I'm all about the cross curricularity

Actually, I'm not sure that's even a word. But I am running with it.

In my quest to be a Renaissance teacher, I like to maintain a passing acquaintance with other subject areas. Of course, this is fairly easy in Maths (since I use it all the time to teach, you know, my subject) and English. That's because I'm a writer *cues flappy hands of creative expression*. I like to know what's happening in Technology. But I love love love Social Science.

Here is my latest obsession of intellectual glee. Sociological Images. They use images to explore assumptions about gender, class and ethnicity, with a short, rigorous commentary. I love it. For example, just today I learned that marriage between cousins is prohibited in 25 states in the US. *blinks* My maternal grandparents were first cousins. Perhaps I shouldn't admit to that on the internet.

We're all about health. And science. Yeah

The other day, I stumbled across a fascinating post featuring a periodic table of the elements represented by cupcakes.

Here, have a gratuitous picture of the sugary goodness:



Nice, huh?

One of the things I have found in teaching chemistry, and, in particular, atomic structure, ion formation and ionic bonding, is that students have real difficulty with the idea that removing electrons makes an ion more positive.

Yes, I am also a maths teacher, and this does make me worried.

So, I'm thinking cupcakes of the first twenty and the few extras we use. Some nice icing. Valence electrons represented by little sour jube lollies - if you remove valence sour jubes, the cupcake gets sweeter. I think this could be a really simple, if not particularly healthy, way to get the idea across.

Bring on the Chemistry!

Cookie-cutter science? Please, I hate chocolate chip

So, one of my colleagues sent me this link, in response to my description of our new junior science scheme. Apparently, he thinks we’re going to be teaching cookie-cutter science. I am faced with the unpalatable thought that I failed to communicate effectively, or the equally unpleasant alternative that my colleagues think I have instituted an intellectually barren scheme of work.

Personally, I think that describing our scheme as cookie-cutter is, at best, unkind. We're getting rid of several student learning outcomes and changing our focus from content - facts in low context - to scientific literacy. I'm going to think more about exactly how we're ensuring high academic rigour.

The well-rounded student (a Renaissance ideal?)

One of the things that irks me about school - and, for the record, I think my school is better about this than most - is how much attention we pay to sports and other athletic endeavours.

Oh, I fully admit that this annoyance comes mainly from the fact that I am not sporty and spent a large chunk of my schooling career as a socially inept loner who preferred reading, writing and drama to... well, pretty much any physical activity you could name. That just makes me more determined to offer students opportunities outside the sport/athletics mould.

So, my whanau (homeroom to any North Americans) is going to spend some time on art appreciation. This was partly prompted by my discovery, last night, of Feed Your Soul, a free art download site.

This is the one I chose for myself, to add to our art collage that will go up on my wall. Students will choose the ones they like and add an annotation about why they chose it. It could be really interesting, I think, and the students might learn something about themselves and each other - and an artist they might otherwise never come across.

I'll post more later about my Renaissance ideals. For now, I feel happy.

Starting thoughts about edupunk

I don't blog much about my personal life. I probably should do more. Anyone who stumbles across this blog needs to know about my adventures in sewing, right? After all, draughting my own patterns is pretty exciting.

But what I have been thinking about lately is edupunk and my personal philosophy. I remember at teacher's college having to write soooo many essays (thoughtfully packaged by my lecturers as "reflective personal narratives or somesuch) on my personal philosophy of teaching, my thoughts on my subject specialities, and how I planned to integrate these into my teaching practice. Even though everyone loathed these, I found them really useful. What follows, obviously, is not something I shared with my lecturers.

I spent large chunks of my late teens and early to mid twenties in punk, grunge, fringe and freak subcultures, from the swamp-garage, industrial noise, punk-metal and punk bands I saw (and the one I played in) in Palmerston North and Hamilton while at university, to the niche, almost desperate, punk underbelly of Wuhan, China. A huge part of this was the idea that everyone can create, one way or another. We can reappropriate, recycle, subvert, satirise and reclaim ideas and knowledge. These things aren’t the exclusive domain of faceless systems. We can do it ourselves – make noise, make art, make community.

I also spent years involved in politics, from student politics and processes to the National Executive of the Green Party. I learned about democracy in all its guises, learned about structural inequality, privilege and cultural capital.

I thought long and hard before getting into teaching, worrying about how I would reconcile my roots-punk sensibilities with the rigid goalposts of Aotearoa-NZ’s examination structure. When I took the plunge, it was with the firm intent to take what I had learned and keep the ethos of doing it yourself, keeping it local (while thinking global) and integrating a rogue random-organic mindset into my teaching and continued learning. Oh, and lets not forget the activism.

If I look at the key points of punk, the things that stick out for me in an educational setting are subverting corporate models of education (including the nasty fringes of human capital), avoiding bite-sized ideas learned as the educational version of chicken nuggets (just as processed and devoid of nutrition) and embracing praxis, that loop of action and reflection.

Wow. Exams impede actual thought, for realz

Let's be frank. I hate exams. I loathe revision. I hate teaching students canned facts because they have to regurgitate them onto a standard paper under standard conditions with standard answers and standard marking. I was going to tweet about this, but, really, my loathing won't fit into 140 characters.

The full post about why exams suck is for another day and time. The post I've been thinking about, about edupunk and DIY in teaching, is for another day too. The brainwave I had about forensics is for another day too. For now, the parts of my brain not eaten by revision are absorbed in my NaNoWriMo project.

BRB, working now.

Working on new curriculum and thinking thinky thoughts

I read recently that only 2% of principals report that their school is ready for the NZ Curriculum rollout that takes place next year. I flicked over it on the front page of the local paper while in the supermarket (wine, cigarettes and chocolate - it's the end of the term) and rolled my eyes a little. Well. It's a new curriculum, not the next Great Flood. I think we can all be at different places without people freaking out. Also, that was the 2% that said they were OMG-completely-prepared-and-braced-for-the-impact. The vast majority of the rest said that they were on the way.

Related to this, I am slowly working on the new junior schemes for science. Most of the broad schemes are done, so I am just organising them now, checking the big ideas and the key competencies and thinking about how I am going to work on wider engagement.

It is no secret that my big thing about web2.0 and education is the idea of authentic audience and breaking down the distinctions between real life and the classroom. So my thinky thoughts at the moment are all around that - and making sure that our new schemes provide these opportunities.