Tag Archives: tim holt episd

My friend Kevin Honeycutt used to tell a story of a professor of American Literature who was droning on about a particular short story in his class and became increasingly frustrated with a student in the back row who was paying more attention to his laptop than to his lecture.

Finally, attempting to get the student’s attention, the professor asked the student what he thought of what had been presented in class.

“I think everything you are saying is wrong” replied the student.

The professor, indignant, asked the student why he was so sure of what he was saying when the professor had decades of study in the field.

“Because,” the student said turning around his laptop and pointing it towards the teacher, “I have the author of that story on Skype, and he has been telling me that everything you are saying about his story is wrong.”

I relate this story not to pick on higher ed and droning professors (although I could) but rather the effect of introducing technology in a classroom setting and the effect it has on the teacher. The student could in this story, fact-check the professor in real time on anything that he might be saying, and indeed, caught him professing misinformation. He could even connect with the essential players in the conversation.

That is the power of technology. The shift of power has moved out of the teacher’s hands and into the student’s hands. All of a sudden, the teacher is no longer the font of all knowledge at the podium that they once were. And that shift of power is a monster shift.

It changes things.
It equalizes that which once was not equal.

In the old days, to learn how to solve a complex Algebra problem, students would have to sit at their desks and watch a teacher work the problem out either on a chalkboard, an overhead projector, a SmartBoard, whatever the method. The teaching POWER was at the front of the room.

The students could simply not proceed until the teacher had demonstrated the correct way to solve the problem and then the students could replicate that on the assigned problems. Only until the teacher had completed the problem were the students able to move forward with the assignment.

With technology in the classroom, students can quickly find their resources to help solve the problem, and may very well find a quicker, more efficient way than the one that the teacher presented. (Indeed, there are even websites such as Wolfram Alpha that will work any Algebra problem out from beginning to end in a matter of milliseconds. )

The power shifts when that happens. No longer does the teacher have 100% control over the teaching and learning.

Classrooms are traditionally very rigid in how the power structure is set. Any disruption in that power structure causes a disruption, and in some cases backlash and chaos.

When disruption happens, not only do the old ways need to be reevaluated but those that are most affected, those that used to have the power are often the first and the loudest to complain about the disruption, because, frankly, they probably see themselves as being marginalized.

I think that we are seeing that backlash now with technology in the classroom. Articles are coming out about the “addictive quality” of apps and devices, how students are glued to Youtube, smart devices, and just technology in general. The technology is to blame.

Not about how boring the presentation is.
Not about how nonengaging the course is.
Not about how poorly the class meets the needs of the student.
Not about how the teacher is teaching off of 10 year old Powerpoint slides.
No, the articles are about how the technology is addictive and destroying the natural order of things in the classroom.

I suspect that some teachers, not all, of course, look at technology as a threat to their livelihoods and some look at it as a threat to their egos. The enemy.

Indeed, I have seen teachers at campuses where students have each been given laptops simply refuse to use technology in their classes. Some even punish students for using the tools available to them, that they would actually use in the “real world,” to complete assignments.

The funniest ones to me however, is when teachers get onto social media to complain about students using technology. Where are all those articles that say the internet and technology is destroying classrooms? They are all found in the internet.

You will need to use technology to find them. Some teachers actually use technology to complain about technology. When asked why they refuse to use the tools, I have been given a buffet of responses, blaming time, tests, lack of preparation, lost or stolen laptops, you pick it, I have heard it.

I suspect that no matter the excuse for not using technology, part of it has to do with ego. “I don’t want this machine to replace me.” It is all about me, not my students.

Perhaps Ian Jukes said it best when he stated:

“Welcome to the modern world. Welcome to the new digital landscape. The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stone; it ended because we invented new tools. It’s futile to continue preparing our students for a world that no longer exists. Our job is to help them prepare for their future not the past.”

Educators everywhere, at every level should heed those words. And perhaps leave egos at home.

***

Author: Tim Holt is an educator and writer, with over 33 years experience in education and opines on education-related topics here and on his own award-winning blog: HoltThink,  Read his previous columns here.

He values your feedback, feel free to leave a comment. 

I am a big fan of the podcast “Pessimist Archive (PA).” If you have never heard of it, the PA documents with humor the sadly regular, negative reaction that society, usually western society, has to things that we now take for granted.

Episodes include how people reacted when margarine was first introduced, how elevators scared rich people, and how the waltz, that staple of elegant ballroom dancing, was seen as an immoral exercise that would cause harm to the baby parts of any women that participated in it. (You can check it out wherever you can find podcasts.)

If high school History class had been half as interesting as a single episode of PA, I would have been much more interested in the topic. Sorry Mr. Swank.

After listening to almost all of the episodes, a clear pattern emerges when something new disrupts the order of things:

• Item is introduced and upsets an industry or society or culture
• Item become popular depsite itself
• Item is labelled either unhealthy, immoral, unnatural or a threat to society/culture
• Item is attacked by “experts” that are in reality not experts on said item
• People listen to “experts” for a short time
• Item usually wins out because item actually benefits industry or society or culture or all

What strikes me after listening to these stories of teddy bears, and scooters, and cars and elevators, and mirrors (yes, even mirrors!) is the sheer repetition of the opposition. It is almost as if there is a cultural playbook that people turn to whenever something new comes along.

Host Jason Feifer once stated something profound about what should happen but hardly ever does. He said, and I paraphrase here, that the new “thing” is almost never bad. It is just that the environment that the new thing is placed in has not adapted to how the new thing should operate.

He cited dance halls in the 18th century which were congested, poorly ventilated fine linen dust factories, that actually made people sick to be in. Of course, people were dancing the waltz in these halls at the time, and coming down with all kinds of respiratory ailments.

Was it the fault of the poorly ventilated, dusty, cold halls? Of course not, it was the fault of the dance, the waltz, that made people sick. See how that works? The environment needed to change, not the waltz. The environment almost always changes way AFTER the new innovation comes out.

Because the environment does not change as quickly, the new thing is often blamed for all the ills that are happening inside the environment that the new thing happens to be in.

With that in mind, that history of the new thing causing a backlash because the environment has not changed, I have noticed a rash of articles and research about students using technology and how bad the use of “screens” are to these children. (“Screens” in these cases are code for computers in most of these articles. “Screentime” is used instead of the phrase “using a computer” because, hey, it sounds more sinister I suppose.)

The latest article to attack “screens” and computers in the classroom comes from Nate Anderson with the not-too-subtle title “They’re abysmal students”: Are cell phones destroying the college classroom?”

In it, he discusses the findings of an MIT professor who stated about his students “I have a real fondness for my students as people. But they’re abysmal students; or rather, they aren’t really students at all, at least not in my class.

On any given day, 70% of them are sitting before me shopping, texting, completing assignments, watching videos, or otherwise occupying themselves. Even the ‘good’ students do this. No one’s even trying to conceal the activity, the way students did before. This is just what they do.”

See what he has done there? “I love my students as people, but my students love their phones more than me.” Boo hoo. Poor me. I am an expert and you should listen to me dammit! I may be a terrible teacher, but well, LISTEN TO ME! Never mind that TECHNOLOGY is in the actual name of the institution that I teach at.

See how that works? New technology in an old environment. It is not the professor’s lecture, its not the probably mid-20th century learning environment, its not the topic, it is not the format of the learning, it is not ANYTHING else, except the smartphone, the screen, the technology that is causing the classroom to fall apart.

The lack of self awareness by the professor (and others like him) is stunning although not unusual especially at the post secondary level. How has the professor adapted his teaching to fit his students learning needs? After all, aren’t these students customers of his?

Any other business besides education adapts to the needs of the customers, not the other way around. (Sorry ma’am, you have to purchase this pink two-door sports car for as your family vehicle, it is the only choice we have here at Toyota.)

Failure to adapt leads to disaster, AM-I-RIGHT Blockbuster? Are all these texting, video-watching, otherwise occupied students failing his class? He does not say, but I suspect not. If not, then his point is completely moot. If the students are learning and completing his classes successfully, then he yelling at passing clouds, and he is at fault for not adapting to his student’s learning styles.

And really, a professor who doesn’t know about learning styles? At MIT? Home of Negroponte and the Adult Kindergarten? Really? Anderson ended his article with a question about what should a 21st century classroom look like.

I emailed him and asked his to please answer his own question, which he graciously did:

“It’s hard to say, in part because I don’t think there is “an” answer. So much depends upon the discipline, the instructor’s quality, the student’s learning style, even the type of institution… That said, I can’t believe that opening a highly distracting, addictive-by-design device during courses is likely to -improve- the time students spend in the classroom. I agree generally with your point about thinking carefully about pedagogy–but I have seen some super-compelling lectures almost completely ignored by students staring at their devices. So it can’t -just- be about pedagogy, unless we’re going to rule out lectures altogether and make classroom time “participatory” as way of disallowing device use. That can be a great approach, but as someone who loves interactive lectures (when they are -good- and when they don’t simply repeat material I could read in a book), I would hate to have everything go this way.”

He seems to be an advocate for a variety of teaching methodologies from lecture (when they are good which many are not) to adapting to the type of..wait for it…environment that the class is being held in. Sort of a personalized learning approach.

Which, last time I checked, is made so much easier by the use of…technology. In the correct environment.

***

Author: Tim Holt is an educator and writer, with over 33 years experience in education and opines on education-related topics here and on his own award-winning blog: HoltThink,  Read his previous columns here.

He values your feedback, feel free to leave a comment. 

What if teacher evaluations were written as Movie Reviews? Here is my ode to Roger Ebert, Education Evaluator…

Corina Tipton – High School Biology 2019

★★★ ½

Ninth Grade  – Release Date: 6-5-2019

I once had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Corina Tipton at NSTA several years before she became the Worchester High School Teacher of the year and long before she became head of the Science Department.

Back then, she told me then that her ambition was just to get students to “at least think about science as an everyday part of their lives. That science was something more than just a class to be taken or a book to be carried around.” I remember that quote quite well, even though it was many years ago. She was young, she was bright, and she had an air of confidence that youth affords. You could bet that if any young fresh-out-of-college teacher was going to make an impact, it would be Corina.

For anyone that has followed Corina’s career in the classroom, one automatically thinks to her seminal year of 1998, about five years after my original conversation with her, in which she did some amazing work all within the span of 18 months, not unlike  Isaac Newton, who created the Laws of Motion and developed the Calculus while sitting around his parent’s farm waiting for the plague to go away in London.

Corina in the span of those 18 months created the still memorable Worchester High Science Club, had four students become National Merit Scholar Finalists, had two students attend the International Science Fair, became a state science standards evaluator,  and wrote curriculum for her school district that is still, at least in kernel form, used to this day.

Of course, she capped it off with her Teacher of the Year award not only at her campus but for the district. She was nominated for state teacher of the year as well, losing to a less qualified but fan favorite from a larger city. To say she was robbed that year does not do justice to thieves.

Science teachers throughout the area have been chasing her legacy ever since that year, and sadly, she too has been chasing that legacy, something difficult for a rock star teacher to do once the lights on the stage start to dim with new young teachers always ready to step onstage and grab the spotlight.

Chasing your own legacy is something akin to chasing the wind; you can feel it, you can get caught up in it, but you can never ever actually capture it.

Most of us are all familiar with her work; some of it good, some of it not so good. Her work with Mr. Gutierrez on the “Collaborative Frog Dissection 2016” was close to masterpiece. So too the “Trip to the Natural History Museum with Seniors ’14” her one trip that year.

In recent years, she seems to have lost that original spark for the joy of teaching that she was so full of in the early years. She became better known for her “Angry Letter to Principal” and “Rant in Front of School Board” than for her actual classroom work. “Teacher Lounge Blowup 2009” will long be remembered as a low point.  I had always said that a good teacher will make you see joy in learning sometimes but a great teacher will let you see the joy in learning all the time. Corina has slipped into sometimes in recent years. She used to be all the time.

I blame time and luck, not Corina.

Time has a way of changing teachers. Sometimes they change for good, sometimes they don’t. Whether you stay a rock star depends on a great number of variables, from your genetics, to your administrator, to the school you are assigned to, to the standardized test, to your family situation. Indeed, what a teacher becomes is very similar to the fate of students:  The roll of the dice, the passage of time your lot in life.

Which brings us to Tipton’s most recent work, advertised extensively as her “come back” performance (something I hate when a person never goes away): “Cell Structure with iPads,” a follow up to last year’s “Onion Cell Dye Lab.” In this work, Tipton stars along side of, and takes advantage of the latest classroom technology.

Corina knows that technology can be the star of any lesson, and appropriately uses it only after she shows the students the analog part of the lesson. Instead of the a typical lesson where students would do a lab after the introduction, Tipton instead uses the iPads using the App “Cells and Cell Structures”

Students were engaged throughout the lesson, even when one student appeared to doze off, he was really just reading the screen in the app with his head down. She kept the learning interesting, the students engaged and on task throughout the lesson. I stayed awake all day.

The first act of the lesson was lecture, an introduction to the cell structures, smoothly performed with a good use of leading questions using the famous 5E model. Engage indeed. I was and so were the students. She led us through the cell, plant vs. animal, structures as well, but purposely left off details.

The reason for that came up in Act 2 when students were assigned a specific cell structure, and using their iPads, had to come up with ten facts about it. Most students were engaged and those that finished early were asked to create a spreadsheet using Office 365, where students could put information in a table form.

The final act of the lesson had the students enter the information on the spreadsheet, and then explain to the class what they came up with. This was an excellent use of the iPad, the Office 365 site as well as a good collaborative exercise.

The lesson came to an end as it should have, with students recalling orally what they had learned not from their own assignment, but from others. Nicely done, and back in form. It is not so much what the lesson is, but rather what the lesson is about. She demonstrated here that she understands that. The technology did dominate, the teacher led portion did not dominate, the student learning dominated.

In the past, back in the day as they might say,  Tipton has made great use of the whiteboard and overhead projector. It is the mark of a growing educator to see her using more technology, something her students obviously appreciate. And even though she is not technically up to the standards of say, Ms. Cromwell in the English Department, her efforts with technology are noted and I might say, I look forward to her future work in this area. Norma Desmond of Biology she is not. The lessons have gotten bigger, and for a moment, so had she.

She also is taking risks by allowing herself to lose some of the “class control” that many teachers feel they must maintain at all times. By allowing the students to seek knowledge on their own, with little guidance, especially in a lesson that was being evaluated, shows her confidence is coming back. This cannot be a bad thing.

A friend once said “What I believe is that all clear minded people should remain curious and teachable.” I hope that Tipton remains curious. She can, and does, show flashes of brilliance, especially when she takes risks.

I hope that those flashes becomes a flame once again and lights itself as long as she decides to teach.

Corina Tipton is now appearing in “Biology Ninth Grade” at Worchester High School.

***

Author: Tim Holt is an educator and writer, with over 33 years experience in education and opines on education-related topics here and on his own award-winning blog: HoltThink,  Read his previous columns here.

He values your feedback, feel free to leave a comment. 

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114 killed.

242 injured.

0 Federal laws passed to stop it.

***

Author: Tim Holt is an educator and writer, with over 33 years experience in education and opines on education-related topics here and on his own award-winning blog: HoltThink,  Read his previous columns here.

He values your feedback, feel free to leave a comment. 

Comments must stay on-topic and be respectful of the opinion of others; posts containing foul language, threats or other uncivil language will not be approved.

Send her back!” “Send her back!” chanted the crowd at the rally for the man that was sworn into office with a bible once held by the Great Emancipator.

They chanted in unison as he smiled broadly after mocking a duly elected Unites States Representative and US citizen, Ilhan Omar (D-MN).

He smiled.

He basked in the moment.

He did nothing to stop them from expressing their message of hate.

He could have said “Stop.”

He could have said that that type of behavior was inappropriate.

He could have said that we are all Americans.

He did nothing but smile.

Thousands of slobbering, mouth breathing MAGA-hat-wearing Republicans, all crammed into a convention center in Greenville, North Carolina; all rabidly and proudly displaying their most base, racist tendencies. This, in their minds, is what making America great again was all about.

Send her back. Send the BLACK woman back to where she came from. Back to Africa. Get out of here. You are black. You wear something on your head that isn’t a red, Chinese made baseball cap.

America will be great again when all the blacks are back in Africa. While you are at it, send all the Mexicans and other brown skins back to Mexico. Except the Cubans. We like the Cubans.We would rather have them than those pesky unAmerican Puerto Ricans.

You don’t belong in our whites-only America.

All of that hate was stoked by the crapfest made by a man who has made a political career by being a Not-quite-white-supremacist-but close, a charge he denies, but something his actions cannot.

From denying housing to minorities as a 1970’s slum lord, to the Central Park 5, to fanning the flames of the “Birther Movement,” to starting his run for president by calling Mexicans “rapists and murderers,” to asking for “My black guy” at a political rally, to saying that there are good White Supremacists, to telling four women of color that are in Congress to “Go back where they came from,” this almost daily reminder that this grand experiment may not be so grand after all, has proven time and time again that not only is he a racist, but his millions and millions of Republican followers, who seemed to have never taken a single class in US History, are as well.

“We aren’t all racists” they claim. But just look how the GOP, collectively, come to the Racist-in-Chief’s defense, not only to claim he was misquoted, to mock the media for reporting it, to even, as Fox News did, blame the democrats for his racist behavior. Can the GOP as a group condemn his words?

Not a chance. They roll excitedly in them like your dog in a pile of poop. In fact, some have even made the case that if you protest a racist and his racist rants, you are anti-American and anti-Jesus. You should go back where you came from.

Indeed, his approval rating among Republicans actually increased once he began his racist rants against four female members of Congress that are all women of color. His approval ratings went up. Up.

Let that sink in for a second.

And before you claim that what he or his followers were saying was not racist, the phrase “Why don’t you go back to where you came from” is specifically mentioned in EEOC documents as a textbook example of discrimination. A Textbook Example.

Yet, despite all the evidence to the contrary, 90% of his supporters claim that he is not a racist. It is like a Monty Python sketch where the man holding the dead parrot refuses to believe it is dead, despite all the evidence pointing to the parrot, indeed is dead.

Just a few years ago, Republicans tried to prove they were not a white’s only club because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican and well, look at what he did for black people.

Well, about that: Two recent studies have shown without doubt that Republican supporters, by and large, support this president not for typical economic reasons, but because they are afraid of losing their lily-white faced country to people that do not look like them. They are afraid of “the other.”

Pew Research data, published last week stated: “An analysis of ‘feeling thermometer’ ratings of Trump finds that attitudes about immigration, Islam and racial diversity are strongly associated with Republican voters’ views of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

Other political values — including opinions about whether the U.S. economic system is unfair and whether business profits are excessive — are less closely linked to feelings about Trump.”

Not surprisingly, other research has shown that the more one associates feelings that our nation is being taken over by “the other,” the greater the support of Trump.

Make America White Again should really be the slogan.

Maybe all Republicans aren’t all racists, but as the Chicago Tribune pointed out, supporting racism and those that are racist is just as bad as being one. Every single Republican that right now supports this president (who will no doubt go down in history as one of the worst we have ever had), is just as guilty as their fellow  North Carolinian GOP moral neanderthals for supporting his racist agenda. You don’t get a pass by saying “But yes, the economy is good.” You are not allowed to be a fair-economic weather racists.

Either you support racism, or you don’t. You either are Christian or you are not. It is that easy. You take the moral high road, or you take the low road. There is no middle ground here. Your choice Republicans. You can’t have it both ways.

When I was young, I was taught that I should respect the “Office” of the President, even if I didn’t like the president himself. Fair enough.

But as a child, I could not mentally separate the “Office” of the president from the person that was the president. The office and the person were one in the same. This is probably true today with our children, who are watching carefully what is happening.

The moral standard bearer for our nation is a racist and a bully.

“Someday little Sally, you could grow up to be the President of the United States” we used to tell our kids. What does that mean today? Do we even want our kids have that particular aspiration? What message is that sending? Someday, you too can be the biggest bully in the whole world? Someday, you can lead a convention hall full of haters in a hate chant? Doesn’t that sound wonderful?

School districts across the country spend millions and millions of dollars each year on “anti-bullying” and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum and teaching, trying to get across the message to our children that being a bully, being mean, and being rude to your fellow students, or anyone, is wrong.

It is a deep-seated message, founded, I suppose, in the idea that you should treat your neighbor with the same type of behavior that you want to be treated. It is the basis for most religions. It is in every school. It is the foundation, basically, for almost every single law that we have ever passed.

It is even the basis for the Melania Trump’s ironically named “Be Best” campaign.

Yet, here we are, trying to teach that message to our children that watch the news and see the president being a bully, being mean, being rude and treating his neighbors like caca almost on a daily message.

How can evangelicals, with a straight face, teach their children the words of Jesus who said to treat everyone with love, while at the same time claiming that this president was chosen by their god? Is racism, hate and bullying the message we want our children to see? Is that the type of behavior we want them to emulate?

How do we explain to them when they misbehave when they can point at a tv screen and say “but the president does it?”

Hopefully, there are enough parents and teachers out there that can use our current office holder as a negative example.

Trump is how NOT to behave.

Trump is what a bully looks and behave like.

Trump shows us how not to treat other people.

Trump shows us what our country is NOT about.

People that support Trump are examples of how NOT to behave.

Maybe that is how we make the difference.

Kids, this guy is a bad example of how to be a human, and this is how you should not behave. MAGA.

***

Author: Tim Holt is an educator and writer, with over 33 years experience in education and opines on education-related topics here and on his own award-winning blog: HoltThink. He values your feedback.

Feel free to leave a comment.  Read his previous columns here.

When I was but a lad, there were several go kart tracks in Northeast El Paso.

One was at a miniature golf course which had an orange dinosaur, and one was dedicated solely to go karts farther north on Dyer street.

I remember, as a 9 or 10 year old, the thrill of riding these mini-cars, which seemed to me to go a hundred miles an hour, with the summer wind in my hair and the smell of exhaust hitting my nostrils.

These lawnmower-engines-strapped-to-a-frame with four wheels seemed to me the be the pinnacle of the driving experience. It simply could not get any better than zipping around the tire and hay-rimmed track, trying to out-maneuver my friends and “win” the imaginary El Chuco 500.

Only later in my life, after I had experienced real driving, real speed, and real El Paso roads did I realize that the go kart experience led much to be desired.

Years after those Northeast El Paso tracks packed up and left, did I try to ride Go Karts again, only to realize that while the karts and the tracks were virtually the same, the experience was something much less than desired.

No matter how hard I pressed the accelerator, no matter how well I swept around the corners, no matter how much I tried, the go karts would not go faster than some predetermined speed, preset before I even bought my ticket and go on the kart.

The speed limit was set ahead of time by someone, somewhere, no doubt who was taking the advice of lawyers and bureaucrats who said that “This shall be the speed: No More, no less.”

Probably as a kid, that limit – that throttle governor – was there already, I just didn’t notice it. It was just a thrill to be a “driver” in a world where I couldn’t drive until I was 16.

I was thinking about how those go karts had been ‘governed’ by adults when I was a kid and then thought about how we do that with kids in education.

A case in point might be how we let kids use technology in classes.

As a long time observer of how technology is used in classrooms, I have noticed that there are basically three kinds of teachers when it comes to edtech: Those that ignore technology all together (won’t even allow kids near the go karts), ones that allow a minimum use of technology that mimics what happens already in a class (you can ride the go carts, but you can only go so fast) and those that let kids go to explore and use edtech as freely as possible (remove the throttle governor and let the drivers drive as fast as possible).

Teachers that do not allow any use of technology in a class are usually ones that have a built in argument that technology does not make a difference.

Students are doing well, why should I add another “gizmo or gadget” to what they are doing? My students are always achieving, so why mess with success? In my mind, these teachers are doing their students no favors at all.

It is the education equivalent of never going to the go kart track, therefore never allowing the experience of traveling faster than they usually do. It is worse than governing the go kart, it is not even allowing the student to climb in.

Teachers that allow students to use some technology but limit it to Google searching and typing up reports in Microsoft Word are the equivalent of the throttle-governed go kart. You can get in and drive, you just can’t drive too fast.

Do what we always do in class, just do it digitally. Always drove the same speed. You won’t win the race, but at least you wont crash. I understand that many teachers feel like they will lose control if they remove the governor, because many of them are not, as they often tell me even in 2019, “Tech Savvy.”

So to them, any edtech is better than no edtech. The funny thing is many in this group will say that they don’t “really” see a difference in their student outcomes. This isn’t surprising, because they are merely substituting the old analog assignments for the exact same assignments in digital form.

The last group of teachers are those that remove the throttle governor of edtech and let their students go. Press down on the accelerator and see how fast your kart can go. Feel the wind in your academic hair.

These teachers love to explore the new tech that is available, are not afraid to let their students try new things and even thought they might occasionally crash. That’s okay, because by messing up occasionally, students learn. These teacher are not afraid to say to their students “Teach me something I don’t know, show me something awesome, present your work in a new format.”

It is pretty easy to find these teachers: They are tweeting out their student’s experiences and learning for the entire world to see. Go ahead and look for hashtags like #microsoftedu or #appleteacher.

They are all over the place and are leading the way forward for students and their colleagues.

Principals all over should challenge their teachers in the upcoming school year to allow their kids to get in the edtech go karts and take off the throttle governors.

Parents should seek out those campuses and those teachers that allow students to press on the accelerator of learning. They will be amazed at what happens.

***

Author: Tim Holt is an educator and writer, with over 33 years experience in education and opines on education-related topics here and on his own award-winning blog: HoltThink. He values your feedback.

Feel free to leave a comment.  Read his previous columns here.

It is easy to lose faith in America and the American way of life.

Politicians certainly don’t do much to reaffirm the ideals of the founding fathers. The judiciary seems impotent to stop incompetent or just evil political parties and policies (as recently demonstrated in their deferral on radical political gerrymandering).

People without means fall farther and farther behind those that do, thus ensuring that their slice of the American Dream Pie grows smaller and smaller until all they have to fight over are the crumbs from the crust.

And don’t get me started on religion, where the followers of the Christ, still the majority religion in this nation, who believe that our plot of land has some special embedded voodoo power from the invisible guy in the sky, seem to have forgotten or just choose to ignore almost every single thing that their prophet ever taught.

Meanwhile, we have gotten so used to kids getting shot up in schools, that it hardly gets a mention on the evening news because we are watching a bunch of brown kids being locked into chainlink holding cells, and any indignation is simply drowned out by the next outrage tweeted by the current grifter-in-chief.

It is easy to get discouraged. It is easy to forget that there is hope. It is easy to think and feel that our beloved country is stuck in a funk.

But there is hope.

I saw hope recently in Washington DC. And I saw it from an unlikely group of people, ones you would might not think would be leading the charge of keeping the the ideals of the American Dream alive. That group is America’s librarians.

The recent American Library Association conference, held late in June, was not only a celebration of all things reading as one would expect, but it was also a celebration of all of those things we think are are somehow being squashed by forces that we cannot control.

The ALA quite frankly used the 5 day event to give a giant collective middle finger, right there in the nation’s capitol, to anyone that says American ideals are on the way out.

(Image from Publishers Weekly)

ALA used their convention to showcase the ideals that our country is a collective of diverse ideals from a variety of voices and all ideas are welcome, not just those yelling the loudest.

Starting off the conference with a keynote speech from young adult author and poet Jason Reynolds who led the audience on a trip through the hood, why libraries are the true temples, and his award winning YA poetry and novels to the creation of his ‘Miles Morales – A YA Spider-Man Novel.”

Follow that up with a discussion from Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor who discussed how she used libraries to influence her life, Hoda Kotb addressed the conference as did “Sin City” and “300” creator Frank Miller, CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Mo Rocca and George Takei who silenced 6000 attendees with his description of being interred as a child in a Japanese American in a concentration camp in the California desert during World War 2 and how what happened to him and his family was similar to what is happening right this minute outside of El Paso in Clint Texas.

The message was clear to all: to present what we are as Americans, we present who Americas actually are: Black, Hispanic, Gay, Asian American, Egyptian American, white, male, female. ALA made it very clear in their choosing highlighted speakers: We, as a country, are truly a melting pot of ideas.

Perhaps Takei stated it best when he reminded the crowd that in Star Trek, where he played Mr. Sulu the starship’s helmsman, the concept of IDIC, Infinite Diversity through Infinite Combinations, was the reason that there was a representative from every populated continent on Earth as part of the cast, including an alien first officer.

That ideal from the 1960’s was alive and well on the main stage at ALA.

Of course, if it were just the speakers, one could dismiss that as mere coincidence, but the entire conference was a celebration of the creative spirit with literally hundreds of authors, illustrators, graphic artists, comedians, actors all blended together.

Walking down the isles of the exhibition halls, one could find not only graphic novels with traditional white male heroes, but female heroes, gay heroes, minority super heroes, lesbian and transgender super heroes, asian and latin American superheroes, and on and on and on.

Creativity was welcomed, as much as diversity. White male middle aged authors creating characters that defied characterization used to be left in the realm of Science Fiction.

At ALA, and soon at a bookstore near you, reading materials from the totality of the American experience will be offered to you. This conference was more about the gifted talents of Americans than any GT-specific conference I have ever attended.

Within walking distance of the ALA conference, the National Mall, with it’s museums and monuments, stands as a testament to the American Dream.

One can’t help but notice that these great museums are shrines to the creativity and diversity of all of the American people, not just a select white, rich few.

Art, culture, race, technology, and history all are on display for anyone to experience. All are reminders to what diversity and creativity and drive can accomplish if freely allowed to do so.

So too was the ALA convention just down the street.

Librarians, leading the way, showing the rest of us what America should continue strive to be. We are, as a nation, better together.

E Pluribus Unum.

Thank you librarians.

Lead on.

***

Author: Tim Holt is an educator and writer, with over 33 years experience in education and opines on education-related topics here and on his own award-winning blog: HoltThink. He values your feedback.

Feel free to leave a comment.  Read his previous columns here.

By now, you probably have heard that the just-concluded Texas legislative session included a massive $11 billion piece of legislation that overhauls many of the long-ignored issues in the state’s public education system.

Good for them.

Republican Governor “They Can Pry the Guns from My Cold Dead Hands” Abbott along with far Right radio host turned Lieutenant Guv “I wish I was Rush Limbaugh” Patrick, flanked by other right winged leaders of the state, made quite a show when signing the bill at a public elementary school (a place many of them have tried avoid like a Honduran asylum seeker coming over the Laredo border crossing).

The Republican Party is taking credit and calling itself the “party that gets things done (Expect that branding or something similar, to be used in the 2020 election.) Look kids, we passed some legislation like you elected us to do! We get things done!™.

Abbott stated at the bill signing: “You could not overstate the magnitude of the law that I’m about to sign because this is a monumental moment in public education history in the state of Texas. We did something that was considered to be highly improbable, and that is to be able to transform public education in the state of Texas without a court order forcing us to do so.”

The law, House Bill 3 (HB3) which includes increase in funding per student from the state, a teacher pay raise, property tax relief, and a controversial merit pay provision, pumps badly needed dollars back into a system that, for the most part, the exact same one Republican legislature has done its best over the years to slowly dismantle.

So they plugged some of the the holes on the leaky dyke of Texas public education that they have purposely ignored for years and have actually created most of the holes themselves. What heroes they are. They really “Get Things Done!™”

In their orgasmic celebration of actually doing something useful, they seem to have collectively forgotten:

• The billions of dollars that were eliminated from the public schools during the 2011 session that just now, HB3 makes up for, almost a decade later?
• The emphasis on Charter schools over the past 4 or 5 legislative sessions, where public schools had to fight for scraps like vultures while rabid Republicans engorged themselves on the ideas of funding charter schools at the expense of public schools and attempting to create a voucher system?
• Finally, that for almost the exact amount of time that the Republicans have been running the show in Austin, the state and federal courts have consistently ruled that the funding measures have been unconstitutional, and that students living in property poor districts have chronically been unequally funded compared to their property rich peers?

The Texas Republicans have, with HB3, tried to fix a set of problems that they themselves, over a period of decades, had created and then take credit for undoing the damage as if they were some kind of Anne Sullivan miracle workers.

Lookie here kiddos: We gave tax relief to overburdened local tax payers that we created because we didn’t want to pay for education using state tax dollars. Aren’t we good?™ We Get Things Done!™

Indeed, Abbott will use this “historic victory” as some kind of legislative miracle that only he and the other Republicans were able to accomplish. “We did something that was considered to be highly improbable…” Abbott said about the legislation.

This “miracle” is not unlike the arsonist who sets the fire, and then claims to be a hero for putting it out. This tactic seems to be a popular one with Republicans these days, as we have seen from the Trump administration which has created quite a few “fires” that it then tries to put out, saying that only their administration was capable of such a feat.

We have seen this from the manufactured crisis on the southern border that to the phony tariff war with China. (Don’t be surprised if a fake war with Iran is started as another fire that will be started to divert attention away from domestic legal issues.)

And while I suppose we should be somewhat grateful to the Republicans for even attempting to partially fix the education problems that they themselves created, one can’t help but wonder if they would have done ANYTHING had it not been for the recent gains of Democrats in the Texas house after the 2018 election.

Did Beto’s near defeat of “Look-at-me-now am-sexy-because-I-have-a-beard™” Cruz have something to do with their all-of-a-sudden come to Jesus moment of needing to reform education? Surely if they could have passed HB3 in 2019, they could have done so in 2017, or ’15, or ’13, or ’11…You get the idea.

They have controlled both houses of the Texas legislature for decades. Why now? What makes 2019 special? Perhaps the pictures of all those angry teachers marching on various state capitols because THEIR Republican controlled legislatures screwed them for years made some of those good old boys take notice.

More probably, the recent shift from red to purple in a once solid sea of crimson had more to do with it than any type of compassionate feelings towards Texas teachers or children.

Only time, and the 2020 election, will tell.

***

Author: Tim Holt is an educator and writer, with over 33 years experience in education and opines on education-related topics here and on his own award-winning blog: HoltThink. He values your feedback.

Feel free to leave a comment.  Read his previous columns here.

I once was asked to answer questions from a TV report about Ed-tech in the classroom.

“Does your district provide classes or help for parents who are not comfortable with technology?”

We had recently just completed a 1:1 roll out in our schools, and had also moved towards digital textbooks. The implication of the question, at least in my mind, was that the technology was difficult to understand, and the school district should provide some kind of training for parents so that they could work with their children.

It sounds like a great idea. At least at first.

I got to thinking about the question a lot. I tried to think of another area in school where parents might be given instruction about how to use the tools their children are being asked to use. I could not think of a single one, although I am sure they are out there somewhere.

For instance, suppose my child is taking band. Do we teach parents how to play the instruments so that they can help their children during practice?

Do we give parents lessons on modern dance to help their children with a complex dance routine?

Do we train parents for basic academic topics? Do we tutor parents on Algebra, American Government, Calculus, or Physics? No, we do not. To any of the above examples.

Would that type of training even be helpful? I don’t think so. Here is why: Student use all kinds of technology to get to a single answer. For instance they might solve a Algebra homework question by using Wolfram Alpha, or Khan Academy, or Hippocampus.org.

The list is endless.

There is no way a school could say to a parent “here is the only way to help your child with this algebra problem.” It would be an exercise in futlity. The better exercise would be to teach students how to search for help, how to collaborate on questions, and how to use tools like Skype to work together after hours.

Then explain to their parents WHAT students will be doing, how to watch them online, and how to set expectations for technolgoy use at home.

I know that school districts all over the place, and even schools by themselves, give “parent training” on the basics of technology. Usually, these classes center around how to use a computer, how to surf the internet, how to fill out online forms, etc. They help non-technical parents function at a low level in a technical workforce.

Yet, I dont think that these are all that useful for parents to work with their children unless the lessons given to the parents are tied to the lessons the students are learning in the classroom. In most cases, they are not. They are the basics of technology use.

The children have a greater understanding of the technology by what they use in the classroom and with their peers.

Many districts does provide videos for students on how to use the very basics of the technology they are getting and parents could access those videos. Most districts have cyber safety tips for parents as well.

The general education public still does not see technology as an integrated piece of the learning culture, but rather an add on; Tech is not as a pencil, but as a pencil sharpener. That needs to change.

Tech in the classroom is here to stay, and is designed to transform learning when used correctly.

Parents need to get on board and learn how to help their children use technology, as much as they help teach their children how to hold a book and write.

***

Author: Tim Holt is an educator and writer, with over 33 years experience in education and opines on education-related topics here and on his own award-winning blog: HoltThink. He values your feedback.

Feel free to leave a comment.  Read his previous columns here.

Steve Wheeler came up with a 10 item list called “Cruel Pedagogy.” In it he lists ten things that teachers should do to be cruel while teaching; where the practice of teaching becomes a cruel experience for the students.

It might very well be that the teacher is a nice person, but the pedagogy they use, the techniques they employ with their students have long term negative impact on student’s learning.

The ten “cruel pedagogy” practices he listed are:

1. Place all chairs and tables in rows facing ‘the front’

2. Talk at your students

3. Cram your slides with text (green on red is a particularly confusing color combination)

4. Insist on there being only one right answer

5. Ensure there is no time for questions and discussion

6. Test and grade regularly

7. Fail students who don’t meet the test standards

8. Assign copious amounts of homework

9. Compartmentalize knowledge so students can’t make connections

10. Ban the use of all technology from your classroom

I think that I can add a few more to his list based on the things I have seen over the years:

11. Assign work where the product is the same every time

12. Don’t allow for creativity in student work

13. Move on to the next topic without making sure that students understand the previous one

14. Mumble to yourself and speak away from the students

15. Compare students to previous classes, their siblings, other students in the same class

16. Tell advanced students that they should intuitively understand

17. Tell students with challenges that it’s time to move on

18. Never accept late work

19. Tell girls that there aren’t many women in the field you are studying

20. Teach the same way you taught last year, and the year before that, and the year before that…

21. Tell students to “leave their problems at home”

22. Remind students that life was harder for you when you were a student

23. Dismiss technology as “gizmos and gadgets”

24. Never ask for feedback from students

25. Use the same teacher edition you used ten years ago

26. Use lecture as your primary means of conveying information

27. Take points off grades for things that students have no control over

28. Take points off academic work for discipline issues

29. Never meet with student’s parents

30. Waste class time on tangents that have no relation to what students are learning

31. Include your personal problems in your lectures

32. Assure students that doing poorly in your class will lead to lifelong failure

33. Never relate what you are doing to current events

34. Do not allow students any say in the topics they learn

35. Do not relate any learning to their lives outside/after school

36. Never replicate techniques when students actually were learning in your class

37. Never give students a big picture of learning

38. Test on things that you either didn’t cover in class or spent very little time on

39. Hide from students before and after school but claim you are always available to meet with them

40. Give assignments that are more difficult than the examples you cited in class

41. Actually use the phrase “You will never…” With a student

42. Assume because you explained it so well, that students understand a topic

43. Tell students that it is always their fault that they scored low on tests

The list could go on and on. Every one has experienced teachers that exhibit the above characteristics. Don’t confuse cruel pedagogy with strict teachers. There are a lot of very good teachers that run a tight ship in their classrooms.

Cruel Pedagogy teachers are not these type of teachers. We have also experienced awesome teachers that are the exact opposite of the cruel pedagogy exhibited above.

Those are the teachers we must celebrate.

Those are the teachers that push the world forward. Can you add to the list? I bet you can.

***

Author: Tim Holt is an educator and writer, with over 33 years experience in education and opines on education-related topics here and on his own award-winning blog: HoltThink. He values your feedback.

Feel free to leave a comment.  Read his previous columns here.

Recently, I attended the graduation of my step daughter from the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design (RMCAD) near Denver. She graduated Magna Cum Laude. Yea, I got smart kids. Even my blended ones.

The ceremony was small, as was expected from a school like RMCAD, but one thing during the ceremony struck me as they read the names of the graduates: Although there were about 100 graduates in attendance, there was about the same amount of students that were not there, whose names were also read and for most of them, the words “Online Student ” proceeded their name.

“Sondra Lopez, Online Student.”

These students, had completed most if not all of their degree without ever having physically set foot on the campus. My daughter was one of those students, completing her entire four year plan of study totally online. We had only set foot on the campus twice previously, once to see the program of study while she was a senior in High School, and once again while we were driving through Denver on a summer vacation.

That’s it. Every single class, all advising, everything, was conducted through a wifi connection and school-supplied Mac laptop.

My daughter is not unusual in my family. My wife completed her Master’s in Education from the University of Texas at Arlington, having only visited the campus to participate in her graduation ceremony. Everything else, like her daughter, was online.

Of course, my family is not some anomaly because I am a techie nerd. A study in 2017 found that 100% of post secondary students take at least one online class sometime during their degree program. Did you get that? 100%. Every. Single. Student.

Add to that, at least 48% of all students in the US take ALL of their university classes online. Nearly half. And it isn’t just kids straight outta high school going online for learning. Those numbers also contain those learners that are returning to school to improve their job skills once they have left college.

Chances are, you may have taken an online course in one form or another over the years or your employer has asked you to attend one.

Trends indicate that the movement towards online learning is only growing, not getting smaller. Universities are now offering free online courses as well. MIT, one of the most prestigious schools in the world posts almost every single class taught online so anyone can learn along with the students in Cambridge. (Of course, you still have to enroll in order to get credit for the courses, but hey, if you want to quick refresher in Quantum Mechanics and can’t make the journey to the east coast, MIT has an online course for you.)

Universities are also experimenting with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), where thousands of students from anywhere in the world can enroll for free and get credit. These MOOCs have had a mixed success rate, with a lot of students starting and a fraction finishing the classes.

Stanford University started the first MOOC with a class in Artificial Intelligence several years ago, and over 100,000 students enrolled for it. By the end, only 5000 completed the course, a 95% dropout rate.

Some saw that as a failure, but the professor who taught the course explained that it would have taken him over a century to have 5000 students complete his course at Stanford, which typically has an enrollment between 12 and 20 students a semester, when it was offered.

With the onslaught on online learning, it is more important than ever that schools and school districts prepare students to learn in that environment. Students that are required to take an online course that have never experienced online learning are at a decided disadvantage than their peers that know how to navigate learning management systems like Canvas or Schoology.

There are multiple reasons why a student needs to take online lessons besides the obvious of preparing them for a post-secondary world that is not waiting for them to catch up.

In her article “How Online Learning Helps Students Pursue Their Passions” Lorne Bird writes that there are at least five good reasons to get students used to learning online:

• Students respond well when they have choices in learning, which online learning facilitates better than traditional face to face learning.
• Online learning offers more flexibility as students with a wide variety of learning styles can pace themselves at the rate that best suits their needs, not the class’s or the teacher’s.
• Online learning is differentiated providing learning at anytime and anywhere there is a wifi connection.
• Online learning develops self-determined, motivated students because students have to push themselves to complete courses, just as they would have to in college.
• Online learning helps students build strong global connections. Despite what you might have heard, the world is connected and online learning helps students develop online collaboration skills that will be invaluable in the future workplace.

Consider this a challenge. Any school district that is not requiring students to complete at least one online course to prepare them for future learning is doing a disservice.

If they have the phrases “future learning” of “lifelong learner” anywhere in their motto and are not providing these opportunities, they need to either rewrite the motto or get on the ball and provide the opportunity.

***

Author: Tim Holt is an educator and writer, with over 33 years experience in education and opines on education-related topics here and on his own award-winning blog: HoltThink. He values your feedback.

Feel free to leave a comment.  Read his previous columns here.

As the class of 2019 sets out into the new world, I thought I would share some words of advice that come not from me but rather from Scott Wakefield, an Assistant Professor, and Chair of Illustration at RMCAD in Denver.

Professor Wakefield came up to my daughter after she had received her diploma and left her some advice about being successful. I thought I would share it with you:

To be successful in your career you need to understand the game of Scrabble.

In Scrabble, each player is given 7 random tiles with a letter on it. The more difficult the the letter is to place in a word, the more it is worth. A “Q” is worth more to a player than an “A” or “E” for instance. Players try to place words on a board, crossword puzzle-like until all the the pieces have been played. Some places on the board are also worth more than others, so the trick is to combine the best use of the seven blocks of letters and points on the board.

Now, some players have a strategy of trying to use as many of their letters at a time, trying to hit a home run with every turn. In life, that would be like someone that is always trying to create the bestest, newest next big thing.

However in Scrabble, as in life, there are times when the letters you have received are not immediately useful. If you have received a S, Q, N, F, V, L, and a D, there are not a lot of words you could spell. You might sit there and get frustrated with your turn, growing more angry that the letters you have are essentially worthless for spelling a word.

But in Scrabble, as in life, perhaps the best strategy is not always to spell the 7 letter word. Sometimes, a player’s best move is to look at the tiles on the board already, and build on them, instead of trying to create a big new word from scratch.

Suppose the word on the board is RACE. A pretty good word. Another player might add the letters TRACK to it, making it RACETRACK. An even better word. But with the tiles you have been dealt, you could make RACETRACK into RACETRACKS. Even better. An excellent example of collaborative work.

Building on that which has already been built, instead of trying to begin from scratch. Which is easier? Coming up with a seven letter word or just adding an “S” to what has already been played? With only a single letter, you have created a ten letter word.

Bernard of Chartes in the 12th Century stated “nanos gigantum humeris insidentes” or “standing on the shoulders of giants” was a way that a dwarf could see farther than an average man. Isaac Newton, in a letter to Robert Hooke said that his discoveries were only possible because ”If I have seen further it is by standing on the sholders [sic] of Giants.”

Using the tiles that have been laid out on the playing board before you is a way to play the game effectively, and a way to win.

Play the tiles that have been played before you. Build on what has already been built. It isn’t cheating. It isn’t stealing. It is playing smartly. Sometimes, evolution is better than revolution.

The iPhone, considered a revolutionary product, was merely a set of tools collaboratively created by merging many parts that had already been created into a new form factor. 90% of the iPhone was already in place before the final product was created.

Apple added the “S” to the word already on the board.

Stand on the shoulders of giants. Play the tiles on the board. Good enough to win at Scrabble. Good enough for Newton. Good enough for Apple.

Good enough for you to win.

***

Author: Tim Holt is an educator and writer, with over 33 years experience in education and opines on education-related topics here and on his own award-winning blog: HoltThink. He values your feedback.

Feel free to leave a comment.  Read his previous columns here.

Recently, after getting his daily national security briefing from the trioka of talking heads on “Fox and Friends,” which horse-whispered to him “at least six states…have introduced legislation this year pushing for public schools to offer Bible literacy classes” our president tweeted out the following message:

“Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible. Starting to make a turn back? Great!”

Great.

Putting aside the incredible irony of a lying, possibly traitorous, misogynistic, tax evading, adultering billionaire suggesting that the teachings of the Bible are a good thing to be followed, this idea, like many he tweets from the warm confines of the Presidential residence during his special “Executive Time” is an incredibly bad idea.

One could make the case that he is just playing to his base of red hatted evangelical sycophants and grovelers who simply refuse to see that their emperor wears no clothes.

Or one could make the case that he is trying to really MAGA to those days in the good ol’ US-of-A when everyone was literate about the Bible and all it stood for when homebound moms vacuumed the house while wearing pearls and a dress, eagerly awaiting dads to return from a hard days work of slapping the secretaries’ behind, where every child was above average and America was a Mad Men fantasy land.

Oh, and every family was very white and went to church every Sunday. You ‘member, don’t you?

Fact is, that America never existed, except in the minds of Hollywood writers and Madison Avenue ad executives. Yet that America, that fiction, is one of the driving forces behind the recent movement about the return of “bible literacy,“ to get Jesus back into classrooms, where in fact, he was never banned except in the minds of evangelical snowflakes.

Who is behind this push you might ask? Is it an altruistic movement bent on improving ethics and civility in today’s youth? Educators who know the needs of students? Parents clamoring for a return to the good old days? No, it is politics. And right winged politics at that. Ever heard of Project Blitz, the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, the National Legal Foundation or the WallBuilders ProFamily Legislative Network? They are the ones behind the push to get bible literacy in front of your kid. Notice Jesus is nowhere on that list.

There are multiple states that offer some kind of Bible literacy classes in High School. (Some states have offered Bible literacy classes since the beginning of public schools, as being able to read the Bible was one of the original reasons to teach reading in Puritanical days.) However, many of these current courses are shrouded in the factually inaccurate idea that only the Hebrew and Christian bibles were the basis for many of the ideas of how our country was founded. Never mind that Jefferson said:

“That our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than on our opinions in physicks or geometry. … We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact, that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any relig[i]ous Worship, place or Ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”

What did Jefferson know anyway? He just wrote the Constitution.

But heck, we live in Texas where the Social Studies standards falsely claim that Moses was a major influence on the Constitution and the roots of our nation’s political systems are found in the Bible. So in Texas, high school students can sign up to take:

• Independent Study in English: Hebrew Scriptures
• Independent Study in English: New Testament
• Independent Study in English: Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament
• Special Topics in Social Studies: Hebrew Scripture (Old Testament)
• Special Topics in Social Studies: New Testament
• Special Topics in Social Studies: Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament

Notice anything about these courses? Hmm, could there be a slight slant to the point of view that students are exposed to? America is a vast country with many point of views, ranging from fanatics to non-believers. Courses like these should not be limited to a single religious perspective. Yet, there you are.

And even though these are largely courses that are offered as electives and count only for local credit, what happens in small rural districts where a lot of students could take these courses and one or two don’t?

“What’s wrong with Crystal? She isn’t taking Bible Literacy like all the rest of us! She must not love the baby Jesus.” Crystal may be forced to wear the scarlet letter of avoidance. Never mind that Crystal might be Hindu, or Muslim, or her family a member of a denomination that thinks religion should better be left in the confines of a church or even atheists. In small districts, just like at Cheers, everybody knows your name. And your business.

Again pushing aside the irony that the Right does not trust public schools enough to teach sex education or global climate change to their kids, yet they seem to have no problem when it comes to religion, there are many concerns that come up with any type of class in a public school being used to teach the teachings of any specific religious group.

Unlike say, Physics (where Force=Mass X Acceleration no matter the time or place you teach it) or Algebra where the rules for quadratic equations work across the globe, experience with the various denominations of the Christian faith include so many variations of a theme that one would be hard pressed to teach a class on Christian bible literacy without it becoming an act of proselytizing a particular point of view, which, by the way, is at the foundation of the entire religion itself.

Your denomination’s Bible teaches that homosexuality is an abomination to the Lord. Mine doesn’t.

Your’s says women should be subservient to men. Mine doesn’t.

Baptist’s believe that the Bible prohibits drink or dance. The Methodists say “have at it!”

Is the story of Noah’s Ark true, or is it simply a copy of the writings of the stories of Gilgamesh? Who is right? Who is wrong? Who is to judge? Whose bible literacy will we be using? Baptists? Methodists? Catholics? Presbyterians? Snake Handlers? The Reformed Asian Orthodoxy? The Greek Orthodox? The Russian Orthodox? The Needed Truth Brethren? The Messianic Jews? The Pentecostals? The Adventists?

Which Bible version, of the hundreds that are out there, would be used as the definitive one for a class like this? The “official” text? Are we going to teach about the Book of Wisdom from the Catholic version, include the Book of Mormon, or tell kids that their version “doesn’t count?”

Some Christian denominations take the entire Bible literally (six days to make the earth) some metaphorically, some a mixture of both. Denominations cannot even agree on what parts are metaphors and which aren’t. Some cannot even agree on what parts of the Old Testament they should be kept and which shouldn’t.

After 2000 years of study, the debate continues with little or no end in sight, because, frankly, no one group can agree on anything with any other group nor do they really want to. Imagine if we taught any other course that way? Imagine a math teacher trying to explain that 2+2 may or may not equal to 4 depending on where you were born and what your parents believe.

Imagine a teacher trying to teach that Newton’s 3 Laws of Motion may or may not be true depending on what version of text book they are using? Three branches of government? Maybe that’s true, but not in this State, because the legislature believes in only two of them.

Those are the kind of problems that would arise if we taught the Bible literacy.

The Bible as Literature? No problem. The Bible as part of a survey course about world religions? Great. But if you are trying to push your religion down the throats of impressionable teens, stop. Save it for church. Teach ethics in an ethics course.

Teach citizenship in a civics course. Teaching the Bible as a a course unto itself is simply a terrible idea.

How about teaching that?

***

Author: Tim Holt is an educator and writer, with over 33 years experience in education and opines on education-related topics here and on his own award-winning blog: HoltThink. He values your feedback.

Feel free to leave a comment.  Read his previous columns here.

Kirstin R. Wilcox, Lecturer at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is one in a growing long line of higher ed educators that refuse to wrap their big brains around how to use educational technology.

Writing in the blog Chroniclevitae.com, Wilcox talks about how ed tech and all the associated things that go with it are not helping her students actually learn deeply.

She opines that deep learning takes place at the edges of the classroom conversations, and those tools that students use online either prevent that learning, or don’t allow students to go there. (Of course, most of the comments on the blog agree with her…)

“While the pedagogical potential is still there, students now approach such online assignments with grim doggedness. For many students, online informal writing has become just another rote component of a literature course, too similar to what they are expected to do in other classes, not helpful enough to hold their interest. Not only have these platforms lost the aura of immediacy and creativity that they once had, but students have little desire to add an intellectual online persona to the profiles that they cultivate across multiple media. They text, they Snapchat, they Yik-Yak, they swipe right or left on Tinder, they seek advice on Reddit, they connect on LinkedIn, they have mixed feelings about Facebook, they tweet, they have well-formulated reasons for using or eschewing various means of online interaction.”

Just as Clay Shirky and Dan Willingham before her complained about how kids are just too distracted to do actual learning in their classes, a deep read of Wilcox’s complaint (just as with Shirky and Willingham) points towards a professor that is stuck in their presentation styles and unwilling to change:

While discussing her early success having students write blogs, she then pivots the discussion and complains that “For many students, online informal writing has become just another rote component of a literature course, too similar to what they are expected to do in other classes, not helpful enough to hold their interest. Not only have these platforms lost the aura of immediacy and creativity that they once had, but students have little desire to add an intellectual online persona to the profiles that they cultivate across multiple media.”

She does say that there are professors that have been able to “harness that social-media energy to their learning goals, with Twitter hashtags, Facebook study groups, judicious Reddit mining. More power to them.”What? That’s it? More power to them? Using classroom technology is limited to social media? Really?

So here are my questions to Wilcox and to all of the professors out there that continue to make subtle yet, obvious digs at using educational technology as part of their everyday learning experience for their students:

What are you doing to change your delivery methods to adapt to modern teaching techniques? Have you ever taken any kind of professional development on integrating technology into your lectures? Read any books on the subject?

You say that deep learning takes place at the edges of the classroom conversations..How can you grab those conversations and extend them for all your students without using technology? You cannot.

If there are professors, as you claim, that can successfully use social media, what are you doing to learn their techniques? Have you asked them for any advice?

Have you changed your assignments to match modern tools? For instance, do all your assignments have to be written papers? It sure sounds like it from your essay. If you are merely substituting a electronic version of your written assignment then no wonder your students are not engaged deeply.

Have you ever heard of the SAMR model of learning? It sounds to me like your assignments are on the S (lowest level) of technology integration.

Have you ever asked your students what you could do as a teacher to make the classes more interesting?

Don’t you feel it kind of interesting that you yourself blog and tweet yet have issues with those exact same tools in your classes? How can you harness the exact same tools you use to make your class more interesting to the learner?

Finally, I have to wonder where you are mentally as a teacher: Do you think that students have to adapt to your way of teaching in order to learn from you, or do you have to adapt to their way or learning?

Answer that question and you might learn a lot about why your students are not as successful with using the tools of technology as you may wish them to be.

There is a trend now, it seems, for higher ed to be pushing back on the use of technology..it is subtle, but it is there. I wonder, it the problem with the technology, or with the teacher?

***

Author: Tim Holt is an educator and writer, with over 33 years experience in education and opines on education-related topics here and on his own award-winning blog: HoltThink. He values your feedback.

Feel free to leave a comment.  Read his previous columns here.