Ch. 2: All Together Now

The chapter opens with the author, a middle-class white heterosexual male, describing an experience as the facilitator for a college-level Diversity course, and how he learned something from his students on the very first day of class.

• Read the students' responses to Michie's discussion on Page 11:
• Do you agree or identify more with the last quote by 'Sherelle' or with the last quote by 'Jenny'?
• Why?

Michie then describes how the course had diverged from 'multicultural education,' or celebrating the vast diversity of cultures and their contributions to American society, to something very different due to tensions that such a focus had caused previously. He also shares his observations and experiences with increased nationalism following 9/11.

The author continues to discuss a couple more activities and describes why he teaches the class: to help students develop their own personal philosophies of education, and how student diversity and equity both play into it. 'Ryan' sums it up best: "I can't believe how much I don't know." (p. 16)

Next, Michie describes how the same emotionally-volatile lesson given to two classes resulted in very different outcomes. He explains, on page 19, that "One of the wonderful, and maddening, things about teaching is that you never know in advance what impact your work will have - or if it will have any at all."

The author ends the chapter discussing educational philosophy and reform. He closes the chapter with very eloquent words:

"What matters is helping aspiring teachers begin to see schools as arenas of struggle and to see themselves as people who can bring about change... that there's no such thing as a neutral classroom, that teaching, but its very nature, is a political act." (page 21)

That makes me think of the old Nike commercial with Charles Barkley, below:

• Is your philosophy and your classroom more in line with Michie or with Nike and Sir Charles?
• What can you do to move a little farther along in that chosen direction?

Chapter 1

Teaching in the Undertow: 

Resisting the Pull of Schooling-As-Usual 

Image from
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/  
PS: NOT the author

In Chapter 1, we are introduced to the author: a white male South Carolinian teaching 7th & 8th graders on Chicago's south side. Thrust into an environment of control - "don't do this" and "don't do that" - then-idealistic Michie instead endeavors to focus on what his students and he CAN do. This Atlantic Coast native recalls his mother's words: "Be careful of the undertow." Michie connects her advice with his own suggestions for getting through the rough currents at school.

Please feel free to post comments by clicking the "(n) comment" link below. You'll find a few questions there to help guide your reading, thoughts, and posts. I look forward to your input!

First meeting cancelled

Due to impending inclement weather and the potential for dangerous driving conditions this afternoon, today's New Teacher Learning Team Book Club meeting is cancelled. Books will be distributed at our next meeting, Feb. 13, and the schedule will be adjusted accordingly.

Be safe and stay warm! :)
MJ

Welcome Back!

You made it! You survived Fall semester! We hope you are rested and already excited to incorporate new and innovative ideas into your classroom activities to help each child succeed!

On that note, we're also getting ready for a new style of meetings for our New Teacher Learning Team meetings. During Spring semester we usually bid farewell to Dr. Wong's excellent video series and start meeting in a Book Club format. You'll find our schedule of meetings in the sidebar, at right.

This semester we'll be reading a book by Greg Michie called We Don't Need Another Hero. At only 130 pages, it offers a quick yet informative read for busy teachers about the experiences of an eudcator in an urban school setting who strives to focus on what student truly need during this era of high-stakes testing.

Books will be distributed during our first meeting, on January 30. If you can't make it to our meetings, you can always follow along here and add your comments below each post. If you'd like a book but can't make our first meeting, send me an email through your school account and I'll drop one in an inter-school envelope to you.

Cooperative Learning Resources

First of all, let me just start by defining one often-overlooked point regarding Cooperative Learning:

• Group Work = pushing a few kids together and assigning a task to be completed together, assuming that kids already know how to work together.
• Cooperative Learning = teaching students to perform specific functions/roles within a carefully-selected assemblage of students whose collective mission is to complete an instructional activity, learning important social skills at the same time.

There is very little research that supports the validity of using “group work” (as defined above) in a classroom. Mountains of research supports cooperative learning. You’ll find much of it – along with ideas for implementing true cooperative learning in your daily activities – in this excellent post by Larry Ferlazzo: The Best Sites for Cooperative Learning Ideas.

Cross-posted from http://tech205.blogspot.com