Un-schooling students. Liminality. Intelligence in the wild.

Thoreau wrote in Walking , “In wildness is the preservation of the world.”  Delivered first as a lecture, then published in Atlantic in 1851, it is an impassioned plea for the pleasures of sauntering, a type of walking meditation that affords reflection, inquiry, and creative thinking.

“Wildness” is my metaphor for learning. For thinking outside the box, off the beaten path, two over-used cliches.

Isn’t Thoreau’s “wildness” more eloquent, and more evocative?

As an English teacher, I use the tools of rhetoric and those of the web to convey my own passion for inquiry, for the sense of wonder and loftiness, the sense of the sublime, that come with a great workout of critical reading and reflection. 

Each time I cross the threshold to Room 210, I do my utmost to ensure that everyone has a good time sauntering —  around and through the layers of a complex, ambiguous text.

I know after a few decades spent within the constricted walls of a classroom that real learning occurs in the liminal space between order and chaos.  At the edges. The margins. A space that is unrestricted, a sacred space where boundaries dissolve, when we stand at the threshold, prepared to move from where we once were to another place, where our awareness of self and others is deepened. 

I spend much of my time in classes guiding students as they learn to take that leap. To take risks with their thinking and learning. To free themselves of what Stanford ‘s Tina Seelig calls “constraint-ridden” thinking because initially they are very busy trying to figure out what the teacher wants.

I want them to be detectives, to find ways to read sub-texts for meaning and purpose.  I want them to make connections. I want them to rise above the text and dig into it by questioning, examining, teasing the meaning out of language. I want them to experience the joy that comes from playing with ideas, from making connections, from exchanging interpretations. I want them to learn to back up their claims with warrants and textual evidence.

I want them to have awakened minds, and the habits of mind to pose big, open-ended questions, medium questions for research, and small, directed ones.

• What kind of a scientist is Victor Frankenstein? 
• What are his traits and values?
• What themes are associated with him?
• How can you tell that this is a Romantic text?
• What are the Gothic elements?
• Why does Shelley focus on the theme of education?
• What does Victor learn? Who are his mentors?
• Where and how does the creature learn ? And you…?
• How is the plot of Frankenstein (1818) as it unfolds similar to that of Oedipus Rex (421 B.C.E.)
• What is the problem with Victor Frankenstein?
• What is the problem with Oedipus Rex?
• Who is the monster? Why?

I hope that by sauntering — by mining a complex literary text for data, examining it, making observations, sharing insights, developing interpretations  — that students arrive at a greater understanding of the issues that literature presents, as a living organic record of interiority, of inner life.

This kind of close reading and analysis is based in linguistics and philosophy, in the study of hermeneutics, and generates big questions. How do we read? How do we communicate? And why? And so what? And what now?

I hope that in reading students come to recognize something of themselves. That they can imagine lives, moral dimensions, ideologies, cultures they would otherwise know nothing about. 

I hope that they learn about self and others, sameness and difference, a world of complexity that is “large…and contains multitudes.” 

For David Perkins, intelligence in the wild involves a complicated and practical process of problem solving.  “The phrase may conjure up images of someone trekking through the jungle, but it actually refers to intelligence as it is used to get along in the world, to handle gritty situations in smart ways. For example, “the wild” might be a classroom or the street or even a used-car lot. It might involve running a corporation or managing a scout troop. Intelligence in the wild includes the ability to recognize problems hidden in messy situations and the motivation and good sense to choose which problems (because there are always too many!) are worth the time and energy it will take to solve them.”

Reading can be wild.

“Let the wild rumpus begin.”

 

Innovation. Leadership Activity. Thinking Dispositions. Rhizomatic Learning.

I’ve been thinking about innovation, and unpacking the meaning of this oft-used word.  

Is it a mindset, an activity, a work ethic? Or is it a thinking disposition? Perkins, Jay and Tishman suggest that a thinking disposition is composed of three elements: abilities, sensitivities, inclinations.

We can recognize that innovation has much to do with the ability, sensitivity, and inclination to tinker. It is a thinking disposition that plays with existing ideas, tweaks them, makes them new.

Innovation is also connected to the capacity for imagination, for creating mental images. This kind of insight or vision is the essence of discovery, and what Proust calls “seeing with new eyes.”

What does innovation look like in a dynamic, organic, living, breathing culture of learning that is a school? Is it top-down, a mandate to innovate? Or bottom-up, beginning with the tech team, who entreat us to try new applications, new ways?

Or is it the “long middle,” a wonderful phrase that gamer-high school English teacher-turned novelist Adam Ross uses in the brilliantly constructed (like a Mobius strip) Mr. Peanut, to describe the middle of a novel. Surely there is a long middle to every school year. 

Perhaps innovation is happening all the time, but goes unnoticed because innovation isn’t a discrete event, it is a way of seeing. And a way of being.

It is an activity, an ability, a sensitivity, an inclination to try something new.

Stanford’s Tina Seelig calls it “an extreme art.” Jonathan Martin captures the essentials of Seelig’s NAIS10 presentation on Innovation as an Extreme Sport.

Innovation: a way of being present, fully engaged, open to sharing.

A space where ideas and activities flow  in conversations that are immediate, spontaneous, continuous, ongoing. Just like a class, which ideally is a community of practitioners. An egalitarian model for creative, innovative, visionary, transformative activity.

Recently my 10th grade lit class finished close reading and analysis of Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child (1988). Ben is the monstrous fifth child, oversized, different, prone to violence. The text describes Ben as a “genetic throwback,” a “monster,” a “troll”, a “goblin.” Students, however, saw him as misunderstood, isolated, and unloved. The novel ends as Ben leaves home to join his friends on the streets as a gang member.

I divided students into teams to probe the following questions.

How do we reclaim the “monstrous’? Can education do this?

PROBLEM: A 19th century novel would kill Ben off. A 20^th century novel sends him into the world, where he becomes a social problem. Perhaps a group of monks or a charity or a social service organization will pick him up; most likely he will end up on the streets, or in prison. But it’s the 21st century, and you are idealistic about education reform. About designing new schools and programs. Unlike the Lovatt family, you recognize that Ben is your responsibility.  

TASK:  Develop a program to support Ben and educate him to be a contributing member of society. Discuss, design, and create a program and curriculum for Ben.  What will you teach him? What does he need to learn and know?

Students had two weeks to work on the project and organize a presentation. There were a number of mini-lessons. On backwards design — to formulate goals for Ben. On action research — to become informed about existing programs. On effective presentation skills — to make a compelling case for Ben’s humanity, including Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen and Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 PowerPoint rules. On ways boys learn — Penn State’s Dr. Alli Carr-Chellman’s TedxTalk on Gaming to Re-engage Boys in Learning.  

The most interesting part for me was observing the students self-organize, delegate tasks, make lists, develop systems, engage in action research. They were discovering ways to solve what social scientists call a wicked problem. 

They were engaged in leadership activity.

John Diamond  of Harvard’s Grad School of Education uses the metaphor of a plane’s cockpit to convey that leadership, instead of a fixed position, involves the fluid activities of many people.The distributed leadership perspective is a conceptual frame, an integrated view of an activity system that is as collaborative as a cockpit, where a “constellation” of actions, behaviors, dispositions, situations, and contexts contribute to keep the plane on its trajectory. 

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to apply this metaphor, this model, everywhere in our schools?

It should be easy. Within a school, there are so many activity systems. Every class, club, team, meeting, conference, is a community of practice.  The NYSAIS motto underscores that “Knowledge is in the group.” Learning is a collective activity.

We need to shift the paradigm from individualized learning to collaborative networking. Students relish being given opportunities for problem-solving, divergent thinking, negotiating differences. This is the rhizomatic process of learning, a term coined to reflect a process of knowledge and knowing that is evolving and flexible, and exemplified in wikis.

This is how to un-school school.

By opening doors, making them portals, we can shift the concept of leadership from that old paradigm of the single charismatic person to the group. From that one person in the seat (the student, the teacher, the division head, the principal, the supervisor, the head of school)  —  to all of us, to every member of the community.

Walk-throughs for everyone. Check-ins. Informal conversations.  Innovation just in time, anywhere, everywhere. This is real professional development. It’s called everyday learning and sharing.

Because a school is a collective enterprise, a community of practice. Every day. Day by day.

And yes, knowledge is in the group.  

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

Knowledge as Design. Instruction as Bricolage.

Knowledge as Design.

This is David Perkins’ metaphor, which implies that knowledge has a purpose and is purposeful and meaningful. Those of us who have been teaching for a while are Perkins fans because he got it right in 1986, with his seminal work Knowledge as Design. We follow Kieran Egan because we believe in his practical premise that schools should inspire imagination in students. We’ve read Edward Tufte’s Envisioning Information (1990) and Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative (1997). We’ve been following the ideas of Don Norman in his books, Design of Everyday Things (2002), Design of Future Things (2007), Living with Complexity (2010). Norman offers valuable insights about  “just noticeable difference, in human-centered technology” that we can apply to our teaching methods and instructional design.

Design Thinking.

This current edu-buzzword refers to what many of us have been doing for years at the Harkness table, guiding students towards rigorous and systematic critical inquiry. Design thinking refers to a creative and systematic process for solving problems, not unlike the scientific method. Here’s Don Norman underscoring that critical thinking and analysis are important factors in this process.

“What is design thinking? It means stepping back from the immediate issue and taking a broader look. It requires systems thinking: realizing that any problem is part of larger whole, and that the solution is likely to require understanding the entire system. It requires deep immersion into the topic, often involving observation and analysis.”

Tim Brown of IDEO and  Roger Martin write about design thinking and integrative thinking. We’re scaling down their ideas so that that high school students can practice and become adept at seeking collaborative solutions to complex problems. Because the problems students will face as they enter the workforce and become global citizens will be problems of varying magnitudes of complexity. The gyre of plastic and marine life in the Pacific. Diminishing food supplies. Alternative energy sources. Refugees crossing borders. Education.

We’re visiting schools like Beaver Country Day School  to learn about their collaboration with MIT’s NuVuStudio.  They use “the design studio approach” to give students experience in innovation. Don Buckley’s 8th grade  pilot “Tools for Schools” at The School at Columbia is a partnership with NYC firm Aruliden + Bernhardt Design. Students engage in a rigorous design process that involves both STEM and project management skills to imagine and build a prototype of a desk, chair, or  locker for their own learning spaces. I sat on the assessment panel  the day the kids presented their big ideas. Ideas that were practical, sustainable, wise, and fun. Desktop whiteboards, ergonomic high chairs that swivel and rock, lockers that are the equivalent of a student’s bedroom.

Educating the Imagination.

The focus: educating the imagination. Educating kids to develop creative solutions. To innovate. To re-mix and mash-up. To think about and parse complex problems in creative ways.

A teacher’s mission is always about instructional design. A lesson conveys information through a purposeful design and an infrastructure. A teacher is a master at re-mix and mash-up, at shaping, molding, and presenting content to students. The French word for this is bricolage, a powerful word in literary theory.

A teacher is a master bricoleur. And bricolage is a wonderful metaphor for creative, collaborative learning. Learning that is cobbled together from many sources, from many minds.

Bricolage. Bricoleur.

As a grad school semiotics student at Columbia University, I first discovered the term in Levi-Strauss’ The Savage Mind (1962). In this anthropological context, bricolage referred to the spontaneous imaginings of mythopoetical thinking. Since myths have no authors, we are all bricoleurs.  In Writing and Difference (1967), Jacques Derrida examines the term and broadly concludes that every discourse is a bricolage, a patchwork. Educator Seymour Papert uses the term in contrast to analytic thinking. Papert sees bricolage as a type of tinkering, a cobbling together akin to play. He presents the notion that such imaginative work is play.

The distributed, decentralized, non-linear, cobbled nature of the web — of social media, of information networks such as the twitterverse, of web spaces like wikis and blogs —  allows us all to tinker and play. Within an enormous community of learners, we mash-up, re-mix, and cobble together ideas.  We are nodes in multiple networks, multiverses of learners.

In this vast and limitless noosphere, the sphere of human thought, like the students we teach, we test incomplete ideas, float them out into space, build on others’ ideas, tinker, cobble, work, learn, share, and play.

Welcome to 21st century learning.

Key metaphor: Bricolage|Bricoleur

Key word: Design