion should show a connection of ideas in a long, connected thread, including segues to the next big question.

7. The conversation should feel "natural."

8. At the end we do not need to agree about what we believe the text is saying, but we do need to understand each other's beliefs.

To be honest, the conversation I observed today did not exactly feel "natural." However, it was serious, informed and very productive. I am intrigued the idea of having this kind of highly structured academic conversation be part of my students' skillset and my regular routine.

The Harkness Table was originated at Philips Exeter but has been adopted at many schools and is ubiquitous on-line, if you want to check it out. I will be writing more about the specific skills that are required and the way I saw it working.

Student Engagement

John, Daren, Harumi, Ann and I had a useful conversation at our department meeting last Tuesday. We mulled over a bunch of topics, but one of our themes was how to maximize student participation and engagement in the classroom.

These are some of the things we noticed:

1. Preparation really helps. Something that I have been trying this quint is setting Reading Questions with every night's assignment. Of course, we are free not to pursue this subject...but creating some sort of expectations seems to set up richer conversations than simply asking the students to come in with with passages which are "interesting."

2. Daren noted that he often begins a discussion with a brief response exercise. Taking a few moments to write gives the students a chance to collect their thoughts before being called upon to articulate/defend them.

3. Even the tried-and-true "Share with a Partner" technique can be more productive if you add a step: Think-Pair-Share. If students are given a moment to flip through their texts and make notes, they will often make better use of the moment when they are invited to turn to their neighbor and share an idea. (How often have you noticed that small groups/pairs often start off off-topic?)

4. Harumi has found that setting goals with students is useful in increasing participation. Conference can be a comfortable place to draw students out; once they have ventured a few ideas there, you can challenge them to wade into section discussion. Even give them a deadline: "By the end of the next week, I expect you to_____________." Or even," Tomorrow, I am going to ask your opinion about ____________. " (Of course, you have to remember that you told them that!)

5. Both Daren and Heather M have attested to the usefulness of Opening Broadly to increase student engagement. Heather and Daren recently started their class with accessible State-Your-Opinion kind of questions, i.e.: "What constitutes a "right?" or "Is there value in reading a play written over 2,000 years ago?"

Students like to weigh in on this sort of thing...and then they feel invested in learning more. Content you present after this kind of a warm-up falls on a relatively receptive audience.

6. Finally, I am reminded of an article JB sent me earlier today, an article in The Washington Post by Daniel Willingham, who reflects on how Prior Knowledge Affects Reading Comprehension. Willingham points out that any student tackling a reading assignment will understand more of it if they have a frame of reference for approaching the issue: some vocabulary, key concepts or a sense of why they should care. Armed with these, students have a measurably easier time actually understanding the text. If they've simply been told to read it "for tomorrow," students understand measurably less of what they read...and reading strategies like Highlighting and Annotating don't seem to change that.

Observations on Observation

This week I have been observed three times and I must say, the more it happens, the more I like it! This is from someone who previously stressed for days at the thought of having a colleague in my class.

Heather, Ann, Ellen and two board members visited my class this week. I have appreciated their gentle presence in the back of the room, their tactful participation (when offered) and most of all, I appreciate the incredibly thorough feedback which HH provided afterwards over a cup of coffee.

Things that made this observation a rewarding experience:

1. Heather picked up the tab for the coffee.

2. Heather and I talked beforehand about how I perceive my skill set as a teacher. I asked her to check in on a couple of areas which I still think I need to work on (i.e. clarity of instructions).

3. I designed a lesson plan which I thought would expose my weaknesses in this area (WHOA! Talk about personal bravery!) and emailed it to her in advance.

4. I gave her a chart with all the students' names and room for comments (in fact, the very same chart I used recently during my Fishbowl activity).

5. HH took meticulous notes during class. She paid attention to my behavior and my students' behaviors. Her vantage point at the back of the room enabled her to see things I couldn't. Icing on the cake was that she knew these students and was able to comment on how they had changed (or not changed) over the years.

6. We checked in again afterwards and shared our impressions of the lesson.

It was quite an affirming experience! HH identified strengths I didn't know I had, allayed my fears about fuzzy instructions (at least for this one class) and provided me with valuable feedback about my interactions with students.

Heather also identified a weakness or at least a quirk that I was quite unaware of. She noticed that if I find a student interpretation less-than-compelling, I will become tentative in my feedback. To avoid "hurting the student's feelings," I hedge in my response; I'll say: "Well, I think..." and then try to re-direct. HH observed that sometimes it is more supportive of the students to be direct in offering correction: "Actually, that is not a metaphor. That is meant to be taken literally. Check the words again." Clear feedback lets students know where they are.

Who knew?

Thank you so much for your energy and time, HH, and I look forward to hearing from the rest of you as the year unfolds.

Interactive Lecture

Ben gave me a great article by Rob Weir, published in the April 29 issue of Inside Higher Ed. Weir offers an approach he calls "didaction," a mix of exposition and student participation. The article offers a lot of great ideas for keeping student involvement strong, even in a lecture situation. Some of the best of these include:

• Brainstorm: pepper your lecture with open-ended questions and invite students to offer ideas.

• Ask "affective" questions: students often hesitate to offer "right/wrong" answers, but many are willing to volunteer how something makes them feel or think. This gets them more personally invested in what you are presenting.
  

• Say it in pictures: No one likes to listen as the presenter reads a slide aloud. However, images are engaging...especially when students are asked to comment on them. Maximize moments where you can convey information by summarizing and affirming correct assumptions the students have extracted from images, graphs or maps.

• Story-telling: Students naturally remember stories. Take advantage of opportunities to package information as mini-stories.

• Be controversial/provocative/silly: if you notice that the class is drifting, ask an outrageous question or make an outlandish claim and demand to be corrected.

• Role-play: You can wade into the audience (which alone changes the mood and gets their attention) and ask questions. Ask more than one student--"What were the weaknesses with this point in the treaty?" or "Why does Descartes distrust the evidence of his senses?" This bit of drama can drive the point home.

• Encourage interruptions: Make your presentation an experience students feel free to join in with comments or questions.
  

• End with a question: it's always better not to end your presentation by simply running out of time. It can be effective to end with a puzzle or problem or question...something that previews material to come or that reflects back on what they've already learned.

Thanks to Ben for sharing this article. If anyone else reads/notices/does anything cool, let us know. You can comment or post or just let me know and I'll post.

Elements of Successful Integration

This week during our department meeting, we had a summit between the Humanities and International departments to review the first year of integration and to set goals for the coming year. As part of this conversation, we brainstormed various activities that had been successful with groups of domestic and international students. We discovered that they had certain elements in common:

• an opportunity to prepare

• clear goals for every task
  

• opportunities for each participant to contribute
  

• some form of accountability for each participant
  

• grids, charts, graphic or visual organizers

• opportunities for hands-on work

These are elements to keep in mind when you are planning classes for a mix of international and domestic students.

Wild Card Seating

Benji taught me this creative approach to configuring the classroom.



You get an old deck of cards, too shabby for the poker table, and write the names of your students on them. These then become flexible classroom management tools.

• You can deal the cards out on the desks to create certain pairs or teams.


• Early-bird students can be given the enjoyable task of dealing them out.
  


• HH refined this idea by using all red for girls, all black for boys (or vice-versa). This comes in handy when you are looking for gender balance.


• For me, having a little deck of name-cards actually helps me design my teams/pairs. I deal out my groups of 2, 3 or 4 and then re-arrange when I see one group is getting too strong.


• Benji even customizes his cards, using pictures that the students bring in: baby pictures, pets.

This has been a simple and fun way to ensure that inertia doesn't have too much influence in classroom seating.

Reflections on Lecture

Gary and I had a chat today about one of the ways in which lecture works beautifully for students: as synthesis as well as presentation.

Gary proposes that one of the best uses of lecture is to make connections between concepts and information with which the students already have a passing familiarity. When time allows, Gary has found students benefit from encountering the basics of a new unit in section or small groups. This can be an especially rich way to work with primary sources: letters, speeches, newspaper articles. Listening to the lecture then becomes a satisfying experience of connecting the dots as well as gathering information. The students have a chance to see how their teachers are interpreting the complex information that primary sources have to offer.

Reflections on a Fish Bowl

I just had a satisfying Fishbowl Experience. (If there's anyone out there who doesn't know, a fishbowl is when half of the class is ringed at the edge of the room, silent, while the other half sits in the middle and carries on the discussion. The teacher says nothing but keeps careful track of how the students participate.)


Some things that made this work:

• Students were prepared. I had told them what we'd be doing and advised them to come to class with passages, questions and observations to share.

• I had a stack of questions on notecards which they could draw from if they felt the conversation needed new energy.

• I had a clipboard with a little graph on hand to take notes. I made hatch marks under the Offers Passage/Asks Question/ Agrees/Disagrees columns and left a long-ish space at the far right edge to make longer comments.

• I had a fun, scooty chair for the "hot seat," where students on the outside can jump in if they really want to say something. (It is fair play to bump someone from the hot seat--and towards the end of class, I did.)

• At the end, we de-briefed the experience and reflected on what kind of comments make for good academic conversation. They themselves volunteered that comments that refer to specific passages in the text lead to richer discussions.

Taking a Backseat

Heather has been having great success lately by saying very little in the classroom. Students have been working closely with texts and with each other instead.

Heather gets the conversation started by inviting students to share passages from the texts they are reading. She reviews the rules of a good classroom conversation and then announces her intention to remain an observer. She even makes a bit of a show of moving to the back of the room and taking notes--and the students get the hint.

I'm thinking I'll do this on Tuesday with a spreadsheet chart that lists all the students names and allows me to check off the ways they participate: offers idea/extends/re-directs/questions/disagrees/jokes.

Architectural Tour

Today I went with the 10th grade on a walking tour of public architecture in Seattle. We visited Town Hall, the Seattle Public Library and the Court House.Again, the students worked within their cohort groups, walking downtown in groups of 8-9.

At Town Hall, students identified Neoclassical elements in the building's architecture and discussed how these elements served the building's functions as meeting place and as a place of worship).

On the steps of the courthouse, the students considered the strikingly different buildings on both sides of 5th Avenue--the library and the courthouse. They brainstormed adjectives as they took in the buildings in their sites; there was lively disagreement within the groups. (Some students love the exuberance and edginess of the library; some students find it confusing and repellent.)

They also considered how the architectural styles of the buildings serve or do not serve the functions of the building. Some students appreciated the rationality and seriousness of the courthouse facade; some considered it forbidding . Everyone commented that the Seattle Public Library seemed to want to convey a very non-traditional message about the nature of information and knowledge.

Though it took a while to get to the buildings, it was very useful to see them as they actually interact with the city. Simply showing some slides would have been faster but would not have captured the dramatic way the library juts out over the street nor the striking separation of the courthouse from the hectic life of the street.

Qu'est-ce que c'est "un cohort?"

Cohorts

A cohort is a group of 6-7 students, a mix of male-female, international-domestic and when know-able, extroverted-introverted personality types. Cohorts are assembled from all the different sections and will be grouped together all year, both in academic settings and on camping/field trips so the students get very used to working with each other. Today I had an opportunity to observe a cohort in an academic setting.

Name cards were provided so that the students had no trouble remembering each others’ names. They got seated in their small groups and set to work on a structured task, based on the previous night’s homework assignment.

• Students took turns reporting their responses to a set of three questions and other members of the group took notes on what was being said. This kept all the students active and gave each a turn to speak.
• When they’d finished this, the students were then asked to divide the responses they’d heard into three categories.
• The teachers circulated and answered questions.

Students made excellent observations like, “Democracy consults the general will” and “Civil rights are granted by the Constitution” and they asked great questions like:

“Where do Human Rights come from?”
“How would you discover that?”
“What if you’re an escaped convict on the loose?”

I heard great discussions on-going for a good 25 minutes—all the way up until 5 minutes before lunch. It doesn’t get much better than that.