*Header image from the YouTube video embedded in this post.
A Quick Aside: Procrastination and the Akrasia Effect
Part 1: Feedback Looping
Before we move into a unit on your reading life, we should test the capabilities of our interstitial classroom. Friday’s work gives us an opportunity to loop feedback through a period of transparent discussion, i.e., you can see what you wrote and respond to that, too. You produced 12856 words — with a response from every single person, unless I miss my mark. You should have access to these responses as part of the results page here:
Click here for the responses.
If that doesn’t work, load this PDF. Note that the PDF conversion cuts off part of the responses. When possible, we’ll want to use Google itself to flip feedback like this, but I need to insure that you can read what was written.
That writing should be anonymous and randomized. Let me know immediately if that isn’t the case. Anonymity and discretion are parts of our feedback loop; the more you see the way your class talks to me about itself, however, the more finely we can tune that discussion.
What do you notice? Leave those observations here, as part of the comment section of this post. Ask questions to which you need a more direct or immediate answer through the Q&A section of our Google Community. (You can always take your own notes, write your own responses, etc; in this case, I’d like you to engage me directly with what you observe.)
Part 2: Procrastination
Many of the more recent posts on Google+ and here deal to some extent with procrastination. Since Friday’s writing and today’s feedback loop also address assiduousness, I want to give you a way to deepen this discussion:
- From You Are Not So Smart: Procrastination
There is also a book trailer for McRaney’s You Are Not So Smart that focuses on procrastination:
We may spend the next few days on this. If you pay attention, you’ll notice that your English 11 contemporaries will spend considerably longer unpacking those two texts (along with this one, on the concept of akrasia); the assumption is that you, having chosen a college-level course, can master procrastination and focus without a protracted look at how it works.
I have noticed a couple main trends after reading through everyone’s responses.
First, I noticed that some people who felt like they accomplished everything well from the task sounded very condescending in their responses. They seemed to view themselves as better than their peers who struggled with the task, and they compared themselves to their peers in order to boost their seeming success. Although of course it is good that these students stayed on task, they are developing a very ‘us vs. them’ dynamic in this class which is very anti-collegial and the opposite attitude that we should have in this class. We should all work together and try to encourage people who are struggling to do better instead of looking down on them and condemning them to failure. When students are judged and looked down upon, it is only discouraging them and is in no way going to improve the classroom atmosphere.
Second, I noticed that the students who felt that they didn’t perform to their fullest potential were able to recognize this. On top of that, a lot of these students seemed to be motivated and intended on improving and working harder in the future. They understood where their shortcomings were and how they could make up for it at home, and in future assignments. Based on all the responses, I definitely think that if we attempt to do something similar to this again, everybody would do even better. It seems to me that we are all still willing to work and improve, and that given the opportunity, everything would go more smoothly and we would have a more productive atmosphere.
Yeah Jamie I agree, it seemed like many of the people thought that their table was always on task and that they never talked to each other the whole period. For some tables this may have been true, or at least partially true, but it was apparent that there were many people talking during the “silent” period as it was quite loud in the classroom. A lot of times they would talk about there table and talk about how they had “a lot of distractions surrounding them,” almost to the condescending point as you mentioned. In attempting to compare themselves to others who they believed were “not as good,” they may have been hoping to become the lesser of two evils. A possible example could be that two people were both off task, but one was off task to a greater extent, so the other attempts to boost their rating or position purely off of comparison. I think however that the beauty of the GAP is that is not based off of anyone else, it is based off of the work that YOU do, and how much YOU improve. You are only competing with yourself, and by developing a very competitive classroom and group, we are only hurting ourselves. Collaboration and collegiality are a big part of the GAP scale, but if we are always competing and not helping one another, it will never work out in our favor. To truly do well, we need to be honest with ourselves and not look at others work to compare our own, so what is someone is a faster or slower reader than you, that is not something you should be concerned with, you should simply try to better your learning; you shouldn’t make others look bad just so that you look better.
In regards to future assignments similar to this, I think that we will improve. I think that after hearing the feedback from the assignment the reality of the class is really hitting some people in the face who were not prepared, and I think we all were to some extent. If we were to have another period like that one I think it would be a much calmer, quieter environment where we could all continue to learn and improve for our own sake and for the sake of the class as a whole.
Well Chris, I agree on many of your points. We cant just count out people who were actually on task for the whole period and would judge themselves as such. It would be wrong to just assume that everyone was off task. However it would be also incorrect to assume that all members of the class were completely on task either. Many including myself were somewhere in the middle. Get off task, then refocus. Our Main problem about our class is really staying focused. Our critical thinking and metacognition are definitely strengths, and we are all passionately curious, which is also a strength. But our amenability and self efficacy (Referring to the grade abatement triptych to-do list), we could be seen as lacking. I would not want to give myself too much or too little credit and not be able to work towards my goal. I would want to improve as much as possible on everything in this to-do list.
I ageee that our main problem as a class is staying focused. It can be very hard to stay on task when you are sitting with your friends or you have a computer in front of you or the classroom is loud. However, we can’t remove the table situtation or the computers or the loudness since collegiality and collaboration are such a big part of our class. We have to figure out a way to balance working with our peers and focusing on the work we are suppose to do that day.
I noticed that a lot of my peers were very judgmental in the development of each other. Some people don’t come into this class a 9 or 10. Everyone does not have the same collegiality level, autodidactic level, metocognative level and more. Instead of comparing and judging each other we should be more collegial. If Mr. Eure sees a problem, he should voice it out vocally in order to help others more instead of telling only the people who are doing just fine. I think Mr. Eure is doing a great job in helping us build our profiles on our own, however I think it’s a little early to be without a guide. Please refer to Jamie Coughlan’s post.
Let’s work together on the idea of “be[ing] without a guide.” You have a lot of writing from me to guide you, and you have the concept of proxy and radial feedback; if those approaches aren’t working, we need to troubleshoot them. It might be user error, and it might be that the system needs tweaking.
In some classes, I am quite vocal about students who are off-task. If you think that there are AP students who need that sort of oversight, I can bring it into your period… but my hope is that it is never too early to ask you all to self-regulate. Keep in mind that we are trying to shift the foundations of how you are instructed and, therefore, how you learn; that is dislocating, but it’s only ineffective if we cling to the old model of teaching.
I would have to say that I agree with Jaime and Susan on the fact that some of the comments sounded anti-collegial. In my opinion, if people felt that some of their peers around them or at their table were making noise, then why not ask them to stop talking? If people felt like the noise level in the room was distracting or prohibiting them from working, then why not try to change the environment of the classroom? I feel as if some people were trying to put the blame on others without focusing on themselves, which was the assignment anyways. However, I did appreciate the small percentage of people who were true to themselves and mentioned that they were off task, at times, during this silent period.
After reading through everyone’s responses I noticed that some kids didn’t get as much done in class because of the noise level. I don’t think that blame should be put onto individual people because it has to be a group to effect someone. If one person out of 30 plus kids were talking it wouldn’t matter. But I think that we can all take a valuable lesson away from this. When you decide to not follow the assignment and talk it not only affects you but it can affect your peers. I agree with Jamie and Susan that we should be building each other up not bringing each other down. We should all help each other. If you see someone off task you could simply ask them a question about the assignment to nicely help them get back on track. I understand that we are all trying to get the best GAP score at the end of the day but that doesn’t mean we have to bring others down just to get there.
I also noticed that for kids who felt that they didn’t get as much done as they should have took responsibility. That takes a lot for a person to admit they were wrong. But if you don’t accept what you do wrong how will you ever improve? This is a perfect time to self reflect and use what you learned to improve in this class. I believe as a whole we have learned from this experience. Thirdly, I noticed that many kids noticed that their learning environment was being effected so they made the decision to give themselves homework. This was a great idea in my opinion because as Mr. Eure has explained we all work well at different times and in different locations.
My response had not showed up, but here’s just a restatement of it:
As I was reading the responses of my peers, I noticed a common theme amongst many of them. The majority of my peers had basically stated how they had been very productive in class, despite the distractions and annoyances of the class that was off task. I find this somewhat ironic how the majority of students say this, yet they refer to the majority of the students to have been off task and distracting. The idea of how the class was off task relates to the conversation Mr. Eure had with my table in the week prior. We had talked about how despite the fact that the assignment was meant to silently read, majority of the students were simply off task, whether that includes irrevlevant conversations about sports or “zoning out”. It was found somewhat intriguing how despite the fact that we are all trying to obtain the fourth tier GAP profiles, the majority of us dismissed the logical reasoning to follow instruction. Many of the students in their responses wrote of the reasoning for their poor work or loss of focus to have been the students who were off task. While I do agree these external forces to be extremely big factors to our lack of productivity, I also think perhaps many of us had internal factors as well. In one of the responses, someone wrote how they were just “not feeling it that day” and just wanted to rest. So perhaps some parts to our lack of productivity includes exhaustion, stress, procrastination, etc.
Even I had stated that I had could have been more productive than I was. For me personally, I had found the external distractions to be inhibiting my productivity. Whether that included eavesdropping on the irrelevant conversation next to me or simply not being able to focus from the surrounding chaos. I think many of us can agree the level of productivity was not at it’s optimum.
I’ve found reading through all of the anonymous responses to be both helpful and insightful. Many of us (as I stated before) are able to see the common thoughts and problems we all may be experiencing. Because we can colloectively see everyone’s thinking, we can collectively collaborate a way to fix our problems. We can all work together to solve the common problems we seem to be experiencing, whether if that’s through a compromise or simply trying to collectively understand the most successful way we all learn. This assignment is a learning process. From instances that may have seemed bad at the time, we can take the “weaknesses” or what we found to be the problem in the situation (ie not following instructions, talking in class, etc.) and improve as a class. If we work together to improve from this, I think we can all make the most of our 39 minute physical class time we have everyday. Mr. Eure had just recently posted an assignment on “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.” Although I haven’t looked over it yet, I’m curious if that could tie in with our class improvement as a whole; if identifying our strengths, weaknesses, etc. as a class can help us understand what needs to be improved.
From reading Susan’s and Jamie’s comments, I can agree on what they’re saying. Many of the people who rated highly of themselves in terms of the GAP profiles and level of productivity had a very condescending and accusatory tone. To me, this came across as just a big “blame game.” Pointing fingers at others and demoting your peers does nothing to prove your point (maybe it proves one’s level of immaturity?). Although I do agree that there were many people who were off-task, simply complaining about others without the goal of improving the class doesn’t serve as much. Even I should take this to heart. I think this assignment and the responses we all wrote teach us about how we all desperately need to figure out the best means of learning as a class (not by complaining and not doing anything about it).
My thoughts in this response are not as succinct as in the previously erased one, so I apologise for the confusion.
I noticed that most people were actually trying to work. Some were off task originally but then were able to refocus their work. I think when a few people talk it may over power those who are actually working, like a few students mentioned were easily distracted and that’s not necessarily their fault. I think it’s ok for the teacher to watch to see what students do with an assignment like this, especially in this class, but sometimes a teacher does need to step in to allow everyone to work productively. Do you all think it would be effective for other students, instead of the teacher to make announcements in the class that are mature and productive when they feel necessary?
First, clicking on the picture did not work for me so I had to read the comments through the PDF file. I noticed when reading through the responses that people varied widely with how they spent their class period. The ones that I read through either explained that they were very on task and completely read through the articles and were very happy with how they worked, while others set goals to improve themselves. Other people also fell in the middle as well. I like that it was randomized because it made it harder to trace back to the original poster, however I do have one suggestion. I think it might be a little bit better if we blurred out the names or something like that, as I was able to find my response by who I mentioned in my writing (this is just a suggestion and how I felt when reading through the comments, for the most part though I felt it was very anonymous). I also noticed that people’s responses varied greatly in length, some were very long and others very short. I think this is fine as long as people are able to clearly get across their ideas and be truly reflective when writing about what they did in class. Lots of people brought up the fact they when they were distracted it was because of the large classes, and the talking going on – which I believe is something that we can work on in order to make a quieter environment when we need to do silent reading. Finally, I also felt that people were very honest when they wrote about how productive they were, which I greatly admire.
While reading through the responses, I noticed many reoccurring themes. For one, most people gave themselves a 7 or higher as a self-assessed grade for their work on Friday. At the same time, many people complained about the high level of noise going on during their classes. I’m wondering if it is really possible for so many people to be working at fourth tier levels while so many people are talking? If there was so much noise than there has to be a larger number of people who did less than a 7 level of work. I think that while most people were completely accurate in their own grading, there is also has to be a certain amount of students who either graded themselves downright incorrectly or just think that they are a more astudious worker than they really are. How can we avoid the pitfalls of grading ourselves too favorably and how can we be more honest with ourselves? In the future would we be able to read a fellow students work or notes and grade them on how we felt they worked based on the evidence they provide? I think student to student assesments would be more accurate and helpful in evaluating how well we are doing. Also, for some students the level of noise may not be as much of a distraction. Some people can more easily block out the noise and focus on their work. But there are also many students who have a hard time focusing in such noisy environments. I myself am a student who is easily distracted, so what is a good strategy for blocking out this noise? It’s virtually impossible to get a room of 30 high school students to sit in silence so there has to be a better solution.