#Ranciere18 - Keepin' Up With Socrates: Giant Steps Indeed

This giant step taken, the need becomes less imperious, the attention less constant, and the child gets used to learning through the eyes of others. Circumstances become diverse, and he develops the intellectual capacities as those circumstances demand. -J. Rancière The Ignorant Schoolmaster 51

Imagine trying to learn through the eyes of John Coltrane. If there were ever a song that could establish a hierarchy of who's the fiercest when it comes to musical performance what better challenge than Trane's maddeningly complex standard, "Giant Steps."  Just ask Paul Chambers, the bassist who recorded with Coltrane on his first of four official Atlantic Records releases (my favorite being Olé Coltrane, but that's off topic). 

Giant steps... Some can wax it better than others, but for most of us, our fingers compromise the notes as they struggle to keep pace with Coltrane's orbit of melodies and key changes. Again, just ask Paul Chambers: his recording during that famous session demonstrates the struggle all of us have keeping pace on Coltrane's path. And Paul Chambers was a masterful musician with an illustrious career, playing with all the greats. On this occasion, it was Chambers' last performance for Coltrane (at least in a studio). Perhaps it was time for the bassist to forge his own path. After all, there's little space for doing so when tracing the celestial orbit of a comet like Coltrane.

Playing alongside Coltrane in a session like "Giant Steps" is probably like discussing mathematics with Socrates. The pressure is cooking: Can you keep up? Can you find the hidden pattern? Do you know where he's going next? Pay attention. And again, please try to keep the pace; the metronome is ticking. If Socrates, for instance, put me on the spot and demanded to know the length of the side of a square whose area is twice the amount of another square whose side is the length of X, I think I'd have a hard time keeping up, staying calm, and forming my own coherent thoughts: I'd be a deer in the headlights, blinded by the light of Socrates. Decimated by the velocity of his oncoming orbit (see the Meno).

On Orbits and Revolutions: Tracing the Master's Secret vs. Mapping the Student's Journey

You don't learn with Socrates; you only learn through him, meaning through his eyes. But he's humble about it though. After all, he'd be the first to tell you that "he knows he knows nothing." Isn't that why the oracle proclaimed him wiser than the rest of us? He's emancipatory as well, right? I mean he did make the claim that even slaves could know higher-level truths of mathematics just as naturally as anyone else (see the Meno). He even asserts that such truths are in all of us.  Radical, right? His pedagogy obviously scared the hell out of the Athenian elites, proclaiming in a state of panic that he was corrupting the youth. So what's not to like here? Isn't this the kind of emancipatory revolution Jacotot and Rancière are attempting to achieve?

First, we have to examine our language games when it comes to speaking about truth procedures:

'Know yourself' no longer means, in the Platonic manner, know where your good lies. It means come back to yourself, to what you know to be unmistakably in you. Your humility is nothing but the proud fear of stumbling in front of others. Stumbling is nothing; the wrong is in diverging from, leaving one's path, no longer paying attention to what one says, forgetting what one is. So follow your path (Rancière 57).   

Thus, each one of us describes our parabola around the truth. No two orbits are alike. And this is why the explicators endanger our revolution... The coincidence of orbits is what we have called stultification... This is why the Socratic Method, apparently so close to universal learning, represents the most formidable form of stultification. The Socratic method of interrogation that pretends to lead the student to his own knowledge is in fact the method of [the schoolmaster]" (Rancière 59). 

Paths... Orbits... Celestial trajectories through the infinite cosmos. I love Rancière's articulation of truth procedure as an orbit or path that revolves around something we might call capital-T Truth (Rancière's structuralist professors might've called it the Real). This is not some kind of proclamation of the post-Truth era born out of the laziness of rhetoricians and spin doctors (thinking of Kellyanne Conway's audacious high-jacking of postmodern discourse with the sly suggestion of "alternative facts"). This isn't about facts. This isn't about science. Two things that are very real: just ask the climate scientists. We as teachers are so much more than fact checkers. This is about the power of intelligence, which can only be fully realized if a student is freed to find her own path, no matter how messy it may be. Rancière states, "The only mistake would be to take our opinions (orbits) for the truth (the center)" but this is only a conceptual error, not a procedural one, if the learner is engaged in her process (italics are my addition). In other words, proceed on your path! We are not celebrating every orbit willy-nilly at the expense of doing away with the center, but we are reminding the explicators that the master's method is not the center as well, which is the stultifier's conceptual error, an error that (unlike the student's) becomes procedurally problematic due to one's position as schoolmaster.

Class becomes a culture of compliance (be like me; trace my answers), and not an environment for emancipation. The Socratic method facilitates learning, for sure, but it's not going to emancipate the learner, (but to call it corruption would be absurd: We are not the Athenian reactionaries).

So specifically speaking, what is the objection then? In what ways is Socrates' method still in the service of stultification? Why is he so close, yet so far away?

On Slaves and Schoolmasters: Whose Work? Whose Path? 

Ever been to law school or known someone who has? My wife went, and I recall more tears than feelings of empowerment. Everyday she was her professors' Glaucon, subjected to questioning, trying to show she had the right answer - that she knew "the master's secret." The Socratic method can swallow a person whole, much like Coltrane's dizzying chord changes. By the end of it, one doesn't recognize oneself; one has been broken down and built anew, made into the likeness of a burgeoning lawyer (or a frenzied post-bop jazzmaster).

Ever visited a lively, discussion-based class, full of Socratic circles and all, and winced once the class began because it centered around the teacher, shaping an overly-eager-to-please group of students in his/her likeness? Constantly correcting, redirecting, or re-articulating the students' words, such that the messiness of students' conversations is dressed up in the likeness of the teacher's "more scholarly" way of saying things. I have seen this class. I've been this teacher; he still creeps up impulsively, like almost every day. But why does this explicating spectre still haunt my pedagogy? The answer: it's less work emotionally, or at least it feels that way, to supply a reproducible answer as opposed to verifying the integrity of the student's search. It's easier to plan for, it's easier to mark, and it's easier to provide feedback.

Rancière writes, "Only the lazy are afraid of the idea of arbitrariness and see in it reason's tomb. On the contrary, it is because there is no code given by divinity, no language of languages, that human intelligence employs all its art to making itself understood and to understanding what the neighboring intelligence is signifying" (62). It's hard work to verify the exercise of intelligence; no scantron sheet can account for it. The ignorant schoolmaster accepts this challenge to verify "that [the student] is always searching [because] whoever looks always finds. He doesn't necessarily find what he was looking for, and even less what he was supposed to find. But he finds something new to relate to thing that he already knows" (33). Not only is this hard work, it's full of uncertainties, and sometimes a teacher's learning gets in the way of "demanding the manifestation of an intelligence that wasn't aware of itself... of verifying that the work of the intelligence is done with attention... [T]he learned master's science make it very difficult for him not to spoil the method" (29). We as teachers have answers, and the students are keenly aware of it, which gets to the heart of where Socrates and Rancière (w/ Jacotot) part ways. Both believe that the power of learning is in everyone regardless of social standing. Both believe that anyone can be intelligent, the irony being that Socrates (Delphi's celebrated ignorant master) implies two more words to the end of his message: "Be intelligent like me." He does this indirectly due to a conceptual error (my method is the method, the center of all orbits) which becomes procedurally problematic ("Come, find the answer. I know you can do it! You're smart!"). The error, of course, was to fixate on answers instead of orbits. To declare the destination before mapping any kind of journey. The Hubble Telescope didn't have a destination in mind when it pointed its lens to the stars, and Rancière's metaphor demands us to look there too, not to caves beneath the earth (see Republic Book X). This is the difference: a pedagogical emphasis on finding the hidden answer versus a focus on searching for the sake of learning. And for Rancière, the stakes couldn't be higher because it's a difference between cultivating compliance or empowerment.

The Socratic Method

The Panecastic Method

While Socrates is busy proving the location of where the answer to the question resides (see Meno), Rancière demands that we recognize the non-locality of all intelligence. It's in all of us: Everything is in everything.  If we trace the masters, we will find answers, but if we map our own journey, we could discover the wonders that no one knew were there. Of course, learn the labyrinthine charts of Coltrane's "Giant Steps," but chart your own standard as well. We know you can; "your humility is nothing but the proud fear of stumbling in front of others. Stumbling is nothing; the wrong is... forgetting what one is. So follow your path" (57).

If you'd like to learn more about the practical work I've done to transform my class discussions from a Socratic style to one that's more "emancipatory," take a look at the OESIS webinar I did back in May, which can be found here:

https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/5313878514640577027

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

Maintaining Student Equity in Classroom Discussions

As an English teacher, I often have discussion days in class either in the form of Socratic inner/outer circles or in a Harkness-style context. One thing that Harkness has taught me is that there is often a disconnect between how I perceive the discussion to go and what the data actually reveals upon reflection afterwards. What I mean to say is that many times in class I thought a discussion went really well: the energy was high, and the insights were diverse and illuminating, and I didn’t have to say very much at all. However, the data may have painted a very different picture; for instance, whether I immediately realized it or not, perhaps the conversation lacked the proper balance of gender equity. Or perhaps only 80% of the class truly participated, and the excluded 20% were the same students who always seem to be overlooked and therefore not heard.

How do we maintain real equity in classroom conversations, and more importantly, how do we track that over a sustained period of time?

One program that has been a game-changer for me as a teacher is the iPad-based app, Equity Maps. The program allows you to map the room digitally in terms of who sits where, thereby allowing the teacher to enter each student’s name as well as his or her gender. Once the discussion begins, the teacher can tap a student’s avatar to signal that the student is speaking; when the next student responds, the instructor taps that person’s figure on the screen, and the program draws a line to the next participant (just like one would do on paper in a traditional Harkness discussion). There are also options to mark when there’s chaos, silence, or smaller group exchanges during the live discussion. 

What’s amazing about the program, however, is what it provides once the class activity is done. Immediately, the instructor has the following data for reflection and assessment:

1. Instant playback of the group discussion

2. Data about how many times a student spoke

3. Data about how long that student actually spoke

4. Analysis of gender equity and whether one gender dominated the conversation

5. Overall assessment of levels of inclusiveness for the entire conversation

Equity Maps dispels any misguided perceptions on the teacher’s or student’s part about how well the conversation went and therefore forces one to be more honest about the greater value of that day’s discussion. It has made me a better facilitator, encourager, and evaluator of what needs to happen every day in a conversation whose main priority is promoting equity among all participants. What I’ve also come to discover is that the information can be insightful feedback for students: they need to see and reflect upon the data as well because deeper learning can only happen if we build in time for reflection upon that learning.

How do you maintain real equity in classroom conversations, and more importantly, how do you track that over a sustained period of time?

Some Reflections from Friday’s Unconference: Notes on How to Make Class Discussions More Successful

The Oakridge Unconference, Jan. 29, 2016

Last Friday, my school hosted an afternoon of professional development for educators both from our campus and from our sister schools in the surrounding area. The gathering was organized like an unconference where teachers, coaches, and administrators voluntarily facilitated ad hoc conversations on interest-based topics ranging from scheduling to tech integration to sessions about what books people are reading and why. It was a great day full of unexpected conversations with people I don’t normally get to spend time with on an average day of typical school scheduling. 

I decided to host a conversation on “Class Discussions: How Do We Make Them Successful,” and all the participants who attended had “a successful discussion” on the topic, helping me clarify some of the thoughts and strategies I've developed over years as I’ve continued to wrestle with this issue. How do we make class discussion more student-driven, evidence based, inclusive to all voices (including the shy kids), and therefore more empowering & meaningful for all? Here's some notes & reflections from the session:

1. Are we focusing more on teacher-preparedness or student-preparedness when planning a discussion-driven day of classes? 

Too often in my early years, I spent more energy and time making sure I ("the content expert") was prepared for the discussion by crafting thought-provoking questions, perhaps planning a kind of thematic arc to how it “should” unfold, and thereby delivering my prepped questions “charismatically” to inspire student buy-in. It took me a long time to realize that one key element to successful discussion is directing one’s energy and instructional design towards making sure students are prepared for the discussion (instead of worrying about my preparedness). I started using google docs and online discussions, for instance, to provide questions ahead of time, to get students gathering their thoughts as well as examples of evidence before they're on the spot the next day in class. If using online discussion threads, I like to have the highlights from the online conversation on the digital projector when the students enter the room. They're always eager to share when they've spent time thinking about it the night before; it's like they want you and the others to see what they have accomplished. Google docs is also useful for disseminating questions well ahead of time, and I encourage students to leave comments about which questions they feel confident about as well as which ones they're less comfortable answering (it gives me instant feedback about strengths, weaknesses, needs, etc...)

A quick note: go here to read more about methods I’ve used, involving google docs, to better prepare and empower students before the class discussion ever takes place.

2. What measures are we taking as teachers to make sure students feel safe and comfortable when taking the risk to voice their thoughts and feelings? 

Preliminary Small Group Talks as Prep for Class Discussion

I think we forget how scary it is to offer a reading, interpretation, or feeling about some difficult academic topic and to have to do so in front of one’s peers as well as one’s teacher (who will be giving a grade at the end of the 9 weeks…). Students need space, time, and (as stated before) preparation to feel comfortable enough to even gather their thoughts, much less to articulate them in front of an audience. In the unconference session we all agreed that time moves differently for us as teachers, and we have to remind ourselves to slow down and to allow the lingering silence, even if it feels awkward or like a waste of precious class time. (It’s not a waste, by the way, because these are the invaluable moments when students are given time to do the thinking for themselves.) As stated before, it’s important to also let the students prepare (again, I think of flipped classroom techniques like google docs or online discussions). For instance, I like to organize students into smaller groups to have a kind of brainstorming conversation beforehand in a safer environment of 3 or 4 peers. Joel Garza once modeled for me another simple but profoundly effective technique where one gives the shier, less confident student a gentle 5-10 minute warning that he will be asked to speak on question X in the next few minutes, thereby giving them time to think it through. A simple nudge or warning does wonders for the anxious student.

3. Who are the students speaking to in the class discussion? Are they speaking to the teacher or are they speaking and listening to each other? 

My current seating design for my classroom; students sit on
the outside and inside of the circle of connected tables

How do we get students to quit talking to the teacher and to engage their peers instead? The first thing that was brought up in reaction to this question was the issue of classroom design. How we arrange our classrooms communicates a lot to students about our expectations of how they should interact with the teacher and their peers. Letting students push around and arrange easily-movable furniture to suit the learning occasion is ideal (if you ask me), but unfortunately, some teachers have no control over the design of classrooms and have to do their best with what they’ve got. In fact, one teacher in our session proclaimed that she was this close to unbolting the tables and chairs in her room... Another response that took the the form of a question was the following: Who is constructing/asking the questions in the class discussion? We all agreed that to have successful, meaningful class conversations we as teachers have to cede control to empower students to create the questions for each other. In my class I divide students into groups of four, assigning a chunk of a novel (or whatever) to each group, such that when a designated section of the reading is due the group assigned to that material has to have posted (24 hours ahead of time) at least five questions (usually on a google doc) for the class; this again allows the other students the proper time to prepare for the anticipated discussion. Many thanks to Joel Garza for helping me develop such methods! I once invited Mr. Garza to guest-teach my sophomore English class at Oakridge, and he employed another technique that I’ve continued to use to get students to engage each other instead of me (and it works everytime…). He divided the room in half, and one set of students got the following prompt for the day’s discussion: what I need to know about last night’s reading is ______________. The other half of the class were told to explore the opposite prompt: what I definitely know about last night’s reading is ______________. Each group discussed their prompts separately and then came together to sound off their main talking points, and discussion took off naturally and without hesitation. We simply leaned back and enjoyed the exchange.

4. With so many individuals in the room, how are we keeping everyone engaged, especially the quiet student? 

One thing I always do when facilitating a class discussion is I assign one or two students to be the scribe or note-taker for the day. I usually encourage them to log on to the google doc where the student-created questions have been posted for the day and instruct them to take notes in the form of detailed bullet points under the relevant prompt being addressed in class. When conducting inner/outer circle formats, Jason Kern suggested (in our session) providing a back channel for the students who are not currently part of the active conversation (Again, I use google docs for this, but one could use TodaysMeet or Chatzy for such a thing). The students using the back channel can take notes or exchange commentary about the inner circle discussion taking place. If possible, put the note-taker’s or the outer circle’s recorded thoughts on a digital projector so everything is visible to all participants during class. These kinds of alternative forms of engagement can also be a way to bring the quieter student into the conversation without making him feel like he's completely left his comfort zone. 

Screen Capture of a Student-Scribe's Notes from a Class Discussion on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

***Note: Go here to learn more about "Five Platforms for a Classroom Back-channel Chat" from Richard Byrne's blog.

5. What do you do with the discussions once they’re done? Does it end there? 

If students are being provided time and space to prepare (via google docs or discussion threads) as well as being given tasks (such as serving as a scribe), there’s going to be a written record of the knowledge the class has constructed together. With this in mind, make use of that written record: I recommend having students cite each other in a future paper/written-response assignment for two important reasons: (1) it empowers the student whose words or ideas are being cited, thereby making her feel heard, valued, and affirmed, and (2) it gets the students to practice digital literacy and citizenship by having them learn how to cite an online document or discussion thread correctly. I’ve used the students’ language from the notes and threads on exams, essay prompts, and quizzes before as well, which I think provides a sense of relevancy for them. It’s not just a come-and-go activity never to be revisited: it’s connected to a greater arc of inquiry that’s taking place all semester.  

Friday's session was an enlightening conversation for everyone involved, but we were definitely left with questions to reflect upon and explore at greater length. Here's some to ponder:

1. What are other methods or best practices to better engage and empower the shy student?

2. Should every student be “forced” to participate in class discussions even if it makes them anxious and uncomfortable? Why or why not?

3. How do you handle the overly-eager student who wants to dominate the discussion?

4. Should one assess student discussion in the form of grades, and if so, what specifically is one assessing?

Please help us keep the conversation from Friday’s unconference alive and moving forward by providing a comment below!