expect more

it's been a long time since i first got down, but i still keep making these funky sounds. -- too short

much has changed since last post. in the world, in the universe, in me. but you all know more about what's been going on in the world than i do. i've been expected more and more to do and be certain things. i have been expected to be a certain kind of student, a certain kind of employee, a certain kind of friend, a certain kind of person. my relationships with those holding those expectations span the spectrum from most intimate partner to unacquainted reluctant crosser of misguided paths. the importance of these relationships have not held in proportion with my responses. in other words, i have spent a lot of energy trying to live up to expectations from people i do not even know and sacrificing attention to expectations of those about whom i care the most. this has left me with emptiness and a feeling that i have run past the housefire with a bucket of water so i may dump it in the river. this is the second layer of my cake.

the first layer is less complicated and lacks the fancy frosting roses that adorned the second layer. it has come to my attention that i used to live a certain way and that way made me happy, buoyant, creative and energetic. i was constantly in motion in one way or the other, and i used my momentum to help get others moving. this could have been helping someone pick up their groceries after the soaked bag lets loose in the middle of the parking lot or it could have been reaffirming someone's sense of self-worth after he or she found reason to doubt it. maybe it was just getting someone to finger paint on hands and knees at four in the morning. i didn't need these types of help very often, because i would get it on my own, often through these same actions. my momentum allowed me to clear obstacles as they arose with minimal delay or effort. yes, i know i promised this layer is less complicated. you'll see.
now, somehow somewhere sometime i started reeling this part of me back. it began to seem more important to live up to an expectation to: find a steady secure job, get my work done on time, follow the rules, take advantage of every networking opportunity, etc. the expectations i had for myself to keep moving keep exploring help others where i can and always BE what i believe in were moved to the back burner, which was not even lit.
so it comes down to this: i have tried the approach of living up to the expectations placed on me by those who do not know me. because they do not know me, their expectations are groundless and thereby have nothing to do with me. my own expectations, however, are grounded in twenty-six years of a fairly close relationship with myself, and are easily changed when obsolete, erroneous or simply too stagnant for my life as i need it to be.

so i am going to keep moving without the extra fat and bulk of that second layer, so i can move freely again and finally get somewhere. hopefully, this will become others' understanding of me, which i know one or two people never stopped expecting.
expect more

age or ability?

i was talking with a colleague and confidant about grade-level systems, and we began thinking about what makes more sense for students: age-level or ability-level placement? i immediately thought of other learning processes such as martial arts, music, sports, visual arts and almost everything else that is typically taught outside our K-12 classrooms, and i realized each of these operates on an ability-based placement system. black belts are not just the old fogies and many middle school music students are much more accomplished than some college student trying to become that guy-at-the-party-who-plays-guitar. so why are students in our schools placed in grade levels based on their ages, forcing teacher to teach myriad levels within a single group of students?

i think socialization is one reason. students should be able to socialize with peers at or near the same age, especially during adolescent years. we have all heard about 13-year-olds who go to college and turn into socially inept savants who live frustrated, incomplete lives, having never developed certain parts of their socio-psychological selves through social interaction. also, exceptionally advanced students often learn so quickly, that even higher level courses are too slow for them. they actually need accelerated courses to be challenged. but is it elitist to offer accelerated options for those who are exceptionally able learners? it is if we ignore the needs of other students. but we don't think that has to happen.

let's consider what most kids need:
social interaction with peers: ah, but 'peers' can be defined by age, intellect, specific aptitude and interests, not just the other kids on the block.
academic challenge: bored kids are usually bored because their learning, lightning fast at birth, has continuously slowed to a mind-numbing belly crawl. think back, you know what i am talking about.
life challenge: this is a little fuzzy, but kids need to learn how to deal with struggles they will face throughout their lives. we offer safe environments to explore academic learning in schools, so we can cerainly help ensure kids begin learning life lessons individually while they still have support networks like parents, guardians, teachers and other guides available. out in the world, sometimes there's no one but you and your problems. if that's the first time you've dealt with these types of problems, you might be in trouble.

we need to figure out how to balance these things without excluding or severely limiting any of them. keeping students with kids the same age no matter what leaves some kids bored and artificially limited and others struggling to keep up, often learning more about how to limp through an upcoming high-stakes test than any actual knowledge or skills. learning must be connected to the rest of the world, so there is no reason different age-levels and different academic levels need to remain bounded from one another. we adults work with and learn from one another, even though we are all different ages and levels of ability and experience. why not prepare students to do this more naturally by encouraging it while they are still in school?

i suspect that there are enough variations among students regarding different kinds of aptitudes and abilities that all forms of developmentally important interaction can be met through an approach that limits arbitrary and artificial barriers between students. i realize this is a complex process and deals with very complex inter- and intrapersonal activities. i don't believe that attempting to simplify the students into least-common-denominator categories is the best way to address this complexity. i realize this post contradicts itself in some places, but the argument does have multiple valid perspectives so i have decided not to edit them out. i hope this transparency will allow better discussion of this topic.

timelapse invite

greetings, all. i have set up a wiki site for the simple creation of a collaborative story called timelapse about a person like me and like all of you. in fact, it IS me and all of you. the story takes place over the course of 24 hours, though what happens within that time is up to all of us. use of time travel, of course, is encouraged. you can find loose instructions at the top of the page. please feel free to write as little, as much and as often as you wish, but remember that we are trying to incorporate the dreams and ideas of many different people into one constructed person. this project will end at 5 pm on Monday, April 23rd. the page will be locked at that time, allowing no further edits or additions. a new project will follow. enjoy.

warning: graphic discussion

are graphic novels lower on the food chain than verbal prose? than poetry? are pictures, combined with words or standing alone less effective, less valuable than words alone? advertisers would say no. the art world would say no. the american national standards institute (ANSI) would say no. so why do haughty-graphic-novel-bashing-commenters writing for pseudo-affected audiences feel their opinions are fact?

what if we transported ourselves back in time to live amongst the inca? should we wag our fingers at them for not figuring out how to construct a language that was based on binary relationships rather than ternary systems of meaning-making, as is used to construct aymara, one of their chief languages? it seems a embarrassingly post-elitist to denounce the communication system of a society that existed six centuries ago, yet successfully practiced mortarless stone construction, brain surgery, sustainable high altitude agriculture and operated with a government that included separate chains of command, creating checks and balances on authority. in many ways, this society in south america was far more advanced than the majority of the world. yet, they communicated in a very different way than their contemporaries, a way that many believe is better for the obvious purpose: communicating. many critics of prose cannot wrap their brains around the delicate, smashing facets of poetry. many poets cannot see the dynamic living magic in writing for the stage.

the graphic novel is another form of writing, implementing multiple ways of learning and information presentation/uptake that are more complex and require significantly more planning than prose. the process of creating a graphic novel involves ways of thinking and composing that many of us who dwell beneath the surface of the overpopulated algae-choked verbal lagoon cannot even imagine, let alone practice with any level of understanding or success.

but i love words. notice the simplistic symbolic binary construction of that which you've just read. words are great. let's not denounce their brothers and sisters, though.

teachers who hate learning

yes, folks, this is a rant. put up your filter guard now, if that's how read.
i have been involved with several conversations recently aimed at increasing student engagement and active, personalized learning. these are important topics, and i think these are core goals for creating classrooms that invite and encourage learning, rather than assume and vacantly proscribe the same. the problem, however, has little to do with human nature, inherent student apathy or any of the other excuses we educators like to keep ready in our hip pockets to deploy in post failure self coddling . i'll return to this in a moment. be ready.
the buzz phrase of the day has of late been "buy-in." we need to increase student buy-in to create a culture of engagement within the classroom. yes. herein lies the floor slab of our problem: this converstation is one i regularly have with in-service and pre-service teachers who, in graduate classes, consciously aim at the minimum requirements to complete the class with a decent grade. many have completely disengaged from activities designed to provide insight into those activities that our students do all the time by their own volition, activities that offer incredible learning possibilities if we teachers understood how and why students do these things. e.g.: electronic social networking, video gaming, independent media creation (video, music, comics, visual art, writing, etc.) in most cases, i actually hear words such as, "i think that would be a lot of work. i just wanna get this done." the ugly head of the western-results-above-all monster reareth. and you wondered how "Git-R-Done" became our national mantra.
these discussions about student buy-in take place between teachers who are students, and who are unwilling or cannot even figure out how to "buy in" for themselves. i am afraid, within the educultural context of these graduate school classrooms, the student by-in discussion has become little more than pathetically doomed cul-de-sac smalltalk.
back to OUR students' buy-in: we are learning that modelling is one of the most effective methods of teaching. here's a new cliche'd maxim, because i am making it one: do not as i say if it is not as i do. as a group, our students are very observant. they pick up on everything we do, whether we pick up on it or not. we cannot embody poor learning teachnique and expect our students to develop good learning technique.
we are attempting to create a classroom culture that differs from that of the outside world. how can we change the way students learn if we are unwilling to change the way WE learn? students are apathetic because we have not shown them why our activities are important to them (sometimes the activities we design are not actually important, and students identify that as well). students only do enough to get the grade because, for over a century the grade has been the understood goal of formal education procedure. actual learning has been cast as the third-string benchwarmer/waterboy and is only brought into the game when we have either given up hope of winning or discarded the possibility of loss. most students play school with a tighter score, though, and consequently look off-field to see poor ol' learning sitting dejected on the sideline in gleaming white spotless disappointment.
and we are the coaches who keep it this way.
why not give true learning a little field time and strengthen the weakest link?

shifting from neutral

in or around 1998 i had an experience driving three friends and myself home the morning after a late night thunderstorm climbing trip in which i shifted the automatic transmission of my friend ben's 1982 honda accord into neutral while descending a long hill at 70 mph. in an attempt to shift back into Drive, i inappropriately moved the shifter toward Reverse. though the car moved forward at 70 mph while in Reverse for only a brief moment, the error was sufficient to do two things: it burned enough rubber off the front tires without even a glimmer of brake light to convince my tailgater t'was in his best interest to leave me a little more room and it converted a significant portion of the honda's internal transmission componentry into small pieces of ferrous debris. i spent a day, a sweatshirt and a couple hundred bucks laying the deceased to rest and replacing it with a salvage tranny.
cleverly embedded life lesson: shifting from neutral may result in an inappropriate reversal that can swiftly destroy one's means of moving forward.

blam!

we like to see comments on our blogs. activity on our pages let us know we are doing something useful to others, something that generates interest and thought in at least one or two people. however, i have noticed commercial commentary on a number of blogs, especially those of some of my classmates. i guess this is not a new phenomenon, but blog spam or blam seems a bit less checked that email spam. the conspicuously translated wording is very similar to the various viagra (and herbal analog) spam messages i get via email. does anyone know of a filtering widget or service that can help reduce these abusive commenters without blocking desirable contribution?