What I learned: Year 1

I thought I’d capture my big teaching discoveries year by year. In some cases, the learning will be expanded in a later post; I’ll link to any expansions later.

My first school was extremely progressive. We had weekly staff meetings; signature petitions for various Democratic causes were commonly passed around. We had a moment of silence when Edward Kennedy died. The principal met with me and mentioned that I didn’t seem, er, enthusiastic about matters that were important to the school which was unfair because I worked very hard to keep my opinions off my face and my mouth shut. That meeting was one of the few times any administrator acknowledged my existence. Weird, uncomfortable year; without question, I was let go because I wasn’t deemed sufficiently left of center.

Teaching history

I teach an AP US History Survey course every year and have excellent content knowledge in US and European history. But I’d never had to think through units on countries or eras, and my ed school work was all in math. All the discoveries I discuss were my own, although for all I know they’re basic equipment and I was just never told.

• When studying a country, start with the physical and give the kids a map activity. Coloring in the Khyber Pass does much to help cement India’s vulnerability to invasion, and the Philippines’ placement in Southeast Asia does much to explain the term “strategically located” which, in turn, does much to explain the history of the Philippines. Be generous with the colored pencils and clever with the location activities.
• Give them the nuts and bolts
  Logistics and economics can be unexpectedly fascinating, and I don’t understand why so many teachers ignore them. I don’t mean formal economics, but the simple nuts and bolts of money, need, and incentives, as well as the interesting unconsidered cause and effects. Male students in particular find this approach interesting. So, for example, when archaeologists found the Globe Theatre, I pointed out what a complete drag it was for the business that owned the location, which had to go through all sorts of negotiations just to get the use of their space back. Or the importance of dung in the Agricultural Revolution, and how the nitrogen-rich plants just happened to be the perfect food for livestock, which thus became more affordable, and so dumped its droppings into the land, providing still more fertilizer. A month later, we were reading a book on post-colonial India later on, in which a character picks up cattle dung to burn for fuel. Bam! Connection. The kids understood why manufacturing alone wasn’t sufficient to grow a new economy, that food production had to become much more efficient, and that using dung for fuel was robbing the land of nutrients. But they also realized that the character had no choice, which led to a greater awareness that England’s success wasn’t necessarily replicable.

• Give them the gore.
  Trotsky got axed. Magellan got ripped to shreds. The Russian royal family got shot. Bad things happen, baby. (I had them draw pictures of Magellan’s demise. They were a hoot.)

• Memorization isn’t automatic
  The first quiz revealed that the history facts had simply gone in one ear and out the other for several of my kids. I sat them down and gave them a talk about the importance of memorization and studying. This was news.
  “You mean, we just keep reading them over and over?”

  “Well, you can also work with a friend. Ask questions until you remember them. Come up with memory tricks to help. But here’s what will also help–understand that all that stuff we talk about, in class? It’s supposed to stay in your brain. That’s why you should take notes. But just writing it down isn’t enough–you have to remember what you write down, what you hear.

  Again, this was clearly new information (presumably because they didn’t listen the other 30 times they’d been told). But my non-performers made a quantum leap in performance that year, simply because I told them explicitly to remember what they learned. So, you know, don’t forget to tell them. And give them time to study; early success will reinforce the behavior.

English

As I described here, I designed a content-rich SSR/SSW program that did not involve the kids staring at a book they didn’t care about.

Math

I taught Geometry and Algebra I, using the CPM curriculum.
Most of my “aha” moments were more useful for the following year.

• What kids learn, they forget.
  I love teaching test prep, but its short-term nature meant I hadn’t yet learned the merciless lack of retention skills that most kids had. And it’s much harder to remember processes (math) then facts (history).

• Multi-step equations
  It’s May, and I suddenly notice that my kids can’t do multistep equations if I mix and match distribution and combination. This realization was essential to the ephiphany I had early the next year; without it, I might have gone another year without realizing why my kids could handle 3(x+7) = 24 but not 2x +3(x-2) + 3 = 6x + 2.

• Binomial multiplication and factoring
  While I’m not a huge fan of CPM, I really like the generic rectangle model for this process. I still use the techniques and the documents I developed this year.

Teaching Humanities, History of Elizabethan Theater, (III)

Days 1 and 2, and 3 and 4.

Day 4 part I: Recreating History
Students use their notes and documents from Day 3 to sketch the details of an Elizabethan era theater. Fishbowl discussion: what did they sketch for seats? What about curtains? What did “backstage” look like? How do historians “fill in the blanks” when they don’t have primary evidence to point them in the right direction?

After the discussion, students took a virtual tour of the Globe theater. How would someone go about establishing the source material and accuracy of this tour?

No deliverable here. I just wanted the kids to grasp the choices involved in recreating history, whether it be for a book, a movie, or simply an image. I thought something familiar and specific would give them a better idea of how many thousands of decisions are involved in filling in those blanks. And while I can offer no tangible proof that this worked, I can say that every student had that “aha” moment, when they realized how much they didn’t know, and how every decision in a recreation can further affect our general understanding of history. The discussions were active and everyone was engaged; we had some great exchanges. One of my delightful ditzes suddenly realized she couldn’t assume that there would be bathroom stalls.

“But….the plays could be hours. What would they do? Go back outside? What if they were way up front?”

“Maybe they had pots,” offered a classmate.

I broke in with a brief history of the chamberpots.

Another student’s eyes widened. “Hey, maybe that’s where the phrase comes from–they didn’t have a”

“pot to pee in!” the class choruses.

“What about the actors, though? They had to have at least one bathroom. They didn’t even need girls’ bathrooms, right?”

One of my top historians pointed out, “But look, they didn’t even have running water back then. Did they even have toilets?”

“When did they get toilets?”

I gave them the story of Thomas Crapper and ended the segment during the ensuing hilarity.

Underneath all the fun, they really did get an inkling of the challenges involved in understanding the past. And, of course, some potty jokes.

Day 4 part II: Sonnets
Lecture on the sonnet, including its history and the two major styles (Petrarchan and Shakespearean). Students listen to five sonnets written from Shakespearean to modern times, and write responses to each. They identify the link between one of the sonnets and a modern song.

I am not a cut-and-dried planner. I’d always known that this unit would have a sonnets lesson. I’d vaguely thought of them reading the poems, which seemed unsatisfactory but I figured something would occur to me. The “something” waited until 30 minutes before class time, when I suddenly realized how much the sound of the sonnets would add to the experience, and so spent a frenetic half hour hunting down them all (mostly on youtube).

After all that, though, it went beautifully.

Day 5 and 6: Shakespeare in Love

They got all the jokes. They didn’t giggle at the sex scenes. They were engrossed by the story. They enjoyed the movie, understood the movie, and were completely aware that enjoyment and understanding came from their new content knowledge. I could tell.

So if I have a disappointment, it’s only that I would have preferred they’d be blown away by the movie. I am a film propagandist who shows movies that students would never think of watching and are nonetheless enthralled. I’m very good at this, so when I could tell that they just enjoyed the movie, it felt like a letdown.

In retrospect, though, Shakespeare in Love isn’t really a propaganda film; I’d never deliberately try to sell it to early teens. In this case, it was curriculum. And from that perspective, it worked beautifully.

Note: My kids had all been approved for R-Rated films for health class. I doubt most teachers could get away with showing SiL to freshmen otherwise.

Day 7: Content Knowledge and Art
Students write an essay on this prompt: “To what extent did content knowledge help you appreciate Shakespeare in Love?”

In fact, I had seen the answer in their faces as they watched the movie, but I wanted them to think about it.

Teaching Humanities, History of Elizabethan Theater (II)

See Days 1 and 2, if you’re interested.

Day 3 Part I: Elizabethan Theater Who’s Who
Students, grouped roughly by ability and content knowledge, were given different readings about key figures in the era. After reading, taking notes, and discussing, they created posters about their subject(s). The lesson ended with a “gallery walk” in which the students take notes about the key figures who weren’t part of their reading.

Yes, posters. Given my druthers, I’d have given them all four readings and 25 minutes to peruse, followed by a class discussion. But there you go. Well over half of all students I’ve worked with love making posters, and I always commiserate with the ones who don’t.

This lesson uses a form of “jigsawing”; as I’ve mentioned before, while most trendy math teaching techniques are hooey, I’ve become fond of more than a few used in history and English. Jigsawing is a terrific way to provide content by ability group. In this case, it allowed me to make sure that the students focused in on the content area most appropriate to their abilities.

So my weakest kids got the Shakespeare reading, because I wanted them to get a solid grasp on who he was, what he’d written, and some important quotes. If that was all they got from the exercise, that was a good get. Next group of kids up, I figured would be able to get the key ideas about Shakespeare from the poster, so I had them focus on the other Elizabethan playwrights. That way, they’d get some solid new information on Marlowe, Kidd, and Webster, whilst still picking up the key facts about Shakespeare. Again, if that was all they got, terrific.

Next group up, I knew, would be interested in learning about the new playwrights and would pick up the content from the poster–so they got the actors. The strongest group got Henslowe and Tilney, and the responsibility of figuring out what it was they did.

I know I’ve said this before, but I really wish I’d had an android back then, since the posters were stunningly good—not just in terms of artistic value, but in terms of how the students incorporated the readings into their posters.

In the gallery walk, each group took turns explaining their subject to the others, so they could take notes. I quizzed everyone it later, but I can’t find that document. They all knew enough to laugh at John Webster as the young boy with a violence fetish, and several were sad knowing that Marlowe must die, so the content definitely filtered in.

Day 3, Part II: Theater and its Impact on the Economy
Students reviewed pages of Philip Henslowe’s diary. What evidence did this primary document provide to support the claim that Henslowe was a producer who worked with some of the key playwrights of the day?

Using diary entries, write an essay supporting or contradicting this assertion: “The rise of the theatrical industry probably had a positive impact on London’s economy.”

I’m not sure if the pages in the attachment the pages I actually used. I spent several hours looking for three or four pages that would give them a wealth of evidence for both parts.

This was definitely an activity I designed primarily for the stronger students, and their essays showed they appreciated the challenge. However, all the students were interested. Much chortling when they discovered how much time Henslowe spent with his lawyers and on “copywrighte”.

Day 4: History In Motion
Reading and lecture on the constantly changing nature of “history”. Not only does it keep on building up, but we keep discovering more about our past. Students learn of the Swan drawing, by Johanes de Witt, which wasn’t discovered until 300 years later. Then, 30 years ago, a routine building excavation led to the discovery of Philip Henslowe’s Rose Theatre–and then the Globe was quickly located as well. But is there a cost to these discoveries? Students discuss the impact of living in a historical site.

This is the third really cool “primary” document (well, a copy of one) that I found for this unit, and I spent much of my own time researching it because it’s exactly the sort of tidbit I find fascinating.

What we know of the London theatres of Shakespeare’s age is, to a disproportionately large extent, due to the records such as diary entries left by tourists….Two of these tourists are Johannes de Witt and Aernout van Buchell, friends from the city of Utrecht, the Netherlands….To them we owe the best piece of visual evidence of what an Elizabethan theatre looked like on the inside: the sketch of the Swan theatre on Bankside, along with a brief Latin text describing the London theatre scene….First of all, it is unclear precisely what each of the two friends contributed. We do know that de Witt travelled to London, probably at some time between 1596 and 1598, and visited some theatres there, including the Swan; at some later point, he apparently gave (or sent) his sketch and written ‘Observations’ to his friend van Buchell, who copied the drawing as well as the text–or part of it. It is van Buchell’s notebook that now survives in the Utrecht University Library……There is no evidence that de Witt’s information had an immediate impact on his own culture. Sure enough, van Buchell made a copy of (some of) the information, but he never published it. Not that he was merely a collector of information for his own amusement; the documents he gathered, the facts and impressions he noted down, were made available to fellow scholars on demand for future generations. But for practical purposes, van Buchell’s main function as a go-between lies in transmitting de Witt’s sketch and observations to posterity. For some 300 years, the notebook gathered dust in libraries, until it was discovered by the German scholar Karl Theodore Gaedertz in 1888.

(Source: Renaissance go-betweens:
cultural exchange in early modern Europe (page 79-81)

So. For centuries, we had no actual image of an Elizabethan theater. Then, for a few generations, the de Witt drawing was all we had, until The Rose was discovered, and once they had that location pinpointed, finding the Globe was pretty easy (hell, my kids found them using a 400 year old map). The past just won’t have the decency to sit still.

And yet, what of the developers? Lucky them! Their business plans had to be postponed; they had to incur additional expense to protect the Rose “until a future date”. Their building had to be suspended over the excavation. and what, exactly, will that do to the retail value of their property? Good, if the rich movie stars propose to buy it out. Bad, if the efforts never get far enough to the purchase level but stay at the annoyance level.

I told the kids about a hospital in my area moving from its old space to an empty lot that held the last orchard in an area that once was devoted to farming. I mean, couldn’t they have moved it anywhere? This orchard had somehow lasted that long, couldn’t we preserve it as the last little piece of heritage in the area?

On the other hand, the hospital can’t move there, it moves to another town, and bye bye jobs and property taxes. Discuss the degree to which we should interfere with business development in order to protect our past.

The essays were great. Heartless guttersnipes all. “Hey, it’s only trees!” “They lasted for 400 years without the theaters. What’s the big deal?”

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Teaching Humanities, History of Elizabethan Theater (I)

Writing up the Twelfth Night unit reminded me how much fun I’d had and how thoroughly the students had learned the material. I need no reminding with my Elizabethan history unit, which is still the single finest two-week period I’ve ever had as a teacher.

Learning Objective: Students can discuss the milestones of the transition from mysteries to plays, and provide the rationale for the development of physical theaters. They can identify the tensions involved when archaelogical remains don’t have the courtesy to become inactive, but just keep inconsiderately piling on history unto the present. They can identify the key Elizabethan playwrights and theater personnel. They know how many lines are in a sonnet.

Secondary Objective: They would understand every in-joke in Shakespeare in Love, which they’d watch at the end of the unit.

Day 1: Lecture on the development history of Western European theater, which disappeared entirely after the fall of the Roman Empire for over five hundred years, until it returned again in the form of “mysteries”, the performance of Biblical scenes, and slowly developed into the morality plays of the late Middle Ages. During the Renaissance era, the morality plays developed slowly into plays written more purely for entertainment, and thus were born both the acting profession and the theater (which allowed the actors to collect money from their audience). The lecture covered the development of the first theater (started by James Burbage, as we all know from SiL) through to the great razing of the theaters in the mid-1600s.

I can’t find my lecture notes, but the gist can be derived from the handout:
It must be said: I give a great lecture, and am particularly good, I think, at making the kids see developments as interesting when they’d never before given them a thought. Movies are a huge part of their lives, and before movies there were plays. But how did plays start? I often test attention by popping in questions during the talk, and the kids were all right there with me.

“So you had these acting troupes traveling from town to town, acting out these morality plays to big audiences, whereas before, the churches themselves put on the mysteries. How would that change things, Meg?”

“Well, the church is religious, and the actors aren’t.”

“Okay, and how would that matter? Renee, your hand is up.”

“The church probably had priests who acted!”

“Okay, and what does that mean? Think about the difference between a priest and and actor. Isaac?”

“The actors would need money, right? The Church had money already.”

Ian said, “Yes, they’d have to get money. How do you get money if it’s just a big crowd?”

“You pass the hat,” said Dom, “like they do in the movies.”

“You can’t pass the hat if you’ve got hundreds of people in the audience,” said Kayla.

“And what if no one wants to pay? How would they make money?” asked Sheena.

“Wow. You all are taking my lecture away from me. You’re right about the differences, the money, and passing the hat works well as a voluntary payment for small groups, but if actors were going to make a business of it, it’d be really convenient to have, oh, I don’t know, maybe a building? To let people in after they’ve paid? Otherwise known as….”

“Theaters!” they chorused.

The handouts, as well as their work over the next week, confirmed that this stuck with them.

Day 2: Using Primary Documents
Students had to map out the theaters of London during the Elizabethan era, using the “Agas Map” (Civitas Londinium). They had a handout with descriptions of theater locations, and they had to use the big map as well as the map on their handout to place all the theaters. When they finished, they checked their work against the placement based on current historical knowledge.

I printed out the Agas Map of London in 32 full page sections, which I then glued together. And trust me, crafts ain’t my thang, usually. But it was worth it, if only for the great visual. It’s a gorgeous map.

These were the clues:

Here’s the map they used to check their work:

Doing it again, I’d have magnifying glasses to read the Agas map more clearly. Still, it was a successful day. The students, working in pairs, found all the theaters and enjoyed the scavenger hunt aspect.

To be continued….

Teaching Humanities, Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night lesson plan and discussion.

This was a 100 minute block period daily, which was pretty cool. Rather than do history one day and English the next, we switched off between history and English. Block is pretty brutal for math, but it’s great for history and English. I have most of the assignment images at the bottom of this post.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I went off the reservation for the last month of the school year. The original lesson plan called for an entire month of Twelfth Night, spent not reading and understanding it, but exploring issues of identity and gender and how the play helped the students see these issues in their own lives. Yeah, not my thing. I started out with good intentions, but by Day 3, I knew I’d done as much as I could. So I cut the time on Twelfth Night in half and then did a two week unit on Elizabethan theater. When I mention the “original lesson plan”, I’m referring to the plan I followed before jumping off.

Primary learning objective: Shakespeare becomes much more understandable when it’s seen and heard. Yes, the words can be simplified, but a great deal of the beauty and power is lost. Students who struggle with understanding Shakespeare can help themselves gain a better understanding of the material by hunting out a movie, talking it over with friends, and yes, reading synopses or translations. But they should also realize that the whole reason we still read Shakespeare has much to do with the beauty and strength of the words, and to make every effort to increase their understanding of those words.

Secondary learning objectives: Students will learn one of Elizabethan acting traditions (e.g., why was Viola dressing like a boy?). They will also form a greater awareness of the challenges and opportunities that emerge as the written word is translated to the stage.

Notes: Remember that a third of the class had reading skills at about the sixth grade level. Actually understanding Twelfth Night text was well beyond their abilities. The top kids, who read at college level (four of them) would find the assignments I was going to give intellectually interesting, even if we weren’t actually analyzing the literature–which they all would read. The mid level kids (half the class) probably would have benefitted from more close reading of the literature. However, as any English teacher can tell you, kids don’t usually do the reading at home, which means you have to schedule a lot of school time for it—and that would leave my low ability kids lost and bored and goofing around, all for the possibility that my mid-level ability kids might gain something from reading more Shakespeare. It was a tradeoff. Eh. Which is not to say the kids weren’t assigned the reading, and that my top level and probably half of my mid-level kids did. It’s just that I didn’t push the reading, as you’ll see.

Day 1-2: Watched the movie, a very good rendition. The kids had to create a “social network” of the characters.

This came from the original plan, it did help the kids focus on characters as well as plot. I then modified the assignment a bit to be less squishy, and off they went. I am not a teacher who goes to the art well much, and whenever I do I am reminded how much the kids love it. They were incredibly creative. I didn’t have an android back then, or I would have grabbed pictures of their work.

Day 3: Gallery walk through the networks and a reading of a Edith Nesbit’s short story of the play and then a fishbowl discussion of three questions. The questions were assigned by student ability (not obviously so). Students are graded in fishbowl on their participation and the strength of their discussion. While the discussion topics varied in complexity, students focused on the tradeoffs made in telling the same basic story in text, live action, or film.

It was the Nesbit story, in fact, that gave me my jumping off point and my new lesson objective. The only students who actually discussed the story were the lower ability students; the top students had to start wrestling with staging and technique.

It’s funny: I have little truck with math “techniques” (pair and share, blah blah blah). I am a big fan, however, of fishbowls and jigsaws in English and history. I suspect it’s because fishbowls and jigsaws work, whereas math techniques just make everyone feel better about trying something. No evidence to support this theory, though.

I thought the questions I came up with for this fishbowl were pretty strong; the kids liked them, too.

Day 4: Read the first act of Twelfth Night aloud. Discussed how much more difficult it would have been to understand if they hadn’t seen the movie first–or was there anyone who found it easier to read than watch? (there wasn’t) Reference back to the free write, short story, and staging.

Assignment: read Act II, scenes 1-3. In class, we looked at them to be sure everyone had a reference point from the movie. I told them yes, I knew of No Fear Shakespeare, and NOT TO USE IT RIGHT NOW. It was okay if they didn’t get everything; we’d discuss it tomorrow, and we would be talking about how to use NFS.

I did a longer stint with SSR today, because reading aloud can be deadly. The first day, the kids just took turns reading it aloud with no acting it out. I am reasonably sure that most of the kids did not use NFS to translate, given that I’d told them I wanted them to puzzle about it without that help and that I wasn’t criticizing NFS.

Day 5: Assigned SSR for 30 minutes–read the rest of Act II, looking for parts you remember from movie. Then we acted out most of Act III–not just reading aloud, but with emphasis and minimal staging. If a student muffed a delivery, I’d make him or her do it again. (Note: I had them skip through a lot of the boring parts.)

Weekend Assignment: Read Acts IV and V of Twelfth Night. Yes, No Fear Shakespeare was allowed, but as much as possible they are to look at both to gain a better sense of what those words mean. Extra credit: spot one scene that was definitely not in the movie. (four kids found some scenes that hadn’t been in the movie.)

As we read through Sebastian and Antonio’s scenes, one student asks “So, am I the only picking up on the whole gay thing? What were they doing on that ship, anyway?” “I think Antonio only helped Sebastian because he was hot for him” said another and the class quickly devolved into three minutes of ribald speculation until I reluctantly restored order.

Day 6: Freewrite: I gave them one scene in two columns, one of the original text, the other “translated” by NFS. It is my opinion, said the freewrite assignment, that NFS loses a great deal in translation. Do you agree or disagree? Be specific and discuss the use of descriptive language, particularly metaphors and similes.

They agreed in all cases (safe choice) but every student, from the strongest to weakest readers, gave thoughtful responses about what was lost in translation, along with some decent specific examples. I was pleased. By the way, I don’t have any documents from the past four days, because it was all done by my winging it through Days 4-6 while I planned out the next assignments, which start now.

Rest of Day 6 and Day 7: Gibberish assignment. No, not the game or the language, but literally words that couldn’t be understood. Students formed groups and chose from a list of scenes that I’d chosen. They had to stage the scene—props and costumes allowed—but they were only allowed to use nonsense language of their choice. They had to focus on making the staging as clear as possible to someone who wasn’t familiar with the play. They had close to two hours of class time to work on their staging, as well as during advisory and of course, after school.

I had no idea how this would work. I just didn’t want them spending time creating scenes that wouldn’t be very good to start with, and this promised to be funny

Day 8: Performance of the Gibberish Staging

This is undoubtedly the funniest 100 minutes of class time I have ever designed.

• Two boys enacted Olivia’s proposal to Viola saying “glockle blockel stoppel” over and over again, with Olivia looking mooningly into Viola’s eyes and Viola–who was much, much larger than Olivia—desperately trying to escape.
• Three girls acted out Malvolio’s yellow stocking scene in three languages: Tagalog (Malvolio), Japanese (Olivia) and Chinese (Maria).
• Four students acted out Sir Andrew’s letter writing scene with Sir Andrew (a girl) doing knee bends, fencing stabs, and muscle preening while Sir Toby reads the letter aloud, giving reassurances to Sir Andrew as to its ferocious law-abidingness, which exchanging snide looks with Maria–and then the duel itself with Viola played by one of the tallest boys in the class, wincing in terror–all done to the sounds of Dubdubdubbiddybub.

And those are just the three I remember specifically; they were all hysterical and in the main, very well staged. I dunno, maybe you had to be there. The students had a blast and wrote their own reviews.

HW: Final Essay–you have a friend who is complaining about how hard it is to read Shakespeare. Write a full-page letter (can be informal, but no text-speak) and give some advice with specific examples.

The results here were pretty much what you’d expect. Nothing spectacular, but they all got the idea.

Day 9 or Day 10—I can’t remember if I’m missing a day or if we had to do some assembly. In any event, the last day of the unit was the final. Students had to identify key plot points and quotes.

While I didn’t track specific results, all the students got a C or higher, and only 3 students got a C. I had spent the year emphasizing the importance of remembering content, not letting it just go in one ear and out the other, and it had really paid off. My favorite airhead got a B-, to her shock, and took a bow to the class.

Documents below.

It’s funny; I have many fond memories of the Elizabethan history unit, but not until I wrote this up did I realize that the Twelfth Night unit had also been quite successful. Learning objective definitely achieved by all students. I’m quite sure they increased their content knowledge and all of them, regardless of reading ability, have a decent memory of the main plot points of the play. All that and gender identity discussions, too!

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