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Paragraph Six - Students' Questions and Planning for Surprises
Update on “The Question that Fed My Writing Unit.” You noticed the title change, didn’t you? From “The Question that Ate My Writing Unit” to “The Question that Fed My Writing Unit?” I may be jumping the gun, but my hope is only growing that teacher Tom McMurrer’s second grade writing unit on letter writing is becoming more meaningful in response to the students’ unexpected questions: (“Where do you get a stamp?” “What happens...
Paragraph Six - Living with Questions
Promised update on The Question that Ate My Writing Unit: Tom McMurrer, the second grade teacher at PS 124 whose unit was in peril, has decided to contact the United States Postal Service to see if he can organize a class trip to answer the students’ questions. We have trepidation. What if the recession has caused the USPS to cut back its...
Paragraph Six - The Question of Questions
Last blog post, I settled on the piñata as a metaphor for how big ideas work in the classroom. You whack it hard enough, and out bursts a hailstorm of essential and guiding questions.
Essential questions are the crown jewels of the curriculum. They dazzle us with their value and beauty at the front of the classroom, posted above blackboards (or whiteboards, or smartboards.) They are a constant point of reference during the year’s, the unit’s, the week’s, the day’s lessons. They inspire and...
Paragraph Six - Big Ideas, Essential Questions, and Piñatas
Consider, for a moment, the metaphor, how it works and what it does for us. Martin Luther King, Jr., was in Memphis, which, yes, does have bluffs, but is hardly on top of a mountain, when he declared that he had seen the mountaintop. We knew what he was talking about, though: a spiritual apex. When the Chinese proverbists say, “Give a dude a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime,” they’re not talking about...
Paragraph Six - Big Ideas and Bodhisattvas
In my last post I claimed, with the help of Zhongkui the Demon Queller and a few statements of understanding, to have vanquished the teacher’s main demon of time. I can tell from the looks on some of your faces that you’re not quite convinced. Let’s take the time to go into it a little deeper. (When the revolution’s complete, that’s what all teachers will be able to say instead of “We have to move on because we have so much to cover.”) Let’s hear what a few writers have to say about...
Election Day Whole School Improvement
Election Day has just passed, and across New York City people were engaged in a process of contributing their voice to the decision-making processes of the city. Three New York schools were also involved in a similar process - giving voice to teacher leadership and empowering all teachers in a faculty to make critical strategic decisions about their whole school improvement plans for the year. This has taken time and most importantly, working through a...
Paragraph Six - Big Ideas and the Problem of Coverage
In my last post I boasted that I could quell the educator’s purple people eating demon of time. Spend a few seconds with me and we’ll see how it goes. First, the story of Zhongkui, my patron ghost in this endeavor:
Zhongkui was a devoted student who, for whatever reason failed the national examination. Times were different during those years in China – sometime around 700 BCE. When you failed a national exam...
Paragraph Six - Big Ideas
In my first “Paragraph Six” I laid bare the belief that has guided me through all my years in the classroom: that the purpose of education should be to liberate students’ voices. I also said that my personal goal was to enjoy myself.
This is all well and good, but what happens to your altruistic creeds and your pleasure-principle-based goals in the face of the monolith: the state, and its tests?
