Eighty-six percent of teaching is routine?

MI GENTE: friends, colleagues, comrades, wise-folk all.

I desire your thoughts, questions, and answers.

Please listen to my four-minute audioboo recording, “Dissertation Woes.” I describe teacher problem finding, teacher decision making, and raise questions about the role of routines in teaching.

Right now, I’m here:

The literature on teacher decision making focuses on describing the routinization of practice as a way teachers might avoid the complexities inherent in on the fly decision making. Assuming educators possess the desire and tendency to establish routines in lieu of treating each teaching and learning encounter as an opportunity to be creative in determining, meeting, and fulfilling students’ affective and cognitive needs is to subjugate interactive teacher decision-making, as well as teacher problem finding, as activities that happen only when all routines have been attempted and failed.

Please tell me what you think.

• What percentage of your average daily classroom time is routine? [Assuming there are average days.]
• Do you strive for routinization? If so, what are the benefits? Drawbacks?
• What informs and/or influences the way you make decisions while teaching?

Thank you in advance for any time you dedicate to responding.

Sincerely and most humbly,

GNA

working it out re: teacher prep

a personal theory:

Teacher prep isn’t the problem, well it’s not 100% of the problem (obvious eh).

Novice/new teachers aka years 1-3ish in communities of practice with oldtimers (in Lavean and Wenger terms) aka “mentor” teachers and colleagues generate (or at least perpetuate) the problem.

Preservice teachers transition into student teachers with their own beliefs and aspirations, and given a tool belt (toy box [in my own terms]) of tools to do their work in schools with students. They meet students, who certainly know “good” from “bad” teachers, but they are also met with constraints within the institution of schooling.

Something happens between the high-hopes and aspirations of student teachers -> novice teachers. Could it be the oldtimers aka veteran teachers? Their school? THE INSTITUTION? Burn out?

I’m not sold yet on any specific answer. But, as I read blog posts of preservice teachers in section one and section two of my Learning Theories course, I’m befuddled by the chasm that apparently exists not between theory and practice, but between aspirations and reality.

How could so many, basically 100% of them, want to be “good teachers” who focus on: being student-centered, attending to students’ emotional and cognitive needs/abilitites, and wanting to create learning scenarios that encourage critical thinking go astray i.e. perpetuate the current system?

Maybe the problem does not reside within teacher prep or the newest generation of folks pursuing teaching. Maybe it exists within those who are already there … those who reside there and meet our candidates with open arms …  but closed minds.

Before you go and criticize the younger generation, just remember who raised them.  Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Contemplating and hopeful about them and us (you and me).

GNA, a non-certified, non-credentialed, somewhat-degreed educator

TCPCG Class of 2012

Tomorrow I will begin working with my fifth cohort of preservice teachers (enrolled in the Teacher Certification Program for College Graduates at the University of Connecticut).

I’m teaching two sections of a master’s level Learning Theories (educational psychology) course to adult learners who all already possess at least a BA or BS degree. All of the candidates are pursuing certification as secondary educators.

Each class meeting lasts seven hours. I meet with each section once a week. Our semester goes for six weeks, ending the week of July 5th.

I will be blogging along side the students, and tweeting with the Twitter hashtag #TCGCP12. The course wiki will be developed throughout the six weeks as our learning progresses in directions to be determined by the ebb and flow of our course.

Stay tuned. Its gonna be awesome!

Hamster Wheel Noise Reduction System

The end of my first academic year as a doctoral student invited many shades of crazy GNA.

Spring Weekend at UConn : A Time to Eat Chicken Nuggets

The University of Connecticut is gearing up this week for its annual Spring Weekend.

Weekend Affective Disorder (WAD) aka Life in Storrs

In order to pay proper homage to my two years living on campus in the graduate dorms at UConn, I’ve dusted off a few excerpts from my long-retired My [_____] blog (the site formerly known as Myspace).

Chapter 1: A Friendly Rememberment

I recently wrote about driving across country from Seattle to Storrs, CT to start graduate school in late summer of 2006.

Chapter 1 : Seatown to Storrs

CHAPTER 1

Seatown to Storrs

I packed my household effects into a portable storage container and loaded the bare necessities into a drive-away van. The drive-away contract stated:  (1) I had to make it from Seattle to Hartford in less than nine days, (2) I could not take the vehicle outside of the US, and (3) I was financially hosed if anything happened to the van. I didn’t care. I was esctatic about the trip, going to grad school, and life in general.

Having traversed our great country via the top, middle, and bottom several times in the past, I elected to take a new route. I traveled almost the entire way via U.S. Route 2.

Some of the highlights of the drive were Glacier National Park,

the Mackinac Bridge,

and Niagara Falls.

The major downside to taking this type of solo road trip was after about three days on the road I began to feel very alone and just a little crazy. I talked to myself, sweated like a pig in the leather driver’s seat (no AC), and did not find any solace in the hundreds of miles of dry grass and anti-Meth PSAs. Imagine that.

I arrived in what I know now to be East Hartford at about 1:00AM the day I was scheduled to drop off the van. I pulled into a 24hr restaurant and attempted to take a nap in the van. Within an hour, the police woke me up and questioned my motives. To their line of questioning I questioned, “How about instead of interrogating me you watch over me?”

The next day I dropped off the van and made my way out to the rolling hills of the Central Connecticut countryside, and the UConn campus where I settled into the super fly 70s era graduate dorms.

TO BE CONTINUED (or altered).

 

The Making of a Gypsy Rogue Scholar

PROLOGUE

In late summer of 2006 I left a wonderful position as the Coordinator of Student Involvement at Seattle Central Community College . I loved my college, position, and the students I had the pleasure to teach and learn with everyday.

Yet, after three years I felt intellectually under-challenged and heard an alarm go off in my head.

The less room you give me, the more space I’ve got. It doesn’t scare me at all. You can’t say no to hope, can’t say no to happiness. It doesn’t scare me at all. I want to be on a mountain-top, with a radio and good batteries, and play a joyous tune and free the human race from suffering. It doesn’t scare me at all. This is an alarm-call. So wake-up, wake-up now. Today has never happened, and it doesn’t frighten me. It doesn’t scare me at all. (Alarm Call, Björk)

I decided to pursue doctoral studies in Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT.

Five years later, I’m rapidly closing-in on the day when I will achieve the goal of completing my dissertation and officially owning the title Dr. GNA Garcia. As the summer, and my dissertation defense approaches, I find myself refracting about what I’ve experienced between the solo drive across country from Seattle to Storrs, and my most recent move to The Blue Shed in Pacific Grove, CA.

Today’s version of my adventure will be told through a few snap shots and a few more words.

Stay tuned.

 

Bridging and BONDOing DS106Radio

Recently D’Arcy Norman (a comrade I met via DS106Radio), in his blog post on acceptance in freeform, provided the grounding texts (initial tweets and his blog post) for a conversation about openness and the web that looks to DS106Radio as a case study.

I cannot offer up any arguments against the positions presented in the comments because I agree with the vast majority of them. My disagreements fall into the category of nit-pickery and of little interest to me right now.

Instead of pickin’ nits (gross), I’d like to submit a couple points to ponder related to the role of the individual within an affinity space (as described by James Paul Gee) such as DS106Radio.

If we imagine DS106Radio, including its varied and various web-based companions e.g., ds106, twitter, various blog posts, wikis, tumblrs, etc., as a context rich with teaching and learning, then we should also imagine it to be a space laden with the accompanying vulnerabilities.

Someone dissing my song choice or feeling frustrated for weeks and venting on twitter (which happened to me related to the failed Papaya update on my iphone4) are two examples that highlight the potential for getting my feelings hurt as a result of my participation in the affinity space that is DS106Radio. I do not  pretend that emotions are not a part of cognition–we are always at once thinking and feeling. Cognition and emotion are interdependent. Thus as an adult who has voluntarily associated myself with DS106Radio, it is up to me to tend to my own overall well-being, and that of my comrades, as much or as little as I feel personally responsible.

The last sentiment being most important because it makes explicit my personal freedom to be brutish or kind, sincere or sarcastic, or something and everything in between whenever I choose. Everyone has the same freedoms to uniquely exercise each time they make a contribution to DS106Radio by DJing, providing technical support and resources, encouragement, initiating live mayhem, etc.

One way to make sense of the varying and various types of individual contributions folks make to DS106Radio, and affinity spaces in general, is by considering Bruce Putnam’s (2000) work related to social capital (referenced in relation to online communities by Pippa Noris).

I’m not wed to Putnam’s overall thesis regarding social capital, but there are two constructs, “bridging” and “bonding,” he employs that believe provide one way to make meaning of the role of an individual within an affinity space.

Bridgers are folks who forge connections between other folks, and even between the community itself and/or its members and non-human resources. One example, among many to choose from, would be Grant Potter. Grant is a master bridger and works not only to provide DS106Radio participants with resources, but also connects the station to other streaming radio communities like WFMU and WMWC, and much more. Norris (2004) describes bridging necessary, and more likely to occur, between socially and ideologically heterogeneous groups. Bridgers clear pathways and ford streams to connect their wide-ranging and diverse networks together in useful ways. Everyone, including themselves, benefit from their connections, and from their efforts to encourage collaboration and harmony between people, and between people and non-human affordances.

By your assessment, do you find this to be true about the way the folks who might inhabit the role of “bridgers” on DS106Radio operate within the community? How does a bridger contribute to the openness of the affinity space? What are the downsides of bridging?

Bonders are those folks who work to deepen contact with people who have similar interests or beliefs (Norris, 2004). hmmm. Who would be a good example of a bonder on DS106Radio? Jim Groom, the man we think of when we hear “Can You Dig It?!” when we tune into the station? Indeed, Jim is the Master Blaster and a master bonder. He rallies the troops, uses the word AWESOME with more fervor and sincerity than anyone I’ve ever heard, and he insists “DS106Radio FOR LIFE!”

Bonders are not just cheerleaders. They are heralds who insert energy into the feedback loop(s) between the members of a community. Comments such as, “Did you see X’s picture of that robot? It was AWESOME!” serve many necessary purposes, including bonding the group together through shared interests and positive reinforcement. Bonders also help the group carry-on traditions, establish protocols, and perform the work of reinforcing connections within a group. Think Bondo.

My sense is rather than a typology, bridging and bonding are roles folks play depending on the context. A person could have a tendency to serve as a bridger within many different affinity spaces, however may behave like a bonder in others.  What do you think?

Across the couple of months I’ve been involved with the station, my role has changed many times, sometimes with a given day I have been a midwife, collaborator, cheerleader, creator, performer, lurker, heckler, bonder, even Wendy to the Lost Boys, etc.

What is informing the fluidity I sense and the freedom I feel to play all those roles and more?

I contend it is openness. Not the openness of the web or of online radio, or the systems and protocols that have evolved during DS106Radio’s existence over time that allow for easy participation. Neither is it the affinity space as a context, nor the community in its entirety (no matter how bridged or bonded it seems).

The openness of DS106Radio comes from the acts of its individual members. On our best days, we extend ourselves when we can by inviting each other to contribute and we encourage new comers to join in the fun. (See Lave and Wenger’s (1991) work on communities of practice including the role of the “new comer” and “old timer” within in an affinity space.)

Affinity spaces, like DS106Radio, need bridgers, bonders, mayhem-makers, lurkers, Lost Boys and Girls, pirates, cheerleaders, leaders, exemplary followers, station managers, hackers, listeners, makers, breakers, futzers, and all other types of characters to keep the station dynamic, creative, inspiring, and broadcasting.

BOTTOM LINE: We need a motley crew to keep DS106Radio afloat. The more the merrier, Yo Ho!