When I was a kid, my parents built a big square 2-story house on an acre in the woods outside of Atlanta. The property bordered a small man-made pond, and the man who had made the pond owned and shared the surrounding 30-acres. I spent my childhood building forts in the woods, and dams in the creek, and hammering together all sorts of useless objects out of scrap lumber and rope. One summer, my friend Jimmy and I spent several consecutive days working to perfect designs for a log-and-twine raft. The final design was sturdy but small, and we set it afloat in the pond, attached to a long rope lead and piloted by my old Shih Tzu, Wolfred, whimpering and shaking with fear.
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| Bamboo Raft by AdmiralPastry [CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0] |
I've always love projects. I love yard work, and building things out of lumber, and changing out light switches, and building decks, and installing downspout rain collectors, and composting, and planting gardens, and developing unit and lesson plans. Those closest to me know that I constantly have several projects happening. When I built my first Home Theater PC last Christmas, I went into the project understanding it as open-ended. The system works now, but there are still things I'd like to tweak. Likewise, I set out this past spring to begin the transformation of my sloped and muddy backyard into a terraced wonderland of edible gardens and outdoor living spaces. Right now, it's a mess. A mess with blueberry bushes, but a mess none the less.
No matter: For me, the pleasure of the project is always in the figuring it out, in the doing. Of course a project often yields a product, and I tend to set my mind to projects the products of which will be useful in some way. Most of my puttering these days is aimed at sustainability hacks (gardening, water collection, free energy), and I always have in the back of my mind a broad goal of making the world simpler and more just. But most of the fun of doing something comes from trying to do something. Or learning how to do something. Or seeing how something might be done. Indeed, it is one of the greatest beauties of the Internet Age that so much collective brain-space has been set aside for How-Tos and schematics and Maker tutorials. I have trouble understanding how anyone can NOT be entertained by YouTube instructional videos about Soda-Can Solar Heaters or Top-Bar Behives.
Mentioning the Internet here brings me to my next great passion: computing. I have been a computer nerd since back when there was such a thing. Back before we all used computers to do everything ever. The segue here is especially appropriate because I'm pretty sure that most of my interest in computers (and especially networked computers) grows out of my love of projects. Because computers have a dual existence as both product and project. My passion for YouTube tutorials demonstrates the idea that computers really shine as products when they are helping us more fully engage in accomplishing something different or creating something new.
It may have been inevitable that I become an English teacher. My mom was a career educator, and my dad was an English major who taught until he got fed up and went to law school. I certainly knew by the time I was in high school and reading newsgroups and Thomas Pynchon and building decks and websites that teaching was where I was most likely headed. And so it may seem natural also that I would inevitably find a way to blend these three interests -- projects, computers, teaching.
It's true that I am already that techie teacher, the one to whom other teachers go when they have a problem or a question about how to do this or that with their machines. When my system finally moved to Google Apps this year, I sighed: finally. I'm so much more comfortable working in a paperless classroom that I have to constantly remind myself that my students are not. Using digital tools to get stuff done just makes sense to me. It just clicks.
As far as thoughtful implementation of technology in the service of learning, however, I am still a Noob. I secured a GAFE account for my system 5 years before they implemented it system wide, and my principal is forward thinking enough to give me a computer lab for my English classes. My students are using the computer to accomplish tasks every day in my classroom. But its all still ad hoc. Most of my computer implementation boils down to document creation, distribution, and retrieval. That's not a bad way to use computers, but it's also not the only thing computers are good for.
When I have used a new technology or a new platform or try a new way to accomplishing something, it usually ended up being a one-off. Rarely have I reflected on the process. Rarely have I returned in a purposeful manner to the technology that I have tried. Too often have I been guilty of the mortal sin of implementing technology as a curiosity. As a new way to do the same old thing. If I am using Google Docs or Google Slides or Prezi simply as a platform replacement for PowerPoint and Word, then I am failing to capitalize in the classroom on the potential of technology as a powerful tool for real-world engagement and revolutionary praxis.
And I am doing the same old assignments. Reading the same old books. Writing the same old papers. Over the years, I have had greater or lesser success convincing students that whatever I am teaching is relevant to them, but every time I try a new tactic, make a new pitch for the relevance of this or that text, skill, or idea, I ask myself the same questions. If these things really are relevant, then why do I have to work so hard to prove it to the kids? Do I protest too much? What would a classroom look like where explicit appeals to relevance were obviated by an intentional and integrated dedication to relevant real-world action? Too many kids come to high school with an utterly depleted sense of personal agency and engagement with the world around them. Too few have taken the time, or been given the opportunity, to ask the hard questions of themselves, their peers, and the authority figures that surround them.
And so that's what I aim to do. I have made it my goal -- my project, if you will -- to reflect more fully and more honestly on my practices as a teacher, especially as they relate to projects and technology. I want to build a classroom where students feel like agents, where they are pushed to use their creativity, to step into the unknown, to take risks, and to gain a willingness to fail. I want to build a classroom where both the use of technology and an analysis of the ways we might use technology are at the core of the curriculum. I want to build a classroom in which students see themselves as owners of the curriculum and agents in the process of their own education. I want to work toward this classroom, even if it means we all start out feeling a bit like Wolfred, balancing on a bundle of sticks in the middle of a lake.
And so part of the purpose behind this blog is to serve as record and a reflective space, and part of it is a project unto itself, an attempt to engage more actively in the community of doers and thinkers from whom I've been creatively borrowing for so many years. To that end, I'd like to give credit to The Nerdy Teacher, Nicholas Provenzano, who, though he doesn't know me, has finally given me the motivation, through his own long-standing blogging endeavors, to add my own bit.
I am setting myself small goals from the start:
- Post at least once a week.
- Reflect critically but positively on endeavors in process.
- Share with a wide audience, and elicit feedback.
Please leave a comment, and come back soon to see how I'm doing.
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