Read the following updates carefully. The title of the post comes from this poem.
On the Quixotic Attempt to Go Paperless
In various corners of the classroom, under the windowsills, on desks and stacked precariously on bookshelves, you will find photocopies of materials for this course. The windows, for instance, frame the most recent posts and texts — the AP reading on horror movies; the instructional post on empathy, which is next to Chad Fowler’s essay; the post on “Habits and Habitats”; the always relevant post on guillotines, self-control, and the intersection thereof; and so on.
Way back in September, in what now seems like the fever dream of another life, I told you that we would be trying to go paperless. We are still trying. I’d like to ramp up that effort, too, in light of these data:
- The Fatal Flying Guillotine — 51
- Habits and Habitats — 53
- The Most Important Skill — 92 (!)
Those are three of the photocopied posts, with the total number of photocopies left as of Monday, 10/30. They’ve all been there at least a week; the guillotine post has been there since October 8.
Unless a majority of you can explain those numbers, I will no longer print copies of instructional posts. Any central texts, yes, but no posts. It’s a waste of resources.
[Onomatopoeia] Quizzes
Note for AP students who have been hardwired in a particularly unfortunate way, and who, despite spending all of Friday discussing cheating, will react to the word “quiz” in an unhealthy way: Read carefully. There’s a reason you’re getting this online before it’s distributed, and it has everything to do with how you hold yourself accountable. You might be able to cheat your own integrity and honesty here to generate evidence of internalization, but that sort of poison seeps into your bones. I don’t think you should do that.
Below is a an [Onomatopoeia] Quiz. It asks you to write down everything you learned from reading the instructional post and the central text by Fowler. Photocopies will be distributed in class on Wednesday, November 1, for AP11 students. They were distributed on Thursday, October 26, for RE11 students. Read this first:
Moving forward, that is required reading. It explains more about how and why we would use this sort of “quiz” to help us learn.
This particular “quiz” takes the form of a reformatted copy of the post and central text for our study of empathy. You’ll find some (but not all) of the original subheadings and images from those readings, plus enough blank space for you to write. Your prompt for this “quiz” (which I’ll stop putting in quotation marks now) is to fill in that space with what you know about these lessons, texts, etc.
Regardless of your course designation, this is a required diagnostic. Load a copy of the two documents here:
You have been trained all your life to look at quizzes as a risk/reward system. They are Skinner-box switches you press, hoping for a reward. If you know the material, you get a prize in the form of a high score; if you don’t know the material, you are punished with a low score.
In this course, the question is different: What does your performance tell us?
The answer to that leads to metacognition, collaboration, and all the other stuff of growth. Perhaps your performance reveals an eidetic memory. That’s a rare skill, and we need to weaponize it. On the other hand, your performance might indicate a weak memory, some performance anxiety, or the struggle to read critically and closely. As frustrating as those results can be, they also provide the best starting place for growth.
The reason is simple: As long as you’re putting in the time and effort necessary, you are exactly where you want to be. This [Onomatopoeia] Quiz is, in that case, just a diagnostic. It tells us which of our universal skills and traits need attention. It gives us a blueprint for the feedback loop you need to improve (and for a fourth-tier GAP score).
What is not acceptable is a lack of self-control. This could be posted once a week, and it would always be relevant:
You must learn self-control. You can recognize, as that post argues, that self-control is difficult to master, but you must put all your effort into developing it. It springs from self-awareness, assiduousness, integrity, collaboration, organization, and a few more of our skills and traits; as a result, you develop self-control by doing your job in this course.
Let this [Onomatopoeia] Quiz reveal your level of self-control, in addition to what it might reveal about your understanding of the posts, especially your ability to internalize key concepts. You can talk to me about this in the comments here.
More on Self-Control
This is a review of how to take control of your learning in our makerspace.
Start with the idea, first given to you in the syllabus1, that the problems we are solving are often unique to you. The components we are using have universal names and definitions, but they take on a unique appearance in your individual learning.
One of the makerspace problems given to you to hack is the lifelong problem of self-control:
Yes. that’s embedded twice in one post. It matters that much, in part because this process continues well past the end of our formal in-class discussion and writing. Every assignment, lesson, text, class period, etc., for the rest of the year provide opportunities for you to work on your self-control.
You could compare this to an attempt to build a robot arm in a robotics makerspace.You’d start with instruction in the basic skills, from electrical wiring to coding. Once you had the basics, the focus would shift to your vision and needs, your work ethic, and a lot of testing and restarting and refining. You’d expect setbacks. You’d measure progress.
A compelling example of how this works is the assignment that was due October 30 around 7AM2:
When you load this assignment, you also load the work you completed. A document was created for you, and your instructions were to divide your writing between the explicit exercises and a separate box for metacognitive analysis. At this point, Google has recorded all of your submissions, resubmissions, edits, and so on.
If you did everything by 7AM, you demonstrated self-control over the weekend. You avoided procrastination, hacked your brain’s tendency to get distracted, made a plan and followed through, and so on. That self-control lets us focus on metacognition, which is the key to your learning (and, not to put too fine a point on it, your performance in this course).
That’s the point of covering this all here, with an eye toward referencing it in the future: Metacognitive writing is what makes learning permanent. You need enough self-control to get you through the first level of the assignment — the one on Google Classroom, usually — because that’s the only way to generate something to be metacognitive about. In this case, I built metacognition into the assignment, instead of asking you to add it after the fact.
You can use any and all choices you’ve made lately, from the amount of focus you had on Friday in class to the way you spent your weekend, to fuel good metacognition. And if you are struggling with the self-control necessary to get your work done, let’s put the space to work on that as soon as possible. It’s not a habit you can afford to keep.
How do all of you internalize information? Okay, I know that’s kind of a vague and generic question. Here’s what I’m getting at: I know that I have read, reread, annotated and discussed many of the posts we’ve been given and yet I’m not sure I could pin down which specific piece of information I learned from a specific post. I feel that the more I discuss and reflect on the posts and the other assigned texts, the more I am able to internalize (like Paul Graham’s hooks) but the fact is that I don’t think I could remember what three facts I remembered from the most recent one. Is that a problem that I should be finding a solution to? Does it matter if we are able to recall specific information from one post at a time or does it only matter if we can apply the most valuable information in these posts to our discussions and reflections in class? I’d like to hear what everyone’s strategies for internalization are, as in what your process looks like when you receive a new text. But I’d also like to hear about if you are able to match the name of a post and the facts you learned from that post alone and if you think that assessment merits your attention.
Personally, I internalize actions by applying them to everything I do whenever possible. My idea is basically to develop a sort of “muscle memory” to the point where I do them without even thinking about it. Information wise, I think you have the concept of internalization mixed up. I don’t think that we are supposed to be memorizing pieces of information, more like that we know how to apply it. Internalization for information (at least for me), seems to be more like learning from what information you have read and being able to apply it elsewhere. Its definition is: to make (attitudes or behavior) part of one’s nature by learning or unconscious assimilation. So for me to internalize information, I apply it to scenarios I’m in, or make up scenarios to see if I understand and can apply the information I have learnt.
I just wanted to say also that I see the constant emphasis on making the makerspace about you to be very encouraging and rewarding. But I think it also lends itself to justifying off-task behavior, and that’s why self-control is (in my opinion) substantially more important to this class than any other (where extrinsic motivation is completely ubiquitous). I think that altering the premise of the course to suit your individual needs and curiosity is a goal that requires monitoring and discipline and maturity, but I think we can all get there if we are consistently conscious of what we are doing and why (which is where the metacognition piece comes in).
Assigned seats are a common theme among most school classes. The reason for these seats may vary across the classes and the philosophy of the teacher. Some of the most common reasons for assigned seats may include the need to separate some individuals that might have a relationship that is, perhaps, too good for school. We might need to keep these talkative people away because they can distract others from learning. We should respect the learning environment of others. I think that we should incorporate the ideas of assigned seats and possibly have a new set of seats everyday. I think that it would keep from a ‘bad’ seating arrangement and would allow for many different people to interact with each other. Sometimes, assigned seating will place two best friends next to one another and sometimes, it can position two students who do not get along side by side. I think that we have tried the loose seating for a long enough time to see that people will always do what others are doing. I am an example of this issue we have. When I walk into the class, I am one of the later ones to arrive. While on time, I don’t have the decision to sit anywhere. As more and more people come in, the choices lessen and lessen. We need to be brave and enjoy the freedom that is given to us. We also need have to have the self control that is embedded in this post. Some people seem to treat the class and the environment of it as a study hall. I think that it is a disrespectful way to treat a class that is so carefully created. We can not begin to compare this makerspace to something so simple like a study hall.
I agree with Brendan and think this a really good point, assigned seating is not really necessary. If you choose to sit next to your friends and get off task hence not completing your work, you will be at fault for that. It will reflect in the child’s grades, and relationship with their teacher. If they do not care about these things, there is not much the teacher can do. However, if the student aspires to do well, they will learn to make adjustments. If a student cannot learn how to make the right choices on their own and how to make use of their time, they will struggle in life. Giving students assigned seats may make it easier on the teacher with the perspective that there will be less talking, but kids who don’t want to put in effort most likely never will. A teacher cannot simply decide that for the kid, they need to learn the maturity to do it on their own. I think if students need to be given the opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
I agree with Jane that self control is most important in this class. In most other classes, we are given exact instructions and dates and the teacher is over our shoulders watching us to make sure we are on task. But, self control is what this class is built on. It is independently run in that the students have to organize their time and energy to do all that is expected. We are not treated as incapable children in this class with the teacher over our shoulder telling us what to do and when to do it. We have to take initiative in here, focus on the task at hand, and figure it out for ourselves. I also think that this is a skill we will need in the real world, which really makes this class useful. In the real world, we will not have someone telling us what to do and when, i t is all on us, just like this class.
I agree with Jane and Maggie that self control is the key thing in this class. It is more important in this class rather than the rest of my classes because we are very independent. We come to class everyday and don’t all have to work on the same assignment at the same time. We have the freedom to make out own choices and whether we use class time wisely or not, it will effect us no matter what.
I think that self control can be really hard to show externally. Not turning something in on time, doesn’t mean we lack self control, it could mean that we’re so wrapped up in other assignments that have due dates, that we miss this work. It could mean anything. The more important objective here, that I think students overall need to focus on is balance and becoming self aware. It’s not easy to have all your work done on time and done to the best of your ability, we get tired because we’re human. We need to find a healthy balance, of school work, mental and physical health, family, and extracurricular activities. I think that living a healthy balanced life, will help us find our own self control.