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Part I: Renaissance Fairness

I make digital art: this is Dolly Blueflower.

Sometimes we teachers may grow cynical about the ‘career and college’ ready mission statement. It’s not hard to see why: when our nation voted gave corporations the same voting rights as human beings we knew we were in deep trouble. To avoid that rabbit hole, I’ll just say this: we still work, and one of our jobs as teachers is to show students the opportunities and pathways so they can make the work-life decisions for themselves with the best and rigorous information.

And a secret to all this is — not all work is bad. Far from it. Modeling passion and personal engagement in our work lives is part of the mix of building relationships with students: when we point to the purpose of learning, the foundational piece comes from us. Establish our own engagement, purpose and love of our time in the workplace.

We were the nation of innovators and dream makers. We were envied the world over for our ability to create, for ingenuity and puppy-like enthusiasm. I am not sure we are that now, with a few exceptions (looking at you, Elon Musk). And I pin my hopes on the next generation of thinkers, inventors, writers, artists, and designers on helping students communicate and build the skills necessary to work together in order to solve problems.

The work I’m doing in the WABS/STEM Fellowship program and the PLU ELL Endorsement is guiding my thinking: I wanted to share some ideas from STEM group in terms of project/collaboration/employability rubrics:

Developed by industry leaders
Some ‘soft skills’ to look for when students are engaged in collaboration
From http://www.bie.org/
http://www.bie.org/
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/assessment-create-student-centered-learning-andrew-miller
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/assessment-create-student-centered-learning-andrew-miller

Part II of this providing those assessment pieces and lessons to go along with these initial rubrics.

 

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Heads, shoulders, knees and toes: listening and speaking all the way

From Regular Show.
My.
Favorite.

Always adding and refining: here are some resources to help with class discussions and partner work. Enjoy!

Previous posts on discussions:

https://blog0rama.edublogs.org/tag/turn-and-talk/

https://blog0rama.edublogs.org/2017/07/09/summer-series-of-saves-can-we-talk-about-this/

[embeddoc url=”https://blog0rama.edublogs.org/files/2018/01/Partner-Work-Protocols-KLove-17nhkzw-1swj888.pptx” download=”all” viewer=”microsoft” ]

[embeddoc url=”https://blog0rama.edublogs.org/files/2018/01/ELL-Sentence-Frames-Exploratory-Classes-27pmdyh-1iq52aw.docx” download=”all” viewer=”microsoft” ]

From a colleague:

[embeddoc url=”https://blog0rama.edublogs.org/files/2018/01/Sentence-frames-1du5k9e-re7twh.docx” download=”all” viewer=”microsoft” ]

 

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Heroic measures: teach critical thinking

My big question this morning: how do we teach, and learn, to think critically?

Not the surface-level fluff–but the hard questions, the wrestling with the trifecta of intellectual stagnation: cognitive dissonance, justification, and rationalization?

Do we need heroes/heroines?

What would happen…if…we…didn’t?

What if…we were good to each other, did no harm, and made our classrooms, lecture halls, and online spaces engaged and safe places to discuss questions and seek ideas and answers?

Consider and read this thread: keep track and curate the narratives you teach: by every figure, do a character study. We need to face and review the decisions of the past and reconcile and come to terms with our future.

Example: what if Ruth Hopkins didn’t follow this path? Discuss the narrative of Lincoln’s heroism and his great, grave flaws?

But we don’t really teach critical thinking because that would cause a potential revolt to order.

What Does ‘Critical Thinking’ Mean?

This feels very big to me right now, and scary, but this is the gift I want to give my students most of all: the courage to question, and draw their own conclusions, and then have the mindfulness and mental flexibility to adjust those conclusions if necessity demands.

Now: that is a big idea. How to go about it?

Okay. Any ideas welcome.

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