Sixth Tips for Teachers Meeting: Spring 08

In the final Tips for Teachers meeting of the Spring 08 semester, we watched excerpts from the film, The History Boys, adapted from the play of the same name by Arnold Bennett. The story takes place in a grammar school in Yorkshire in 1983, and mainly focuses on two teachers with different pedagogies; Hector, who is an older man and English Literature teacher, who believes in knowledge for its own sake, and an abundance of culture and creativity (the students often burst into song, recite poetry, or lines from a film when in his class); and Irwin, a very young new History teacher, who says that truth does not matter, but recommends that saying something different for the sake of making one’s exam paper stand out, is what is important.

The film follows the progress of a group of boys who are studying for the Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge) entrance exams, under these two different teachers. Many of us commented on how outspoken and passionate the boys were, and how it is rare to see this amongst New Jersey students today. Often, it was agreed, we see students who are glib and do not pursue knowledge in such amazing depth as was the case for the boys in this film. It was suggested that possibly the very fact that the group of boys in the film had such longevity with each other, having been in the same class for many years, might have contributed to this trend in them, yet even so it was remarkable how nice they were to each other, and how they tolerated each other’s weaknesses and admired each other’s strengths.

A factor, too, was that this film took place in the 1980’s, and we speculated that perhaps students read more then than many do now, and how modern-day technology might have short circuited the depth of knowledge (a topic we have dwelt on in previous Tips for Teachers meetings). Some of us talked about how we ask our students if they read for pleasure, and sadly only a few do, and one WP teacher said she thought this was simply because students do not know how to choose. However, one remarked that students do approach librarians to ask for recommendations.

Returning specifically to the film, we asked about how similar or different were the teaching styles of Irwin and Hector. In one interesting scene, Irwin had taken the students to see a war memorial, and looking at the list of names, he said it was not so much “lest we forget” as it was “lest we remember”. In other words, he was implying that once we built a war memorial, we could then forget the dead. Hector, though, had asked one of the students to recite some words from Hardy, about a fallen young soldier, Hodge, fighting on a field, and whose bones were ground up and spread as fertilizer, yet who still had the dignity of a name and thus a means to be remembered. It was almost as if, we commented, that Irwin saw things as they were, and gave them a sharp angle of interpretation, whereas Hector saw truth through art, as in reciting a poem to understand the event.

These radically different approaches to teaching and learning confused the boys to the extent that when Irwin was asked by the headmaster, to team-teach with Hector, the class started off, despite the fact that the two teachers and the boys were sitting in a circle, in complete silence. When asked why nobody spoke, one student had, as a WP instructor remarked, impressive powers of metacognition, as he said, “Do you want us to be smart or thoughtful?” This illustrated the interesting question as to how much do students just give teachers what they want, in order to get a good grade, rather than embark in true learning?

As one member of our meeting said, Irwin wanted the boys to ignore the truth, but wouldn’t this mean that there should be a shared understanding of what’s expected as true, to know how to effectively create something that is different? And another WP teacher said that is it not the case that truth is not necessarily factual, but more that it is conventional wisdom?

In the class that Hector and Irwin team-taught, the subject of discussion that ultimately arose was that of the Holocaust. Hector asked how tourists could go to concentration camps and eat sandwiches and take photos of each other smiling, and this reminded some of us of Schlosser’s piece about building a McDonald’s one third of a mile away from the concentration camp of Dachau. One WP instructor asked if students need to know about the Holocaust now, as he doubted whether future employers would find it of relevance. Another WP member said that this sort of event was important to know as it would reflect upon values, and a true meshing of values between employer and employee was important in the workplace, to which the first WP said he thought this was of less importance. This brings up the crucial question as to how to decide what is significant to teach our students.

We concluded by lamenting that so much of high school teaching is teaching towards tests, and we asked about why couldn’t we infuse a love of learning for its own sake, as Hector did. However, many of us also said that we encourage students to take risks and say something different in their papers, which mirrors Irwin’s approach only to the extent, I think, that we still believe in authenticity whereas Irwin did not see this as important. But, asked one WP teacher, do students ever wonder why they need to be original?

Fifth Tips for Teachers Meeting

This time our Tips for Teachers discussion was based around the article, "Impact of Popular Culture on Communication Skills: A Commentary with Insights for Writing Instruction" by Linda Best and Christopher Lynch, which can be found at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4116/is_200604/ai_n17183359/pg_1 Again we had some teachers from Hackensack High School join us in this amazing discussion.

Our basic question was to discuss how much popular culture influences the lives and learning patterns of High School and College students. One Rutgers instructor said he thought TV short circuits students’ thoughts, and excessive numbers of activities substitute for deeper thinking as the quest is always looking for something to amuse. He said, for example, how students are often wearing headphones or listening to music on their iPods as they conduct their research. They are, in short, used to multi-tasking, but is this to the detriment of learning and the acquisition of knowledge? Or, to play Devil’s Advocate, is this constant noise and chaos actually realistic training for the workplace, in which it is quite likely that they will not work in complete silence? Maybe the distractions might not deter from learning, especially if students are taught a framework or structure within which to focus and organize their thoughts.

A High School teacher commented that most students at her school see education as a means to an end, as they have little incentive to learn. She said she asked her class if they ever use an encyclopedia, and students said they would not as they found them frustrating as there is too much information to thumb through, and they might be distracted by an article on another topic, or ultimately distracted by MySpace.

It seems fair to say that students prefer looking for information on the Web, but do they stop at the first piece of information they find, or do they browse further? A High School teacher said she thought that students stop at the first thing, as she asked facetiously why they would want to expand their knowledge! However, possibly the problem is that one can easily feel overwhelmed by excessive amounts of information, which is very typical of the age in which we live. One WP instructor said it would be advantageous to guide students so that they know how to be discriminating about what information to use, and that it should be acknowledged that it can take ages to find the exact information of true value for which one is hunting.

But how, it was asked, can we encourage students to do this? A High School teacher said she does this by telling students that they will need to know/do this in college, and a Writing Program instructor said that she tells her students they will need to know how to read and write well as it would help enormously when applying for a job. However, do employers care if their employees are not good readers or writers? It seems that some might care, as another WP instructor said that many US firms are offering their employees courses on how to write, and another said how accountants are asked to evaluate their writing frequently, since they often need to write reports. It seems that the answer lies in the fact that writing is a means of communication, so it is essential that everyone understands the same thing in terms of word choice and spelling.

Should we care that writing is changing, or should we recognize that the rules of language have always changed, a Writing Program instructor asked. After all, all we need do is read a Jane Austen novel to see how many differences there are in the spelling of certain words between then and now. Or should we be like the French, and have committees which strictly monitor word changes and mostly reject them? How far should it go? Some High School teachers said that they see students use “R U going…” instead of “Are you going…”, and one even admitted to having started doing this herself in her text messages. But another High School teacher talked about how cell phones now have predictive texting, and thinks that this might ultimately help students and other users with their spelling. However, in answer to this, one WP instructor said he sees a worsening of spelling in placement tests, and another said that she has a student who must so totally rely on the Spell Check feature on the computer, that he has so many wrong words as to make the overall paper incomprehensible. So it seems that Spell Check, as well as countless misspellings in society (ShopRite, EZ Pass) that bombard us with misspellings, are the ultimate culprits.

A WP instructor went on to say that it is well known that the US is lagging behind many other countries in terms of Math and Science, but what is not said is how it is lagging in terms of reading and writing.

A High School teacher remarked that most students are simply satisfied when they have written a paper rather than not. They do not seem to have pride in their work. Another from the High School said that all too often students are taught rules of writing, such as five sentences per paragraph, or how the letter [i]should be capitalized, yet are not sufficiently taught about inclusion of content. They might be told, for example, that a paragraph should contain a thought, but many students say they can express that thought in just one sentence. The High School teachers also said that they have to teach a recipe for how to pass the HSPA exams, and this is why they have to emphasise the rules. One teacher said how she had heard that the elementary school in their district had a 90% success rate on standardized tests, and this was because the children were taught a little song to better memorise the rules.

A WP instructor said that a lot of these changes in reading and writing reflect the incursion of technology at so many levels, and another talked about how many two year olds have a TV in their room, and there are such programs as Baby Einstein. Someone also made the comment about how in Japan some teenagers are writing novels on their cell phones, to which a High School teacher replied that students often bring in their homework on their cell phones!

We discussed how all this technology can lead to increased isolation. In fact one WP instructor asked her class why texting was more prevalent than voice mail, and they uniformly replied that with texting one can hide, be detached, and even lie because of the lack of intimacy. And often, as soon as class is over, students whip out their cell phones. It seems that they already have friends from elsewhere, and lack engagement with what is immediately surrounding them. Another WP instructor mentioned an E.M. Forster novel in which everyone lived underground in separate cells, and all were horrified at the thought of face-to-face contact. Are students currently living this way, he asked, shut in their rooms with their TVs and computers?

One WP instructor, who has been deeply involved in High School education over a number of years, said that our current discussion reminded him of a discussion they had had in the 1960’s in his school when they were lamenting educational standards. He said that he felt the real problem was not, in fact, isolation, but a lack of reflection. He said that reading, after all, is a completely isolated act, yet one needs to be solitary when reading so as to have a chance to ponder. However, as the article mentions, many students have become afraid of their own thoughts so avoid this isolation. Moreover, as another WP instructor said, in the workplace the emphasis is often on team work rather than individual work, so is isolation good?

And whether or not isolation is beneficial, we discussed the inherent irony in that we ask Expos students to enter into dialogue with the authors, yet they are increasingly not having dialogue with each other. Another Rutgers instructor talked about her son who is in seventh grade, who is capable of thinking things through, but he does not do this as he is not used to being in dialogue to explain and explore thoughts further. And we talked further about how young children can mend a computer yet are unable to write a coherent, meaningful paper.

A WP instructor said that given that technology exists, what should our teaching strategies be? He, for example, said that he told his students that he will accept e-mail from them, but will not read them if they are filled with errors instead of using proper language. To this, a High School teacher asked if it really matters if a student is reading Gossip Girl rather than something more scholarly, as it is still reading, and does it matter if a student writes on a Blog rather than writing an assignment paper, as it is still writing. He thought these acts might be beneficial, as he is willing to do all it takes to motivate a student. But another WP instructor said that the content of what students read or write, behind the technology, does matter, as it should be of substance, otherwise there is very little upon which to reflect. A High School teacher answered that students are only interested in what they already see as interesting or relevant to them as individuals, but we discussed how it might ultimately be important, if not glorious, for students to broaden their horizons and move beyond their preconceived ideas and a priori knowledge, to the wonderful discovery of new things.

Another member from the WP said that a lot of this depends on the teacher establishing trust in the classroom, which will help, if not enable students to accept new things. She said teachers should not only be entertainers and should not only try to be popular, but they should primarily be educators. After all, we all know how great it is to witness that moment when a student is excited by new knowledge and ideas. Furthermore, she said, as teachers we all have a lot to learn from our students, too. And also there are commonalities of activities between High School and College, in terms of peer reviews and group work, but where new activities are carried out in college, such as grammar presentations, it is always a good idea to explain to students why these are important.

However, some High School teachers thought that there is a big gap between teaching for the HSPA and teaching from the NHR, and that their students would probably find the readings in the NHR to be quite impenetrable. WP instructors answered that the idea of sequencing helps with tough readings, as they are revisited many times, and one commented on the teaching of Expos in the New Brunswick High School, which seems to be well received, and the students are relating some of their Expos readings to other subjects which they are learning in High School.

Fifth Tips for Teachers Meeting

This time our Tips for Teachers discussion was based around the article, "Impact of Popular Culture on Communication Skills: A Commentary with Insights for Writing Instruction" by Linda Best and Christopher Lynch, which can be found at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4116/is_200604/ai_n17183359/pg_1 Again we had some teachers from Hackensack High School join us in this amazing discussion. 

Our basic question was to discuss how much popular culture influences the lives and learning patterns of High School and College students. One Rutgers instructor said he thought TV short circuits students’ thoughts, and excessive numbers of activities substitute for deeper thinking as the quest is always looking for something to amuse. He said, for example, how students are often wearing headphones or listening to music on their iPods as they conduct their research. They are, in short, used to multi-tasking, but is this to the detriment of learning and the acquisition of knowledge? Or, to play Devil’s Advocate, is this constant noise and chaos actually realistic training for the workplace, in which it is quite likely that they will not work in complete silence? Maybe the distractions might not deter from learning, especially if students are taught a framework or structure within which to focus and organize their thoughts. 

A High School teacher commented that most students at her school see education as a means to an end, as they have little incentive to learn. She said she asked her class if they ever use an encyclopedia, and students said they would not as they found them frustrating as there is too much information to thumb through, and they might be distracted by an article on another topic, or ultimately distracted by MySpace.

It seems fair to say that students prefer looking for information on the Web, but do they stop at the first piece of information they find, or do they browse further? A High School teacher said she thought that students stop at the first thing, as she asked facetiously why they would want to expand their knowledge! However, possibly the problem is that one can easily feel overwhelmed by excessive amounts of information, which is very typical of the age in which we live. One WP instructor said it would be advantageous to guide students so that they know how to be discriminating about what information to use, and that it should be acknowledged that it can take ages to find the exact information of true value for which one is hunting. 

But how, it was asked, can we encourage students to do this? A High School teacher said she does this by telling students that they will need to know/do this in college, and a Writing Program instructor said that she tells her students they will need to know how to read and write well as it would help enormously when applying for a job. However, do employers care if their employees are not good readers or writers? It seems that some might care, as another WP instructor said that many US firms are offering their employees courses on how to write, and another said how accountants are asked to evaluate their writing frequently, since they often need to write reports. It seems that the answer lies in the fact that writing is a means of communication, so it is essential that everyone understands the same thing in terms of word choice and spelling. 

Should we care that writing is changing, or should we recognize that the rules of language have always changed, a Writing Program instructor asked. After all, all we need do is read a Jane Austen novel to see how many differences there are in the spelling of certain words between then and now. Or should we be like the French, and have committees which strictly monitor word changes and mostly reject them? How far should it go? Some High School teachers said that they see students use “R U going…” instead of “Are you going…”, and one even admitted to having started doing this herself in her text messages. But another High School teacher talked about how cell phones now have predictive texting, and thinks that this might ultimately help students and other users with their spelling. However, in answer to this, one WP instructor said he sees a worsening of spelling in placement tests, and another said that she has a student who must so totally rely on the Spell Check feature on the computer, that he has so many wrong words as to make the overall paper incomprehensible. So it seems that Spell Check, as well as countless misspellings in society (ShopRite, EZ Pass) that bombard us with misspellings, are the ultimate culprits.

A WP instructor went on to say that it is well known that the US is lagging behind many other countries in terms of Math and Science, but what is not said is how it is lagging in terms of reading and writing. 

A High School teacher remarked that most students are simply satisfied when they have written a paper rather than not. They do not seem to have pride in their work. Another from the High School said that all too often students are taught rules of writing, such as five sentences per paragraph, or how the letter [i]should be capitalized, yet are not sufficiently taught about inclusion of content. They might be told, for example, that a paragraph should contain a thought, but many students say they can express that thought in just one sentence. The High School teachers also said that they have to teach a recipe for how to pass the HSPA exams, and this is why they have to emphasise the rules. One teacher said how she had heard that the elementary school in their district had a 90% success rate on standardized tests, and this was because the children were taught a little song to better memorise the rules. 

A WP instructor said that a lot of these changes in reading and writing reflect the incursion of technology at so many levels, and another talked about how many two year olds have a TV in their room, and there are such programs as Baby Einstein. Someone also made the comment about how in Japan some teenagers are writing novels on their cell phones, to which a High School teacher replied that students often bring in their homework on their cell phones!

We discussed how all this technology can lead to increased isolation. In fact one WP instructor asked her class why texting was more prevalent than voice mail, and they uniformly replied that with texting one can hide, be detached, and even lie because of the lack of intimacy. And often, as soon as class is over, students whip out their cell phones. It seems that they already have friends from elsewhere, and lack engagement with what is immediately surrounding them. Another WP instructor mentioned an E.M. Forster novel in which everyone lived underground in separate cells, and all were horrified at the thought of face-to-face contact. Are students currently living this way, he asked, shut in their rooms with their TVs and computers? 

One WP instructor, who has been deeply involved in High School education over a number of years, said that our current discussion reminded him of a discussion they had had in the 1960’s in his school when they were lamenting educational standards. He said that he felt the real problem was not, in fact, isolation, but a lack of reflection. He said that reading, after all, is a completely isolated act, yet one needs to be solitary when reading so as to have a chance to ponder. However, as the article mentions, many students have become afraid of their own thoughts so avoid this isolation. Moreover, as another WP instructor said, in the workplace the emphasis is often on team work rather than individual work, so is isolation good? 

And whether or not isolation is beneficial, we discussed the inherent irony in that we ask Expos students to enter into dialogue with the authors, yet they are increasingly not having dialogue with each other. Another Rutgers instructor talked about her son who is in seventh grade, who is capable of thinking things through, but he does not do this as he is not used to being in dialogue to explain and explore thoughts further. And we talked further about how young children can mend a computer yet are unable to write a coherent, meaningful paper. 

A WP instructor said that given that technology exists, what should our teaching strategies be? He, for example, said that he told his students that he will accept e-mail from them, but will not read them if they are filled with errors instead of using proper language. To this, a High School teacher asked if it really matters if a student is reading Gossip Girl rather than something more scholarly, as it is still reading, and does it matter if a student writes on a Blog rather than writing an assignment paper, as it is still writing. He thought these acts might be beneficial, as he is willing to do all it takes to motivate a student. But another WP instructor said that the content of what students read or write, behind the technology, does matter, as it should be of substance, otherwise there is very little upon which to reflect. A High School teacher answered that students are only interested in what they already see as interesting or relevant to them as individuals, but we discussed how it might ultimately be important, if not glorious, for students to broaden their horizons and move beyond their preconceived ideas and a priori knowledge, to the wonderful discovery of new things. 

Another member from the WP said that a lot of this depends on the teacher establishing trust in the classroom, which will help, if not enable students to accept new things. She said teachers should not only be entertainers and should not only try to be popular, but they should primarily be educators. After all, we all know how great it is to witness that moment when a student is excited by new knowledge and ideas. Furthermore, she said, as teachers we all have a lot to learn from our students, too. And also there are commonalities of activities between High School and College, in terms of peer reviews and group work, but where new activities are carried out in college, such as grammar presentations, it is always a good idea to explain to students why these are important. 

However, some High School teachers thought that there is a big gap between teaching for the HSPA and teaching from the NHR, and that their students would probably find the readings in the NHR to be quite impenetrable. WP instructors answered that the idea of sequencing helps with tough readings, as they are revisited many times, and one commented on the teaching of Expos in the New Brunswick High School, which seems to be well received, and the students are relating some of their Expos readings to other subjects which they are learning in High School. 

Fourth Tips for Teachers Meeting

This Tips for Teachers meeting was a little different in that we were glad to have five teachers and the Principal from Hackensack High School as part of our group. As such, we discussed a topic of interest both to High School teachers and Writing Program instructors; namely, the transition from high school to college, and read and discussed Betsy O. Barefoot’s piece, “The First Year Experience: Are We Making it Any Better?” found at http://www.earlycolleges.org/Downloads/FirstYear.pdf

as well as “How is College Different From High School?” published by SMU, at http://www.smu.edu/alec/whyhighschool.html
.

We started our discussion by asking how many students the High School teachers have, and were told they each have about 120! We then went on to ask about student expectations, and whether students anticipate that college will be a 24 hour party. The Hackensack Principal replied that they do a lot of preparation with the seniors, in terms of asking them to plan what their major will be, and how to be financially responsible. Additionally, they invite back high school graduates to talk to current high school students. They also plan to reform the senior year so that students do not waste time after their APs. However, he said that their efforts were not yet reaching all Black males in terms of helping them to be admitted to community colleges, although there was improvement with the Latino males.

One High School teacher said there was a much smaller amount of required reading in high school than college; sometimes articles would only be about three pages in length, or longer pieces would have pictures and maps, and even then often students would complain or resist doing the reading. It was asked whether this was due to a lack of time – the students do, after all, have six academic subjects a day so they have a lot of work - or a lack of good study skills. Another High School teacher said that often there would be minimum effort on the part of students, who prefer to use Spark notes, or quickly glean some information from the Internet.

We feel better study skills is obviously of much importance, so that students in Expository and other writing classes, do not think that it is sufficient to write their papers the night before (or minutes before!) the class. One member present asked whether it was necessary for a student to fail, to realize that procrastination is not a good modus operandi. A Writing Program instructor said that she has a class in which she asks students to write down what they think are good study skills, and then cross out everything which seems unrealistic. In this way, she says, she lets students know that if they produce good work at 3.00 am, then indeed they should continue doing so.

Another Writing Program instructor said that students complain to her that writing an assignment takes ten hours, because of all the reading, and she said that this is definitely realistic, and should be done, as the essays need to be reread so that critical thinking, which takes time, can occur. She went on to say that critical thinking and making connections is something foreign to them. A High School teacher said that it’s true that the emphasis is more on memorization than critical thinking, as she says they teach for the tests, such as the HSPA’s, and these tests are specifically looking for certain information, so the more that information is included, the higher the grade for the students. In this way, she said, all good student papers look the same, the implication being that there is no room for original thought or analysis. Someone from the Writing Program said that he saw that in High School, students are taught to write very neat, structured papers with five paragraphs, but when they come here, they are encouraged to take risks and make discoveries, which might result in quite a sloppy paper initially, until they learn to structure that.

We asked the question as to whether a rethinking to the pedagogy of exposition and risk-taking comes with maturity, and therefore whether high school students are not yet ready for this approach. The Principal answered that maturity plays a part in this, and that there is a mix of those who are sufficiently mature, and those who are not so mature, but also that there are a multitude of socio’economic factors to take into consideration. He said that, for example, 40% of their student population is not living in the parental home, which was especially true for their Black and Latino students. Last week, he said, he had to deal with a rape case, and a case of a punctured eardrum, and he went on to say that these kinds of incidents are not unusual. He also said that in the same class, there is a huge mixture of student abilities, ranging from those with special learning needs, to those who are going to Harvard. They are starting, he said, to have classes in such non-academic topics as culinary arts and metal shops, to cater to some student needs. But he went on to say that those who will be coming to Rutgers better be ready!

We went on to discuss technology in teaching, and the High School teachers talked of the digital divide brought about by the fact that some students had Internet access in their homes, whereas others did not. However, they are teaching high school freshmen about credit cards and cell phones, and they think that most students throughout the school are tech savvy. There was some difference of opinion amongst the Writing Program instructors present who teach a Hybrid, as to how tech savvy their students are, as some Hybrid teachers thought their students very capable with technology, and others did not, though we wondered whether some of the excuses were the modern day equivalent of “the dog ate my homework”.

Still on the subject of technology, the Hackensack High School teachers said that they think when it comes to research, students turn to the Internet, yet they do not know how to separate between “junk” and scholarly sources. They went on to say that 12% of their students take an online course, as many go on to Bergen Community College, where they are mandated to take one Hybrid course a year. One Writing Program instructor who teaches a Hybrid here, said that she thinks that a Hybrid teaches students to use their time wisely, and that the best students do well online, though the Principal said that he thought that if a student was not a high achiever, he or she would possibly not do well in the traditional class or a hybrid.

We then moved to a discussion of structure, and how in high school, so much structure is given, with teachers writing explicit notes of what to do on the chalk board. The High School teacher went on to say that she thought that students are given much less structure in college, and so she wonders whether in high school they are doing the students a disservice, or whether it is beneficial as it helps students learn how to manage their time. One Writing Program instructor countered this by saying that it might not be time management that is needed to be taught, but the concept of independent learning. She said, for example, she has a class that meets only once a week, and the rest of the week they are given quite a bit of reading, yet the students do not know what to do, as they are unclear about how to work independently.

Still on the topic of structure, one Writing Program instructor asked whether it might be feasible to lessen the amount of structure given in the upper grades of high school, as presumably there was less structure given to these students at home too, and school and home mutually reflect each other. The Principal said that the problem in their school came from the fact that they had such diversity of home backgrounds, and there might especially be problems if an economically disadvantaged minority student clashed with a white middle class teacher. He referred us to a book entitled Unequal Childhoods, by Annette Lareau.

And it is not only structure in terms of time management, but also in terms of writing a paper that can be significant, as a Writing Program instructor said that she thought that however much we say that we are moving away from the structured paper typically written in high school, we still advocate a structured paper (albeit different) in terms of topic paragraphs and quotation sandwiches. It was argued by some that this structure, or format, opens the doors to interpretation and analysis instead of summary and regurgitation, as it juxtaposes two readings, but then others present said this might only be true for the bright students, and those who are less bright might just be following a formula and not making meaningful connections.