Shooting for Buy-in

“We knew they wouldn’t stand a chance,” Student X said.  “The training we gave them was shit.”  
Class was long over and a conversation about total institutions had naturally led to the military, and from there to ISIS and the current situation in Iraq.  Student X was a vet and spoke freely about his time in the Army.

“We’d give them their shiny new M16, aim ‘em at some makeshift target, and say shoot.  They’d then blow through a few magazines and we’d call it good.”

“That’s it?” I was incredulous.

“Yep.  No range.  Nothing about sighting-in or how to maintain the weapon.  We didn’t want them to know too much.”

“Because of deserters?”

“Yep.  Why would I want to train an Iraqi soldier today who might change his mind and decide to shoot me tomorrow?”

“Weren’t you an officer?  What about your orders to train the new Iraqi army?”

“I was an NCO –in the dust with the grunts.  We went through the motions but given the reality of our world, actually filling that boot on the ground, we weren’t exactly motivated. It’s no wonder they’re getting beat so bad.  We didn’t train them at all.”

A feeling of resignation and distant anger took hold of me.  It was top-down thinking at its best and a common failing of any large institution.  Those in charge, in this case remote politicians and generals, conceive an idea and make a decision.  This plan of action is then kicked down the chain of command for actual implementation.  Thus, a strategy devised in Washington by high level officials must be executed in Iraq by those on the very bottom of the totem-pole.  These sad-sack individuals, living the reality of the conflict, naturally have their own ideas and opinions about what needs and should be done.  Given the vast discrepancy in rank, geography, agency, and personal safety, these ideas are often quite different from those of their far-off superiors.  So, as Student X says, they go through the motions.  They do enough to look busy and avoid getting in trouble, then call it a day.  A report then travels up the long chain stating that Iraqi soldiers were trained today.  This is not true, but because it is properly filed and sent back up through the ranks (like some vast game of telephone) it gains a sort of organizational reality.  After a few months of these reports the politicians and generals at the top assume their plan has been implemented. 

Large institutions are predicated on this sort of magical thinking.  A linguistic imperative is made (in the beginning was the word) and physical reality is then expected to conform.  Now, if this change was anticipated immediately, no one would buy in.  However, because the command is uttered by a figure isolated by his/her own authority and expected to be carried out by distant minions, a seemingly efficacious fantasy is sustained:  “I told them to train the troops.  They said they trained the troops.  Therefore, the troops must be trained.”  Sadly, the devil is in the details. 

Given his position Student X can’t really be blamed for this failure.  Nor can the generals and politicians be judged for believing these generally honest and hard-working soldiers.  Everyone involved, including the tragic Iraqis, is simply a victim of institutional thinking.  

So, why am I relating all of this in a blog ostensibly about education?  Because, for better or worse, we teach within institutions.  The stakes are, admittedly, lower, though perhaps no less important when looking at the long-term health and well-being of our nation. As teachers we occupy a unique role in the hierarchy of the institution.  We have administrators above us relaying commands and expressing expectations, and below us are our students, to whom we relay commands and express expectations.  This makes us the fulcrum of the institution and ideally positioned to combat the perils of institutional thinking. 

We do this by seeking to understand the “boots on the ground” reality of the students –what are their challenges, hopes, and fears?  In turn, we ask for them to buy-in to our vision of what needs to be accomplished.  Working in close conjunction (and this is key) we can then pursue implementation together and track results. 

When looking to our administrators, we must demand the same.  Invite them into our reality, share our goals and concerns and then seek to develop an institutional vision together with broad, vertical support.  If a teacher feels understood and believes in a president’s plan, it’s likely to succeed.  But if not . . . well, we might as well just call it a day.        

Generation Specs

 

Apparently, the Millennials aren’t very smart.  No, really, there’s even a book on the subject: The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.  Falling just outside this maligned designation, I’m rather fond of Mark Bauerlien’s title, and I enjoy confronting my students with it.  Their reactions generally veer from woeful acceptance: “Yes,” their sad little eyes say, “yes, we are,” to righteous indignation, “who does he think he is!”  Regardless of the student’s emotional response to Mark Bauerlien’s published impertinence, the book is a capital conversation starter and a fine segue into discussions on parenting, technology, consumption, and even philosophy.  On particularly diabolical days, I’ve been known to divide classes, force them into a little research, and then let them go at it Law and Order style.  The resulting class session neatly encapsulates one of the more important debates of our age, and offers a nice rebuttal to Bauerlien’s assertion: these kids are smart, you just have to get them away from them:

  
Lacking a personal video to prove this, I’ll instead introduce one of my teacher-crushes and let him do it for me.  Mike Rugnetta has made over 100 brilliant and funny shorts for the PBS Ideas Channel, and, this close to Halloween, I’ll go with his talk on Zombies.  Regard:



Great stuff, right?  Well, your opinion might vary according to your age.  Remember the expression, “if it’s too loud, you’re too old”?  In this case, it’s more like “if it’s too fast, too mashed-up, too multi-faceted, too self-referential, you’re too old.”  Rugnetta is delivering a fusillade of fine information on the topic of zombies, his thoughts and ideas ranging carelessly (and pointedly) from pop culture to classical sociology, from low brow to high.  He colors with all of modern human experience, and he’s not afraid to go outside the lines.
   
Now, the most common invectives lobbed at Millennials accuse them of a lack of concentration, diligence, and the ability to think deeply.  And some studies bear this out.  However, the brain exhibits remarkable plasticity, and while technology and modern life may weaken some skills, it’s actively strengthening others.  Video games and multi-layered social engagements train young people to access and absorb a great deal of information quickly.  Refer back to Rugnetta’s rant on zombies.  Ideas are relayed via video, text, audio, and image simultaneously, resulting in a thought-collage rather than a one-dimensional point.  The advantage of such a system is readily apparent though still undervalued and certainly underserved.

As a literature professor, I can surely appreciate the importance of concentration and deep reading.  However, as a pop-culture teacher, I can also value stimulation and multiplicity.  Reaching students and providing a meaningful education means not choosing one over the other, but rather utilizing both, and in so doing engendering a learning environment everyone can benefit –regardless of generation.

No Man is an Island

What a strange profession teaching is!  Though we pass our coworkers in the hall, eat with them at lunch, sit beside them at meetings and share supplies, joys and fears, our labor itself is solitary.  In five years of teaching at Yavapai, I’ve had only two colleagues in my classroom.  We’re accustomed to this                      

independence, some of us even celebrate it, but it’s certainly not the norm.  The bricklayer can view his buddy’s growing wall, the lawyer her opponent, the doctor his office partner –their techniques, feats, and foibles are all quite public to the profession. This is not the case with teaching.  Students filter in and out, but our peers do not.  At work, perhaps only the author is more isolated in her practice. 

The result of this is a sort of Galapagos evolution: over the years we adapt and improve but only within a very narrowly defined, self-determined ecosystem.  Yes, occasionally diversity washes up on our shores in the form of conferences, Academe articles, and 9x9x25 Challenges, but, for the most part, our pedagogy plays out in isolation.  This can create didactic dodos –creatures perfectly suited for their own environment but incapable of adapting to new challenges.  In a century thus far defined by ever-evolving technology, increased governmental attention, and administrative pressures, an inability to react and alter course may ultimately prove a genetic dead-end.   

So what’s the answer?  In a career that lends itself to professional sequestration, how do we promote  sustainable adaptation?  Easy.  We just need to introduce a little hybrid vigor.  Now, before you get all hot and bothered, realize that, for us, this means watching other teachers at work.  We need to get into their classrooms, attend their lectures, take their quizzes, complete their assignments, and then shamelessly incorporate anything of value into our own instruction. 

At some colleges this method of career development is institutionalized, but more often teachers have to seek it out on their own.  So let’s do more of that here at Yavapai.  Open your classroom to a colleague.  Take a course from a friend.  Join a MOOC.  Do anything collaborative –just don’t be a didactic dodo.

Don't Monkey with Success

A few weeks ago I did this:

For those of you not versed in my particular brand of poor penmanship, the angry calligraphy at the bottom of this sheet reads: "Don't do this Again -Move back to Discussion Board!!"  This fit of pique was inspired by my online world literature course and its use of Voicethread.  What once was revolutionary (well, for little ol' YC) and progressive, had, over the past few years, grown stale and burdensome.

Voicethread, which allows students to engage in online discussions using voice and video, is seldom welcomed with open arms by new students.  There are some technical hurdles to jump and the ever-present web browser shenanigans to overcome before students can settle into its use.  I would get emails -not many, but enough.  Sometimes they were mean.  Couple this with the requisite work and logistics required outside of Blackboard's traditional grading system, and my enthusiasm had more than flagged.  Why not simply use the built-in, well-worn discussion board feature?  Most everyone else does it, and the students expect it.  I've previously discussed the advantages of having actual faces in an online course, but it had come to feel as if the benefits no longer outweighed the negatives.

The reason for this is related to the unique workspace of an online instructor.  We sit in front of a computer, technically connected to the entire world, and yet, effectively and most often, alone in a room.  Our interactions with students generally come in the from of emails, and, as is the nature of feedback, its usually from the disgruntled.  The silent and happy majority do not make an appearance.  Thus, we encounter a complaint and then set about our work, which is made more onerous through the use of the exact same gadget the student was ragging on.  In my case, Voicethread.  Because Voicethread does not interact directly with Blackboard's grade book, I have to count and identify discussion posts myself.  A crumpled and ugly spreadsheet (shown above) is my method of choice.  This is time-intensive (20 students x 5 video posts each = 100 short videos per week) and is vulnerable to English instructor math mistakes.  After a couple of years of complaints (which, though few in number, loom large in a vacuum) and hard work (after each semester the posts have to be individually deleted by hand: 100 videos x 12 topics =1,200 total), I had decided to revert back to the simpler days of the discussion board.

However, on a whim, I chose to first include an opinion poll in that week's reading quiz:

"Please state which of the following formats for online class discussion you would prefer and briefly explain why:  A,  the voicethread/guestbook method we are currently using, or B,  the traditional discussion board approach with better organization but no video or audio."

The results were surprising.  Two students said they were ambivalent and one student said she preferred the discussion board.  The entire rest of the class indicated they liked or even loved Voicethread.  Some of the endorsements were less than ringing: "A-because I can state how I feel at the time without having to be grammatically correct."  But others were downright awesome:

• "I would prefer to keep the method that we are using now which is the voicethread/guestbook. I find it to be more personable. I like to see the other students, as well as listening to their responses. It helps with understanding the material especially when students go into detail about what they read, and how it made them feel. I don't think this can be conveyed through mere writing." 
• "I went to an online high school. I spent my two years of high school video chatting with teachers and answering questions face to face. Through these two years, I liked the way my classes were set up, I’d do work in writing, and multiple choices, like these quizzes, and then do video chatting like in the Guestbook. In college, I’ve taken the majority of my courses online, each one the same, a discussion board post, with two replies, and that was it. I like the way this class is different, the way it allows students to interact such as they would in discussion board, but this just seems to be more personal, it really gives off a sense of connecting with the other students. I know every week, I think, “Oh, I wonder what Rachel’s going to think.” I like being able to listen to other people’s opinions and compare them to my own. It might’ve been a bit awkward at first, but I got used to it, and I honestly look forward to doing the voice threads. This type of format makes it a bit more fin and a lot more personal, which is something that I like."

Needless to say, despite my angry chicken-scratch above, I will be keeping Voicethread in my course.  The moral here being, don't simply bow to what Blackboard does best, and, before assuming what students do or do not want online, don't be afraid to ask them!  

In Praise of The Instigator

Because Todd and I have already discussed next year’s 9x9x25 Challenge at length, I plan to use this space to accomplish a pair of long-percolating goals.  First, I shall curb my natural propensity for verbosity (staring now) and make this post exactly twenty-five sentences.  No, really, this makes three.  Drat; I had best get creative and conservative fast.  My second goal is to thank Todd for providing us with the carrot, the stick, and, yes, sometimes the whip, that is this project.  When he approached me with the idea over the summer I was flush with post-grading euphoria and a sudden surplus of free time.  It sounded like a great idea, in an abstract sort of way, and I readily agreed to participate.  The check didn’t come due until October, and by then (like most of you), I was staring at a full schedule and piles of work high enough to have their own ski lift.  Motivation was low.

Fortunately, my office is four doors down from The Instigator.  For those of you not lucky enough to exist in close proximity to Todd, it’s a bit like sharing a workspace with a cheerleader, an inventor, an optimist, a friendly IT guy, a happily misplaced John Muir, and The Cat in the Hat.  If this sounds like some sort of manic Hell, I cannot assure you it’s not.  Rather, Todd wanders the corridor of M building, poking his shaggy head in offices, dispensing each personality in just the right proportion.  Of course, the formula might not always feel right at the moment.   

When I’m three hours into grading essays, with another three soul-sucking hours to go, I’m not interested in hearing about Blackboard’s newest doodad, nor what cool things my apparently essay-less colleague has cooked up and put forth on the web for her ever-so-lucky students.  However, like some tech-savvy Johnny Appleseed, Todd knows that not every seed sown will bear fruit.  Instead, he relies on casual tenacity and repetition.  On Tuesday I am frightfully busy, but when he knocks on Thursday (and Todd is never afraid to knock), I’m sipping coffee and tossing around ideas for a new class.  When The Instigator walks in at that moment, he’s just what I need; in fact, he’s just what every good teacher needs. 

Though the life of an educator is rewarding, it can sometimes grow repetitious.  Each semester we teach students roughly the same material, using roughly the same techniques, in roughly the same spaces, and with roughly the same goal.  In this way we can fall into the role of an assembly worker at a large production plant, each day inserting part X into part Y2.  This is not our fault, nor necessarily a bad thing; we each delve deeply into our disciplines, and, over a few years, find effective methods of achieving our goals –after all, if it’s not broke, why fix it?  Nevertheless, we occasionally need someone to get us off our well-worn seats and make us tour the factory, to show us what happens at station X, to examine the finished product, to share what’s going on at the Dearborn plant.  This is what Todd does, and this is what 9x9x25 has achieved.  Perhaps that is why I’ve not felt some momentous change by participating in this project –with The Instigator around, I get to engage in it all the time.

Giving Thanks

Click on the Yavapai College homepage this week and the first image that pops up is this:

Yep, that’s my Hannah, and yes, this is going to be one of those “why I’m thankful to be a teacher posts.”  It’s Thanksgiving time.  Bear with me and I’ll try and keep it short.

Hannah and I started at YC together in the fall of 2009.  She was a wide-eyed freshman and I was a brand-new professor.  She was trying to jumpstart her life, and I was trying to jumpstart my career.  We didn’t know it at the time, but one day her march to pomp and circumstance, her well-earned cap and gown, would serve as supreme validation for us both.  Before we can appreciate her journey, though, we must first examine my own. 

Like most aspiring academics, I had entered graduate school with an eye on ivory towers.  I knew that I would someday be teaching (really, what else does one do with an advanced degree in English), but, as a student enrolled at a research institution, I assumed that such work would be ancillary to the more important pursuit of my discipline.  This mindset was shared by my classmates and encouraged by my professors.  Thus, when offered a Graduate Teaching Fellowship, I adopted the prevailing outlook and viewed it, not as a valuable learning opportunity, but as a meal ticket and tuition waiver.  I would attend class, and read, and study, and read, and write, and read some more, and teach on the side.  This was how it was done; this was the once and present way.
 
Indeed, my mentor called it a mandate.  Sitting in her dark and hallowed office, she looked at me and said, “Spend as little time teaching as possible.  Don’t dwell on their papers.  Your focus should be on your own classes and your own career.”  I considered this valuable guidance.  Obviously, it had worked for her; she had my dream job.  However, I would have been a fool to think that she wasn’t applying the same advice to herself.  As an associate professor at a research institution, her primary focus was not the two or three classes she taught but the articles and professional conferences that would bring prestige to the university and win her tenure.  Thus, she would only spend a little time teaching me and certainly wouldn’t dwell on my papers.  She wasn’t selfish, just invested -one more cog in a clock that’s been ticking since the 13th century.  I could read the time and knew what I had to do.

There was just one problem: I discovered I liked teaching.  After leaving a five-hour study session in the library, I was often bleary-eyed and resentful, but after teaching I was always energized and optimistic.  At first, this newfound passion was my dirty little secret, but in my teacher training program I found a few likeminded souls.  We gathered in the shadows to discuss pedagogy and scrawled out lesson plans on spare napkins.  One can endure a double life for only so long, and eventually I had to make a decision.  I could soon graduate with my MA and hopefully focus on teaching at a community college, or I could endure another three or four years of academic hazing, earn my PhD, and follow in my mentor’s footsteps.  Surrounded by brick and ivy, it was a difficult decision.

Surprisingly (or perhaps not) the deciding factor came from outside academia.  My wife’s career involved helping victims of abuse, especially children.  Though this job was emotionally challenging, she could never question whether or not it was socially valuable and important.  I was jealous of this assurance.  My teaching was not without meaning or relevance, but when I looked around the room, I did not see a vulnerable population.  Most of my students came from well-to-do families, with a number of safety nets, and even if I was Professor Keating in the classroom, my English 101 course would likely have little impact on whether or not they succeeded in life.  However, I was a first generation college student myself and had once attended a community college.  I well remembered that demographic and the challenges they faced.  My decision was made.

I was soon hired at Yavapai, willing and eager to teach and contribute to the social good.  Fortunately, validation was not long in coming.  As stated above, Hannah arrived at the same time.  She was a single mom with a troubled past, no child support, and plenty of people, including herself, telling her she couldn’t cut it in college.  And they were almost right.  That first semester there was late work, and tears, and forgotten weekends, but there was also intelligence and drive.  A busy university professor with writing to publish would likely have had little time for this student, but I was in a wonderful environment that encouraged teaching and supported making connections.  My office hours were for students and my primary purpose, really my sole raison d'être, was to help them succeed.  Hannah was my demo and Yavapai gave me a chance to make a social difference, the opportunity to help a young woman climb into the middle class and forever change her life and the life of her daughter.  I relished this chance and did the best I could to help.

Let me be clear though: Hannah did the work, Hannah suffered through the difficulties, and Hannah made the sacrifices.  She deserves the credit.  I was just lucky enough to have a job that helped make such dreams possible, and that’s certainly something to be thankful for.

What's the Point?

I have a confession to make: I hate the exclamation point.  This is, of course, an entirely inappropriate disclosure for an English professor, and I sincerely apologize for denigrating the archetype, but it’s true.  I dislike it for all the same reasons I love It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It’s rude, indiscreet, unsophisticated, and a bit pushy.  As Peter Griffin would say, “It insists upon itself.”  Or, to quote a more traditional literary figure:

And like all good bigots, I’m passing my intolerance on to young people.  Include an exclamation point in your English 101 essay and you’ll likely earn this comment in the margin: “Avoid exclamation points.  If the writing is strong, the reader will recognize the emphasis without being instructed.” Burn, right?  Call me a pedant if you like, but unless we’re in a Monty Python skit, we don’t go around shouting at one another in casual conversation, and so why should we do it in our writing?  A screamer-free piece of prose is a civilized piece of prose.  It exudes grace, speaks eloquently, and requests attention.  It does not simply hand everything to you, crying in its best subaltern voice:


Lookie here

but rather engages you in polite and meaningful conversation. 

Perhaps I’ve gone too far.

Regardless, the point I’m trying to make (emphatically as I can –if only there was some way that I could indicate how strongly I feel in a concise way, maybe even with a single mark. . .) is that I do not like exclamation points.  I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.

And yet, I use them.  I use them in a very specific way and for a very specific purpose.
   
If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you know that I strongly encourage enthusiasm in the classroom.  After all, if I’m not excited and interested in the material, how can I expect my students to be?  Thus, when at the front of the room, I speak louder and with emphasis.  I move around.  I gesticulate.  I smile –all the opposites of Old Man Stein.  Enthusiasm is more than just good modeling though.  At its best, it’s charismatic and inspiring.  Do you remember Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter?

As his '80s predecessor first taught us, there are a number of khaki-clad Australian men happy to wrestle reptiles for a camera crew, but what earned Irwin worldwide fame was a level of boyish enthusiasm that was obvious and attractive.  He loved what he did and that love inspired others. 

I’m not entirely saying that we should all adopt this Trix Rabbit personae in the classroom, but if we can show excitement and energy to our students we are far more likely to garner their interest and engage them in the material.  In other words, know your stuff but don’t be afraid to be a fool for the subject.
   
That's all well and good in the classroom, but how do we accomplish this online?   One solution is simply to create videos, and I highly recommend this approach.  However, it’s not practical or even best practice to film everything, and so one must resort to, sigh, distasteful measures.  One must resort to exclamation points.  Though I loathe them in serious or professional prose, I use them dozens of times daily when interacting with online students, and it makes a difference.  Because I cannot be physically there to smile at them, welcome them into my space with body language, and create a comfortable atmosphere with my demeanor, I compose emails like this:

"Good morning, Sally.  I received your assignment this morning and can’t believe how much improvement you’ve shown!  Some work still needs to be done on the analysis portion, but you are headed in the right direction.  Keep it up!  Next week we will be looking more at punctuation, so feel free to get a jumpstart on that reading if you can.  Until then, good luck and have a great week!"

Those three exclamation points are more than I would use in three years in my personal writing, but here they do good work.  They convey positivity, congeniality, and encouragement. As human beings we often overanalyze written communications borne of a power differential: 

“Does my boss really think it’s okay that I come in late on Monday?”
                                                 Or
“She seems to be excited for our date, but I really don’t know for sure.”

However, there is little chance of misinterpreting my example above.  The exact nature that makes exclamation points boorish in serious writing equips them perfectly for interacting with students online; they are overly clear and a bit Pollyanna-ish, and this pair of traits perfectly suits them for teaching.

If enthusiasm evinces happiness and interest in the classroom, then the roots of the exclamation point express how the excited little glyph accomplishes this in writing.  The best origin theory states that punctuation derives from the Latin exclamation of joy (io), written with the i above the o, and when the mark first appeared in English printing in the 15th century, it was known as the “note of admiration.”  Though some serious students may find my liberal use of the punctuation a little over-the-top, I’m happy to err on the side of joy and admiration, and I think that's something worth shouting about!