Intrepid Teacher

Here is the first of what I hope to be many video trailers for this class. I would love to see more videos from members or readers about what Intrepid Classroom means to you:

I feel I am in a bit of a rut here at the Intrepid Teacher blog. Reading over my last few posts, I can see that I am sounding a bit repetitive and bitter. I think this is in part due to the fact that I am not interacting with students on a daily basis. I cannot emphasize how difficult this exile has been for me. I have done nothing but work with kids everyday for the last eight years, so to now sit alone in a coffee and stare at a screen is tough, but I wanted this post to be a breath of fresh air, not just me whining again, as it appears I have been doing.

I want to take this time to talk about and reflect on the Intrepid Classroom experiment I am working on. The mission statement of the class is:

Intrepid Classroom is a place where students of all ages from around the world visit, meet each other, share ideas, and decide what they want to learn from each other. The goal is to focus on the following topics: conflict resolution, global sustainability, peace activism, music and art as agent for social change, technology as a tool for social justice causes, but we are open to any other topics the readers of this blog suggest.We can discuss any topic we feel important here at the Intrepid Classroom. The hope is to create a fluid, organic curriculum that engages all participants.

What does that look like? So far we have 28 members from all over the world. We are using a variety of web tools to help create and maintain a natural network of students determined to investigate and pursue their own interests. I am fighting every urge to micro-manage the daily functions of our Ning, which seems to be the actual classroom where students come almost daily to talk about books, the war on terror, best forms of governments, music, or technology.

It has been fascinating for me, because I have taught some of these students first hand, while others I have never met. I am watching students from Doha discuss books with students I had in Malaysia, only to have a complete strangers join them from Costa Rica. I am allowing the students the freedom to explore and investigate not only what they want to learn, but how they will synthesis any new knowledge or skills they acquire. I often find them participating late on a Friday night or discouraged because tools are blocked at their schools. I am hoping that they will discover and share which of these tools are best for each task that they choose to pursue.

The point, I suppose, is for kids to realize that their learning is more than a grade. Seeking truth and knowledge is a natural and exciting human action. Furthermore, I hope they will realize that the search for this new knowledge need not be scripted or found in “approved” sources only. I want them to work with strangers to find meaning in their individual investigations. I cannot think of a more student centered way of teaching. I am not the expert, but another member of the network. I use the blog as a platform to share my thoughts and knowledge. It is becoming a great resource for political conscious music and film. I look forward to seeing it grow, so that the members of the class can share it with others.

I am always amazed by how much we underestimate students. When given the freedom to produce innovative work based on their own interests most of them will often surprise us. I am very pleased with our progress at this stage in the game. We are working with very few rules or guidelines, but there seems to be a synergy building that I am looking forward to exploiting.

Besides the blog and ning, we have a youtube channel for storing any video we may produce as well as a place to document and store video resources. We have started a wiki for a collaborative writing project as well as a place for brainstorming and collaborating on future projects.

Kids today do care about the world in which they live and are looking for ways to have a say in its administration. If you haven’t already been to the Intrepid Classroom please come by and snoop around. Join the Ning, we could use a few more teacher voices in our growing network, or use our resources to talk to your students about instilling a sense of creative activism. Invite them to join us. This is a great post to get them started. You may have to loosen the leash, but you will be surprised by how far they can run.

I recently read an article about a teacher’s union in New Zealand fighting new rules that could have teachers fired for online behavior.

Teachers are fighting to exclude their private lives - such as personal postings on Internet sites Bebo and Facebook - from falling foul of new serious misconduct rules. The Teachers Council wants to change criteria by which officials decide whether to refer complaints against the country’s 90,000 teachers to its disciplinary tribunal. The tribunal can censure or deregister teachers for serious misbehaviour. The council says the new clause - covering “any conduct
that brings, or is likely to bring, discredit to the profession” - would plug gaps in current rules. But teacher unions fear the “all encompassing” clause would put teachers’ personal lives under unfair scrutiny, even when it had no bearing on their ability to be good teachers.

As readers of this blog are aware, I have had my own troubles dealing with this issue of being asked to resign for my online behavior. For the last few weeks, I have often found myself saying, “This is a very grey area. Incidents like mine will occur more and more often as teachers and society at large start spending more time online.”

This problem is more than just a case of inappropriate applications on Facebook, the issue at hand is that as we enter a more open and global society with more and more people allowed to express themselves publicly on the internet, professionals especially those who work with children must decide how to best express themselves in a multi-cultural world.

Teachers already have to prove they are of fit character.

What does that mean? What is fit character is probably very different in New Zealand, or New York City, or the Middle East.

Post Primary Teachers Association president Robin Duff said current misconduct criteria were “perfectly adequate”. The new rule was too vague. “What’s creditable and discreditable these days? That sort of judgment is often based on your own social background.”

To what rubric are teachers being judged on appropriate online behavior. I think we can all agree that…

allegations of physical, sexual or psychological abuse of children; inappropriate pupil relationships; viewing pornography at school; using, making or supplying drugs; neglect or illtreatment of a child or animal in their care; or crimes punishable by at least three months’ jail.

…are unacceptable anywhere, but what about teachers who promote the theory of evolution over intelligent design, or teachers who have strong feelings about the war in Iraq? Suddenly, a teacher who is pro-active in politics can be deemed unfit by a school board, a principal, or a particular group of parents.Teachers are held to a higher standard for social behavior in nearly all cases. Which is fine to an extent. I understand the level of trust that is put in my hands on a daily basis. I will expect nothing less when my daughter goes to school, but as the 21st century really gets underway, we must move forward cautiously and not allow fear of unknown technologies dictate the level of freedoms we allow the men and women teaching our children.

The reality is that teachers are not robots. We function in the same social and intellectual spheres that govern the rest of the world. It is difficult enough to be everything to everyone else: the polite and professional coworker, the qualified and hardworking employee, the fair and kind role model for students, and the polished and respectful saint for parents.

I cannot think of another job, where a person is expected to always be on their “best” behavior. We are expected to remain blank slates that will somehow shape and build the future, without offering our own ideas so as not to improperly influence young minds, lest their parents’ opinions, or that of the school board or administration should differ from our own.

We live in an age where opinions and strong beliefs can be threatening to people in power. We are told from a young age not to discuss politics or religion in public. It is unprofessional we are led to believe. But as a language arts and social studies teacher how can I not? How are we meant to teach children that they can change the existing power structures and work towards a better world, if we are no allowed to discuss the flaws in the system?

Teachers are not meant to criticize a certain president or his policies, or question the global consumer culture, or suggest that perhaps capitalism is not the best system around. Some say this type of political criticism makes a teacher of unfit character. Don’t get me wrong. I whole-heartedly agree that this type of bias has no place in a classroom, especially at the middle school level. Teachers should not be sermonizing their religious or political beliefs in the classroom, but they shouldn’t be punished for expressing them on the Internet.

If we allow schools to start firing teachers for vague indications of inappropriateness, we are opening the door to weakened teacher’s unions and a generation of teachers afraid to take risks and be themselves.

There seems to be no place left for us teacher/activists to express our ideas. It doesn’t seem fair that we cannot feel comfortable expressing ourselves on the internet, the very space we are painstakingly teaching our students to use.

It feels very hypocritical to teach students to use the tools that we ourselves are afraid to use. I believe in education more than anything else in the world. I believe that objective presentation of facts, logical thought, honesty, love, and communication are the keys to a more peaceful world. A peaceful world is my only goal. If this attitude makes me of unfit character than I suppose I have to search the earth until I find a school that agrees with my ideals. Which is what I am doing now. I have no hidden agendas. No matter what political or religious obstacles we may face, I want nothing more than to find a path toward peace. This is why I teach. This is why I write. This is why I exist. My blogs are nothing more than maps of my journey. There may have been times I have taken wrong turns, said things I shouldn’t have said, but they are meant to be read as a whole. I do not believe in sermonizing or preaching in the classroom. While my opinions may appear to take a one-sided stand at times, I work very hard to create and maintain an objective environment to teach kids to ask questions and search out the truth. That is all.

So remember that not only are…

there’s lots of other things that happen in people’s lives that have no direct bearing on people’s ability to be good teachers. Certainly not the private life of a teacher unless it impacted on the profession itself.

Personal factors in a teacher’s life often enhance their ability to better relate to and teach students. We cannot allow these freedoms to be taken away.

It is only day eight and I am overwhelmed by the comment challenge. I dropped the ball sometime around day five or six. This is embarrassing because I don’t even have a job, but not only have I not written a quick post highlighting the lessons I am learning by commenting, I am not even commenting. I am not sure if I even have the energy to make excuses. So let me catch up:

Day Five-Comment on a post you disagree with and Day Six- Comment to engage in conversation:

I left the following comment on The Science Bench. For personal reasons, I am very passionate about the idea of professionalism and online identities:

This idea of how teaches should or shouldn’t act online seems to be a popular topic these days, and one that I am personally very familiar with. I was recently asked to resign from a private international school because of a parent complaint about material on my Flickr page. Unlike the teachers from the Washington Post article, I feel I have a good grasp of what is on my various sites. I keep a clean Facebook. I actually invited parents to view my personal blog because I wanted them to have a fuller picture of who was teaching their kids; this brings me to my point:

I am a language arts teacher who is very interested in using technology and Web 2.0 in my classroom as a tool for student self expression. I use these tools myself as an artist, a writer, a photographer, and amateur filmmaker, and as a human being, so what happens if I don’t do anything “stupid” online, but a parent still finds fault with my taste in books, my politics, or religious views. I am an atheist, should I hide this fact to the world, even while I teach my students to be open minded about people’s religious beliefs. What do teachers who do not use these tools tell their students when asked, “Do you have a Youtube page, or do you have a Flickr page?|

It is one thing to judge young teachers who are being flagrantly “inappropriate” online, but who decides where the line is to be drawn. I am a grown adult who loves teaching, loves kids, and loves what I do. I don’t want to have to hide who I am because some parents may think that I am inappropriate. My point is that there will always be someone who doesn’t like who you are and what you stand for, so how do teachers who feel are doing right by their online identities react to being told to be careful, or worse to not engage in online activity.

I have lost my job and have since been re-thinking my stance on all of these questions, but I know that the day of the teacher being a robot of professionalism is dying. Teachers like all professions are made up of eclectic people; we should celebrate this diversity, rather than forcing the educators of our children to be forced into some strange homogeneous fake world of conservative expectations.

I teach my kids to use Web 2.0 to create, share, exchange, and build networks, how can I not be doing that myself…as myself?

Day Seven- What have you learn do far:

I have learned that I don’t like the pressure of this challenge. I am not sure if staying on schedule is good for the quality of my comments and subsequent blog posts. Take this last post for example. I was looking for a blog with which to disagree; I am not sure how natural this process is. I do, however, see the value in keeping these lessons with me as I move beyond this challenge.

The most important lesson I have learned early on, is that commenting is the most important activity for establishing and fostering online relationships, which will only strengthen one’s network. I have already met several bloggers with whom I am regularly interacting with on my blog and twitter, simply because we exchanged a few comments.

I hope that I will continue to comment frequently when the pressure of this challenge has subsided. I am off to find a blog outside of my niche. I’ll let you know how that went.

A few days ago, I read the following excerpt from a post by Leila, a student, from the Intrepid Classroom. She said:

First, I have a shikayat, a complaint against anyone reading this. Currently only two people are commenting on this blog. I put a lot of work but I guess it’s going to waste. The amazing two people I’m talking about are Mr.R and Julia. Thank you both. I would probably give up if it wasn’t for you. So those of you reading comment and you two amazing people keep on commenting and please send my blog link to anyone you know. Why? Well I don’t are if they think it’s a blog by a wired girl who has an average life. Even if they think so I don’t care just get them to mention that they came; by comment.

I wrote her the following post as advice to a young writer. I think our exchange demonstrates how much writers, no matter what age want to make connections. When I had a classroom, I found it very difficult to make blogging engaging for most of my students. I was stuck in the “blog as filing cabinet for homework” stage with most of my students.

Now that I am out of the classroom and interacting with students on a purely cyber level I am realizing that not all students are ready to connect and communicate. I have assembled a small group of students from around the world and the trait they all have in common is that they understand the power of writing; they realize that it is their most powerful tool to communicate their expanding vision of the world. I am not referring to writing as a solely textual experience, but rather writing as a way to use any tool necessary to communicate and connect. To be effective bloggers must first understand the power of writing on a personal level. They must first be writers. You cannot force students to start a blog and expect them to fall in love with writing.

Leila’s post shows that although, she is not sure exactly what it is she wants to say, she wants someone to listen and respond. This is the first step in the development of a writer. It is the more experienced writer or teacher’s role to teach students that they must first find out what they want to say, show them the most effective way to say it, and then to simply write, without need for reciprocation. Once the young writer realizes the power writing has for them as human beings, they will write freely and obsessively. It is at this stage that blogging works best.

It is difficult for the writer’s ego to relinquish the need for an audience. I don’t know about many of you, but I am still learning these lessons myself. It must be pretty difficult for someone new to the game. We writers are sitting on the fence of needing to write to stay sane and wanting to communicate every experience we have with a larger audience. A blog is a great tool for any student who has come to this realization. For others it is simply another assignment or homework assignment they could careless about.

I also left this comment, albeit it was the 83rd one, at The Strength of Weak Ties:

Wow! This discussion is at the same time intense and depressing. Once again, I feel like the kid who doesn’t know the right things to say to be considered cool. I am fairly new to the “echo-chamber,” and as a new member I found it at first very exciting, but I am starting to learn what the author means about the tragedy of commons and not just in regards to Twitter.

Even as a newbie, one can feel that there are certain names that always turn up. There are the experts that everyone follows. There are the names that carry clout, and then there are the little guys like me, simply trying to make sense of this all.

Perhaps it is still the novelty of Twitter that makes it worthwhile for me, or perhaps it is my naivety of the Edublog “in” crowd that keeps me out of discussions like this, and for that I am grateful.

I am a Middle School English teacher obsessed with learning and making connections. So it is a natural link for me to use Web 2.0, both for my own learning, but also to try and figure out what can make my own teaching more productive for my students and their rapidly changing world. Which is ironic because as of now, I don’t even have students, but I haven’t let this stop me from trying to use this network of people help me make the connections I find valuable.

I have met some great people on Twitter and made some great connections. My followers are slowly growing and I periodically check to see who they are, not to see if the “popular” kids are watching me, but to see if there is someone out there operating on my wavelength that could prove to be an alley in the war against ignorance. I blogged and shared my ideas when no one was reading, and I will continue to do so when a few kindred souls might chime in.

Let me finished with a quick story: When I was young I wanted to be the next Jack Kerouac, like every wide-eyed idealist, I was going to write prose that would change the world. I quickly realized that I am not that good of a writer, but that has never stopped me from writing. I don’t want to be famous anymore, I simply must write. The same thing is true for blogging. When I started I thought I could get huge numbers of people to read my work and leave 100’s of comments a week, but now I see that I simply need to write and perhaps, I will meet a few people who like what I have to say.

In closing, Twitter may be old hat for the early crowd, but some of us are still getting good mileage out of it. So come follow that…@intrepidteacher

Day three was pretty simple. I signed up with coComment, and while I think I have it working smoothly, I still feel it is not very easy to use. I am always unsure if things are working as they should. I suppose this is the element of Web learning I love the most. The secret is to figure things out. Sometimes that means a quick Tweet, which leads to a Skype call with Sue Waters, and sometimes it means a few hours of Google research, whatever the case the answers are out there, and it is the job of the learner to figure them out.

When dealing with technology I often found my students, although they are supposed to be digital natives were very squeamish about experimenting. I often had to hold their hands through the most basic steps of a procedure, when really I feel that experimentation and “figuring” it out is vital to web learning. In short, I am figuring out coComment, and I am excited about the potential it has to make me a much more effective commenter long after this challenge is over.

Day four I was meant to ask a question in one of my comments. I liked this idea of volleying the conversation back to the writer or other commentors, and now with a commenter tracker this action makes much more sense. Here is a question I left on Sarah Hanawald’s:

How can we slowly encourage people to understand that the future is hear with a sense of urgency, but at the same time not allow them to become defensive?

Not the most profound question, but it will do.

I will be using my new tool, coComment along side my new habit of raising questions when I comment well into the future. Once again, thank you comment challenge.

I run three blogs and have been doing so for some time now. But until tonight, I have always felt blogging was a very lonely act. Perhaps it is because my readership is quite low, and I seldom get comments, and when I do they are usually from the same small group of people who comment regularly. It is true that I write and blog for the sake of writing and reflecting, but as every writer knows I want and need an audience. Sometimes this need to connect has made me a bit crazy, but usually I write and wait optimistically that my posts will somehow connect to someone out in the blogsphere.

Well, tonight something felt different, because I finally stopped being a lurker and became a commenter. (If you are lurking on this post, leave a comment! It feels good trust me.) I visited several blogs I had never read before and left my two-cents. This inconsequential act made me feel more a part of a communty than all of my writing combined.

I finally realized that like everything in life you have to give in order to recieve. How selfish I had been, sitting in my lonely room writing away, thinking that everything I say is the most important new idea, expecting others to flock to my blog and tell me how brilliant I am, when I never take the time to do the same for others.

This challenge is teaching me that commenting is one of the most important aspects of blogging. So a quick shout out to the organizers of this challenge. (Yes, I know hyper-linking is a good blogging karmic tool as well, but it is late and I am tired. Next time I promise.)

The following post is for the 31-day commenting challenge:

How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?

I am a horrible commenter. Even though I know that commenting is one of the most important aspects of blogging, I am often either too lazy or intimidated to leave a comment. I am always awed by the depth and length of some comments, so I feel silly just say, “Yeah, I agree.” Often times I will leave the site having said nothing at all. If there is a post that makes me think, I swear that I will mull over the content and come later, but I seldom do. I will leave several blog that I want to comment on later as unread in my reader, but when the next batch of 50 come through, I mark them read and say I will do it next time.

The irony is I am always disappointed, when I write what I think is an emotional charged or powerful post and get no comments. I really hope this challenge will get me into the habit of commenting more. Tonight I comment on two new blogs, and I feel great about it. I hope to hear back from both of these great bloggers. After all this is the spirit of blogging. I am through with screaming into the darkness waiting to be heard and acknowledged, I want to sit in the darkness and listen and reassure.

Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?

I never even knew this was possible. I have signed up for CoComment for this challenge, so I hope I will learn how to better keep track of my comments. I am still a bit fuzzy on how it works, but like everything else I will figure it out, or use my network to teach me. As of now it seems a bit “buggy.” Any advice or tips?

Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?

I comment so rarely, that I will not answer that question, but I will try to comment on new blogs from now on.

Are there any specific areas where you think you need to do some work? What do you want to do to address these issues?

When I do comment, I think I do well. Although I sometimes may come off as confrontational or a know it all, because I find it easier to comment on posts I disagree with, especially when it is something I am passionate about, so it may be a good idea for me to try and be a bit more cordial.

I am sure no one want to read this post, so I will stop. Although it felt good to get it down. Great first day of the challenge.

Since March 10th,  I have been out of a job and it has been difficult for me to post anything worthwhile, because after all, it is tough reflecting on teaching when you haven’t been teaching. There have been many times I have had a post brewing, but I let it slip away due to either, laziness or self-pity. Whatever the case may have been, I have a new project and I am excited to be back in the game.

Although I am not getting paid and my future is still unclear,  I feel the need to be involved with my teaching network and trying to rustle up people who are interested in exchanging ideas and learning. Those are the reasons I teach anyway, not for a paycheck.

As I sat day after day, thinking about how the educational institutions of the world are mistreating me, I started to re-think what it means to teach in an institutional environment run at best by bureaucrats and at worst by corporate interests. I also began to brainstorm “perfect” classroom ideas. I have been forced to really sell myself to potential employers, and these negotiations have got me thinking about courses I would like to teach that don’t exist in most schools.

It appears that more and more people are starting to realize the fundamental flaw of teaching in a system that is based on profit. Teachers like Clay Burel and Bill Farren are asking us to rethink the very nature of how a school should function in society. As the global consumer cultures attains more and more influnce over all of our lives, should it not be the role of schools to offer young people alternatives to current systems.

Our schools should play a role in encouraging and teaching students the basic principles of activist culture. As the authority, teachers are nervous to tell an already rebellious group of adolescents to question authority, but we owe it to them to demand more of their educators.

I hope to play with some of these ideas further at the Intrepid Classroom, but I want to use this space to reflect on the reasons behind why these themes should be taught in traditional schools. I hope to create a sort of activist training school. A place where students can question the very systems they are told to worship. I would like to create a source of resources from art, to music, to web culture that helps students understand that although the mass media may try to make them believe they are powerless, there have always been people fighting for a better world, and most importantly they too can participate. Although perhaps not for much longer!
I have written in the past about my Utopian classroom, but now I want to focus on my perfect curriculum. The reoccurring themes for most of my ideas are the incorporation of Social Justice and Peace Activism into traditional curriculums. I see a series of specialized courses that deal with political, class-based issues, and artistic and philosophical themes. One such course would be an elective, probably a semester long on music as an agent of change. I hope to outline each course in depth, but for now I want to start drawing the rough sketches:

The music curriculum would study everything from sixties protest music, to the blues, to modern day singer/activists working for change. Students would not only listen to the music and examine and reflect on the lyrics, but they would also be asked to research and learn about the social problems that were the impetus of the music. As you can see there is already a Social Studies and Language Arts element to the material. They would also be asked to collaborate and create socially conscious music themselves. Using networking tools like Youtube, they would than try to promote their music to as wide an audience as possible.

I have taught a mini-music unit every year of my career, but it always seems forced, and it takes time away from the curriculum I “should” be teaching. Now that I am out of a real classroom, I hope to teach students about the power of music in a less constricting and confined environment We owe it to our students to not only study history, but learn to be a part of it.

How do you incorporate socially conscious material into your curriculum? What obstacle to you face?