Subscribe
Jan
19
Accidental Lessons
Filed Under lifelong learning, personal development, teaching moments | View Comments
I don’t like Ariel.
No, that’s not true. It’s not that I don’t like Ariel. I actually hate her. I have since I was sixteen. Teenaged me just couldn’t get behind a girl who gives up a critical (non-harmful) component of her personal identity to pursue a guy she doesn’t know anything about, but thinks is cute. Adult me doesn’t care for characters who do this, either.
The Disney Princesses in general have come under quite a bit of attack in recent months because of the lessons these characters, beloved by little girls for decades, have the potential to share. No one is looking at the fairy tale from which the Princess came or the period during which the movie was made. They’re too busy worrying that a mindset from days gone by will translate as “classic” and “expected” for girls of today.
And they’re not wrong for worrying.
Not too long ago, a picture was making the rounds on the feminist sites where someone had taken each Disney Princess and boiled her down to her essence. While I hotly disagree with the analysis of bookworm Belle, it illustrates the lesson a little girl could pick up from her favorite princess. The problem is, it’s not just little girls being imprinted with these lessons. Web series The Guild illustrates just how widespread the problem is when a male character insults another male character by telling him he has the street smarts of a cartoon princess.
When everyone learns a lesson incorrectly, it becomes that much harder to set the record straight.
I do appreciate how Huffy’s marketing department seems to be approaching the situation. The new commercial for their Disney Princess bikes shows two little girls off on a quest to rescue a prince (a teddy bear). Once he’s free, they take off on another adventure. The commercial has been already been recognized for promoting feminist values for little girls, but is it really enough?
It might prove to be a good start if the effort can be sustained by other girl-focused media.
Dec
8
I don’t hear it often, but occasionally a student will ask me why I’m forcing him to learn a math skill he’s struggling with. I usually start asking about hobbies, interests, and future plans and tie what he’s doing to that. The student still grumbles, but he gets back to work, soon mastering the skill and grumbling about the next one.
While I love to learn new things, I can sympathize with my students. It’s hard to make yourself work through challenging skills when you can’t see where you’re going.
A couple of summers ago, I decided I’d had it with not being able to draw anything more than a stick figure and started working through the beginning lessons at Drawspace. The first lessons were simple enough, but I quickly got to the real-life human lessons. I hated them. I dreaded them. In fact, I kind of put them off because I didn’t want to do them. I completely ignored the last lesson because I felt like I couldn’t handle yet another failure (and a friend had loaned me an anatomy book that was proving far more useful).
While I was avoiding the lessons I didn’t want to do, I was enjoying the cartoon lessons. It didn’t take long to realize that if I wanted those to come out well, then I had to learn about human proportions and the basics of drawing a well-constructed, believable person. I didn’t go back to the lessons I’d skipped. Instead, I started experimenting with drawing people. Then, I discovered a manga how-to that showed me a way to take my stick figures and build them up to people.
I can almost draw human-shaped people now, as long as you don’t look at their hands, but I wouldn’t have reached that point if I hadn’t put myself through the challenge of actually learning about human shapes and proportions, my people would still have this grammar-school blob quality to them.
Sometimes, when a student is really struggling to see where he is in the big picture and I can see that he needs that big picture clarified for him, I share that with him. He usually asks to draw instead of doing math, but I just laugh and make him get back to work. When the next skill is easier, he more often than not tackles it because he can see that he knows part of the skill already. The big picture is that much clearer because he pushed himself through the challenge.
Sep
18
The value of information
Filed Under content development, education, teaching moments | View Comments
There have been quite a few jokes lately on the widespread misinterpretation of the quote, “Information wants to be free.” Call it optimistic hopefulness. Call it brutish ignorance. Call it whatever you will. The simple fact of the matter is that because “free” has multiple definitions, people interpreted it to fit their worldview (perhaps saying something about themselves in the process).
Most of my students haven’t heard this quote, in context or out, but they definitely face the inherent spirit of it on a near-daily basis as they learn about copyright and plagiarism. I’ll never forget the student who, in all seriousness, told me that she could take anything she found on the internet and do whatever she wanted with it because it was “free”. I quickly explained to her that copyright does extend to work on the internet, and it’s only free if it’s specifically labeled public domain. She wasn’t too sure about that, but she was at least willing to consider that I knew what I was talking about.
It’s amazing how many of my students have either not been taught this, or have tuned out the teacher. These students tend to be frustrating because they whine on and on (in a private tutoring center, no less) about how they can’t get to the information they want for a school project because some jerk had the gall to lock it up away from them. They then boast that they can just find that same information somewhere else…and that never works out. They don’t get it. They don’t understand.
What they’re missing, and what I think is a part of what makes copyright protection so nice, is that information doesn’t want to be certain definitions of free. It wants to be unrestrained, but at the same time be respected and valued.
Sep
7
Most of my students head back to school tomorrow, and they’re excited.
Okay, maybe they aren’t, but they’re already asking that one question every teacher dreads: Why do I have to learn this?
We’re taught in teacher prep programs that this is a learner’s driving question once they become a teenager. Sometimes, it’s obvious why they have to learn something. They can see how it will help them in their desired career or allow them to pursue a hobby. Some of my high schoolers are willing to learn anything that they think will make them look better than their friends; others just want to know what they need to survive the next test, and they don’t look at applicability past that.
Adult learners are also driven by this question. They’re looking for things to help them perform their job more efficiently. Some are looking to be more creative in their job. Some are just looking to strengthen or diversify their skill set. But just like teenagers, adults aren’t always so willing to sit through lessons that they can see that they need without giving into the whiny teenager voice asking, “Why do I have to learn this?”
Is there a cure? Yes, help learners see how what they’re working on connects to what they will be doing in the future. It’s not foolproof (teenagers seem particularly talented at thinking they’ll never have to do anything they don’t want to once they’re adults), but it can make teaching a tiny bit easier.
Sep
27
Learning from cartoons
Filed Under animation, teaching moments | View Comments
On Dinosaur King this morning, Rex defined “savannah” in a way that was reminiscent of Magi-Nation. Seriously, what is keeping that show from the E/I label? (Best guess: episode length)
It did make me think about M.A.S.K., as it often does, and I got to wondering about what I learned from episodes (not the PSAs at the end of each episode- I really liked preachy cartoons, didn’t I?). It was things like- apple seeds contain trace amounts of a poisonous substance, how two-way mirrors work, bullet trains are the fastest on earth.
You know…useful stuff! *grin*
Jul
4
Dead Bunny’s Guide to Basic Grammar
Filed Under teaching moments, writing | View Comments
For those who haven’t met him yet, Dead Bunny is my teaching assistant. Don’t worry. He isn’t really a dead bunny. He’s a live bunny whose name just happens to be Dead. (Blame my students.) He has his own (neglected) blog where he was teaching algebra last year. He’s starting to produce his own tutorials on algebra topics.
But he actually started out teaching writing. After a year’s break, he’s now starting to help my writing students again by teaching the basic foundations of grammar.
While he hasn’t figured out how to teach nouns yet, he has figured out that “bunny” is a common noun and “Dead Bunny” is a proper noun. He’s still working on this one.
Verbs are much simpler. As the commercials say, a verb is what you do. So if you’re trying to decide if a word is a verb, simply ask yourself if the bunny can do the word you’re looking at. One of my students loves this one. As she’s working on her worksheets, she whispers to herself, “The bunny (word)”, and keeps going until she hits a combination that allows the bunny to do something.
Dead Bunny also likes adjectives. An adjective is a word that describes a noun. When looking for adjectives, just put the word in front of “bunny”. If it can actually describe the bunny, you’ve found an adjective. (It’s kind of funny listening to my whispering student work through these. She asks herself, “Can the bunny be (word)? No, but he could be (word). Wait, no he can’t. Aha, but he could be (word).”)
Adverbs are words that describe verbs. If the word you’re looking at can answer any one of the four following questions:
- The bunny did it how?
- The bunny did it when?
- The bunny did it where?
- The bunny did it how often?
then the word is an adverb.
The only other part of speech, the original one, that Dead Bunny has taught is prepositions. If the word can describe where the bunny is in relation to a box, then the word is a preposition. (This lesson is actually how the bunny was given his name.)
While it may seem strange to learn grammar from a fictional bunny, it’s really helped a lot of my students better understand the parts of speech. In fact, after our verb lesson, my whispering student went back to her English teacher and asked if she could retake a test she had just failed. With the help of the bunny, she got a much better grade on the retake, and she’s now using Dead Bunny to explain grammar to struggling classmates. Her teacher was quite amused.
Jul
2
The details are the spices
Filed Under teaching moments, writing | View Comments
After spending two years begging and pleading with young writers to add more detail to their essays, I finally met one who added far too many details in the wordiest way possible. I spend four hours a week begging and pleading with her to either cut excessive details or state them more concisely, but she really struggles. As she said recently, her words are her babies and it hurts to cut them out.
I sympathized. I’ve been writing in one form or another since I was in elementary school. Learning to revise and edit wasn’t easy for me because I could turn out a paper that would earn top scores without even trying. It wasn’t until I got to grad school that someone (the department chair) sat me down and explained that while my writing was exemplary, it lacked any sense of finesse.
I’m still trying to find that finesse, actually.
But that wasn’t going to help this student. Since she responds well to metaphors, I told her that essays are like a dish. You follow the recipe to a point, and then you add and subtract spices to suit your own taste.
In her case, there are too many spices and the flavor is so overpowering that no one can enjoy the delightful ideas she’s writing about. Where many students serve a bland essay in need of those spices, hers is almost spice with a side of essay.
A well-written essay is like a well-executed dish. Through the right blend of basic structure and attention to spices, it catches the attention and makes the consumer want to stay with it to the very end. If it’s done just right, the consumer even regrets when it’s over.
Dec
12
Making mistakes can be the best learning experience
Filed Under lifelong learning, teaching moments | View Comments
Scene: My workplace, any day of the week.
Me: What do we do next?
Student: (looks at the desk, the floor, the clock on the wall, anywhere but the problem we’re working on)
Me: What do you think?
Student: (tentatively) I don’t know. (says exactly the right answer) I don’t know. Why are you asking me this? I don’t want to work on this any more. I don’t know any of this.
Me: But you just got it.
Student: Really?
It often amazes me how many of my students are afraid to speak up when I ask them how to do something, especially since I work with them in what is essentially a one-to-one environment. They really are afraid that they have no earthly idea what’s going on, that they’re stupid. It’s like pulling teeth to get them to make their best guess, despite the fact that when they stop to think about it, they either know what to do or they land on the right track.
They’re so afraid of making a mistake (either out of fear of sounding stupid or because of a hyper-critical teacher at school) that they really don’t want to think about things they aren’t sure about to begin with. That fear, I fear, holds way too many of my bright students from reaching their academic potential.
Fear is a funny thing. It can motivate you to put forth effort where you might not care otherwise. It can also cause you to hide from challenges you are more than capable of facing and defeating. It’s that second kind of fear that keeps my students from taking a chance because they’re afraid of making a mistake.
I’m trying to help them see that making mistakes is a good thing. (You’d think they’d get the message by now with all the mistakes I make.) Making mistakes allows a teacher to see where a student isn’t understanding the material, which leads to the teacher helping the student understand and move past that. Making mistakes is part of accommodation, which permits us to learn more. Making mistakes often leads to innovation and invention.
To paraphrase Thomas Edison, “I didn’t fail. I just learned several ways how not to do something.” That’s really all a mistake is, a way to not do something.
Inspired by The Many Errors in Thinking About Mistakes
Nov
15
I’ve been sitting on this challenge a bit longer than normal for two reasons. First, between NaNoWriMo and trying to find work, my life has been pretty crazy. Secondly, I just didn’t know what to write about.
Fortunately, my students have come to my rescue once again.
A couple of years back, I taught for a science enrichment program’s summer camp. We had kids that ranged in age from kindergarten to sixth grade (and amazingly, not a single one of my fifth or sixth graders was taller than me during any session).
The program’s mascot was a blue gecko. A six-foot-tall blue gecko.
One day, I was explaining the mascot to the kids during a break because one of them asked me about the weird-looking guy on my name tag. A sixth grader toward the back of the group yelled that geckos were stupid. I looked at him, positively scandalized, and said, “Don’t you realize every time you say that, a gecko somewhere falls down dead?” (Can you tell I was a fan of Peter Pan as a child?)
He shouted repeatedly, “Geckos are stupid!” So, I told him he had to save all the geckos he’d just killed by clapping. I’m pretty sure I looked like a complete idiot standing there clapping and telling him to clap if he believed in geckos. He just looked at me with that look they issue every tween for use when the nearest adult is acting silly, and I laughed.
I happened to share this story with three of my students the other night, and they all gave me that look issued to every teen for use when the nearest adult is reminiscing and laughing about it. They all admitted it was fairly funny, but they were all looking at me like I’d gone crazy.
I swear, it’s memories like this that keep me teaching. I get to help kids understand all sorts of things, and I can make a big fool of myself in the process. (And somehow, I do it more often than not without losing the respect of my students.)
Nov
15
I’ve been sitting on this challenge a bit longer than normal for two reasons. First, between NaNoWriMo and trying to find work, my life has been pretty crazy. Secondly, I just didn’t know what to write about.
Fortunately, my students have come to my rescue once again.
A couple of years back, I taught for a science enrichment program’s summer camp. We had kids that ranged in age from kindergarten to sixth grade (and amazingly, not a single one of my fifth or sixth graders was taller than me during any session).
The program’s mascot was a blue gecko. A six-foot-tall blue gecko.
One day, I was explaining the mascot to the kids during a break because one of them asked me about the weird-looking guy on my name tag. A sixth grader toward the back of the group yelled that geckos were stupid. I looked at him, positively scandalized, and said, “Don’t you realize every time you say that, a gecko somewhere falls down dead?” (Can you tell I was a fan of Peter Pan as a child?)
He shouts repeatedly, “Geckos are stupid!” So, I told him he had to save all the geckos he’d just killed by clapping. I’m pretty sure I looked like a complete idiot standing there clapping and telling him to clap if he believed in geckos. He just looked at me with that look they issue every tween for use when the nearest adult is acting silly, and I laughed.
I happened to share this story with three of my students the other night, and they all gave me that look issued to every teen for use when the nearest adult is reminiscing and laughing about it. They all admitted it was fairly funny, but they were all looking at me like I’d gone crazy.
I swear, it’s memories like this that keep me teaching. I get to help kids understand all sorts of things, and I can make a big fool of myself in the process. (And somehow, I do it more often than not without losing the respect of my students.)
