Teachers of Significance

Lesson Hooks-- Cultivating an intention-rich classroom. Cognitive scientists point out the massively effective habit of recruiting and maintaining focus in the learning process.  For learners--be they adults, children, or teens in between--the challenges of staying focused in our "intention - deficit" society can create real challenges to meaning making.  In schools, we throw unending stimuli, ideas, facts, and figures at our students and wonder why they have trouble retaining.  The point of starting a lesson in an interesting, purposeful way is to set the course of intention forward. One potential issue arises from the importance of setting the stage for students to become vested in what they are learning .  Why are they being asked to learn a given topic?  Why is it significant or important?  Of course, drawing on their prior learning through discussion can create important bridges of learning as students connect old understandings and new content and concepts.

Nudging groups toward becoming high-functioning teams. We want our students to invest in their classroom relationships. Veteran teachers have often seen groups that “gel” in that special way to become a team that is highly functional and synergistic--and fun! Students leave these groups feeling fed by the social interaction, and the work that they produce is often much stronger than it would have been if the student were acting solo. Positive Interdependence. The question remains, though, about how to get students (and adults, for that matter!) to invest in their groups and to have high expectations for the group. How do we get students to care? According to the research of David and Roger Johnson, there are at least 5-6 factors that can move a group toward synergy. The most overlooked, in my experience as a teacher and instructional coach, is that of Positive Interdependence . Some examples:  Positive Goal Interdependence  Positive Resource Interdependence  Positive Rol

Synthesis Writing involving The Role of Women & The Scarlet Letter Conflicting Sources. What does it mean to have students write meaningfully about sources that conflict? In this attached writing prompt, students evaluate Hester Prynne, a character whom Nathaniel Hawthorne posits as strong, capable and independent in chapters 12-15 of the novel. The question is whether or not the students think that she is a strong female character by today's standards. Embedded in this prompt is a problem or controversy that the students have had some interest in addressing, even though the documents are challenging. Charting an Inquiry. Prior to today's class, students have examined other synthesis prompts together, charting how the sources conflict and setting up how each of them would proceed through them. Today, they were ready to address the prompt independently, so they wrote alone, creating a mock outline of their essays, and we reviewed these together as a group. The impo

Trying something new in AP English with FLIPPING the class. Instead of doing the "think aloud" of key passages of the book during class, I am asking students to listen after/while reading; then, in class we are doing more interactive workshopping and troubleshooting on the chapter contents. I was driven to do this because the text is really challenging for some of my students, The Scarlet Letter and because I wanted to free up time in class at least once or twice a week to coach students on their reading, which was hard to do in a large-group discussion or talk-through of key passages. Here is a link to the Soundcloud recording that is related. I wanted to feature key passages that were actually read and experienced by the student with support. Here is what is included: https://soundcloud.com/drpappag/ch-9-leech-and-patient 1.) Reading! I did a dramatic reading of 3-4 key passages in the chapter. 2.) Vocab support. As I read, I add realtime paraphrasing, inclu

TRANSCENDENTALISTS UNITE!   Goal:  To foster inquiry and connections across various prompts that we have read (including Krakauer's article from Outside Magazine, "Into the Wild"; essays and letters from Thoreau to Emerson and Whitman; poems from Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson; two texts below, Whitman's "Song of Myself, #52" and Abrahman Lincoln's "The Gettysburg Address." Perspectives: You will draw one of these perspectives to represent in the fishbowl discussion, and you will need to prepare your perspective to represent her or him accurately!   - Margaret Fuller - Frederick Douglass - Henry David Thoreau - Walt Whitman - Ralph Waldo Emerson - Emily Dickinson - Chris McCandless Questions: What do you think is most important in life? Why are people unhappy? What type of quest do you think is meaningful? What would you say if you were being wiretapped without your knowledge, as wi

Non-Fiction Book -- Final Research Installment in your Conceptual Inquiry Project What’s this?   During the second part of this quarter, you will select and read a full non-fiction book of your choice.  Again, like the audio blogs, this book choice may explore the topic directly, obliquely or in some tangential way that we do not anticipate.  We can recall from the history of the Syntopicon project that they had already spent $1M (in 1952!) and did not see a way through to completing the project and were tempted to sell the printing plates as junk!  According to the history of the project: “Adler persevered, however, having spent the previous eight years of his life on the project. He single-handedly raised funds by selling more expensive `Founders Editions’ of the sets, and disobeyed the order to fire his entire staff. There were times, during the process when he admitted: `the question was could we sell the plates for junk! Could we dispose of the plates as old metal?’”  Lik

Politics and Literature In her landmark essay, Literacy in Three Metaphors , Sylvia Scribner directs our attention a three-fold purpose in appropriating literacy skill and insight: adaptation, power, and grace.  Adaptation, she allows, features the work skills that students need in order to be able to adapt and survive; as with organisms within the metaphor of natural selection, literacy in this metaphor focuses on being able to survive in the "real world" and "work skills."  This metaphor dominates public discourse on literacy education at the present time because we have anxiety about the  shape that our knowledge economy is taking and where the jobs will be in 5-10 or more years.  This metaphor has swollen itself and has pushed aside two the metaphors which have constituted the fibre of our  culture and democracy.  We need again, to think about how language enshrines political power within the context of political rights, and we need to attend to the personal cu