To Err is Human, Yet at Schools...

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.  ~Niels Bohr

On Gaming and Errors

Yesterday while driving in the car my son explained that he is improving at writing code:

Invention. (Reilly, 2008)

When I first started last summer I would get about 800 error messages and I got that down to 60 by the end of summer. The other day I got it down to 5 error messages.

My husband, Rob, quickly added that this is a gaming mentality.

Ask any gamer and he'll tell you that you learn through trial and error.

This struck me as significant.  Each week, either Rob or I have to sign a paper acknowledging each quiz and test grade my son received/earned during that week.  Next to each number, one of us signs his or her name. Some weeks Rob does this, other weeks I do it.  But it never stops or changes.  The numbers are final and we must acknowledge with ink, each performance and each "counts" towards a final marking period grade. Tests count x percentage points and quiz grades and homework count as well. 

It's all quite logical and explained at back to school night. Yet, it seems to me as if the logic is really faulty if the outcome is learning. For there are no second chances or even the understanding of how any one performance may be viewed in light of any other performance.

Eggs in a carton. Each separate, never mixed for fear of cracking.

There is no learning along the way. There are starts and stops and even these don't seem to be connected.

On Schooling

from this website

Last year, my son arrived at a new school in March and took a mathematics test three days after arriving. He failed the test, earning less than half of the available points.  A week of so later the mathematics teacher phoned to tell me she thought my son should be moved from the advanced math class as he was not doing well.  I inquired why and she mentioned the test score.  As we talked a bit it became evident that he was tested on material he simply had not been present to learn.  There was an assumption that "he should have known" the material. The test score would count toward his final average, I was warned. This seemed like misinformed mathematics to me.  I suggested as much and although the teacher agreed, the test score remained an indicator of his knowledge and performance.

But what did it actually mean?  How was it received? What did my son learn about his potential as a mathematician?  This is a child who at 21 months took the condiments from the refrigerator and organized them into two groups in an attempt to balance the lot. 11 years later he would confide to me that he just isn't' good in math, as in the class.  This is what he has learned at school. He has confused mathematics know-how with mathematics performance at school.

I never hear my son say, I am not a good gamer.  800 error messages and he sees these as an indicator of what he will learn, not as an indicator of how 'smart' he is.   School is something quite different.  In September, a friend told me about a virtual Java course at Stanford and I mentioned it to my son.  At first he seemed interested in attending. Yesterday he announced he had decided against this.

It's school.  I'd rather figure out Java like I do everything else. On line and figuring it out with friends and YouTtube.

Occupy Your Classroom

Circa 1967 (M.A. Reilly, 2009)

We make much of NCLB, its restrictive and onerous assessment practices, and we are right to do so.  I often wish though that the same educators who are vocal about state assessments might deeply inquire about their own assessment practices.  Now, I realize that there are many who do.  There are many who have more informed practices.  And there are many who simply issue grades based on some simple algorithm.

How is it that in a gaming culture, error is a way of learning and yet at schools, error is a form of damnation?  How many children sit in classrooms where they are terrorized by failing?  How many hear their teachers say to them or someone else in the class that if you fail you will be left back?  How many parents use their children's performances via grades at school as bragging rights, as bumper stickers? What is a way out of this mindless entrapment?

Karl Fisch (@karlfisch), Jose Vilson (@TheJLV) and Chad Sansing (@chadsansing) recently blogged about educators occupying their own classrooms.

Jose offered five ways for educators to occupy their classrooms.  He closed by writing:

We ought to rebel. Our best rebellion must come in the form of assuring our students do as well as possible. Outside politics have deteriorated, not elevated, the classroom experience for far too long. Before we can truly have a revolution of any nature, we must first shore up the parts of our job we can immediately control. It starts with the 30 / 60 / 90 / 150 students we have under our care.

Shore up the parts of the job we have immediate control over.

In a post dated October 7, 2011, Karl wrote:

That instead of blaming “the system,” we should realize that we are the system, and we should advocate for our students when we see things that we don’t believe are in their best interests. And that we, just like the protesters in the middle east, and just like the #occupywallstreet folks, have access to tools that Clay Shirky has shown us make it much easier to not only organize, but to actually effect change. That, really, this thing we call school doesn’t happen without us.

Be responsible as we are the system.

Chad closed his post by suggesting five proactive actions.  The last one, Build communities instead of reinforcing expectations, seems to be at the heart of what I am attempting to convey here.

Want to occupy your classroom?

Begin by asking yourself: Do the practices I espouse help to build a culture where to err is not only human, but necessary? As James Joyce penned in Ulysses,  "A man of genius makes no mistakes.  His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery"

What portals will you afford your students?

Fieldwork

Birds Lifting (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

SONG

A rowan like a lipsticked girl

Between the by-road and the main road

Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance

Stand off among the rushes.

There are the mud-flowers of dialect

And the immortelles of perfect pitch

And that moment when the bird sings very close

To the music of what happens.

-Seamus Heaney, 1979

Man Watching (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

A DRINK OF WATER

She came every morning to draw water
Like an old bat staggering up the field:
The pump's whooping cough, the bucket's clatter
And slow dimineundo as it filled,
Announced her. I recall
Her grey apron, the pocked white enamel
Of the brimming bucket, and the treble
Creak of her voice like the pump's handle.
Nights when a full moon lifted past her gable
It fell back through her window and would lie
Into the water set out on the table.
Where I have dipped to drink again, to be
Faithful to the admonishment on her cup,
"Remember the Giver," fading off the lip.

                                                        -- Seamus Heaney

Fog Lifting (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

Autumn Festivals: Book Recommendations for Grades 3-8+

1. Day of the Dead

Ancona, George. 1993. Pablo Remembers: The Fiesta of the Day of the Dead. NY: HarperCollins.

Amado, Elisa. 1999. Barrilete: A Kite for the Day of the Dead. Illustrated by Joya Hairs. Toronto: Groundwood Books.

Goldman, Judy. 2008. Uncle Monarch and the Day of the Dead. Illustrated by Rene King Moreno. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press.

Johnston, Tony. 2000. Day of the Dead. Illustrated by Jeanette Winter. NY: Sandpiper.

Keep, Richard. 2008. Clatter Bash! A Day of the Dead Celebration. Atlanta, GA: Peachtree Publishers.

Krull, Kathleen. 1994. Maria Molina and the Days of the Dead. Illustrated by Enrique O. Sanchez. NY: Simon & Schuster.

Vicente, Luis San. 2002. Festival of Bones/El Festival de las Calaveras:  The Little-Bitty Book for the Day of the Dead. El Paso. TX: Cinco Puntos Press.

Winter, Jeanette. 2004. Calavera Abecedario: A Day of the Dead Alphabet. Cambridge, MA: North-South Book.

2. Halloween

Behn, Harry. 2003. Halloween. Illustrated by Greg Couch. NY: North-South Books.

Bowers, Sharon. 2009. Ghoulish Goodies. Storey Books. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aGMe1VwBbA

Choi, Yangsook. 2006. Behind the Mask. NY: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.

Hamilton, Virginia. 2004. Wee Winnie Witch’s Skinny. Illustrated by Barry Moser. NY: Blue Sky Press.

Heiligman, Deborah. 2009. Holidays Around the World: Celebrate Halloween. Washington D.C.: National Geographic.

from The Three Witches

Hurston, Zora Neale. 2006. The Three Witches. Adapted by Joyce Carol Thomas. Illustrated by Faith Ringgold. NY: HarperCollins.

Merrian, Eve. 1987. Halloween ABC. NY: Simon & Schuster.

From Los Gatos Black on Halloween

Montes, Marisa. 2006. Los Gatos Black on Halloween. Illustrated by Yuyi Morales. NY: Henry Holt.

Nikola-Lisa, W. 1997. Shake Dem Halloween Bones. Illustrated by Mike Reed. NY: Houghton Mifflin.

RavenWolf, Silver. 1999. Halloween: Customs, Recipes & Spells. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Worldwide.

 

3. Harvest Festivals/Autumn

Bruchac, Joseph (Abenaki). 2007. Squanto’s Journey: The Story of the First Thanksgiving. Illustrated by Greg Shed. NY: Sandpiper.

Jackson, Ellen.  2003. The Autumn Equinox: Celebrating the Harvest. Illustrated by Jan Davey Ellis. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press.

Lee, Uk-Bae. 1999. Sori’s Harvest Moon Day: A Story of Korea. Norwalk, CT: Soundprints.

Leslie, Clare Walker and Frank E. Gerace. 2000. The Ancient Celtic Festivals: And How We Celebrate Them Today. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International.

Levenson, George. 2002. Pumpkin Circle. Photographs by Shmuel Thaler. San Francisco, CA: Tricycle.

Lin, Grace. 2010. Thanking the Moon: Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. NY: Knopf.

O’Neill, Catherine. 2004. 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving. Washington D.C.: National Geographic.

Pfeffer, Wendy. 2006. We Gather Together. Illustrated by Linda Bleck. NY: Dutton Juvenile.

Russell, Ching Yeung. 1997. Moon Festival. Illustrated by Christopher Zhong-Yuan-Zhang. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press.

Tan, Amy 1995. The Moon Lady. Illustrated by Gretchen Shields. NY: Aladdin.

Tang, Sanmu. 2008. Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival. Translated by Mina Tenison. Better Link Press.

Williams, Brenda. 2009. Lin Yi’s Lantern: A Moon Festival Tale. Illustrated by Benjamin Lacombe. Cambridge, MA: Barefoot Books.

4. Scary Stories (Grades 3 – 8+)

From Coraline

Bellairs, John. 2004. The House with a Clock in Its Walls. Illustrated by Edward Gorey. NY: Puffin.

Gaiman, Neil. 2009. Coraline: The Graphic Novel. Illustrated by P. Craig Russell. NY: Harper Collins.

----------------. The Graveyard Book. Illustrated by Dave McKean. NY: HarperCollins.

Gidwitz, Adam. 2011. A Dark Tale and Grimm. NY: Puffin.

From La Llorna/The Weeping Woman

Priestly, Chris. 2007. Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror. Illustrated by David Roberts. NY: Bloomsbury.

Hayes, Joe. 2006. La Llorna/The Weeping Woman. Illustrated by Mona Pennypacker. Translated by Bicki Trego Hill. El Paso, TX: Cinco Puntos Press.

-------------. 2003. El Cucuy: A Bogeyman Cuento. Illustrated by Honorio Robeledo. El Paso, TX: Cinco Puntos Press.

Riggs, Ransom. 2011. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Philadelphia, PA: Quirk Books.

SanSouci, Robert D. 2010. Haunted Houses (Are You Scared Yet?). Illustrated by Kelly Murphy and Antoine Revoy. NY: Henry Holt.

On Teaching Writing, Not!

A People Do Not Forget their Geniuses (Reilly, 2009)

Last weekend Maureen Devlin (@lookforsun) asked me if I had written or would write a post about teaching writing. I found one post, actually taken from part of a chapter from a book I wrote. But other than that, I have been pretty quiet about teaching writing and I think there are some reasons for that silence.

I'm not sure teaching teachers about writing is helpful to them or their students, especially if the instruction is in place of teachers actually learning to teach writing by being authors and studying their own processes.  I almost want to suggest that on the many books and posts about teaching writing that there needs to be a sign that reads: Don't try this without actually having written and thought a bit about how you write!

Wild Nights! Wild Nights! (Reilly, 2009)

Now to be clear, the challenge isn't that there are lots of text about teaching writing, some that have informed my own work.  The issue, rather, is that such information will not and cannot take the place of being a writer.  Being a writer allows me to understand what actually happens while writing, thinking about writing, avoiding writing, etc.  From within the context of doing and thinking, texts about writing may be helpful.  I am wondering though how many teachers think they can read about teaching writing and then apply those lessons to their classrooms, in lieu of actually being a writer.  I want to say here, that such practices may well  result in lessons that lack accuracy, depth, and appropriate or meaningful response.  The reasons for this are three-fold:

1. Without actually writing it is impossible to understand that what you recommend or insist learners do which may appear logical , may in fact be problematic or simply, wrong. You may be telling students to do things that will limit their expression, cause them to doubt their capacity to write, confuse them, or cause them to dislike writing.
2. Not everyone who authors books about teaching writing, actually has experience teaching. Whereas the recommendations made may make sense to the author and perhaps other adults, some of the practices may not translate well or be appropriate for children. 
3. Not all recommended practices work well with youngsters depending on their age, their histories, their idiosyncratic practices as writers.

Some writing advice/directions or writing instruction I have heard told to students that would not help me as a writer, well at least not always:

A Pocket Full of Stones (Reilly, 2009)

1. You must begin your composition with a topic sentence. Underline it.
2. Never use first person in your essay.
3. You must keep a writer's notebook. I will show you the format you will use.
4. Each paragraph must have a topic sentence, supporting details, and clincher sentence. The paragraphs must contain between 5 and 8 sentences and you must include at least five paragraphs.
5. Correcting verb tense on a first draft. (I am almost always shifting tense as I am unsure of where I am situating the text).
6. Make an outline of your story before you begin writing.
7. Once you decide your topic, you must stick to it throughout the writing. It cannot be changed.
8. Begin your writing by making a web of ideas.
9. Shh. You're writing, not talking.
10. Add adjectives to spruce up your work.
11. Put away those books, you're writing.
12. You must write the first draft and then can use the computer for the final copy.
13. Finish every piece.
14. You have five days to write....
15. Show, don't tell.
16. Only write with complete sentences.
17. You  must write in x number of different genres each year.
18. This is a non-fiction piece. There should be no fiction in it.
19. You must prewrite and it should be attached to your final draft.
20. Invert the question into a statement and use that as your opening. 
21. Make a list of topics you want to write about this year and put them in the front of your notebook.
22. You must write everyday for at least 15 minutes.
23. Draw a picture before you write.
24. Use metaphors in your writing.
25. Never mimic other people's writing. This is stealing.
26. Do not use "you" anywhere in your work.
27. Talk about what you want to write with your neighbor before you write.
28. Don't edit until the end.
29. You will lose 10 points for each day your writing is late.
30. I can't give you a topic. You must find one for yourself.
31. Don't use slang.
32. Write only in Standard English.

So what teaching writing advice I would offer?

• Write.
• See what you learn about writing from your own writing, writing habits, and dispositions across time.
• Join or don't join a writing group. Truly this is a personal decision.
• Read often.
• Forget my advice and invent it for yourself.

Nausicaa (Reilly, 2009)

On a lighter note, here's some feedback for James Joyce upon submission of Ulysses to his creative writing workshop. 

Authority, Meaning Making, and Information Literacy

Warning: Very emergent thinking on my part!!!

It was with great interest that I read and reread Thomas Mackey and Trudi E. Jackobson's (2011) Reframing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy and would recommend the text to you. The authors provide a critique of several frameworks for literacy (information literacy, media literacy, digital literacy, visual literacy, cyberliteracy) and suggest that a metaliteracy framework is necessary as these former definitions of literacy/ies are challenged "based on the emergence of new social technologies" (p. 69).

The authors contend that:

Metaliteracy reinforces stronger connections between information literacy and other literacy frameworks. This approach looks at the foundation principles that unite information and technology, rather than focusing on differences based on discrete skills, distant technologies, or media formats (p. 70).

The authors wish to ensure that a broader definition than information skills be employed.

As I read, I wondered: What do we mean when we characterize something as information?  Do we carry with us an understanding that information is stable? Static? Singularly authored? Is information limited to what we explicitly know? In Mackey and Jacobson's critique, they write about the need to think:

beyond information as a commodity, and instead (focus) on the production of knowledge in collaboration with others (p.68).

Screen shot from Minecraft.

Yet when offering examples of metaliteracy, they situate "information" as a bounded entity; that which can be found and retrieved. And certainly there is information that fits that definition--information based on explicit knowledge.  Yet, what happens if instead of thinking of information as a bounded matter, we situate information along a knowledge continuum that stretches from bounded (a thing you could hold in you hand such as a bus schedule) to unbounded (that which cannot be contained nor is complete, such as an emerging idea)?  Perhaps it is the practice of referring to all of those possibilities as information that is so thorny, especially when we may well think of information as that which is bounded.  In some ways the tensions remind of Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory in which efferent and aesthetic ways of reading represent a continuum of responses to text.

I wonder if the tensions the authors describe might also be influenced by how knowledge is (in)formed: explicitly and tacitly.  It is easy to identify explicit knowledge. It is external and codified and schools of the last century (and many would argue this century) have build curricula on explicitly known information. Explicit knowing is something I can hand to you using a single symbol system.  Tacit knowing is inherently different and less likely to be seen at school. Tacit knowing is bodily-known, experiential, and not yet codified. Additionally, tacit knowing, cannot be represented via a single symbol system.  In fact I would suggest that it is through transmediated representations (multiple symbol systems) that tacit knowledge begins to be codified.

Tacit knowledge is about knowing and at the same time not being able to clearly explain how and at times what one knows. Earlier today I was reading Roger Martin's essay, How To Make Companies Think Long-Term and stopped when I read:

Eliminating stock-based compensation would help reduce the incentive for executive leadership to focus on the short term. But there is a residual problem which has long frustrated me. The answer finally popped into my brain (funny how that works).

Martin's characterization of knowing as the answer popping into his brain suggests a possible bridge between tacit and explicit knowing that occurs when that which you have known but could not name begins to be codified. I wonder if codification of tacit knowledge isn't heightened via the connectivity to and collaboration with so many potential others through social media and online communities.

This idea feels important. How? I'm not sure I can name it as of yet.  But here's my first go at it.

Perhaps the emphasis in redefining information literacy as metaliteracy and expanding the definition to include the participatory nature of producing and consuming information is secondary to understanding the emerging importance of tacit knowledge and how such knowledge becomes codified.  I am not suggesting metaliteracy isn't important.  I think the authors do a fine job at exploring the differences and arguing well for the expanded framework. But I think the tensions the authors describe are more a symptom of the need in social institutions to shift from privileging explicit ways of knowing to privileging tacit ways of knowing.

Here's my working thesis: Through participation and collaboration with others via social media and online communities as well as the development of transmediated (multiple symbol systems) representations, learners' feelings, intuitions, and impressions emerge rhizomatically and collectively. These tacit ways of knowing among people disrupt what it has meant to know, to author, and to consume.  It is these disruptions that signal tension, disequilibrium and creation.

Hacking the Poem: Assignment 1

M.A. Reilly, 10.1.11

Catching the Heart

Seamus Heaney’s “Postscript,” speaks to me, always has from the first time I read it in 1996.  It is a poem that juxtaposes containment and rupture. I often imagine, perhaps even hear, the poet speaking directly to me in intimate tones as I read it aloud.  A friend alongside as I stop the car as I must do--a tourist in this land where I was born.  And there is Seamus, reminding me that in the bustle of my life, the hurry through, I can no more capture the scene, as I might stop the winds from buffeting the car or my heart from being blown open.  He knows so well that this “scene” is really an artificially stopped moment and signals such with the first word of the poem, And. 

Art works that way when we make the time. We find ourselves arrived at a place of feeling that we cannot trace.  Life happens that way too.

Finding the poetic in the everyday by realizing that one cannot get ready for it, nor control it seems to be at the heart of “Postscript.”  The Flaggy Shore in Clare County Ireland (especially in late September) certainly invites wonder and awe as the starkness of land meets sky.  A lyric poem. A sharp breath we exhale .

But more is at work here than mere contrasts of light and dark.  I have traveled the Flaggy Shore to make images and have done so in late September, as well as other times of the year. I rerun these images in my head like reels of film, re-seeing the vastness, the dark and light, the splintered beauty, and with each image I recall the vulnerability felt at what I knew then, like I know now, I could not capture. There is so much beyond my human breath to behold.

In hacking the poem, I wanted to first do it visually and the result is above. The image is a combination of works I have made along the Flaggy Shore and also at home in New Jersey, as well as some random images of sky that I remixed.  I wanted all of the messiness of place as it seems to suggest how futile containment is given the inevitability of rupture.

Listen now, as the poet reads the poem.

'Living Your Way into the Answer'

Feet.  (Reilly, 2009)

I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.

Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
in Letters to a Young Poet

Finding an answer is inherently different than living your way into the answer, especially for matters of the heart.  The first, finding an answer, may well be more a product of impetuous behavior; an attempt to dismiss the ambiguity and uncertainty that seems to frame human dilemma. Think of it as action that  rushes one to a contrived sense of certainty.

The latter is about living deliberately and sometimes coming to notice that you have arrived at the answer without any announcement of such happenings. What happens in the spaces between now and the ubiquitous, then depends a lot on whether you are living atop your feet or trying to navigate an imagined world that has yet to arrive. The it might be world.

Living in the present takes courage, and perhaps for me even practice.  It may well mean losing what I think I need, like money or position, and having to grapple with the attending fear that often masquerades such loss.  I know this firsthand and even alongside experience, fear is a formidable force.  It absolutely means deeply acknowledging that where I am situated offers only a partial and incomplete view of the present, let alone any future.

Not rushing to an answer (any answer at that) allows me to forgo excuses (regardless of how sound they sound) in order to situate a truth: I don't know the future. I do know now. Can I determine for now what makes sense and live on this parcel of land where I place my feet?

Living my way into an answer means forgetting the question and in doing so seeing what is and taking the small rather local steps of being. There is a clarity that accompanies such action and a feeling of being centered. In such a series of moments I have recently come to realize that I have been knowing for a long time without knowing that I have confused salary and position with satisfaction.

It is an important answer and I am most surprised to come to name it. Being satisfied is largely about the nature of work I do, not the salary I am paid.

 Living my way into an answer is about accepting the may ways I am powerless and living deliberately as I might each day.

Be you, as my friend Monika reminds.

Feeling lost, bereft of answers you seek?  Look down and make sure you can still see your feet.