Sleep Starved

When I was an elementary school student, my bedtime was 7:30 p.m., into my PJs and after a bedtime story, and off to the land of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. (Sunday was an exception, when I would have a bath and be ready for bed in time to stay up for The Wonderful World of Disney. But as soon as Tinkerbell blinked into the credits, off I would go.) Over time, my bedtime became later and later. By high school, though I was usually hitting the hay by 10 or 10:30 p.m. Staying up later than 11 p.m. on a school night, maybe to finish up a school project, was a rare occasion.

Nowadays that's when some of my students are just getting off work. They left school at 2:30 p.m. and punched the time clock until this late hour. How much homework can they get done, returning home at eleven o'clock? Worse yet, they drag themselves through the next day, and the next, till they take a day off school to catch up. More interested in making a buck to support fashion, cars, and college funds, school becomes a drag, an interruptive burden in their busy lives. Afterall, when do they have time to catch up on Facebook and Twitter?

A few parents have bemoaned to me that social networking sites are the ruination of their kids' study habits. Students tell me they are up till 2 or 3 a.m. on these sites.

On June 7, 2010, NPR reported on some of the latest sleep research that (again) suggests that we all, but especially children, preschool to college, need more sleep. These reports say that ten hours a night would be beneficial to cognitive development. It likely would make us smarter as well as healthier. I wish I could get that much during the school year myself.

Last night, after my last day of school for the term, I eked out a luxurious eight. I have to admit, I like the recommended ten. Still, most school nights I am lucky to get five or six, but I do try to sneak in a one-to-two-hour nap in the late afternoon, before a few more hours of grading and prep for the next day. I clock at least thirty hours per week of school work in addition to the regular duty, so weekend sleep is key to an exhausting routine for ten months out of the year.

I'm glad that my parents set a strict bedtime when I was young. Getting me off to bed at 7:30 p.m. no doubt gave them some much needed time for their lives as well as providing my brain and body needed rest. As I grew older my parents stressed my trying to get my homework done before dinner. This gave me time to relax, watch television, or play in the neighborhood before a reasonable 9 or 10 o'clock bedtime. Or, on busy homework nights, time to finish up before the parental curfew.

Ah, those halcyon days.  As I teach seniors Macbeth, Shakespeare describes slumber so well:

     Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
     The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
     Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
     Chief nourisher in life's feast--

"Life feast"--of which most of my students are showing signs of starvation.
Image credit: "Asleep at the Wheel." By Aaron Jacobs. 17 Nov. 2005. Flickr.
Used by permission via Creative Commons: BY-SA.

Blended Schools: A Topsy-Turvy Mix of Real and Virtual

This year I am using blogs and wikis more and more not only for student interaction, but also for instructional delivery and presentation of assignments and activities.  As I look toward a blended schools model, I envision that much of what has been traditional homework may become classwork and vice versa.  Here's what I mean.

Where now I might present a slideshow in PowerPoint in class, soon students may view it on SlideShare as homework.  Where now I might assign a chapter of a novel to read as homework (with dwindling responses), I may require 40 minutes sustained silent reading in class and post a discussion in response to the reading on a blog for homework.

It sounds a bit topsy-turvy, but it will be based on students' needs.

I'm reflecting on recent studies by researchers at Stanford University, and anecdotal reports in the PBS Frontline documentary Digital Nation, that point out the needs of 21st century learners to not only work with technology, but also to abstain from it.  In a Digital Nation interview clip, Todd Oppeheimer, author of The Flickering Mind, (click here for a review) reminds us that the school is a sort of sanctuary from the busi-ness of the world and instant gratification of popular culture; rather the academy has always been  "a place of  discipline and perserverance," where holding a thought, not just scanning data is a valuable activity.

This past summer I studied at the University of Ghana at Legon. Although much more verdant and necessarily tropical in contrast to my other graduate school haunts of NYU's Washington Square or Oxford's Trinity College, I instantly felt that sense of the academy--that sense that I was in the company of scholars, walking about in converstations, hushed or exhuberant, on topics of intellectual importance.

Despite the arrival of cyber schooling, I believe for most students that a real, in-world place called school will have a vital role to play in learning, creating, and demonstrating a world of ideas long into the future. Although I know my students and I will be collaborating more and more in virtual spaces--and what's thought of as homework and classwork might get topsy-turvy, I also know  what schools can offer offline is irreplaceable.  Schools that genuinely blending the virtual, digital technology with thoughtful purpose will be able to offer that real, traditional sense of  belonging, focus, calm, and rigor that can only come at the discipline of school.

Image credit:  "Home Row." Detail. By Matt Hurst. 14 Oct. 2008. Uploaded 15 Mar. 2009. Flickr. Web. 3 Mar. 2010. Used by permission via Creative Commons Licensing.

Getting Wiki With Research Paper Drafting

This year I'm having my students draft their research papers on our class wiki on PBWorks. And I'm loving it.

First, it solves the transfer problem of having to save files at home or at school. It's all online. Students can write in class, in the writing center, in the media center, at home, at the public library, and at Starbucks.

Since we have a campus license, I can set page-level access, so that everyone's draft is private. While all the tentative processes of rough composition take place writers can have their privacy (yet be visible to me for assessing their progress). When the first full rough cut is ready, I can open their pages to one peer mutually.

Moreover, I'm not collecting a variety of handwritten or typed drafts of intro paragraphs, counterarguments, supports and conclusions. All of their progress is not only visible but also documented as to when it was saved, thanks to a page history feature.  I can see everyone's progress as soon as he or she clicks save.  I can also gage each student's progress (or lack thereof) and add encouragement or warnings along the way.

Students report a few downsides.  If they don't save frequently, they leave themselves open to power failures and lost keystrokes (PB Works has a save-and-continue feature in their Beta editor, coming).  And they must have Internet access--not such a problem in this digital age, but still a factor for some that share their computers with family, or the power goes off (which did happen this year due some bad weather).

Still, the ability to work at school and at home in a common online medium has more pluses than minuses. Haven't we all heard the refrain "I can't write in class"? Indeed, some students are more productive at home, when they are alone and not hopping from one bell to the next. They can spread out their notes, sip coffee, and hunker down for some quality drafting. For instance, this year, in the week students were working our their first drafts, we had several snow days, and students could keep working away from school.  And from home, I could watch their progress during our time away from school and offer coaching in the comment fields. The connectivity seemed to motivate both student and teacher, while helping everyone to beat cabin fever during the blizzard.

As students finish their papers they upload their Word files to the wiki for peer editing thanks to Word's review and comment feautures. Then it's on to the next draft and submit to teacher in Word.  Having the papers in electronic form facilitates plagiarism checking; I can simply pass along the paper to a checking service if it looks too good to be true. 

Next, I use Word to add my comments and mark the papers, send the amended file back through the wiki, and wait for the third and final draft.

Let it Snow!

Like many teachers and students in the Mid-Atlantic States, I've been experiencing a week of snow days. After quickly reminding my envious friends that I must make these days up on fairer days, I settle in to catching up on grading papers, replying to student blogs, and prepping for next week's classes.  Then calm.

A chance to think, to mull, to surf, and to read unlike what I had been accustomed to save my salad days of grad school or dog days of summer. Being unable to get out of the house, with two feet of fluff on the ground and a few more inches falling, I'm granted that rarest of commodities--time unscheduled.

Time to be reflective, creative, thoughtful, intellectual, sentimental, and focused.  I'm catching up with the September issue of Educational Leadership and the November issue of English Journal. I'm chairing a curriculum committee on 21st Century Learning Standards and both have periodical have offerings on the topic.

In EL, Terrence Clark's article "21st Century Scholars" tell of a program inspired by the curriculum framework of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. "The district's high school developed a program that gives students the opportunity to build an impressive electronic portfolio documenting an array of mind-stretching experiences, which take place outside of regular school hours in the afternoon, evening, on weekends, or during vacations."

In EJ, Jim Burke's piece for the English Journal's "From the Secondary Section" column, presents "Reimagining English: The Seven Personae of the Future."  He gives Howard Gardner's Five Minds for the Future an English teacher's perspective and profiles a lucky seven archetypes for the Millennials in our English courses.  These personae have one common denominator: imagination.  Burke lists:

storyteller, philosopher, historian, anthropollogist, reporter, critic, designer. 

It may seem that some of these are far afield from how we English teachers have thought of our craft. Burke argues:

This is the future we must imagine, the one in which our students will live. These are the personae they will adopt and adapt as society and the workplace evolve. Some will wonder where literature is, where culture can be found in this model. Yet I see our rich tradition of literature and language, rhetoric and composition, prose and poetry already existent in all these roles. It is simply time to reimagine how our discipline might be reenvisioned.  

Even without these personae in mind, many English teachers know that their work has helped students who have gone on to create, innovate, and cope with cultural change.  Now to remain relevant our cultural change Burke joins the chorus of Daniel Pink and Ken Robinson (and many others)  in calling us to make imaginarion, creativity, and collaboration the brain, heart, and soul of our courses.  More on the challenge of this in a future post.

Right now I have some shoveling to do.

Idealistic, Content, Disheartened? (Or Burnt Out?)

"I don't know whether I believe in teacher burn out," my college supervisor Hilda A. Kring, Ph.D. said to me more than twenty years ago. She called herself a "realistic idealist" when it came to most matters, including the topic at hand. One of her proteges, I would say the same of myself, and as for her comment, ditto.

A recent comment by a reader prompted my consideration about this idea of "burnout." He suggested that I get out of teacher if I'm burnt out. Agreed, but I'm still not sure about the idea of burnout. (And if you're wondering, I don't think I am nor in denial.)

While I was thinking about this, I see a recent study by the Public Agenda has released a report on a related topic: Teaching for a Living: How Teachers See the Profession Today. The study sheds light on what makes teachers feel valued and less likely to quit. It mentions things like:

• offering career paths in education,


• ensuring technology is available to aid instruction,


• and increasing teacher salaries to levels of other professional jobs such as lawyers and doctors.

More interesting to me, the study separates the 890 teachers surveyed into three groups: contended, disheartened, and idealists. When I heard the three monikers, I instantly thought this made sense. Don't we fall into one of the three categories?

Well, in the study 40% fell into the disheartened category, 37% contented, and 23% idealist.

I've already tipped my hand. You know I fall in to the minority--which brings me back to my wondering if there is burnout. Maybe there is such a thing--and dishearteneds are the best ones to ask about it, 77% of those studied who have been teaching for more than 10 years. But this realistic idealist can't see it.

Although I'm "way older" than most idealists teachers recorded in the study (77% of idealists identified by the study are Gen. Y'ers with fewer than 10 years in the classroom), I'll find a path for my career (36% of idealist teachers said this would be in education but outside of the classroom for them), a way to get the tech, and take whatever raise my union can muster.

A Meter of Happiness and Success

A few years ago I blogged about "booby-trapping your day for happiness," or at least some happy moments. Now research backs up this idea. And it's not just good advice for teachers. Kids too, and in fact everyone benefits from at least three positive experiences for every one negative.

In a recent U.S. News and World Report article, "Positive Psychology for Kids: Teaching Resilience with Positive Education," points to experts' findings of how accenting the positive in experiences can help students cope with the stress of learning. And that means learning how to deal with failure as well as success.

This goes much better than mere self-esteem. In the past decade or so, I've seen the hollow sense of self-esteem students have been given by the empty words of "great job" and "excellent" no matter what the outcome. Rather than our gilding every effort no matter how weak or futile, students need to learn to find the silver-lining in the clouds of their mistakes and missteps.

The article also links to a free website to test your own happiness ratio, designed by Barbara Frederickson, a professor at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

"Doing so might help you learn the sources of your positive emotions and the
triggers for you negative ones. 'The truth emerging from the science is that
feeling good as it is a wise investment in our future,' she says."

Studies are showing that teaching our students as well as ourselves how to interrupt the negative scripts we have in self-talk and with each other can lead to greater achievements in the long run and longer life. Resiliency.

As a result of inflated grades and so called lessons in self-esteem, I've seen students in my office in tears over the "first B" and dealt with parents who complain about a score because they "know" their child is an "A student." What ridiculous--pressure on students with all the emphasis not on achievement and learning but on scores and false ideas of esteem.

Remembering the maxims about learning more from our mistakes than from our success, I ask whether students did their best, what they learned from the activity, what they learned from the score, and what they can do to make their best better. Only be being honest with children, with what is expected and what is accomplished can we truly accentuate the positive, teach the positive, and teach resiliency--all which is much more lasting and fulfilling than a cliche high-five for mediocrity.

Information Highway: Country Roads, Take Me Home

For a short time I moved to Texas in the late 1980s. It was after the crash of the oil boom that preceded it. I lived in a suburban townhouse plan that had an exit of I-30 specifically built for the suburban sprawl right before the economic downturn; thus, the exit became specific to a few plans and a four-lane highway that went about four blocks in each direction before the black and white fence and sign reading "End of Expressway."

I am reminded of that roadway as I contemplate the information highway. As a teacher I often jump on the Internet to gain or refresh about topics in the curriculum. (What did teachers do before the Internet?) We can find websites, webquests, and lesson plans at our fingertips. Yet I was reminded such how fast and short those journeys can be when, after reviewing a few websites on a poet's work that I was reviewing for class, I consulted the hard copy leatherbound set of Encycolpaedia Britannica in my home library.

Was I reading about the same poet? Britannica led me into three and a half pages of fine print that gave so much breadth and depth on the subject that it almost seemed like a different biography altogether. I laughed. How many times during student research projects had I led my class to the literary criticism shelves of the nonfiction section and feigned amazement: "Lo! What have we here? Books, whole chapters--indeed whole books--on books!" (Seldom is my enthusiasm shared by my students--ah, but sometimes those "country roads of knowledge" are found serviceable by the earnest learner.)

As I pored over the Britannica entry and added to my lecture notes I enjoyed the scenery of one of those country roads, catching so much more than the information highway typically affords.

This month Microsoft curtails its Encarta program, stating:

People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past. As part of Microsoft’s goal to deliver the most effective and engaging resources for today’s consumer, it has made the decision to exit the Encarta business.

Is this a surrender to Wikipedia? I wonder . . . and worry.

Perhaps Encarta is off-mission for Microsoft in the long-term and I shouldn't fret. Still to loose an accessible, popular, and reliable reference tool is sad. Do we need to fear Britannica will follow suit, giving way to Wikipedia? Don't take this the wrong way: I myself love Wikipedia for a fast drive across contemporary knowledge and items not worth a encyclopedia's consideration, but when I want to get to know a subject in some depth I turn to a more established road. Wikipedia might get me there, but it's rather like asking a passerby for directions. In reaching my destination, if I don't suffer wrong turns, I still might not realize where I am along the way.

Image credit: Remix of Microsoft Encarta trademark and "Around the Bend." By Erica Marshall. 11 July 2008. Flickr.

Get the Shmoop

No, that's not a typo.  Shmoop is the latest study guide site for students and teachers of literature, poetry, and history.  It's put out by professors and grad students at Stanford, Berkley, Harvard, Yale, and other ivy-draped halls of humanities. 

English teachers and students are bound to like it for its scholarly-yet-breezy take on literature. It's cheeky in a nice way, comparing Conrad's Heart of Darkness to Lucas' Star Wars rather than Coppola's Apocalypse Now.  No snobs to pulp, you'll find Shmoop tells it like it is on everything from Hamlet by Shakespeare to Twilight by who-it-that-wrote-that?

I find it's got more goods and easier to access than Sparknotes, and a great improvement over Cliff Notes.  For a free account sign up, you can also save your favorite bits of information, organized in folders. They boast that the information on the site is documented and cited, and they help students cite for MLA, APA, and Chicago styles.

One downside is ads appear in the margins of the site that some teachers might not approve of for their students.  At any rate, it can be a guilty pleasure for teachers to have a reference. Looking up Tennessee William's The Glass Menagerie for such things as "Brain Snacks" (interesting trivia and allusions), pictures of playwright and performances, lists of literary devices (with examples), and 27 quotes on "Memory." 

Williams might agree that Shmoop is one of those "long-delayed but always expected something that we live for."

Publishing Le Blogue, La Raison d'Etre

A colleague with whom I've been working on student blogs, Nicole Roth, recently finished her doctoral research on blogging and its effects on high school writing. Her study indicates that despite an initial drop in proficiency that we guess might be accounted for by the newness of the experience, a learning curve of how-to use blog technology, or perhaps a hesitancy to write for a real audience after writing for "just to get it done" across so many years of schooling, soon the students were surpassing their peers whether they were writing in long-hand or via word processors. So our hunches about students writing more and writing for publication--and instant publication at that--leading to greater proficiency are confirmed. More on that and Nicole's study in a future blog.

What got me thinking about this was something I heard in a screencast from Elizabeth Perry's blog. Elizabeth Perry is a fellow educator, blogger, author, artist, and last but not least fellow Pittsburgher. In her screencast she eloquently describes the process of how she came to blog her daily sketches in the Carnegie Museum of Art in the aesthetically-tuned museum drawing project. It's worth some time spent in mulling over her work. Lovely drawings. For those folks who know the museum, will be the recognition that she has caught the familiar, natural order of the place in her sketches. Perry comments on a motivation of her blogging that I think is integral to why it might works so well. She reflects:

"Once I started, the public and shared nature of that process made me want to keep going. The response has been encouraging."

I find myself connecting with this sentiment with regard to my own and my students' blogging experiences. I've blogged now for a month and I feel a sense of small, quiet accomplishment every time I put my two cents in. My sense is that this feeling comes not from the reflection inherent in writing, and the thinking at the point of utterance, but also because it is not just for myself. I don't know if will always be so. But I know it is good for today. My first motivation to blog was to find out if I could hack it. There I was asking students to do something I had not attempted, other than what comments I had offered in our class blog. Whether or not I have an audience or am rattling on in an empty room seems to matter not. My keypad needs the exercise. Wait! someone lurked in from London this week! There's the adrenaline rush and I'm good for another 7 days.

I can remember as a kid I would spend all day making art projects. I had piles of drawings, pastings, cutouts, paintings--you name it, if it could be made with construction paper, markers, paste, crayons, pencils, cotton, pipe cleaners, ad infinitum, it was in my pile. I created one or several art pieces a day. Yet, I still remember having the realization one day at age 4 that I was wasting my time because no one was going to see the pile. I gave up the practice and tossed most of it away. And although I continued to dabble with graphics on through the rest of my life, and copped an job at an ad agency because of it, and have a strong appreciation for art, as a boy I never imagined an audience. I stopped for lack of a public. So maybe would not have become an artist. After all, artists claim they create for themselves, right?

And I at 4 concluded an audience was my art's raison d'etre and mostly ceased to create. For this post, I pulled out a drawing from kindergarten. (Note my teacher Mrs. Pullings' encouragement at the bottom.) Like a chronically ill patient that manages to live to see the cure, it's a survivor to the day of personal, global publication. What if I could have published my pile in 1968! Who knows? Maybe my art would have continued. Ah, well, not meant to be.

Yet, I consider the empowering nature of Internet publishing to our students and how it contributes to the depth of literary analysis, synthesis, and composition as they make their own voices known on our class blogs (By the way, the reason there is no hyperlink to the class blogs is that for the time being anyway, they are closed-forums, for security concerns, and therefore I am unable to share). But rest assured, for all their groaning about "having to blog," my students are gaining in their writing and thinking because of the practice and even more so because of the publishing, not to me, but to each other. They have a public that matters to them and I have the wisdom of a 4 year-old boy telling me so.