voicing concern ii

I. scenario:

sat, oct 29, 2005. class at ole miss. the day's topic is assesment - considering its traditional and non-traditional faces, respective pros and cons, etc. the beginning is spent being lectured to (though i don't remember if the lecture was actually about assessment, i think it was another tough love life-coaching session by our own dr. germaine), complete with "checking for understanding" traps: a veiled rhetorical question is presented to a group of people (e.g. [approximations] "about this time of the year, first year teachers generally start to gain control of the classroom. how many of you feel like things are under control?"; "most people use at least some non-traditional assessment. how many of you use non-traditional assessment in your classrooms?") , for which some of us mechanically raise a hand in the affirmative (others shrug), thereafter understanding being checked for.

after this mess, a longish activity involving group discussions about various assessment methods (traditional, peer assessment, self assessment, rubric, etc.). teacher corps members were placed in groups, and posters describing each method were rotated around to each group. upon arrival of a poster, we were instructed to - i think - discuss the worth of the assessment strategy, and its use in our class rooms.

[key school-of-ed words in the above paragraph: "groups,"and "worth." the former satisfies the educational fixation on "cooperative learning," the latter on the high-end of ye ole Bloom scale: evaluation.]

II. and then:

i spent the majority of the activity time thinking about how i probably feel disengaged with these classes in the same ways that my students feel disengaged from mine. i drifted into conversations with colleagues about the irony, occassionally reprimanded by an overseer for not re-learning or re-hashing what a rubric is. of course, one substantive difference between our disengagment and that of our students is that it seems like my colleagues and i choose to re-engage in the topic at a level that we value, in this case by reflecting on the implications of our own inadequacies given our very response to a pedagogical front that seems equally inadequate (of course, we could just need a little institutional discipline - spare the rod, spoil the grad student. go rebels.). on the other hand of the meta-irony, our students - upon disengagement - just seem to start talking about humping each other, which is of course a level that they value - though it's not true that i don't; i spend plenty of time thinking about humping, even humping some of the people in my program. the point is, our students don't respond to a weak lesson on linear systems by meditating on the indeterminacy of the fifth postulate, which is tragic (both the indeterminacy and the not thinking about not-humping). furthermore, the sorts of conversations we were developing in our groups were exactly at the level of evaluatory analysis ostensibly promoted by the activity's structure, though undervalued as such in deference to the need to move on to the next aribitrary conversation piece (re: minor controversies at jake's table).

III. possible reasons why i didn't engage in the lesson (with the corollary reflection about why my students may not engage in my lesson, provided that the structural analogy is solvent - and i think it is)

(III.a) preface: i've been spewing forth the buzz-work "value systems" since i've gotten into this mess. it seems quite apparant that if a person does not attribute value to a system or object, he or she will not choose to engage in that system or object - at least not in any way that would expend effort for which the foreseeable return is valueless, and at least not in the same way that someone who does attribute value would engage. this seems to - in a reductive way, sure - allow some illustration for the fact that students who - from an education-institutional sense - drastically lack proficienty, and show few signs of interest in the classroom are nevertheless more than willing to be trained to perform a systems of tasks (of compareable difficulty to most traditional academic objectives) for - lets' say - minumum wage. clearly, something about this performance discrepancy may be the fact that they've chosen to value the immediacy of money, and the culture that preceeds it. and this is of course an understandable choice.

back to (III) possible reasons why i didn't engage in the lesson...

1. lack of fluency

the whole conversation about assessment was rather contingent on my assumed adequacy/comfortability with transmitting content to be asssessed. at the comparative level, this prompt for disengagment is somewhat related to the dilemma facing a student who knows what a linear system is, but can't graph lines in order to show this knowledge. so - in the same sense that the student starts to disengage from the objective by realizing that he or she lacks the basic skills that are prerequisites for performing the objective once learned - i'm reluctant to be concerned at all about being good (or at least being better) at assessing things in the event that i'm not confident that i'm teaching well in the first place. and - sure - part of teaching well is assessing well, and - sure - i'm supposed to believe that good teaching comes with experience, so i should just keep stuffing my toolbox with fancy things i'm afraid to use, and - sure- proficiency will grow on all fronts as long as i stick to it. but, the fact remains that i have no idea what it means to be a math teacher, that i'm struggling to pull things together and make things up as i go along, and that there's an ever-hovering "that's just how it is" myth coming from the gods above, along with the occasional rain of flying cars, cold fusion, and peer assessment- when all i want is a rigorous perspective on how to actually prepare myself to teach algebra ii to my students - not just a spin-cycle of talking about teaching while divorced from its practice, and practicing teaching without having really thought about it, even though i'm in a perfect position to synthesize my own practice of teaching with my own thoughts about it. (response: "the first year of teaching... trial by fire... experience... rewarding... here's a candy bar.") nevertheless, linear systems remain at the theoretical level, as does diverse assessement. of course i know what assessment is, and can rattle off on its flavors, but if i'm still struggling to instruct on a daily basis, and i'm struggling to find time to focus on refining my instruction, discussions about possible assessment strategies are going to be drastically less useful than time to actually reflect upon and develop my instruction, which could easily (gasp) be scoped within the framework of developming my assessment arsenal.

2. "low-level" objective (the Bloom trap)

i mentioned above the veil of "evaluation" that came along with our group-and-poster activity: "we were instructed to - i think - discuss the worth of the assessment strategy, and its use in our class rooms." this evaluatory analysis was called upon despite the directed experience of any of these assessment tools - which is fine, but which keeps discussion at a highly theoretical level. strangely, this is a nice microcosm of the teacher corps approach, which hits the learner [read the bold text in the following]

Knowledge <--- here
Comprehension
Application
Analysis
Synthesis
Evaluation <----- and here

on Bloom's taxonomy of learning stuff - the holy eucharist of educational instruction. the "Knowledge.... Evaluation" trap basically goes like this: "here's stuff.... how do you feel about it?" (and, the ellipses may represent days, weeks, or months) any development in the middle is left to chance and/or whim - which may allow someone to try and back out of the trap, saying that we're responsible somethings or other, and it's assumed that we do this on our own. this is a silly assumption - not about us being responsible, but about us being so capable that we're going to just adapt immediately to the maelstrom of teaching, and on top of that think to apply all of the things we were told once or twice during the summer.

back to the activity. the information (re: knowledge) isn't too difficult to pick up, and i'm not impressed by getting it again in novel situations (re: posters). [i'm tired, so my tenses are changing, which is frustrating]. neither am i concerned about how i "feel" about assessment (re: evaluation), especially given any credence you may ascribe to the above argument about fluency. that is, i'm not worried about what this information is (again, for the most part, it's not new), i'm worried about how i'm actually going to use it in my actual class (re: the skipped over part of the bloom's list, and my own inadequacies as a teacher). again: not if can use it (re: knowledge), and not if i want to use it (re: evaluation), but how the hell am i going to do this (re: "here's a candy bar...").

IV. class ended....

i. instructor A threatened our professional future.

he had picked up on the first-degree irony, a la [an approximation]: "you guys complain alot about how your students don't pay attention/follow directions/engage(!) during your classroom, but you all seem to act the same way in mine..." however, this comparison is (a) structurally thin, given the content of our disengagment and our voiced desire to engage in productive rigour (in the face of its near absence), and (b) perhaps applied more appropriately (or at least dually) as an illustration of the failed teacher, rather than the failed student; it is as much of an indictment of a situation that fails us in much the way that we construct situations that often fail our students (you know, because we're first-year teachers, and we're pretty much making it up as we go along).

nevertheless, we were thereafter reminded that sometime in our lives we would be moving on to a world where letters of recommendation would be critical currency, and that perhaps we should take into account perhaps needing letters of recommendation from our teacher corps instructors, etc. a tragically laughable position, yes. i'm usualy wary of the term "proffessionalism," but it seems nevertheless applicable in contrast.

ii. instructor B suggested hope

class concluded with the line: "hopefully you can actually use something you picked up today."

the Bloom-gap of the ellipses. "here's stuff. you're on your own to integrate it into your daily practice, but let it be known that down the line you'll be ask to reflect on its worth." i'm not interested in hope. neither am i interested in worth divorced from application, at least in the case where i need to survive as a teacher next week and all i'm asked to engage in today is a head-nod excercise about rubrics being pretty. sure, i'll raise my hand when you check for prettiness, but i'm still going to be scrambling next week to - you know - teach. and i'll create an activity that uses a rubric when i've got things under control, and i can breathe creatively for a second or two. but it'll take time to get there because i'm still figuring out what it means to teach math, and you're asking me to solve a linear system when i don't know how to graph lines. so the assessment mess gathers on the pile of "helpful tips," "how to's," "do's and don'ts," and "in a nutshells" - and i return to sunday with more stuff that "hopefully i can actually use," and no clue where to start, or how to start, or why to start.

iii. classmate C prevails

amidst this all, i notice a teacher corps member sitting beside me, writing a lesson plan. she's crouching down in her seat, curling away from all awkward power posturings and balloons of hope, and actually creating something for her classroom. a handout on one of the assessment strategies is on the desk, and she's got her eyes darting between this an a legal pad, all the while shrinking away from notice - as if her actions are somehow criminal. she's writing a lesson plan. it is beautiful: a moment where someone is actually making a value judgement on the information presented, and applying it - trying it out. there are scratched out ideas all over the paper - because it takes quite some time to develop all of these things - but pieces are being brought together, another fragile day is slowly being fitted with a structure. i watch her, and it's clear that this is the sort of time that should be spent by and with all of these brilliant people, amidst all of these powerful resources, and it's highly upsetting that it has to happen in a fugitive moment. it is as if we have to go out of our way to engage productively in actually applying the things that we're only presented with the hope of actually using. futhermore, these aren't difficult things to learn; it's not too much of a trouble to figure out what "peer assessment" means. but they are difficult things to apply and integrate into one's practice. yet, this is the very thing that we are left to do on our own - lest we risk the wrath of instuctor A, and crouch down amidst his fuming to try and actually develop as a teacher.

[i have no more conclusory sweeps. i'm very tired, and this is a very long post. thank you for reading, if you have. i will try and reflect more on my jim hill classroom soon; it all seems like a teacher corps drama, i'm sure.]