Mark Murphy’s book on the importance of having high expectations and, for us at least, allowing students to rise to meet them. It’s a book recommended by Mary Yenik that I plan to read.
Category: Books
Fierce leadership: Not wimping out
In my new “Books to Read” series, Susan Scott’s book Fierce Leadership. This was recommended by Mary Yenik who’s been teaching classroom management at HMC. Scott is the author of Fierce Conversations, which is about enabling people to have challenging conversations (parent-teacher conferences can be contentious sometimes) effectively. According to my notes, the new book is about “not wimping out.”
Books to read
They’re books I plan to read (at some point) because they were recommended by someone I trust for some reason. They may be great, they may be controversial, I can’t offer any guarantees, but they’re all fairly influential in their way. I’m posting them here so I don’t forget that I plan to read them, and I’m more than happy to hear comments on the books before I read them. Spoilers are welcome.
Website design
Teaching website design can be done in two ways. The easy way is to use one the the many, very good, software packages. Adobe Dreamweaver is a fairly popular commercial package, while Mozilla’s SeaMonkey (from the creators of Firefox) is a free, open-source alternative.
The longer way to teach web design, which I prefer, is to start with HTML and CSS and build a fundamental understanding of how webpages work.
Chakita J., who teaches technology at the Hazelwood School District in St. Louis and shares my approach to the subject recommends , “The Complete Reference HTML” by Thomas Powell.
Fractured thinking – How the internet affects how you think
While many people say multitasking makes them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress.
And scientists are discovering that even after the multitasking ends, fractured thinking and lack of focus persist. In other words, this is also your brain off computers. Richtel, 2010
Matt Richtel has an intriguing article in the New York Times on how multitasking on computers is affecting the way people think. I don’t have a whole lot of time to get into it is a well resourced article citing work from researchers such as Clifford Nass, Eyal Ophir and Melina Uncapher at Stanford, Steven Yantis at Johns Hopkins, Daphne Bavelier at the University of Rochester, Gary Small at UCLA and Adam Gazzaley at UCSF.
Other choice quotes:
[Multi-taskers] had trouble filtering out … the irrelevant information.
multitaskers tended to search for new information rather than accept a reward for putting older, more valuable information to work.
that people interrupted by e-mail reported significantly increased stress compared with those left to focus. Stress hormones have been shown to reduce short-term memory
Finally, the article ends with a thought about how technology use affects our ability to relate to others.
Mr. Nass at Stanford thinks the ultimate risk of heavy technology use is that it diminishes empathy by limiting how much people engage with one another, even in the same room.
“The way we become more human is by paying attention to each other,” he said. “It shows how much you care.”
That empathy, Mr. Nass said, is essential to the human condition. “We are at an inflection point,” he said. “A significant fraction of people’s experiences are now fragmented.”
This work of course ties in with Nicholas Carr’s thesis that asks the question, “Is Google Making Us Stupid“. Carr’s book, “The Shallows” takes up the argument that we should spend less time online. While I tend to agree with Carr that we would benefit from more time offline, I really think his explanation that the invention of the press, and cheap books, lead to more deeper concentration (and that’s what we’re loosing now) needs a lot more evidence to back it up.
From the author’s mouth: The heroic journey
Tammy Carter Bronson, author and illustrator of Tiny Snail, and Matthew Bronson, author of The Kaleidonotes, gave an excellent talk about publishing and the heroic journey to our middle and elementary classes. We use the heroic journey as a story arc a lot, but it was great for the students to hear published authors talking about how important it was to them.
The Bronsons have done over 500 talks to schools (but this was their first to in a Montessori program) so they have a well polished presentation. I particularly liked how they stressed the need for revision when writing. Tiny Snail took nine months to write, and 16 revisions before Ms. Bronson was happy enough with it to start illustrating. And it’s a kids picture book. They talked about peer reading and read-out-loud revision strategies. In our after-talk discussion, while we assembled a couple graphic organizers on the heroic journey and publishing, it was great to see the students recognize, however reluctantly, that there might actually have been a good reason for them practicing these techniques all year.
It was also very interesting to hear that the authors are delving into the growing opportunities of the web for building a following and publishing their work. You can find Ms. Bronson reading Tiny Snail and Pollywog on their YouTube channel. While it’s not up yet, I’m really looking forward to seeing the making of her new book, where she is video recording the entire process.
This was a great opportunity for our students, especially the prospective writers and directors, and I will try to plan something like this every couple years. I also feel a little guilty. The Bronsons emphasize how important it is to put your best work forward. Even though it’s easy to self-publish or publish online what you put up will shape your reputation. That’s why multiple revisions are important. Yet despite my best efforts, I don’t have the time to revise each blog post until I’m completely happy with it. Blogging is a different beast. So I beg the reader’s lenience (of course, since the average number of readers per blog is one, this may not even be a problem).
Poetry for adolescents
I’m always a little suspicious of things titled as “for adolescents” or similar, because they tend to satisfy someone’s memory of being young and don’t necessarily provide what adolescents actually need. Of course I’m guilty of the same bias but I do take some effort be aware and to be critical of my own choices because of it. That said, I listened to a couple of poems from Elise Paschen’s compilation of poetry for adolescents, “Poetry Speaks Who I Am: Poems of Discovery, Inspiration, Independence and Everything Else” on NPR’s Morning Edition today and some of them are pretty good.
The poetry anthology comes with a CD, and Paschen reads a few on the program. She also goes on to talk about the poems a little, giving a good example about how to respond to poetry. The first poem they discuss on the program, Rita Dove’s Flash Cards, though written from the point of view of a younger student, is quite good. There are also a couple of poems on the NPR article.
Since we’re still having poetry presentations in the morning I think it would be useful to play part of this interview to help shape the discussion.
Intrinsic motivation in the real world
rewards tend to focus the brain more narrowly on the specific task that earns the rewards—thus making it harder to encourage employees to develop creative, innovative solutions. – Laura Vanderkam (2010)
How do you motivate people in the creative economy? Apparently not with bonuses. The best way to get people to be creative is to motivate them in ways that “takes the issue of money off the table, so they can focus on the work itself” according to Daniel Pink in his book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.” Laura Vanderkam’s (2010) review of the book in the City Journal provides an excellent overview.
… leaders create an environment where people want to do their best. This involves giving people lots of autonomy over their time, their tasks, their techniques, and their teams; providing them an opportunity to work toward mastery of their professional craft; and imbuing their work with a sense of purpose. Laura Vanderkam (2010)
And translated into education Pink advocates the same approach as Montessori,
encourage mastery by allowing children to spend as long as they’d like and to go as deep as they desire on the topics that interest them. – Pink (2010)
It’s good to be reminded of the importance of intrinsic motivation every now and then. There are always forces, most often subtle but sometimes not, that push toward making sure students do well in the standardized tests and cover everything in the curriculum. High schools want to see good grades in all the subjects.
But what if a student just wants to write, and they just pour their heart into it. The other subjects suffer, especially the least interesting ones, but my goodness how their writing improves. What then? …