Alien Pedagogy

I’ve had some success inviting the English Language Learners in writing club to write Austin Kleon’s blackout poems.

Some tips from Austin Kleon as well as my experience:

• Scan for attention-grabbing words.
• Choose one.
• Build phrases around that word.
• You can use a marker or you can scan the document and use paint or photoshop.

Good luck.

When Alexander cut the gordian knot with a sword, he was clearly cheating. Yet I’ve heard people describe this as a brilliant example of creative problem solving, lateral thinking, or thinking outside the box.

To my mind, cheating and creative problem solving are very similar, which is why I find team building activities that rely on creative problem solving and unusual modes of thought very difficult to value.

I was recently coaching a team that was asked to solve several team-building puzzles.

• In the first case, they solved the puzzle, but not quickly enough. Our coordinator reminded us “there’s no where in the rules that it says you can’t do X.” We were motivated to think creatively.
• In the second case, the students quickly solved puzzle and did so in a way that the coordinator had foreseen, saying “you figured it out.” They found the correct creative solution that previous groups had worked out. Perhaps creativity and originality can be exclusive concepts.
• In the third case, the coordinators were irritated by our solution. Yet when the students pointed out “there’s no where in the rules that it says you can’t do X,” our coordinator replied, “well. We didn’t specifically state that you can’t do X, but we implied it when we said that you couldn’t do Y.” We failed, though we did complete our objective.

The rules of gravity imply that people can’t fly, but they do it all the time. Those cheaters.

So, how will this change the way I teach?

I’m not sure, but with this in mind, I’m doing my best to eliminate classroom discussion questions unless they’re open-ended (I get so irritated when someone says “That’s a good answer but not the one that I was going for. Anyone else?”).

The challenge comes in when:

• Essays. Academic writing is often very rigid.
• Research.
• Creative writing. Even poetry requires a great deal of skill before poets are able to transcend the “rules” of the form.
• The need for rules. Most students are very used to working within clear rules and many feel uncomfortable without them — even I feel uncomfortable without them.

This is a start for me. This principle will require a lot of thought (how can I get students to cheat within acceptable guidlines) before I see it resulting in a real transformation of my teaching.

Though he’s not a teacher, I find myself constantly applying Ryan Holiday’s thoughts on motivation and success to teaching. Here’s a piece by him on using incentives to motivate.

I confess that when I’m tired, I tend to catch myself turning to consequences in order to manage student behavior. Ironically, this approach leads to more work and strains teacher-student rapport.

When faced with this approach to motivation and management, I’ve often heard teachers say things like “they’re students and must do what you say.” Above all else, they’ll warn against being weak.

The subtlety of properly marketing an assignment, behavior, etc. is not weakness. It’s effective, as shown by Jim’s use of ideals and principles to manage student behavior.

Are you communicating your expectations and behaviors or are you marketing them?

A series of MP3s for novels and short stories.

I’ve just returned from a week of adventure — our school’s annual field trip designed to instill leadership and daring into our student body.

As a young teacher, this is a difficult week. There are many personality dynamics to manage: nationality, student & teacher, teacher & teacher, and student & student. Not to mention the guides, the locals, the airport authorities, and the school administrators.

Personally, this is a difficult week because I prefer to have a certain amount of personal space every day, but this trip does not provide that and I find myself rapidly becoming short with people and then expend energy being patient. Most challenging of all, this trip started on the first day of the fall break, meaning that I was running on vapors by the time I got to Indonesia.

So here’s what I did to get through:

• The students loved this trip and I reminded myself to focus on student needs rather than my own.
• Sought compromise.
• Wrote in a journal.
• Maintained a flexible attitude.
• Sought sincerity.
• Played volleyball during free time.
• Reminded myself that the relationships I was building with the students would help me as a teacher.
• Said ‘Indonesia’ the way Tom Waits does on “What’s He Building” from Mule Variations.

I can’t say that I was perfect, but I know that I’ll have a trip again next year, so I hope that I’ll improve from this beginning.

A couple tricks that I picked up from the teacher that will help:

• An ongoing joke can build identity.
• Let students stay up a little later on the last night.
• Amusing and consistent consequences.
• Try to solve student problems no matter how ridiculous they may sound.