Leading From The Heart

by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.

Category: Classroom

  • Is lecture a 4-letter word? Following up a year later

    Today I received a comment from Miss Teacha on a post I published almost a year ago called Is ‘lecture’ a 4-letter word? She continues our love-hate relationship conversation about lecture. I started to write my reply as a comment and then decided to post it as its own post. So here it is.

    Thanks for following up on this conversation, Miss Teacha! I think the mark of a successful lecture is when you need to calm the class down, when you need to redirect their energy. Lecture is not merely a content delivery system, though it can be and often has the reputation of being solely that.

    I no longer teach economics. The required course for Grade 11 has been changed to Contemporary World Issues beginning this year. It’s a course based on themes rather than specific content and I am in the middle of a section on the themes of tension and conflict using information from different areas of the world – Monks protesting in Burma; Seal Hunters in Nunavut, the Maritime provinces, and Quebec; living in the Gaza strip; living in Sri Lanka… *** (see below)

    There is SO much content that if I lectured it all they would never get to the juicy stuff of developing their own definitions of tension and conflict or debating different intervention strategies. So I give them articles, music, video to read, listen to, view, and talk about in small groups. They check their understanding with me during group and class discussions – sometimes I point them to the computers for background research and sometimes I give them the background (and sometimes I even let them know that I don’t know the background very well and we research it together).

    When I give them the background it may be done as a whole class exercise, where I stop activity and give background to the entire class, or to individual groups, depending on the need. If only 1 group isn’t getting something, why make others who do get it stop what they are doing?

    I am finding that this kind of lecture is effective because the students see the need for it. The lecture happens because they have asked for it and not because a) it’s easier for me or b) it’s what I think they should learn. They often interrupt in order to ask questions and link what I am saying to their articles or videos or songs or however it is they are gathering their information.

    So, again, lecture does not have to be a 4-letter word. Thanks to Miss Teach for following up on this conversation.

    ***I am lucky that this unit (we call them Learning Evaluation Situations (LES) in Quebec) has been developed for the course by a Quebec English schools support centre. It is the only teaching material for this course that has been made available to us in English so far, beyond the curricular guidelines (basically the competencies (like standards) and their descriptors). Apparently there is a textbook that is being published in sections but I have yet to see it.

  • holding emotion

    I’ve written about this before. Yesterday I felt stressed – nervous, anxious, slightly on edge – and not because of me. We are starting an exam period (what a lovely way to come back from a 2 week vacation…not) and yesterday was the first of them. The exam began with some argument about what to do, how it didn’t make sense, how there was no way that they could finish in 2 hours.

    It is especially during these kinds of situations that I realize part of my job is to manage emotion and in doing so, hold it.

    I could have snapped back but I kept my voice low and calm. I moved from student to student, tried to connect with them individually, to let them know I see their stress, their frustration – the exam was a French one, a compulsory course that many students have a huge brick wall up about – and that they needed to plow on despite that.

    Slowly, the room became still, with just a spattering of complaint toward the end of the period, when students became worried about finishing on time.

    I was in bed by 7:30 last night though!

  • Evolving stories, creating change/ A reflection on Kevin’s story writing experiment

    Yesterday I started to participate in a collaborative story writing adventure hosted by Kevin (Kevin’s Meandering Mind). Basically, he has started a story and a group of us are writing it collectively, though one at a time. I’ve done this kind of thing using paper and pen technology in the past where I hand out pieces of paper with different story starters on them. Students are given 2 minutes to write, the timer buzzes and they have to pass off their story to the right, receiving one from their peer to the left, to continue for another 2 minutes, and so on. Kids love it, I use it as a writing workout to get the juices flowing.

    Our story is taking place via Google Wave, though Kevin has also begun the story in two other places as well – find out how you can participate.

    Here is the starter, written by Kevin:

    To say she was connected would be too simple a statement. She was never disconnected. Even in her sleep, her dreams came to her in bursts of 140 characters. (She knew this because she often woke up and jotted down her dreams, a habit she acquired in her college psychology course. Her notebook was full of nighttime ramblings.) And so, the night of the storm, with the weather forecasters freaking out about the high winds and possible lightning, she, too, began to freak out. She checked for batteries. She stood waiting near the electrical outlets, ready to pull the plugs at the first flash of lightning.The last thing she expected was the knock at the door, but then, the unexpected always comes at the unexpected moment …

    So, so far there are 2 variations based on this same starter, the third is being launched this morning. It reminds me that people have an amazing capacity for creativity. With the same givens, different results are possible.

    This can be transfered onto our own work in classrooms and organizations. We do not need to be stuck in one story. Especially if we collaborate with others, we can certainly evolve our stories and trigger change for ourselves and those around us.

  • rant

    I’ve made the decision to do something I have never done before and that is to remove a post. Well, actually, to replace it with this one. I have not been asked to do this by anyone, it is something I have decided to do on my own because, regardless of its intention, its results clash with what I feel is the right thing to do. I never intended to cause harm, to hurt anyone in its posting. It has and I’m truly sorry.

    The post was an in-the-moment response to some of the frustrations of teaching. Frustrations that I know others experience, as was evidenced by the number of, “I know where you’re coming from,” comments to the post here and in other forums.

    From the get-go, Michael felt I should ‘quietly delete’ the post, while others said no. Susan said that strong emotion teaches strong lessons. Others, that we (teachers) are expected to be devoid of emotion and that reminders of our humanity are needed from time to time. Others, that I should suck it up or leave teaching, that there are certain things I should not reflect on in my blog.

    So the intention of the post was to capture my emotion in the moment. I use this blog to record the successes and challenges of teaching for the purpose of reflection and feedback. I strive to be a reflective practitioner. I strive.

    I need to step back and look at the context of reflection. Since I began this blog about 3 years ago my audience has changed. It began as an audience of 1 (me) and slowly grew to an audience of a few (me and a few other teachers from other cities and countries), and more recently to a much larger (though still relatively small) audience of readers (teachers and non-teachers, including students, parents, and colleagues).

    Does this mean I will stop writing about difficult issues? No. Not at all. But I will do so with a sensitivity for a shifting audience. There are times when my readers won’t agree with what I say but my delivery needs to reflect the values that are dear to me – kindness, compassion, and doing no harm. Indeed, love.

    So, I haven’t been asked to remove this post or replace it in any way. But when I reflect on it and the reactions it received within the shifting readership contexts that widening social networks provide blog writers, it is the right thing to do. When I reflect on it and my mission to do no harm, it is the right thing to do.

    Tracy
    The great thing about learning is that it never, never stops.

  • On de-rubricizing

    I almost forgot about my favourite line from yesterday’s QPAT convention keynote speaker, Alfie Kohn.

    He said it as I was leaving the room so it didn’t end up in my not-live blog post but I just found the page where I scribbled it as I was making my way to my car:


    The whole can not be reduced to the sum of its rubricized parts!


    For a long time now I have been sceptical of the whole rubric frenzy. Must have a rubric, must have a rubric. Why? Why should we tell kids exactly what our expectations are and in such minute detail? I call that a creativity killer. Give them some parameters. If you are expecting the result to be some kind of multimedia presentation let them know that, give them the guiding question, maybe a few resources to get them going, to raise the velcro in their brains, but then let them experiment!


    Let them show me what they can do without spelling it out for them. Rubrics lower the bar for our students. It is telling them that we do not trust they can do anything worthwhile without our providing them with all of the pieces. Kids will rise to the bar we set for them whether it be high or low.I like to push the limits of height.


    A line that I find myself quoting on a regular basis is

    Why do anything unless it is going to be great. (Peter Block)

    I try to instill this in my students. They ask – why do I have to use proper letter-writing style elements in history when I write a letter to the King of France as a character from New France in 1665 offering ideas for how to stimulate population growth in the new colony? This is history, not English! I answer, why do anything unless it is going to be great?

    I insist on learning with this philosophical slant. That being said, I better get to my readings. I have a paer due next week on an aspect of education for Native kids in Canada. I need to do some more reading so I can write a great paper.

    Rubric, Shmubric.