The Bible and Benjamin Bloom

            Benjamin Bloom was an educational psychologist who led a team that classified a hierarchy of thinking skills that is referred to as Bloom’s Taxonomy.  This “ladder” of thinking skills is drilled into teachers during their basic training courses. 

            The taxonomy of skills really does make sense.  The lowest level is knowledge; can you remember the facts?  The next level is comprehension; do you understand what the facts mean?  The third level up is application; can you apply what you know and understand?  There are three more levels that deal with analyzing, evaluating and creating.  Teachers are always encouraged to present lessons that push students into the higher levels of thinking.  A lesson that merely asks students to regurgitate a set of facts has not pushed kids into higher levels of thinking.

            When my children were very little, our church was just beginning the Awana program.  Awana is a children’s program that demands huge amounts of Bible memorization from the kids.  I can remember several parents in the church questioning the value of having kids memorize so much scripture that the kids themselves did not even understand.  Anyone listening to the kids say their verses each week knew the kids were just rattling back a lot of rote memorization.

            I knew there was value to having the kids memorize the verses, even if they did not always understand them; but it wasn’t until I began formally teaching that I could get my head around what was going on.

            In church today, the message was from II Timothy 3.  Within that passage Paul tells Timothy, “. . .from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation” (II Timothy 3:15).  I was struck again by the description of Timothy being taught scripture by his mother and grandmother that he probably didn’t fully understand, but that later gave him wisdom and led him to salvation.  There it is!  Bloom’s taxonomy – knowledge > understanding >application.

            Many skills start with basic rote memorization.  The greatest mathematician might have first learned his numbers as his mother counted 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 on her toes.  Before any of us learned to read, we were probably saying or singing the alphabet (remember the elameno pea?).  Even a great chemist was probably once shown a simple drawing of one proton, one neutron, a circling electron, and was told to memorize it because that was a Hydrogen atom. 

            So the next time you hear someone bashing rote memorization, remember - everything has to start somewhere.  And a lot of things start with just memorizing the facts in front of you.    

We Are The World

             

 “Come sit down Naomi.”  I motioned to the empty chair at the table.  “We have a new student.”

Safia was sitting at the table with me when Naomi walked into the room.  Naomi looked around a minute as though she might have walked into the wrong room then slowly walked to the table and sat down.

“Naomi, this is Safia.  She’s new to our school this year and she’s going to be in Study Skills with you.”   I motioned to Naomi, “Safia, this is Naomi.”

Safia was tall, slender, and had luxurious black wavy hair.  She was beautiful.  She was also very scared and very shy.  She looked at Naomi and smiled sweetly.  Naomi stared at Safia and said nothing.

“Naomi, can you say hello to Safia?”

“Where did you move here from?” Naomi demanded.

Safia’s eyes darted to me.  She wasn’t quite ready to speak.

“Safia didn’t move here from anywhere else,” I explained.  “She has lived here all her life.  She just transferred here from another school.”

Naomi was used to transfers.  “Which school did you go to?” she asked.

I turned to Safia and smiled.  “Go ahead Safia.  Tell Naomi the name of your school.”

“I went to the Islamic school,” Safia whispered.

Naomi puzzled over this.  I wasn’t sure if she’d even heard Safia, so I said, “She went to the Islamic school for the last four years.  Now she’s going to be in our school.”

Naomi’s eyes stopped focusing on Safia and I could tell she was thinking about this.  Finally she asked, “Are you Catholic?”

  Safia’s face looked stricken.  She didn’t know what to say.  She looked at me pleadingly.    Naomi doesn’t know what Islamic means.  “Naomi,” I explained, “Safia is Muslim.  The Islamic school is a Muslim school.”  I wondered if Naomi had ever heard the word “Muslim.”  “That’s Safia’s religion.”

Sarah continued to stare at Safia.  Then she said, “I’m Jewish.”

It was Safia’s turn to look puzzled.  I turned to Safia and said, “Naomi is Jewish.  That’s her religion.  Your religion is Muslim and Naomi is Jewish.”

This seemed to satisfy both girls because they both smiled at each other.

“Hello Safia,” whispered Naomi.

“Hello Naomi,” whispered Safia.

“Let’s work on some math problems,” I said, passing out small whiteboards, markers, and erasers.  If only world peace could be achieved this easily, I thought.

I wrote the first problem on my whiteboard and showed it to the girls, but Naomi was already busy working on her whiteboard.  Her head was bent down, tilted to the side, and she was biting the tip of her tongue as she carefully drew a Star of David.

Apathy

I was helping an eighth grade student today as he was preparing for a test over a selection the class had been reading.  It was one of my favorite pieces in the literature books we use, one I had taught many time in my previous position as an eighth grade Language Arts teacher.

The selection was a condensed version of Flowers for Algernon  by Daniel Keye.  The students read journal entries of Charlie Gordon, who has experimental brain surgery that changes him from a developmentally disabled young man to a genius.  The surgery works for a time, but eventually he regresses back to the low cognitive state he began with.  Even very low performing students recognize the changes in Charlie’s writing abilities and his observations and understanding of those around him.  The selection generates great discussions about work ethic and motivation which students of all abilities can understand. 

            When teachers really enjoy a particular selection, they display a passion for the work that is not always immediately embraced by their students.  It is not easy to maintain a patient, enthusiastic demeanor when the kids moan and groan in the face of your enchantment.   On one particular day when I was teaching this selection, I kept pushing the phrase “pearls before swine” from my head as I was introducing the new reading passage.  I loved Flowers for Algernon.  I was pretty sure my students would love it after they got into it.  But it was hard getting them started.

            “What’s an Algernon?” Josh asked, mispronouncing the name with a hard “g” sound.

            “Is this about gardening?” David chimed in.  “I don’t like girly books.”

            Michael just slumped in the back, looking like he was having stomach cramps.

            “There’s a weird picture on page 297,” Jacob offered.  By now two of the girls were giggling.  It’s important for eighth grade girls to let the guys know how cool they think they are.  Giggling accomplishes this quite effectively.

            “Algernon,” I began, appropriately modeling the correct pronunciation of Algernon with a soft “g,” “Is the name of a laboratory mouse in the story.”

            “So it’s about Science?” Josh whined.  “Shouldn’t we be reading this in Science class?”

            “Mrs. Olsen would really love making us bring our lit book to Science,” David offered.  The kids were on notice about forgetting their textbooks in classes.  The teachers had implemented a three strikes rule for offenders.  I was pretty sure David had two strikes already.

            “No, this is not something you would read in Science,” I corrected.  “The setting involves a laboratory where a lot of the action takes place.”  “Setting” was on the state reading test, and I mentally congratulated myself for seamlessly fitting it into the conversation. 

“If you had the opportunity to become a genius,” I continued, “What would you like to accomplish?”  This was the standard “set the stage” question for this selection.

            “I’d get all A’s in my classes without doing any work,” Josh immediately offered.  I found Josh’s comment interesting.  Josh was probably the brightest student I had ever worked with.  He was also one of the laziest.  The first week of school he asked me if the district made a distinction between an A+, A, or A- when calculating the GPA for middle school.  I knew the school used a “4” for everything from 89.5 to 100, so I had told him no, there was no difference between a high and low “A” when calculating student GPA’s in middle school.   It was uncanny how he sat at a comfortable B most of the quarter and managed to move it to a “barely made it” A at the last minute.  Becoming a genius wouldn’t change Josh one bit.

            “I’d get A’s and sell my answers to the other kids and get rich,” Cory declared.

            “Way to go Cory.”

            “We’re with you man.”

            “I’d buy,” several kids called out.

            These were pretty typical eighth grade responses.  Every year I hoped for one student who’d take the moral high ground and declare he wanted to cure cancer or AIDS, or solve world hunger.  No saints this year.  But I did enjoy playing devil’s advocate.

            “Couldn’t you do those things without being a genius?” I asked.  “Most any of you can get A’s with hard work.” I couldn’t always say that about every class, but it was true for this particular group of kids.

            “We don’t want to work,” Josh insisted.  “What’s the point of being a genius if you have to work?”

            Pretty shallow pool this year, I thought.  “Well, maybe this selection will help you re-think your ideas of being a genius,” I offered.  “The main character learns some things he had no idea were out there.  Maybe having all the brains in the world isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” I continued.  I was met with the “nooooo’s” and “brains are best” reaction I suspected would come.  But it was always fun to watch their thinking change as they read.

            I always read the first several “progris riports” in the selection out loud.  The story begins with Charlie Gordon having an IQ of 68.  His spelling is horrible and the punctuation is non-existent.  It’s very difficult for many kids to read.  I’m pretty good at “decoding” this kind of writing because – well, I do it for a living. 

The kids enjoy seeing the poor writing.  It makes them feel smart.  It’s like seeing something you wrote in second grade and realizing how much you’ve improved.  For some reason, however, I wasn’t getting the same responses this year.  I don’t know whether it was the advent of texting, the dynamics of this particular group, or how the stars were aligning.  I just wasn’t getting the chuckles to the very primitive writing in the beginning passages that I usually got.

            ???, the goofy part of my brain thought, Does anyone here see anything wrong with this?

            “What do you think of what Charlie has written so far?” I asked after the first two progress reports.

            “The dude can’t write,” Jacob said.

            Finally, I thought.  And it was so good coming from Jacob.   I knew Jacob struggled academically, but he was also the cutest guy in the class and the girls flocked to him.  Eighth grade girls haven’t quite focused in on high academic skills yet.  It’s all about how hot the guy is.  I suspected Jacob just might be able to get girls to do most of his homework through high school.

 The third progress report described several cognitive tests that were given to Charlie Gordon to establish a baseline.  One of the tests referred to was the Rorschach test.  I pulled up some inkblot examples I have gotten off the internet, put them on the overhead, and explained to the kids that different people saw different things in the designs.  This had never failed to pull in even the most disinterested student. 

            “This is something like Charlie Gordon might have been shown.  What does this inkblot look like to you?” I asked.  Past classes had described this particular inkblot as looking like everything from a weird butterfly to two dogs looking away from each other.

            “It looks like someone spilled ink,” moaned Michael.

            “What does it remind you of?” I probed.  “Think of it like looking for pictures in the clouds.”

           

            “It reminds me of a pen breaking and spilling ink,” Michael deadpanned.

            “How about this one?” I continued, putting up another picture.  Kids usually said this one looked like the monster from the movie Alien.

            “How does this test measure intelligence?” Josh asked.

            Good question, I thought.  “I’m not sure,” I said.  “Maybe it’s looking at your ability to imagine things.”  I had a vague memory of criminals seeing weird things in the pictures, but I wasn’t going there.  “I’ll continue reading,” I announced.  Things just weren’t picking up like they usually did.  Maybe we just needed to get more into the story.

            I read the next two progress reports and tried a different tack.  In the fourth report Charlie is writing down things he heard the doctors saying about him, but he didn’t understand most of what they said.  Many of the words were only partially written down.

            “OK guys,” I said, “See if you can figure out some of the words Charlie wasn’t able to get written down completely.  Dr. Nemur said Charlie was not what they had in mind as the first of their new breed of ‘intelek’.  What do you think he meant with ‘intelek’?”  I was waiting for someone to say “intellectual.”

            Sleepy, bored faces looked back at me.

            “Intelek guys!” I insisted.  “What word were they saying when Charlie wrote down ‘intelek’?”

            Now they weren’t even looking back at me.  Several were looking at the edge of their desk or at the clock.

            “Intellectual,” I belted out.  “Charlie Gordon was going to be the first in their new breed of intellectuals.”  I was beginning to lose patience with the lack of responses I was getting.  This was a great story and the kids didn’t seem to be giving it a chance.

            “How about the next sentences,” I continued.  “Most people of his low ment are host and uncoop they are usually dull apath and hard to reach.”

            No responses again.

            “Low ment.  What do you think low ment means?”  I wasn’t letting them off.

            Again, no responses.

            I abandoned even trying anymore.  “Low ment means low mentality.  Most people of his low mentality are hostile and uncooperative.  They are usually dull apathetic and hard to reach.  That’s what Charlie heard but couldn’t get written down.”

            I had raised my voice and delivered the last several sentences in a loud staccato.  Most of the kids had stopped gazing around and were at least looking back at me now.  “What do you think about that statement,” I asked.  “Is that a fair description of people with low mentality?  Do you think they are hostile, uncooperative, apathetic, or hard to reach?”

            The kids could tell I was losing patience and I saw a few furtive glances at the clock.  There would be no help there.  We still had 20 minutes of class left. 

            After a long, long pause, David asked, “What does apathetic mean?”

            “Why don’t you look it up in the dictionary,” I snapped back.  Why does this all have to be so hard? I thought.

            Now everyone had something else to do besides listen to me, so they all watched David get up and lumber over to the shelf where the dictionaries were kept.

            “How is it spelled?” he inquired.

            “A-pa-the-tic,” I replied exaggerating the syllables.  “It’s spelled just like it sounds.”

            David hunched over the dictionary mouthing “a-pa-the-tic” as he flipped through the pages.  He found it and began reading silently.

            “Read it out loud,” I instructed.

            “Apathetic,” David began.  “Having or showing little or no feeling or emotion.  Having little or no interest or concern.”   David finished and looked up at me, his lower jaw slack.  I stared back at him.  He stared dully back at me.  I held my stare back at him.  David dropped his head back down at the dictionary and read the definition again to himself.  Suddenly his head snapped up. 

            “Apathetic!” he suddenly announced.  “That’s us!  We’re apathetic!”  David closed the dictionary, replaced it on the shelf, and walked back to his desk, continuing to mouth “Apathetic.  We’re apathetic.”

            OK, I thought.  Maybe I didn’t get them thinking along the lines I usually took students down, but I had a sneaky suspicion David would never forget what “apathetic” meant for the rest of his life.

Leadership

 

            I work in a district that has just announced that as part of their strategic five year plan, they want to develop new leaders for their future.  I’ve taught long enough to have seen a vast difference in the leadership qualities that are praised now compared with what a school leader looked like 25 years ago.

            Eight years ago I took a graduate class on school leadership, and one of the assignments was to interview our current administrator.  We were given several questions to ask the administrator and were to write up a report of our findings.  Many of the questions were about developing new teachers.  “Describe your mentoring program for new teachers,” or “What would be your first step in helping a new teacher develop classroom management skills?”  The administrator I was interviewing had been in education for almost 40 years, and he wasn’t the least bit shy in responding that it wasn’t his job to teach a teacher to teach.  That was the college’s job, and he would contact the college about sending them back if the teacher was having problems.

            It was amusing to report my interview to my class, but it really underscored how much educational leadership has changed in my lifetime.  The servant-leader is the model I most often hear about today, and I think it does have high merit.  I’ve been watching several younger teachers at my school and can see which ones are already “marked” or “chosen” for future development.  I think they seem to fit into one of two categories.

            The first of the “chosen” potential leaders is the one who can give a good speech.  This person speaks up in faculty meetings and is always referring back to meetings he or she has had with students.  Students love them in the classroom.  Their classes are exciting and fun.  There’s lots of discussion between the teacher and students and you can hear a lot of laughter when you pass in the hall.  Everyone wants to be in this teacher’s room.

            But sometimes the fun discussions get out of hand and the kids don’t know when to stop.  The teacher ends up yelling loudly to get the kids’ attention and bring everyone back under control.  If any other teacher yelled like that, there would be ramifications.  But this teacher is so well-loved by their students, it’s all part of the package.  There’s not a lot of structure to lesson plans and sometimes there are problems if this teacher is supposed to be aligning their lessons with other job-alikes.  But that weakness tends to be over-looked, because this teacher has such strong relationships with his students.  Yes, everyone agrees.  He will be a great leader someday because he makes such a good speech.

            The other potential leader on everyone’s radar is what I would call the OCD teacher – OCD as in obsessive compulsive disorder teacher.  They’re not really OCD, but they sure lean in that direction.  They have copies of everything.  They take the minutes at every meeting because they type them on their laptop as we speak.  They have fired copies to everyone by the time they get back to their room.  They have folders within folders within folders, and on and on.  Every activity is planned in writing in every minute detail.

            The OCD teacher can get on everyone’s nerves, though.  They are valuable when you’re looking for the copy of whatever you lost, but they are a headache if you’re planning something fairly complicated.  They raise every possible question that can be raised.  It takes ten times longer to get through any meeting because they are the ones who talk everything to death.   But everyone agrees that they will be a great leader someday because they have such vision to see all the possibilities of everything.

            So how will these two leaders work together?  I think the speechmaker will end up on top because he will be the face and voice of our school.  But the speechmaker cannot survive on his own.  Right below him will be the OCD leader organizing all the work and seeing that it’s being carried out exactly as it should be. 

            Who is below Mr. Speechmaker and Miss OCD on the totem pole?   The worker bees!  They are the teachers who are giving the small speeches every day, and struggling to organize the work, and hoping they prepared for most contingencies.  But as the worker bees do the daily work, the kids will always remind them of how much fun they had in Mr. Speechmaker’s room and how he was such a good friend.  And the worker bees will always remember that they will never be as organized and prepared as Miss OCD, who, incidentally, is even more organized and prepared now because she doesn’t have to worry about teaching kids anymore – just preparing and organizing.

            I can just hear you now.  You’re thinking -  sour grapes!  Hattie’s whining. 

            You.  Are.  Correct. 

            Today I heard Mr. Speechmaker give a stern but wonderful pep talk to one of my students who had been misbehaving.  I also got an email from Miss OCD asking for a summary of state testing procedures for all of my students that included their student ID’s and page number in their IEP’s supporting the outlined accommodations and modifications.  She needed it by the end of the school day.

            After Mr. Speechmaker left my room, I’m sure he was confident that Naomi knew how to behave in the hall and what would happen to her in the future if she didn’t behave appropriately.  Thirty seconds after the door closed behind him, however, Naomi turned to me and said she didn’t understand anything Mr. Speechmaker had said to her.  She wanted me to explain it all again.

            I told Naomi I couldn’t.  I was too busy looking up page numbers in IEP’s.  Happy Monday.

Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives

            I teach a remedial language course for students who have reading and writing skills below grade level.  Part of the focus is on basic grammar that the students might not have mastered yet.  This past week we were discussing how a single word could be a noun, a verb, or an adjective, depending on how it was used in the sentence. 

            As we went over the examples in class, I knew we were leaving Naomi behind.  Grammar is foreign land for her.  After she had asked about the given examples several times and still not understood, I could tell the other students were getting exasperated waiting for her.  Naomi could see they were getting impatient too, but she was clearly lost.  I told her I would go over it with her during Study Skills Class when it was just her and another student.

            Two hours later I again went over the three examples:   There was a short in the TV that caused sparks to fly.  When they short me on my paycheck, I get angry.  I waited a short time for my mother.  For Naomi to understand a “short” in the TV and being “shorted” on a paycheck, I had to go into a long explanation of what they meant.  The other students in the earlier class had all apparently seen an appliance short out, and all understood being shorted on money.  I patiently began telling what was going on in each situation.  After each explanation I gave, Naomi tilted her head slightly and said, “I don’t get it.”

            I went over it again using even simpler language.  Naomi’s head tilted farther.  “I don’t get it.”

            By the third round, Naomi’s head was tilted almost to the point of resting on her shoulder.  After a lesson I thought a three-year-old could understand, I wondered if I would get another, “I don’t get it.” 

            Instead Naomi’s eyes bore in on me, and she said, “Mrs. Jones.  I have a question.  What makes you really happy in your life?” 

            Most of the time when I’m with Naomi, I feel like I’m working with a very, very, young student.  But every so often she asks something that makes me feel like she can see deep inside me.  I started to laugh.

            “Why is that funny?” she asked.

            “It’s not funny, Naomi,” I said.  “It’s so profound.”  Her face puzzled over the word, “profound”.  “It’s a good question,” I restated.  “I have to think about that a minute.” 

            This had been one of those days where other events had pulled the rug out from under me.  Consequently, this felt so much more important than nouns, verbs, and adjectives.   “Let’s all think about what makes us happy in our life,” I said.  There was one other student in the room and she immediately announced that she was happy when she didn’t have to think of nouns, verbs, and adjectives.  In the next few minutes I learned that Naomi was most happy when she was walking her dog, Leon.  The other student was happiest when she and her mom were doing something together.  They learned that I was happiest when all my kids came home to visit me.

            “What makes you laugh, Mrs. Jones?” Naomi asked. 

            “Well . . .  you make me laugh, Naomi.”

            Her face lit up into a huge smile.  “Am I your favorite student?”

            I wasn’t going to ignore the other little girl, so I said, “No.  You’re all my favorite students.”  But the truth was, today Naomi was my favorite student.