What's a Star? Who knows what good teaching is? Must one be a
BBracey
It was a beautiful gift.
I left the Connected Classroom Conference with a major feeling of good will. I
was cradling a beautiful crystal obelisk that says I am a classroom star. I
sat near real royalty in the world of teaching and learning and so I know the
award is a real one. I didn't exactly sleep with it but I did put it near the
window so that at first light it could make rainbow arcs all over the room. t
was a wondrous object. It was like the icons given by music and actors groups.
I loved it.
I suspect though that supervisors and principals, some of them would give me a
different award. It would be an award for being a trouble maker and a pain in
the rear. I have been known as "creative" all of my teaching life. A clear
sign that I was not accepted was that I was never invited to join the
administrative program. Not that I was interested. I wanted to be a teacher's
teacher and I was. Supervisors always looked at me crosseyed.
There were prices to pay for learning, attending conferences, reading in
various fields and buying my "own" stuff. Before technology my classroom was
as well stocked as a small museum. After technology? You get confidence in
your learning landscape creation when you have NASA,Discovery, National
Geographic, Fish and Wildlife and independent film makers asking to use your
classroom and students to show teaching and learning. But there was a price to
pay for that too. ( Bet you know what it was...silence in the teacher's room
from a lot of people). I shared..but it created a great rift. This was at a
previous school. The principal loved it. Some teachers did too. But.. you know
the story.
Joyous Learning
Making Rainbows....Learning about Light..
The rainbow arcs remind me of the time I got busted( that means I was
reprimanded by a supervisor) for doing hands on science. I don't remember the
name of the program, but we mixed colored liquid dyes and water. We dropped
the liquids into hot and into cold water. We mixed colors. We made
observations. We had clearn containers and some sideways droppers. We created
drawings of our findings. We mixed the colors over the overhead projector in
special containers. We had diffraction gratings. I had my first laser pieces..
(at the time it was jewelry). I was called in. My students were not just
reading their science. (There was a chapter in the book, but we were doing the
experiments.) I had broken some rules. I went to get the materials out of the
science room and kept the materials in my room for two days. We had done the
experiment with the disk where you try to make white light and we were
unsucessful. I raided a local physics lab with the help of a wonderful
instructor, Jackie Black at Marymount.
We were using a spectroscope, and other kinds of sophisticated equipment I had
borrowed from a science program at Marymount. My kids were shrieking in
delight as we learned how stars were tracked. We used NASA posters and slides
and videos on light and visible spectrum. Loved that Hubble
work.http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/interactive/hst.html/
Later we dropped colored dyes in long streams of colored water .We analyzed
the patterns using cold water , hot water and tepid water. It was fun with one
dye, it was magic with two. We dropped the color on absorbant papers that
looked like sixties tie dye. We also went to the National Museum of American
Art to see an exhibition of making art using stripes of color. I thought it ws
a wonderful linking idea.
Let's just say that the supervisor was not amused. She pointed her finger at
the book. She wrote me up.( It went into my permanent teaching record.) But
the wonderful arcs of understanding still keep bouncing all over the room. The
kids loved that kind of learning.I learned to quietly practice my craft.
Pointillism anyone?
The Eggs and I
I was once eligible for being the science supervisor, I did not win, and so I
believe that was the mistake that was made. Here she was again.What had I
done? I can really teach embriology. (My mother used to raise chickens on a
family farm.) With the help of the 4H and a teacher who was dying of cancer
who made me learn to hatch chicken eggs, I tried it for the first time many
years ago.
I read and read and read. I measured every part of that incubator. I wanted to
be successful in hatching and I would not open the eggs . My brother is a
doctor and he was enrolled in Georgetown Medical School. We found ways to know
what was happening inside without opening the eggs. Truth be told, I dropped
an egg one Sunday night when I was in the school and I was not a happy camper
when I made that mistake, so I created ways to protect the eggs, and I used
all kinds of methodology gleaned from everywhere. A science teacher, my senior
, told me that she was the one who did that experiment. It was not in her
curriculum but she was the resident expert. I did not know at the time that
there were supposed to be only one or two experts in a school.
Well, I was doing it because I wanted to help a dying teacher feel good about
passing on her art. I was so successful that we only had two eggs that did not
hatch. I had wonderful resource materials from the 4 H and we studied, read,
drew pictures, ate boiled eggs, made mobiles, read chicken stories from around
the world,( no we did not fry chicken. I bodly allowed students to pencil in
their name on two eggs( I had three incubators) and to supervise turning times
and measure the moisture.
I ( ugh opened them.. and they had not been fertile). The class and I reviewed
all of the experiment, and since I was looping , we decided to hatch quail,
chicken and a couple of ducks the next year. We also ordered Vanessa Cardui(
Painted Lady Butterflies, and ah, ah.. we ah took mealworms through their life
cycle). This was the 4 H unit and it was grade leveled. We were highly
successful and placed all of our chicks and quail up for adoption, but
Shakespeare. I took him, it, home at night and would put it in a cage with a
light. In the morning he would be asleep near my face. He swam in a bowl at
our Renaissance Festival, and then, the Fish and Wildlife helpers found a home
for him. I got busted. By this time the embriology project had been placed in
first grade instead of the sixth grade. I was told to give up the incubators.
But, since I had purchased them and all of the other special stuff I decided
to adopt a class and we would help them do the embriology. That worked because
she never knew.
Today ,I use this kind of teaching to do the project.
Jo Ann Eurell gave a detailed lesson Tuesday on the development of a 2-day-old
chicken embryo to 38 students who were sitting miles away in two different
high schools.
Eurell was working with digital images of various views of tissue slices from
embryos in a virtual reality environment called an ImmersaDesk, a 4-by-6 foot
screen.
Her voice and the picture she was working with -- for instance, a view of the
chick's circulatory system -- were transmitted over the Internet to the
students. And just as in a regular classroom, the students could ask her
questions -- like requesting her to zoom in on a particular organ or rotate
the view of the tissue slice by 90 degrees.
The idea of classes being taught over the Internet is not new. But project
leader Clint Potter said it was the first time researchers had taken a 3-D
image like the one the teacher was looking at in a virtual reality environment
and transmitted it into a two-dimensional form, where students looked at it on
a computer screen or projected onto the wall."This service can bring high
technology to people who are separated by great distances, who may not have a
lot of money and resources to experience the whole thing right there. This is
reaching out to anybody on the Web," said Lisa Childers of Argonne National
Laboratory, which developed some of the technology for the project.
The demonstration was one of the exhibits at the first official gathering of
partners in the National Computational Science Alliance, an effort funded by
the National Science Foundation to create the communications infrastructure
for the next century.
The University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications is
the leader in the alliance and developed some of the technology used in the
chicken embryo demonstration.Eurell, an associate professor in the
university's College of Veterinary Medicine, presented her lesson from
Assembly Hall on the university's campus.Her students were members of a
biology class at University High School in Urbana and members of a computer
club in Urbana High School.Eurell could see the students at University High on
a small window on her big screen, and they asked quite a few questions - how
blood travels through a chicken embryo at that age, how different a human
heart is from a chicken embryo, how organs develop.
But at Urbana High School, the project didn't run as smoothly. The school's
Internet connection is too slow, so the students in the computer club saw the
images frame-by-frame instead of in constant motion, like a video.They also
had to listen to Eurell's voice over a speaker phone. Teacher Jim Peterson
said the experience of his school shows that money will have to be spent to
upgrade technology in schools before tools like the one demonstrated Tuesday
will be put into wide use.
Still, he thinks that lessons like Eurell's will be common in schools in as
soon as 10 years. And students will pull from such video and audio
presentations from the Internet to use in research presentations, he said. I
know Jim Peterson. I was not able to participate in the lesson even if I had
been asked. I have been busted by the Media Specialist. She will not allow me
access to the school internet connections( I have AOL and Erol's but she fears
that I have committed the crime of giving out the password to the kids for
Internet use). So I have been busted. Never mind that the prize I won was for
linking the school to the AfricaTrek expedition. I guess I will have to let
people take turns in the lab. I am not sure. Am I a star? I don't think so.
How do you judge.
I know this stuff works. Check out http://glef.org ( Learn and Live) The first
part of the film is about a linking to San Diego State University and an
elementary class.
Cusenaire Rods and Hands on Geometry
In my folder is a reprimand for teaching math with hands on, first with
cuisenaire blocks, and then using some other materials. The reprimand says
that all math lessons should be from the book. I was having kids play with
blocks during math. There was no academic rigor. I had to take a math class
..but the fun thing about it was that the math class ended up being a math
class which involved all kinds of hands on materials. Eventually I was not
able to use them because we bought only one set and teachers were literally
jostling each other for times to use them. So, I learned to buy my own, and I
purchased something different. But it was still hands on and we used
calculators. Now I use some software programs in addition to the hands on for
teaching concepts in math . Now it is expected that a teacher would use hands
on but then, I was..suspect I was busted for using calculators. NCTM had
sanctioned it but, I did not have local permission. The Math Forum
http://forum.swarthmore.edu/ AND have you seen MathKeys and Microworlds? I
tell you that and the Pierian Springs work on fractions. I don't care if I get
busted. Come on Opperman) Todd Opperman, duel me with your kind of math and
some kids and let me teach using all of my learning landscape. You betcha I
would win... Using Probability, the MathKeys lesson.. what an awesome way to
teach, It was joyous.
Seymour and Me..( I got to tell him this in person)
Then comes Logo. I learned it and took free courses that the county gave us to
help us understand this language. We wanted to link Lego and Logo.
This time it was not the science supervisor. I was taking a course in graduate
physics but, but.. she taught us as if we were all stupid.( we ate a lot
during that course..whenever some one would want to complain, they would jam
their mouth full of food).
The reason we declined to object was that when we did she talked to us slow
and long, like a docent in the museum , she talked to us as if we were not
able to learn or understand.
There was lots of kicking under the tables as she purred physics( in baby
talk). Ouch!
For weather she read us the weather out of the newspaper and had us to create
a weather station using that material. Some of us had been on Audubon camp
scholarship and we had real weather stations in our classrooms , ok, they
were the wooden thing but it worked for me?. Did I say NASA was giving me a
Mac to use for weather stations and another supervisor decided that the
experiment was too close to what a high school teacher was doing and did not
let me have the mac or the program?( It happened. I could not protest.) I was
a mere teacher ,so I used my Audubon Weather station. It worked. Of course you
know that the machines and the weather stations went more electronic
but...that kind of thing happens. That is when you decide perhaps that you are
not a star but a troublemaker.
What is the difference?
I am not sure.I was , at the time doing Kidsnetwork on Weather. It was lots
of fun. The teacher didn't get how it worked. My first clue. She also did not
pursue it. Seemed to be boring to her. Well, shucks. One of the letters was
from a class who had been through a hurricane and they wrote to describe what
it was like. They told us about grand tables in trees and chickens with the
feathers stripped off. We heard from another class in LA during the
earthquake. This personal involvement with students had the kids reading,
clipping pictures, and investigating disaster areas. Hispanic students did not
want to go to ESOL , they wanted to find out about what was happening in Los
Angeles. They wrote their letter in Spanish and English. The class was on fire
with ideas. It was work. We had experiments to do and data to learn and post
and analyze.
The Logo part of the curriculum was talked about. I decided to really do it.I
had a friend who was a physics teacher. I had a principal friend who let us
program a robotic arm a couple of times.We went to the high school and were
introduced to robotics. We built and programmed Legos. It was awesome!! I
liked what the kids were doing so much,I invited in parents to participate.
They loved it. When the physics professor came, she wrote the children looked
really interested in what they were doing but she was not sure that it was
physics. I knew it was because I was using Seymour Papert's lessons and I had
spent a small fortune , with some grant monies to get what I needed. She did
give me a B for the project. I was disappointed.The kids loved it. My physics
teacher friend got busted. He had taken kids to an amusement park to learn
physics and used legos for construction of the rides.
Being a Naturalist using technology!
I went to the outdoor lab. We were taking a computer. It was my computer. This
time the principal was standing at the bus door as I entered the bus. She
called the environmental camp and told them not to let me use the computer. I
was not going to use it during the day. It was going to be used to create a
newspaper about our experiences of the day. There is a time between the usual
end of the day and darkness before the star hike , when the kids get restless
and teachers are tired.
I have done my environmental learing in streams, on trails, doing transects
and insect study. Rich Efthim of the Smithsonian was my mentor. He showed us
how to create a naturalists journal.I wanted to create writing vignettes and
capture the experience... oh well.... I gave up the computer.
Interestingly enough, one of the parents who observed this exchange decided to
bring her computer that afternoon to share with the kids and to help them
with their writing. She was a writer. I did not get busted. It was the time of
a Nation at Risk. That parent was a believer in purposeful writing. We created
a wonderful newspaper. Now I am involved with the Classroom of the Future and
BioBlast( http://www.cotf.edu/BioBLAST/ That parent is now a member of the
school board. She is the one who pushes technology. That night as we sat
around the pond and watched the night settle, we took the words in our head
into the place where the computer was . They wrote and I typed. They drew and
reflected the journeys of the day. Technology can be a beacon for trouble from
people who do not understand its power.
When I was invited to visit the George Lucas Educational Foundation and to
participate in the foundations work, I came home to my school , the one I was
teaching in then, to find all of my teaching materials, computers, hands on
science, disks and other materials had been dumped into another room. It was
the start of a short path out of the school. I was informed on the last day of
the school year that I must move. And so I did. I had no Knight of the Jedi to
protect me.I was busted.But that was ok. I guess a new principal has a lot to
consider. The devotion of my kids and parents may have been
unsettling.http://glef.org
I am in a new school. Ironically , we at Randolph choose stars as the theme of
the school. I guess I am a Randolph Star. Maybe being a star requires some
heat and fusion .I know about the heat. I have never been successful except
with the care and feeding given to me by friends and great principals who are
sometimes a part of my life.
One last story. I had a kind of friend who became the assistant principal.
When my principal was there, I used the internet. When the principal was
out,the assistant principal would come to my room demand the telephone, hoist
it very high and exit the room. The kids and I wouldn't say much. ( We had a
little phone that was concealed behind the computer) As she left she would
say, "No internet today." We would all practice our gloomiest face and be
really quiet for a while. Then we would go outside so we could not be heard.
We never laughed at the difference. We just knew that she did not understand.
Somehow, she did not understand.The twinkle in the eyes of the children was
not a smirk. It was a knowing glance from the empowered. The children
wondered if she understood the way the internet worked. We had five computers
, a laser disc player, and an av Mac, and a video camera. It was a wonderland.
We explored the world at fingertip length. National Geographic had given us
books, videotapes, special lessons, and teacher support . We were rich in
learning. The kids had stars in their eyes. That's the incredible reward most
teachers get. The gift we give to the kids is not to be rude with the learning
but to be joyous with it.
My time is done. I am not old enough to retire but I am boxed in. I give. My
teaching star will set. My enemies will probably throw a party, and celebrate
kids in rows, listening to teacher talk.They will probably pull the plugs and
burn the video tapes. They will hurl disks in the air and boogie the night
away.
Bonnie Bracey
Technology Teacher in Residence
Randolph Elementary School
1306 S. Quincy Street,
Arlington, Va 22204
Where is Canute when one needs him?
Bruce Daley
Hi Bonnie and everyone,
I always appreciate how open you are to share not only the great success
that you have had, but also the challenges that others have in
understanding and supporting your efforts.
I remember, as a first grade teacher, years ago, when I got a phone line
for my classroom. They had no idea what I was going to use it for, and
had borrowed a 2400 baud modem from a district consultant. It was in a
box and never used. Not sure they even knew what it was...so I installed
that 2400 baud modem in my Apple IIe and I was off to the races,
teaching the children to read with the help of the Physics Department at
Monash University in Australia.
My principal made me promise that I would never use the phone as a "real
phone" but only use it to connect to the University. I used to love
those Scholastic cardboard bookcases you could set up, because that is
where I used to hide the telephone, so that nobody could see it...:)
One morning they had a faculty meeting in my room, and dang if that
Scholastic cardboard bookshelf didn't start ringing just like a phone!
One of my kids, who was my nuclear engineer (he knew how to heat my
coffee in the microwave) got up with no worries, reached behind the
bookshelf and answered the phone and exclaimed to the whole faculty,
including the principal, "They want to know if we want to buy a garage
door opener for our garage!"
Some days your the pigeon, and some days your the statue....:)
Chip