Thoughts On Teaching » pbs

Affirmative Brazil

Todd — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 06:12:37 +0000

Great show on KQED tonight. “Brazil in Black and White” gives an interesting take on affirmative action. The reasons for its existence in Brazil differ from those presented in America. At one point, photographs of the students decide who will be accepted under the quota system: do you look black enough? Phrased in those terms, the issue seems a bit different than the typical. Quickly followed up with the fact that black college students in Brazil make up a single-digit percentage, yet blacks make up 50% of the overall population, and the issue looks different, still. By comparing the racial problems in Brazil to those in America, the conversation changes.

This could be a great way to discuss race without the baggage that we bring to it in this country. Sure, it’s exchanging baggage for baggage, but removing from the argument personal beliefs about the origin of our country should encourage a slightly altered view of the issue, perhaps a more objective one. Witnessing racial struggle in another country surely spins the way students talk and think about this.

Trouble Is

Doesn’t look like this one is for sale or available to watch online (yet?). A 4-minute clip (grab your 8MB QuickTime version) provides a fairly good summation for now. Did anyone happen to TiVO the full thing? If you have KQED Encore, the show replays Sunday, September 9 at 12:00pm. Can you record it?Similar Posts:

How It Should Be Done

Todd — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 08:41:44 +0000

While reading Andy Carvin’s summary of the good news about DOPA, a click on “TV for Teachers,” a link I found at the bottom of the page, lead me to a lesson plan. Usually, this is no big deal. But this was no ordinary online lesson plan, this was one that looked like it would actually challenge students and provide some meaningful steps to help them create the final product. This was a lesson plan that should be a model for all other online lesson plans.

Challenging Material

The team of educational consultants working on these lessons put together a solid set of ideas for teachers to follow. Back in December of 2002, Bill Moyers interviewed Albert Maysles, a documentary filmmaker. The lesson plans put students in the position of filmmaker, asking them to make a few observations about Maysles’s techniques and then create their own film in his style.

Thorough steps and several options along the way go far toward providing something that teachers can put in place, feeling good about marching their students down the path toward creating the final product suggested.

Weak Organization

The plan references an episode of Bill Moyers NOW, something only available on VHS. Not that big a deal, but worth consideration. The mention of the NOW episode comes with a link to the ShopPBS store. Once at the store, teachers will have to search for the appropriate episode; instead, that link should lead directly to the episode under discussion.

Skipping the purchase of the video means that I miss the Moyers interview (the only person I like better at interviews is Terry Gross, so I don’t take missing that Moyers interview lightly), but the free transcript sits online, waiting for you or your students to read it.

And if I don’t spend the $30, there are clips of Maysles’s films online. I may not be able to show the students an entire film, but they should be able to get the idea behind the techniques from these clips. Add to that the fact that the clips are available for students to view whenever they want and things are looking pretty good.

The clips are not too easy to find, though. Currently, there’s a dropdown box next to “More on This Lesson” (or “More on This Story,” depending on your current page). The contents of that box change as you go from page to page. To find the link to the Maysles clips, you have to navigate a few pages away from the lesson plan.

There must be a better way to organize all these links. It took me far too much hunting and pecking for the additional materials the planning team has worked so hard to provide.

Still, these plans look to be among the best I’ve found online. Have a look at NOW for Educators and let me know what you find.

P.S. This is post #200. Thanks for reading.Similar Posts:

Don’t Do Drugs

Todd — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 03:02:59 +0000

During the year that I took off from teaching, the 2000-2001 school year, this guy named John introduced me to an organizational concept, one best summed up in the following analogy:

Think of a bucket, something the size of, say, a paint can. You’ve got 3 big rocks, several smaller stones, and a bag of sand. How can you fit all of those things into the bucket?

Size Matters

If you pour the sand in first and then the smaller stones, the big rocks won’t fit. Put the big rocks in first and pour the sand in, the smaller stones won’t fit. Basically, if you do anything other than put the larger objects in first, something won’t fit. First come the big rocks, then the smaller stones, and finally the sand. That’s the only order that will allow everything to fit.

The Bigs

The point of all this is that only by doing the big things first can you get everything done. Otherwise, you end up spending too much time on the other things that aren’t as important and there’s not enough time charted out to take care of all those big items. At the start-up where I was working, this became a concept that we’d call The Bigs.

On Mondays, we’d have a meeting to chart out The Bigs for the week, fitting the smaller things around those. Launching a Web site was A Big; moving the server from one corner of the attic to another was not. Sending a pamphlet to the printer was A Big; editing videos of the company jam session last weekend was not. This made it so that we always took care of the most important things, but also allowed us to use our time to get other, less important tasks taken care of.

Rocks, stones, and sand presented a good analogy, one that I should probably apply to teaching more often than I do. To some extent, the novels and essay types that I teach throughout the year are The Bigs. The state standards are The Bigs. Still, I spend a lot of time on the smaller stones and the bag of sand.

While Flipping Channels…

Imagine my surprise one day when I saw some motivational speaker on KQED take out a big water jug filled with, not water, but ping-pong balls. “How many more can I fit in there?” he asked as he shoved a dozen more into the opening. A bag of sand was next. “Can I fit this in?” I smiled, thinking that I knew where he was going. Memories of The Bigs popped back into my head, a practice I had actually forgotten about until I saw the show. Finally, he produced a glass of wine and a bottle of beer. He asked “And what if I pour these things in?” as he proceeded to do so. I figured this was simply a variation on the analogy I had been shown years earlier.

“What’s my point?” the man on TV asked. I knew what his point was, but I decided to humor him and kept watching.

“My point is there’s always time for a glass of wine or a beer with friends.”

What…

Are You Kidding?

No, seriously, that’s exactly what he said. That was really his point. And he honestly felt that he built up to the point of spending time with friends. I tried to grab the remote, but my hysterical laughter made it hard focus. My girlfriend, she was laughing too, shaking her head back and forth, staring at the man trying so hard to make his life-altering revelation clear to his TV audience.

This guy really thought that he followed his demonstration to its logical conclusion by extolling the virtues of time spent in good company, that somehow ping-pong-sand-beer-wine soup made that truth so clear and obvious. Yet he missed the real lesson of the demonstration entirely.

What’s my point? It’s pretty clear, isn’t it? My point is there’s always time for me to write another blog entry and for you to read it.

Oh. And don’t do drugs. Seriously.Similar Posts:

Imitate Your Job

Todd — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 02:47:39 +0000

To work on bedside manner and how to handle the stresses of the job, medical schools apparently hire actors to play parents. Students then need to break bad news and help the parent cope with the tragedy. I watched a woman who I thought honestly suffered the loss of her son to cancer blubber her way through a fake consultation with doctors as they told her that there was really nothing left to do for her child. The New Medicine, a show on PBS, discusses connections between the mind and the body, showing how our mental state can influence our physical well being. On a show that examined the impact of stress, the announcer said that the doctor was the one under stress, that the crying woman was paid to perform.

And I thought to myself, “that’s brilliant!” One doctor took the completely wrong approach and distanced himself, acting almost robotic. Another doctor asked the fake mom questions, listened to her, and asked about the rest of her family, how the loss hits them. Through closed-circuit TV, the medical teachers were in another room watching the doctors and I’m certain that the video tape was talked over with the students. This is just one more reason that the medical profession is the model of a professional community.

If future teachers had to interact with archetypes of the educational system (the hard-case student, the unsympathetic colleague, the enabling parent), even in a role-playing situation, the chance to apply their theoretical learning to seemingly-real circumstances would be one more thing to help create a highly qualified teaching force. This not only develops the practical skills of how to address the situation, but it also encourages an amount of reflection on how to appropriately deal with the stresses of the job.

Something that my local state college credential program started last school year, in a subconscious effort to mimic the medical profession, student teachers take over a full-time teaching position for 2 weeks. Phase 2 student teachers are those who teach 2 different classes for an entire semester, usually with 2 different teachers. At some point during phase 2, that student teacher will take over 5 classes for 10 school days.

I’m not sure that I’ve heard of a better move in credential requirements. The more we can put student teachers into positions that imitate the actual pressures of the job, the better we’ll be. Hey, haven’t I said this about high school students, too? At every level of education, we have to remember that the only reason we’re sitting in a classroom and the only reason teachers should be teaching something is for practical application to life outside of the classroom.Similar Posts:

Wal-Mart: Persuasion And Argumentation

Todd — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 13:45:58 +0000

I just watched an episode of Frontline this weekend and plan to use it to encourage persuasive and argumentative writing, along with a classroom debate.

Oh yeah. And I plan to make an illegal copy of the DVD for use in the classroom because I don’t want to pay the $20 for a legal copy. But the end justifies the means, right?

Do You Shop At Wal-Mart?

“Is Wal-Mart Good For America?” does a pretty good job at maintaining balance and holding to the definition of a documentary; the show is more expository than editorial, though certainly not free of the latter. The movie Hell House did a good job of this, too, and is another film under my consideration to show to students. Both films present some ideas for the audience to consider, but leave the door open for interpretation. The Frontline show doesn’t come down too hard on Wal-Mart and students could draw their own conclusions about whether or not the Big Box stores are good for the country. Even as I watched the show, the definition of capitalism kept running through my head and I was left wondering where Wal-Mart has violated that definition.

And, true to PBS style, the show comes complete with an online teacher’s guide. It’s a fair attempt, too. Many teacher’s guides provided as companions to videos are garbage, really. Even discussion questions provided are often completely worthless. Frontline and PBS usually do at least a fair job at providing resources and this is no exception.

Another del.icio.us Possibility

The thing that draws me to this teacher’s guide is their preparation of a debate over whether or not outsourcing is a good thing. Even if the movie is more heavy handed against Wal-Mart, this debate would help show both sides of the argument and put students in a position to decide for themselves.

The links for investigating the advantages and disadvantages of buying cheaper parts overseas provide a good beginning for researching the issue. And, of course, I see a way for del.icio.us to play a role in easily letting students look through even more Web resources; with tags for “advantages” and “disadvantages,” adding more pages for students to gather evidence from would be a simple matter of a few Google searches on my part (much of which I’ve already done in the next paragraph).

Take Action; That’s Argumentation

So the convincing of outsourcing as a good or bad thing is the persuasion. Moving the reader to action is argumentation. While the bulk of their links are against the chain, Reclaim Democracy does provide links on both sides of the Wal-Mart issue. There are a few other sites that don’t like Wal-Mart too much and many of those sites have suggestions of what one can do to express discontent. Likewise, sites exist that support Wal-Mart and want to explain why. Not very well organized, but full of good food for thought on both sides, a page on LawMall is worth a visit, as is Always Low Prices — Always?, a blog that Wal-Mart threatened legal action against and caused to become inactive.

What a great excuse to gather some research on an issue or teaching idea: write a blog entry about it!

UPDATE: John Stossel wrote a pro Wal-Mart article over at townhall.com.Similar Posts: