Check Out My Latest Post on Leadership & Implicit Bias in Schools at the ATLIS Blog

This year the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools is hosting a series of seminars based on 4 essential books that all educational leaders should read. I'm hosting the first seminar on Mahzarin Banaji's and Anthony Greenwald's Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People.

The book explores how implicit bias shapes the perspectives and behaviors of all people, even those with the best intentions. It was written by the same people who developed the Implicit-Association Test at Harvard University. If you haven't taken one of the IATs, I strongly urge you to do so (they have tests on all sorts of topics, ranging from race and gender to things as innocuous as our biases towards insects).

Go here to read my blog post about the book, and if you're an ATLIS member, join us September 26 for a live webinar discussion of the book.

The Beautiful Risk of Making Creativity Visible in Every Classroom (Reflections on the 6 Cs - Part One)

“Education itself is a creative act… Education as an act of creation, that is, as an act of bringing something new into the world, something that did not exist before” (Gert J. J. Biesta The Beautiful Risk of Education 11).

THE CREATIVE HUMAN

In Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World, authors Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman write, “Other animals show signs of creativity, but humans are the standout performers. What makes us so? As we’ve seen, our brains interpose more neurons in areas between sensory input and motor output allowing for more abstract concepts and more pathways through circuitry. What’s more, our exceptional sociability compels humans to constantly interact and share ideas” (51). What a counter-intuitive starting point for us as educators – namely, the idea that creativity is something which all students are already capable of. Sure, we may agree with this in feeling, but examine our daily practices at schools. Creativity, more often than not, is a skill whose practice remains at the periphery of most students’ core curricular experience. It’s something we do when practicing the arts, but it’s not clear how it fits into other “core academic” classes, at least on a daily basis.

However, the quote above reminds us that, because of our neuronal networks, we naturally excel at creativity when compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. But what’s more interesting is how our sociability gives us an edge over other forms of intelligence, such as computers. “To achieve a creative artificial intelligence,” writes Brandt and Eagleman, “we would need to build a society of exploratory computers, all striving to surprise and impress each other. That social aspect of computers is totally missing and this is part of what makes computer intelligence so mechanical” (31). Computers are not creative, period. And that’s because they’re not social, but do you know what computers are really good at? Accurately storing and recalling information. Humans, however, "are terrible at retaining precise, detailed information, but we have just the right design to create alternative worlds” (50). Think about that. We’re facing a future where much of the work force could be eliminated by the onslaught of more machines, yet we have something that computers don’t have, which is why creativity matters. It’s a human skill - a natural extension of who we uniquely are. It’s part of our past, present, and future legacy as a species, but school often relegates it to the periphery of a kid’s core experience. Why?

BEYOND BLOOM'S TAXONOMY

Let’s apply all this to Bloom’s Taxonomy. Shouldn’t creativity be at the foundation of Bloom’s pyramid since it’s something all students are naturally able to do well? Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison in Making Thinking Visible stress the following point: “Although Bloom’s categories capture types of mental activity and thus are useful as a starting point for thinking about thinking, the idea that thinking is sequential or hierarchical is problematic” (6). More thoughtful applications of Bloom’s framework operate under this wisdom, for sure, but think about our cultures of assessment on our campuses. We seem to assume in school that recall/remembering (namely, what computers are much better at) is the basic starting point for human learning. All core classes engage students in the mental activity of remembering and recalling, but few academic experiences put creativity at the center. Without a doubt, this is true of standardized testing as well.

THE BEAUTIFUL RISK OF BENDING, BREAKING, AND BLENDING

How might we make creativity a foundational element of every students’ learning experience? Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman offer a conceptual framework for teaching and assessing more transparently the practice of creativity in the classroom. They suggest the threefold framework of bending, breaking, and blending as the “primary means by which all ideas evolve” (47). The three concepts are “a way of capturing the brain operations that underlie innovative thinking” (49). They go on to say, “We bend, break, and blend everything we observe, and these tools allow us to extrapolate far from reality around us” (50). In other words, this is how we as humans create new things – not by some omnipotent act of creating something out of nothing but by taking the materials around us and “calling things to life.”  As Gert J. J. Biesta puts it, “creation is ‘not a movement from non-being to being, but from being to the good’” (The Beautiful Risk of Education 14). Humans do it all the time, but schools assume we need to double down on recall and computational intelligence instead. Why might this be the case? Misreading Bloom’s pyramid has something to do with it, for sure, but it’s also because “creating is a risky business, and one has to be prepared for a lot of noise, dissent, resistance, and a general disturbance of the peace if one is of a mind to engage in [it]” (Biesta 15). Since remembering is Bloom’s baseline, we tend to assume that basic recall is the most equitable thing to test people on. What makes dispelling this notion all the more challenging is the fact that it’s a lot less risky for educators to test student recall (it’s also easier to grade). But as Biesta might say, cultivating creativity in the classroom is a beautiful risk that we simply can’t afford not to take, or else we risk something much greater: making ourselves obsolete in a world run by robots.

One place to start is by introducing students to Brandt’s and Eagleman’s framework of bending, breaking , and blending. Instead of asking students to study, memorize, and store certain content for a given course, invite students to manipulate or play with the content by turning it into something new. Warning: results will be unpredictable.

Works Cited

Biesta, Gert J. J. The Beautiful Risk of Education. Paradigm Publishers, 2013.

Brandt, Anthony and David Eagleman. Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World. Catapult Publishing, 2017.

Ritchhart, Ron, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison. Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners. Jossey-Bass, 2011.

#Ranciere18 - Week One: "Translator's Introduction" from The Ignorant Schoolmaster

Starting this week several of us are reading together (at a leisurely pace) a very important book for me as an educator. In many ways Jacques Rancière's 1987 polemic, The Ignorant Schoolmaster, has become a kind of motivational manifesto for me - a mantra of sorts that keeps me focused on what matters most in my role as teacher. My loyalty to its message, at times, has inspired mockery and disbelief in others: You can't possibly believe that all students are equally capable of being intelligent? After all, this is the book's central thesis: "ALL people are equally intelligent" (xix).

So what's your gut response to such a statement? Does one wince with disbelief? What do we mean when we say "intelligence"? What does it look like when it's being demonstrated? How can we measure it or should we even ask that question? 

Which of the following images, for instance, showcases a greater display of intelligence?

"The hierarchical division of head and hand" (xviii).

One of Rancière's targets is the myth that there are different types of intelligences that can be arranged spatially/directionally in terms of hierarchies (low to high). Such space reifies (or makes natural) the gap between the knowing and the ignorant; the explicators and the listeners; the capable and the incapable; the ones who must be heard (subject groups) and the ones who need not be heard (subjugated groups). But common sense says this is the case, right? I mean, some of us simply know things that others don't, and it's on us to tell them what they need to know. Right? If teaching were defined as the act of transmitting knowledge, then yes, perhaps this is just "how things are" and teachers are tasked with leading the ignorant out of the cave by showing them/explaining to them the Truth of things. But perhaps the task of the teacher needs to be re-conceptualized, not as "a kind of muscular theoretical heroism" to enlighten the masses, but as an authority who demands the equally intelligent to chart their own truth:

The problem is not to create scholars. It is to raise up those who believe themselves inferior in intelligence, to make them leave the swamp where they are stagnating – not the swamp of ignorance, but the swamp of self-contempt (101-102).

It is the explicator who needs the incapable and not the other way around; it is he who constitutes the incapable as such (6).

There aren’t 2 sorts of minds. There is inequality in the manifestations of intelligence, according to the greater or lesser energy communicated to the intelligence or by the will for discovering and combining new relations; but there is no hierarchy of intellectual capacity (27).

Whoever teaches w/o emancipation stultifies. Whoever emancipates doesn’t have to worry about what the emancipated person learns (18).

Emancipation is the idea that every common person might conceive his human dignity, take the measure of his intellectual capacity, and decide how to use it (17).

Our problem isn’t proving that all intelligence is equal. It’s seeing what can be done under that supposition (46).

The last quote here brings up some questions for me: Does R posit the equality of intelligences for strategic purposes alone? In other words, is he trolling/provoking us in some way? OR Is he simply stating upfront that one cannot prove nor disprove his thesis, therefore why not make Pascal's wager? 

A few more thoughts...

The Lesson of Althusser

Both Rancière's teacher and mentor, Louis Althusser may be France's most influential Marxist thinker from the 20th century. Rancière, however, turned his back on Althusser's anti-humanist, structuralist program, which can be seen in R's student-centered, agency-focused approach to pedagogy. Althusser was a big believer in the master-student relationship: "'The function of teaching,' Althusser wrote in 1964, 'is to transmit a determinate knowledge to subjects who do not possess this knowledge. The teaching situation thus rests on the absolute condition of an inequality between a knowledge and a nonknowledge'" (xvi). 

For Althusser, emancipatory education was only possible if we recognize the present impossibility for students to be equal (with each other or with the master) and instead focus our reformist energies toward distributing more equally the same quality of instruction (by well-trained, enlightened masters) among all students of all classes. I want to suggest that Rancière reverses this claim: It is impossible to make the distribution of instruction equal, but we can assert axiomatically that all students (and teachers) are naturally, equally intelligent. The hard work of pedagogy is ac/counting for this. If schools are unequal spaces for equal intelligences, the task of pedagogy becomes political, namely demanding those who are not "counted" in the unequal space of schools to assert their equal right to be counted. 

The image above does not make a case for unequal intelligences: each animal has the equal, verifiable capacity, but the learning space or environment created by the administration of the "same exam" does not equally verify or account for each animal's natural capacity. The space (and method of verification) is unequal, not the students.

The Practice of Equality: Our problem isn’t proving that all intelligence is equal. It’s seeing what can be done under that supposition.

Rancière speaks of his thesis as being an axiomatic starting point, a pure concept in Kantian terms that orders the way we experience the landscape of learning. Even if one thinks his claim is strategic or performative, and less a statement about capital "T" truth, there's still something of value to be investigated - namely, how the pure concept of equality reshapes the space-time continuum of our learning landscapes.

We as educators have a lot to say about the hard work of "closing achievement gaps," but the space-time continuum of a world occupied by unequal intelligences is one where the gaps can never be fully overcome. According to Rancière, the grim-visaged war of unequal intelligences will never completely smooth its wrinkled fronts. By starting with the pure concept of equal intelligences we begin to close the spatial and temporal distances between the learned and the learner, between the master and the student. 

Ultimately, we need to rethink starting points, instead of outcomes, which can make us sound reckless in the ears of certain administrators. I think of the example of the Hubble Telescope. No one knew what was out there or what would be the outcome of pointing the world's most expensive observation device into a void of complete darkness. I'm sure some people thought the original scientists were reckless for proposing it, but here we are years later still discovering the infinite wonders of a universe that proved to be much larger than anyone could initially have imagined. What can we do if we start with equality of all intellects? What have we mistaken for darkness that on second look could reveal an infinite amount of wonders beyond our imaginations?

This has been a post for the #Ranciere18 Reading Project. Please feel free to comment and join the conversation.

If you want to get more involved, our google doc is here and our hypothes.is group is here. Email me at jcolley@theoakridgeschool.org if you want editing access to the Google Doc.

Rethinking Class Participation using Hypothes.is Annotations - A Guest Post by Joel Garza

I called roll for the first time twenty-four years ago. For the past eleven years, I've taught high school English at Greenhill school in Addison. We're an independent school. Our learning management system is Canvas. We've got students who take Global Online Academy courses. Our students are tech-savvy. I'm not emailing you about tech. I'm emailing you about relationships, relationships that Hypothes.is, an online free annotation platform, helps me develop.

I entered teaching because of relationships. I wanted to honor several teachers that I knew—if I’m honest, my becoming a teacher was an act of discipleship. I wanted to continue the conversations that they had started with me that excited me. I wanted to spread that good news. 

The setting of these relationships was always very simple--most of the time we were in some shabby room.

But we were all looking at each other, we were all trying to figure out the same text, we were all trying to answer questions that had been asked for centuries. You know, Socratic seminar stuff. I love it. Those conversations, that format of learning taught me the value of daily engagement. I was taught that participation was necessary, not only to shape my understanding but also to shape my classmates’ understanding.

In every department where I studied and taught, daily engagement was worth a grade, usually a huge part of the grade.

Years later, I recognized that calling that part of the course “participation” might, in effect, create a bias against certain kids.

It's not that these kids don't have anything to say. It's just that they aren't at their most comfortable speaking up like that every day. Last trimester, I tried to find out how many students were like this. So I conducted an unofficial survey. I told students, “Introverts are energized by private solitary moments; extroverts are energized by public social moments. Which one are you?”

I discovered that there are a lot of students who are not energized by the Socratic seminar. There's a lot who would benefit sometimes from some other entrance to the conversation. Enter Hypothes.is.

By means of Hypothes.is, I've got another entrance for these students, and I've got another word besides “participation”, another way of evaluating them. I keep my antenna up for their “tenacity”—How are they grabbing hold of the material? Twitter hashtags, e-mails to the entire class, or in the case that I'm about to walk through for you here, Hypothes.is annotations.

So that's the first thing that I want you to know about Hypothes.is. It gives students an entrance to the material in a public, trackable, shareable way that benefits the entire room.

So in many cases, I would “prime the pump” of the discussion. I would post questions in advance about particular passages.

Within the first hour of posting these “discussion” questions, though, students responded—before class. They responded in great detail. They added their own questions. 

The next thing I want to share with you is the easy way that Hypothes.is user interface allows me to offer targeted feedback to individual students. Here's a student that in my old way of grading was below average with respect to participation. He was reluctant to speak up even when asked a direct question. By means of Hypothes.is, though, you can see he has probed each reading each day in a single unique way. Before Hypothes.is, I did not hear from him every day—with Hypothes.is, everybody did.

What this allowed me to do also was check to see the kind of annotations that he made. Very often this student would swoop into the reading, drop an annotation, and swoop back out. So I asked him, “For the next reading, please read not only the work, but jump in later so that you can see and read other annotations. I want you to make a comment on a classmate's annotation. I want you to get a conversation started.” 

So by means of Hypothes.is, I was able, first of all, to give this student an entrance, but I was also able to give him a way of engaging his classmates, not just the material.

Another student was very good at understanding the thematic importance of a particular passage.

What I had to ask her was, “Pretty please, ground your observation in a specific literary device next time. I want to make sure that you've got a hold of the stuff in terms specific to poetry, not just in terms specific to you personally.” 

This student had the opposite problem.

You know, she could slice and dice literary devices.  She had clearly been quizzed on them at her previous school. What I needed her to do was to move beyond merely pointing out the literary device to demonstrating how that literary device shaped meaning. So those are the two big takeaways that I had first of all.

Hyptohesi.is grants entrance to the material that a traditional classroom format sometimes does not. Also, Hypothes.is allows instructors to encourage students to take risks.

And they do. 

Please reach out to me if you have any questions, comments, or ideas for a collaboration! 

garzaj@greenhill.org
@joelrgarza