Category: Opening Salvo

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Opening-Day Questionnaire

  By Opening Salvo, Space Explainers

“Exactly so! I am a humbug.”

Illustration by W.W. Denslow, as archived here. Full illustrated e-text of L. Frank Baum’s novel here.

Pay Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

The following questionnaire (or one very much like it) is given to students at the start of their time in the Humanities makerspace:

This is the start of a feedback chain — a connection between the students and the various innovations of the course. The answers to these questions will help to build a better form of feedback.

Most of the time, I would stick to exactly that sort of self-effacing setup: a focus on the course, not the teacher; the use of the passive voice to the point where it’s a bit stilted; and substantial hyperlinks, like the ones in that last paragraph, that emphasize the course philosophy.

This self-effacing approach has led to testimonials that talk more often about the course and the students themselves than the teacher. Any adult can jump on a desk and poorly interpret Robert Frost; it always seemed more important to push against the myth that it’s all about the teacher. Students benefit more from approaches that instill autonomy and agency.

The pendulum swings, though, and it’s important to confront mistakes and misconceptions. I started out against technology, for instance. Things change.

Over the years, I’ve tried less self-effacement. First, it was subtle, like structuring instructional posts to include references to my family; by 2019, there was an actual “About Me” page, which is now part of the introductory texts for the makerspace.

The questionnaire is there to generate the right kind of focus and feedback, but it’s also a chance to connect. Below are my answers to the same questions asked of students.

What does your writing life look like?

My writing life consists, during the school year, almost entirely of writing for students. There’s a reason for that:

Well, Why Read?

That is both an example of the kind of interstitial instruction I use and an explanation of it. It also tackles the subject of reading in a contemporary, non-academic sense.

I believe that students need the training outlined in that post, which is training in online discourse. It is a skill needed in almost every job and walk of life.

Most of what I write, however, isn’t in these posts; most of it is feedback in the form of direct comments on student work. This commentary is an overhaul of the traditional kind of feedback, which is why, as far back as 2017, I’ve had to gently rebuke rumors and ignorance about how it works. (The section on “The Hydra” addresses feedback in a makerspace.)

I also write and rewrite the foundational pieces of the course. That’s why the syllabus on the testimonial/showcase website is slightly different from this universal one, which is itself an update to the 2019 version. Grade abatement is updated whenever there is a need. There is an ongoing internal discussion of what works.

It’s an iterative process, but the basic innovations and shifts seem to be universal and adaptable. The updates to the course explained in 2016 still make sense years later.

One process note: To save time, I dictate most of this writing and feedback while commuting to and from work. It’s not as fun as listening to podcasts or music, but it became necessary when I had children of my own. Dictation is one way for you to deal with reluctance or difficulty in writing, too.

What else do you like to create?

I play and write music whenever I have time to do so. I’m teaching my own kids the basics of playing the piano and music theory.

I studied poetry and creative writing throughout college and grad school, too.

What does your reading life look like?

I read constantly. During the school year, I read student writing more than anything else; there are daily check-ins, feedback forms, full essays, smaller writing assignments, and more.

I read the news every morning and night, including as many longer non-fiction articles and essays as I can. To take breaks from all that, I read novels and other literature. In the last few years, I’ve expanded what I read to include atypical fiction, too — manga, comic books, light novels, that sort of thing.

I read along with my kids, even as they get older. We usually start and end the day by reading together.

What other media do you enjoy?

Like most parents of young kids, I know more than I ever expected to know about Paw Patrol. When I am able to put non-children’s programming on the TV, it tends to be background for school work or other responsibilities. I like horror movies quite a bit.

I value having a wide-ranging interest in almost all music and art. Here are a few I’d share with you randomly:

What is the story, so far, of your educational experience?

I was at the top of my class in high school and went to UVA on a scholarship. I got another scholarship to study education at Wake Forest, and then I got certified to teach in New York. Fewer than five years into teaching, I was interviewed in Harper’s and then won the first Milken Award in New York .

It all sounds impressive, but it’s not really important. The important story, for me, is that I was a perfectionist who struggled mightily with the impact of that perfectionism (and a host of other issues) for a long, long time.

So the story I choose to tell is this: I overhauled my own teaching because the awards and accolades didn’t matter. Grade abatement, for instance, comes from my own relationship with grades, filtered through the experience of getting older and starting my own family.

The story, for me, is that education has to change, even if the change is disruptive to the status quo. We have to change for the individual student.

Where do you plan, hope, or expect to be next year?

I’d like to see a discussion that is critical and constructive about, as Ken Robinson puts it, the habitats and habits of educational institutions. During the COVID-19 crisis, we got a series of post-mortem analyses of America:

We’re now trying to go back to normal. Innovation is giving way to the status quo. But if we value education, we all need to find our critical voices. There is such a thing as toxic positivity.

What else, if anything, would you like to write here?

I’ll embed an essay that is a useful way of conceptualizing this makerspace and its underlying shifts:

View at Medium.com

 

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Focus and Feedback

  By Opening Salvo, Space Explainers

Note: Intended for the beginning of a school year (the tagged “opening salvo”). Each subheading links to an Atmosphere song, which is unrelated to anything but how good Atmosphere is.

Shrapnel

The focuses of this instructional post are in-class focus and feedback. The impetus is that it is never too early to warn you against straying from the path. We shouldn’t wait until the spring to discuss poor decisions; we should talk about it now, at the beginning of things, before any bad habits metastasize. The worst habits, like wasting class time and ignoring instruction, will slowly end you.

There’s something in that warning that should scare you, and I’ll tell you what it is. First, here’s what it is not.

It’s not what happens when you ignore instruction. That decision is insubordinate and disrespectful and breaking pretty specific rules of the whole school, and our classroom can only tolerate that for so long. Then you face some kind of punishment. Parents are called, Guidance meetings are arranged, infantilizing behavioral plans maybe get drawn up, etc. But that should embarrass you, not scare you.

It’s not your grade. As many posts explain, GAP scores suffer most when there isn’t evidence of in-class focus and feedback. The margin for error is less as you get older, too, but that’s obvious. That shouldn’t scare you, except to the extent that you are scared of the traditional Skinner-box shocks to your system.

It’s not even what bad decisions truly do to you. You are, right now, becoming a permanent version of yourself, and that self, for some of you, is going to be uninteresting, unskilled, and undisciplined. Believing otherwise is the “grain through the body of a bird” error explained many years ago in the first guide to this stuff, which puts it this way:

The ugly parts of us don’t operate on a switch. Apathy, disrespect, entitlement—these aren’t sweaters or jackets you can shrug off and cast aside when you’re tired of wearing them. That stuff will stick to you, stay with you, for a long time. When you choose not to work, you are breeding future selves, developing right now the habits that will poison or empower you in every aspect of your life. Your daily life is inculcation in its purest form: the linking together of a chain of decisions that will protect you or drag you down.

But that is more depressing than it is scary.

What you ought to fear is missing out1. Everyone who invests in this course and its philosophy, who works hard and pays careful attention, unlocks something special, and that is no longer a wild claim:

In essence, there are two courses taught in a Humanities makerspace. The first one exists to improve how you do your work, pay attention, and develop basic skills and traits. It attempts to make you a half-decent citizen of the world. It’ll cover ELA staples, get you ready for exams and graduation, and help you feel less stressed about grades.

The second course exists to transform you. Its students are smarter, more interesting, and more engaged. On their worst days, they have a space that understands and supports them. On their best days, they find real freedom and true inspiration.

Yes, you should be afraid of low grades, making disrespect a habit, upsetting the teacher enough that he decapitates you in the middle of class2. But much more existentially terrifying should be the risk of wasting such an opportunity.

To be in a room with people who have unlocked that deeper level is a constant reminder that you could have done it, too. You have the freedom to become a better person, to study many of the things you want, to do many of the things you want — and instead you’ve wasted it all to scroll through Instagram or play a video game3.

The Keys to Life vs. 15 Minutes of Fame

The purpose of a GAP score is to tell the story of your learning. The number unpacks to a profile, which unpacks to the work you’ve done in the course over (in our case) three weeks or so. To figure out that GAP score, you might want the complete guide next to you; you can get away, however, with just the following:

Every 15 days or so, you will be given a Google Form through which you indicate which GAP score you believe fits you. The data we gather through that form help us assess your struggles with the Dunning-Kruger effect and/or the imposter syndrome. Two of the self-assessments ask you to consider your in-class focus and use of feedback. That’s because those really are perhaps the two most important contributors to your success, even before you get to the logic of the profiles themselves.

Here is a document that explains further:

Starting at the top of that handout, you see again these two most basic requirements of this course, which are also the two keys that unlock upper-tier success:

  1. You must make the most of the class period.
  2. You must invest in feedback.

Feedback is also the focus of this instructional post, which links to an updated Medium essay on feedback here. These counter a lot of long-standing rumors while reiterating the importance of our time together during the school day — see this essay or this one for more on working face-to-face and during the period. Here is another post on the concept, too.

Back to focus and feedback: Part 1 of the handout (“The Keys”) asks you to self-assess your in-class focus and the level of feedback you’ve generated. Again, it’s an iteration of what you see in the Google Form you complete every three weeks or so. It is a color-coded, subjective self-assessment.

What may help to clarify how a self-assessment is useful is a look at what the old version of this handout looked like. Instead of circles, there was a line of emojis:

When viewed through some browsers, the faces looked like this:

This will seem unimportant, but there was a reason to use faces instead of numbers, at least originally. It is all about relative self-assessment.

In our case, there are two perspectives. The first is the imagined perspective of an objective observer. What would someone notice about your in-class focus and feedback over the course of several weeks? That observer doesn’t care about why you were playing video games or mindlessly reloading Snapchat; he just makes a note that you were.

The second perspective is relative, and it’s inspired a bit by the Wong-Baker pain scale:

There is a lot of subjectivity in this sort of self-assessment. What you consider to be a 10 — the worst pain you’ve ever experienced — might be only a 4 or 6 for a much less fortunate person. It’s still a 10 for you, though, because you can only base it on your experience. That’s the second perspective in our classroom: To a small extent, your best version of focusing might be different from that of others, and we might adjust — to a small extent — the standards to which you are held. You might be capable only of a certain level of feedback. That’s okay, if it’s true.

Again, the first perspective on your body of work is ultimately more important:

What would an objective observer write down, if he was asked to describe your habits and behavioral patterns?

We aren’t always after the reasons you were compelled to play on your phone for 35 minutes while your required reading gathered dust in front of you. We can’t always take into consideration why you were playing video games instead of workshopping an essay. And, in fact, advocacy is such an integral part of the course that if you did need to space out for 35 minutes, you could probably ask for that, reflect on it later, and end up learning quite a bit about yourself4.

Part 2 of the handout (“The Engine”) clarifies these two perspectives through some close reading. The selections you see come from grade abatement profiles of 2, 4, 6, and 8, which give us final scores of 60, 70, 85, and 95, respectively. By any heuristic, these are the profiles that serve as benchmarks for failure and success. These small excerpts should help you arrive at a more accurate and helpful GAP score.

GAP 2 | A 2 {may indicate} [a deliberate and systemic disengagement]…

This is a question of repeated, conscious choice. How many times does a student need to disengage, miss work, lose focus, etc, before it is “deliberate and systemic”? How many mistakes are permissible? No one expects perfection, even at the level of a 9, but we have to start the discussion with some sort of threshold. You have agency and self-control, and very few students goof off out of malice. You do it without thinking. At a certain point, however, a lack of adjustment or a lack of thinking is a choice.

GAP 4 | These students {do not meet} [the basic requirements of the course]…

The GAP 2 has modal language, which is language suggesting possibility. The student “may” meet those criteria, but there are other ways to slip to that tier. For a GAP 4 and its surrounding scores, the language is direct: If you do not meet the basic requirements of the course, you really shouldn’t be scored any higher than a 4 (70).

The question, then, is what the course defines as its basic requirements. Right now, as always, the course values in-class focus and student-driven feedback more than anything else. This new handout also lists the obvious stuff, like getting work in on time and being amenable to redirection, as basic requirements. As the handout says, it’s about doing the job on the days you would rather be watching Netflix, instead of, you know, actually watching Netflix in class5.

So the question is, again, how lenient we ought to be. Where is the line between human error and apathy or indulgence? It isn’t a hypothetical question. To illustrate what I mean, here are data from a normal classroom at 9:00 AM on 5/17/17:

Those are self-reported GAP scores from about a dozen students for a three-week assessment period. See how high the scores are? Maybe you can spot the issue when you read the original directions from the Google Classroom assignment:

That clearly states that completing the form before May 19 would lower a student’s profile score. So about a dozen students, some of them otherwise excellent, didn’t read the directions before jumping in. They also didn’t read the calendar, and they seem to have forgotten what we discussed in class. Yet they self-reported scores in Tier 4. Should those students have received lower GAP scores? Should we have shrugged away their mistake, even though it was mid-May? Where do we draw the line?

And that’s an innocuous example. The point might be that these are complicated problems, and we need to talk early and often about them.

GAP 6 | Students earning a 6 {are consistent and reliable} [in performance]…

My theory is that you consider “performance” to be only a particular set of things you do in school. Tests are performances. Essays are performances. Exams are definitely performances. The formative steps aren’t performative in the same way, so you cut corners and cheat the system if/when you need to. That’s not a finger-wagging accusation: Over the years, hundreds of students have admitted to copying homework, using Schmoop before a class discussion, zoning out during lectures, etc.

This course rests on the opposite principle: The process is what matters, and the products should never be the primary focus of our learning. That means that “consistent and reliable” work happens every day. I encourage you to read about that philosophy in this article about preschool crafts, and then to skim this:

View at Medium.com

GAP 8 | An 8 {reflects} [a systemic investment in the course]…

In many of the notes on earning a GAP 8, you’ll see “galvanize” identified as the key verb. That’s true, but another important verb is “reflects,” in no small part because of what it does for us metaphorically.

Most of your self-assessment looks at quantifiable stuff. You could, for instance, count the number of minutes you’re off-task when determining that a GAP 4 is your fate. If you believe you’ve been “consistent and reliable,” you can add up the assignments you’ve handed in, collate the formative and process-based work you did, and stack up your feedback-driven metacognition. It’s sortable, stackable, quantifiable data.

When you invest in the entire system, however, your evidence moves beyond the quantifiable and into something more reflective. Which is not to get too existential6. Think about how else we can use “reflect” in a classroom: It’s the other part of the self-monitoring you do, alongside metacognitive writing and discussion. You reflect your investment through self-monitoring. Once you observe the true purpose of the work, you can set the course accordingly. You’re in control of the learning, because you are involved in all parts of the system — not just the daily class periods and formal writing assignments, but everything.

Which is why Part 3 of this new handout, “The Vehicle,” is a list of the universal skills and traits we value. They are streamlined and edited a bit, but they aren’t changed fundamentally from the other guides to grade abatement, collaboration, and so on. Every iteration helps a bit. When you are invested enough, in fact, and when your focus becomes honing these skills, you will see them reflected in everything you do.

That’s why it matters less which books we read, which essays you write, and which discussions we have. It’s more important for you to memorize our list of skills and traits, and then for us to work together to determine what you need to do to hone your strengths and eliminate your weaknesses. This becomes the blueprint for your growth:

Reflections

At this point, your brain should be churning as it begins to process this. You may need to write down your understanding for me to read and comment on. You may want to write about your previous experiences with grades. You may need to ask questions in the comment section below7. Regardless, you absolutely must write something in response to all this feedback — not just because that is a formal assignment, but because it’s the whole point.

First, I want to add that I still believe that it is nearly impossible to fake in-class focus and feedback. You can fake a certain level of curiosity and empathy, but it’s nearly impossible to reframe a period spent off-task as anything but what it was. You can rush through a few pages of perfunctory reflection, but it’s nearly impossible to turn a real lack of feedback and investment into something else.

Since “nearly” impossible is not the same as “totally” impossible, I usually try to pitch faking it in here as a good idea, theoretically speaking. That was the theory as early on as the tenth section of this essay:

If you force yourself through the motions in here, those motions will inculcate the skills and traits we want. A misanthrope who forces himself to take collegial and galvanizing actions will incrementally learn empathy. A narcissist who forces herself to reflect and metacogitate every week will incrementally find new self-awareness and insight. An apathetic student who grinds through assignments just to get them done will incrementally gain a real appreciation for the value of the work.

That’s idealistic, but it seems to be true for most students: If you fake it, at least you’re doing some good. Learning doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game.

I think there’s something else to add, though: If you decided that this “nearly impossible” claim was a challenge, you might figure out how to fake it. You might fool me. Or you might just slip through the cracks, earning credit when credit is definitely not due. Then the hard-working students become frustrated, seeing a kind of injustice. No one wants to feel cheated, to have a peer succeed dishonestly, or to see a good system subverted.

So here’s the thing: Did that person succeed? Did he really? When a student “cheats” in here, all he’s done is get worse at everything that the world actually values. That vehicle for learning — the list of universal skills and traits — might as well be a car rusting on cinder blocks in the front yard. The student, having gotten away with wasting class time and ignoring feedback, has made himself more distracted and more disrespectful. He knows less now and can do less with the little he knows than his peers. He’s grown dishonest and cynical and selfish.

That’s… not really a victory. How do you imagine you would celebrate that? “Boy, I tricked him! I’m a terrible student! My life is going to be much harder now!”

I mean, yes, I’m upset about that, but not in a mustache-twirling kind of way8. I would like the world to be filled with respectful, creative people who take advantage of extraordinary opportunities to learn about themselves and the world around them. I hope you will make that world a better place through your intelligence and compassion. I believe in your potential, and I hate to see it wasted.

That’s all.

  1. Not in the FOMO sense, although that’s a concept worth studying, especially as a gateway to learning about the five-factor model of personality. There is a test you can take, the IPIP-NEO, that will generate a really rich set of data to unpack and analyze. It’s a way of getting to know yourself more completely, and that’s almost always a helpful thing. ↩

  2. “Metaphorically!” he shouted quickly, glancing at administration and laughing nervously. “Metaphorically decapitates you in the middle of class.” ↩

  3. Both of which you could legitimately do, if it was part of a unit of study you’d designed. You could write about these things, study them, read excellent ETA essays on them. You’d get more out of it. Why not do that? Why not take the extra five minutes to advocate thoughtfully for the very thing you are doing thoughtlessly? ↩

  4. The best kind of metacognition is uncomfortable, so this would be perfect: Why do you need to waste class time? Is it really that you’re wasting it, or is something more significant going on? What is your brain up to? ↩

  5. Again, you could probably write and read about this, if you were invested enough in the course to see how it connects to our work. Binge-watching culture is fascinating, and I’d want to help you unpack the reasons why that show had so transfixed you that it couldn’t wait another few hours. ↩

  6. Says the Camus-inspired website that has pitched Regents Exam prep in the past with a Kafka reference. ↩

  7. Try that out. Scroll down and ask a question. It’s never too late to engage with the interstitial elements of the course, and it is the easiest and fastest way to get feedback. ↩

  8. Although I wonder… In that scenario, who is Dudley Do-Right? ↩

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The Start of Class: Daily Calibration

  By Opening Salvo, Space Explainers

Book art by Guy Laramée.

Note: This post isolates and updates the daily calibration form introduced here: Objects in Space. Here is the “start of class” handout shared with students and posted on the walls, on the tables, and online:

Direct link: https://tinyurl.com/makerspace-start

Daily Calibration for Students

The daily calibration form is the key to your in-class focus, at least to some extent. Links for each class period can be found on Google Classroom, at the top of the “Classwork” tab. Put that link somewhere you can access quickly — the home screen of your phone, the bookmarks bar of your browser, etc.

Here is a pre-filled copy to consider:

(The joke, such as it is, comes from this writing by Albert Camus, which inspired the name of this site, the philosophy of this course, and a few other existentially important elements of what we do.)

This form requires you to set a goal for the 24 hours that fall after the class period. What will you accomplish during that time? What do you hope to learn, to create, to explore, etc? Think of this as another inflection point: a moment when the trajectory of your day changes.

You are also invited to reflect on your physical and mental state, with an optional space for any other thoughts you want to share. This part is highly encouraged; self-awareness and self-efficacy begin with that kind of mindfulness.

All told, it takes only a few moments at the start of each class period. Those moments build powerful habits and generate a stronger connection between you and the work of a course like this. A larger picture of you also emerges over time. Consider this screenshot of student feedback:

The first two columns’ data come from what we’d call the mindfulness section of the form, which is drawn from the excellent educator resources at Stop, Breathe & Think. That section looks like this:

While these sections are optional, they can center you physically and mentally, giving you a greater chance of shifting cognitively from whatever came before — an exhilarating gym class, a relaxed lunch period — into the work of a Humanities makerspace.

The next columns of data are goals and miscellaneous feedback or updates. (The exact order has been changed since this screenshot.) This is incredibly powerful information to have at the start of the class period, and not just for teachers. For you students, this is a way to orient yourselves in the middle of a day that pulls you in a dozen different directions.

Completing this form is, therefore, incredibly important. This is a habit that will help you navigate academics, relationships, and the equally Sisyphean grind of many jobs. You can and often should pause momentarily to take stock of your physical and mental wellbeing. You can and often should set an immediate, achievable goal.

Ask questions about this below.

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Immediate Obligations

  By Opening Salvo

The root of obligation is ligare, “to bind,” and it helps to keep in mind that this can be positive or negative.

Repeated: What Our Makerspace Does

Core English courses that are not affiliated with the College Board nor a state or local college enjoy a bit of freedom from the traditional superstructure of high school. The foundation is the same — that’s why the district’s SCP looks just like our set of universal skills and traits — but what we build on it can be practical in a different way.

For the most part, this will mean dividing our year into skill-based units, like this one on self-control and assiduousness, and units based on essential questions and authentic problems. Read the explanatory post on the Humanities makerspace, and pay attention to this section:

The problems students face are the problems all of us face, and they are exactly the problems that the Humanities exist to solve:

What does it mean to be a human being?
What does it mean to coexist in a society?
What are my beliefs?
How do I want to live my life?

An English classroom is also the home of soft skills, including self-awareness and self-efficacy, which raises a few more questions for the makerspace:

What does it mean to be educated?
What is the purpose of school?
How does each of us learn best?
What are the most important skills and traits for our futures?

Like any makerspace, we experiment to find solutions to these problems and answer these questions. We collaborate, ask experts, do research. We try to think outside the box. We sometimes try to dismantle the box to build a better one.

The tools and components we pour out on the table are a set of universal skills and traits, our connections to other human beings, and the literature and nonfiction that best teaches us how to be human.

We might study whether video games can be art, whether obscenity has an objective definition, whether schools take care of mental health effectively, or any of a dozen other authentic issues.

Outstanding Obligations

It’s all part of training for the real world. Fortunately or unfortunately, there will always be obligations outside of the space, some of which are more authentically derived than others. That is the way it is.

For seniors, there are two immediate and pressing obligations to consider: the college essay and summer reading. There is also a third obligation that comes due in the last month of school.

① The College Essay

If you were a junior at this high school last year, you have already written a college essay. You will need to share a copy of that through the appropriate Google Classroom assignment, and you will probably want to edit and revise to some extent.

If you were not a junior here in Brewster, or if you simply would like to take another crack at the college essay, you will need to go through the writing process. Either way, you will benefit from reading the following:

This is adapted from a universal writing process that we will use throughout the year to inform essays, short stories, poetry, and any other written work1.

Your are obligated to take care of this if and only if you plan to go to college next year. An alternative assignment is available.

② Summer Reading

Your other obligation is to the summer reading assignment outlined here:

Click on the embedded page or this link to revisit the summer assignment. An assignment will be given related to this reading during Q1B. You can always see the course grading calendar for information about what that means.

③ Senior Talk

At the end of your senior year, you will present a “senior talk,” which is a requirement for graduation. It is most like a TED Talk, although there is a lot of customization and personalization possible.

You can read coverage of some of last year’s talks here. In our class, these talks are likely to be built on a long-term project you’ll begin almost immediately:

The Pareto Project: Complete Guide

During Q1A, you will design a passion project through that guide. You’ll have the option to retool, reboot, etc., as the year progresses, and you’ll always know that the senior talk fits a passion project perfectly — which is by design.

Use the space below to ask questions about this, and watch Google Classroom for formal deadlines, assignment specifics, and the like.

  1. You can read the history of that writing process here, in a post contextualizing the most recent version. ↩

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Course Syllabus

  By 23–24 Posts, Opening Salvo

An interesting thing about the word syllabus is that it comes from a misreading of Latin. That doesn’t change its meaning now, but it does let us think more critically about what a syllabus actually does, not just what we expect it to do.

This syllabus is an overview of our course. It includes the grading policy, homework policy, etc., but it is also an example itself of how instruction works — flipped so that you can access it at your own pace, with plenty of opportunities to ask questions and receive feedback.

Read on carefully, and use the comment section or your email to ask questions.

Continue reading

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Humanities Makerspace Building Blocks

  By Opening Salvo, Space Explainers

Established Innovations

Our Humanities makerspace relies on flipped instruction, project-based learning, and standards-based grading. These innovations are not unique to us. Each is supported by years of research and evidence of their impact on student learning.

There are other innovations that are unique to a Humanities makerspace. They change the dynamics, the look and feel, of the learning environment. As a result, it is essential that all stakeholders approach the makerspace with an open-minded desire to learn.

Students get this information through the course orientation, through each course’s unique syllabus, and through opening-week activities. Further information is given in class and online, and we reevaluate the learning environment at every opportunity. Here is an example of what this looks like at the end of the first quarter.

It is the sincere hope of every teacher who uses the makerspace that all non-student stakeholders use this website and the vast resources it archives to become fluent in the language of the space. As this 2015 essay puts it, “[a] a student’s task is to avoid illiteracy about the way this course works.” The same must be true for all stakeholders.

A good place to start would be with definitions of flipped instruction, project-based learning, and standards-based grading.

Flipped Instruction 

Google: What is a flipped classroom?

Major shifts:

  1. Instruction takes place online in the form of teacher essays, lecture notes, flipped discussion, and more.
  2. Class time is spent doing the work that is traditionally done at home.
  3. Large-group instruction is rare.
  4. Small-group and individual instruction is common.
Project-Based Learning 

Google: What is project-based learning?

Major shifts:

  1. Formative work and process is emphasized as much as any final product.
  2. Projects are iterative, individualized, and ongoing.
  3. The project-based approach is adapted for essay-writing and reading assignments.
  4. Lessons do not have “do nows” and “exit tickets”; instead, there are workshop dates and checkpoints.
Standards-Based Grading 

Google: What is standards-based grading?

Major shifts:

  1. Grades are not given on individual assignments.
  2. Feedback is tied to the development of universal skills and traits, ELA-specific skills and traits, and content knowledge.
  3. Grade are give at regular intervals (every three weeks in our space) and reflect standards-based achievement and growth.
  4. Grades are tied to universal profiles that reflect evidence of mastery according to knowable criteria.

ELA Requirements

These are the elements found in every ELA course. They are part of our makerspace, whether in a co-taught inclusion class or as part of a college-level curriculum.

Required Texts

The syllabus for a particular course lists the canonical fiction and nonfiction we study. Each course calendar reflects the time dedicated to reading, discussion, and responsive writing, including analysis. We also provide frequent updates on what, how, and why we’re reading.

In 2018-2019, the space adopted a unique reading process. This idea of choosing what to read, either to augment assured experiences or in place of them, is still being considered. (Note: When an innovation doesn’t work like we hoped, we recognize that, learn from it, and get back to basics.)

Required Writing

The syllabus for a particular course lists the required essays we write. This includes assured experiences, such as the persuasive writing in English 10, the college essay at the end of English 11, and the senior talk in English 12. Each course calendar reflects the time dedicated to writing and revising.

We use a unique writing process. On top of that process, we are able to incorporate any other rubric, from Regents Exam rubrics to department-wide rubrics. The process is universalized.

Exam Prep

English students must pass a Regents Exam to graduate. This exam is taken at the end of English 11. In those junior classes, we fold weekly test prep into our schedule a few months ahead of the exam. The calendar reflects this.

In addition, all analysis of literature involves an exam-styled prompt. See the directions and handouts in this shared folder: Simplified Analysis. This applies to all students except seniors, since seniors have already taken the exam that requires this sort of writing.

In AP- or Honors-level class, exam prep based on the expectations of the College Board is also assigned regularly. The calendar reflects this.

Sisyphean High

Now we come to the innovations that are unique to our makerspace. There are many resources that explain these unique elements, and they all answer the same question:

What Is a (Humanities) Makerspace?

That post covers the basics thoroughly. This post, the one you are reading right now, delineates how flipped instruction, standards-based assessment, and project-based learning led to those other innovations. Each iteration improves on the original. Each is based on established educational research. And for each, there is evidence of the overwhelmingly positive impact on student learning.

Testimonials and evidence are always available online. Further testimonials crop up naturally from students, as in these examples from the top ten graduating seniors in 2019:

Flipped Instruction → Interstitial Instruction

There are many resources explaining what interstitial instruction does to iterate and improve on the idea of flipped instruction. Here are three:

Interstitial instruction relies more heavily on hypertextual, teacher-written essays than other forms of flipped instruction. These instructional essays and posts can be revisited and explored repeatedly, offering multiple points of entry for students of differing ability levels.

Interstitial instruction also utilizes Google Classroom to set deadlines, give feedback, individualize assignments, and so on. Submitted work is organized and archived digitally.

At the same time, the kinesthetic and face-to-face aspects of learning are emphasized as essential “maker” activities. It’s not just flipping instruction and doing homework in class; it’s inviting students to adapt a framework to suit their individual learning style and needs. The goal is an anytime/anywhere learning environment.

Standards-Based Grading → Grade Abatement

There are many resources explaining what grade abatement does to iterate and improve on the idea of standards-based grading. Here is an entire site of testimonials to its efficacy. Below is the grade abatement process, which includes every updated material and resource:

The GAP Process

In brief, grade abatement answers the case against grades through a system of profile-driven, evidence-based assessment. The profiles are precise but flexible, incorporating a nuanced set of universal skills and traits that can be individualized and adapted to any ELA curriculum. Final scores can be unpacked into rich, specific feedback, offering modular points of entry for all students — yet it all fits on a single handout.

Project-Based Learning → Daily Check-In

Instead of a “do now,” there is a required “check-in” form for students. It is explained in a post on the physical makerspace, which includes a direct link to a pre-filled form:

The required goal-setting is accompanied by optional mindfulness prompts and a space to share privately with the teacher. Think of it as the social/emotional framework for our academics.

Project-Based Learning → 20% Projects

Google: What is a 20% project?

Our version of a 20% project, which is sometimes called a 20-Time or Genius Hour project, is the Pareto Project. It has its own guide, an FAQ, and a unique final assessment.

In brief, students complete a project entirely of their own choosing, which they then present, publish, or otherwise share. Student projects and testimonials are available online.

Project-Based Learning → Bishop Composition

The complete writing process is sometimes called bishop composition, a reference to some of the origins and applications of the process itself. Writing is the central pillar of the makerspace, which leads to several related shifts:

  • Units are based on essential questions, central skills and traits, or authentic problems.
  • Student growth, choice, and metacognitive insight are emphasized over final writing products.
  • Emulation is emphasized over analysis, as detailed in this instructional essay.

The writing process can be adapted for any purpose. Here is an example of adapting it for the college application essay.

Complete Transparency

Finally, it is important to note that transparency is essential to all flipped instruction, project-based learning, and standards-based grading, especially as conceived in a Humanities makerspace.

A good example is the stakeholder’s guide that is sent home to parents every year, which is often accompanied by course-specific letters, like this AP English letter from 2018. The message is clear: You can know as much about what we do as you’d like. Information is power, and all stakeholders, from students to administrators, have access to that power.

There is also a constant effort to provide redundancies and failsafes, as explained here in late 2019. This approach respects that procrastination and avoidance are part of human nature. Think of it as guided inquiry — agency and autonomy assisted by expert guidance and feedback.

More evidence of the invitation to investment can be found in the FAQ featured on the home page of this site:

Makerspace FAQ

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What Is a (Humanities) Makerspace?

  By Opening Salvo, Space Explainers

As part of the conference day that led to that tweet, I’m polishing my one-sentence definition of makerspaces:

Makerspaces emphasize iterative, process-based learning that is

  1. built around a common language for that process;
  2. focused on collaboration; and
  3. supported by expert feedback.

That unpacks, of course, into a lot more material. There is an FAQ on makerspaces, a recent clarification of grade abatement, tons of student insight into how the space connects to ELA and SCP standards, and more, all available through the website.

The rest of this post explores how the ELA framework and standards work in our space. What follows is adapted, in fact, from the general course syllabus and this Google Site.

What Is a Makerspace?

“Makerspace” is not the only term for this kind of work, and in the real world, the name is relatively unimportant Names are always relevant, of course, because they help us set the agenda for the work we do. The point is that folks solving problems in the real world will be less concerned with the name of the space and more concerned with the work itself. The work is what matters.

This clip from Apollo 13 showcases makerspace problem-solving:

What you have there is a group of like-minded and similarly trained folks who must confront a real-world problem. To solve it, they gather all the tools and resources they need, and then they collaborate on a solution.

In this particular example, NASA engineers pour out a box of mechanical components and use their expertise and creativity to “invent a way to put a square peg in a round hole.” As in most makerspaces, academic or otherwise, the components are physical — gears, electronics, plastic, etc. Even when the components are something as small as DNA, they are still physical.

That’s why hacking DNA (to create cow-less milk; read the Wired article hyperlinked in the previous paragraph) requires the same kind of makerspace thinking needed to save stranded astronauts. These examples also fit the usual acronym attached to makerspaces in education: STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math).

English doesn’t often get a seat at the table, perhaps because its components are more abstract. Literature and writing aren’t considered to have the same modular, experimental elements, at least in a general sense, and the history of makerspaces, hackerspaces, fab labs, etc., is very much about the STEM and STEAM disciplines.

But a makerspace can be an excellent way of reading, writing, and exploring the Humanities. That’s because all makerspaces must answer the same two questions:

  1. What important, real-world problems are we solving?
  2. What components and tools do we need to solve those problems?

These are the same questions answered by scientists, engineers, and so on. What’s interesting is how universal the questions become when applied to an English classroom. What is more universal than being human? In fact, the authentic problems students face in an English classroom are the problems all of us face. They are the questions that we answer through reading, writing, and thinking:

What does it mean to be a human being?
What does it mean to coexist in a society?
What are my beliefs?
How do I want to live my life?

Like all classrooms, an English classroom is where students also experiment with and learn to use so-called “soft” skills. A makerspace approach simply makes that work more explicit. Skills and traits like self-awareness, self-efficacy, and collegiality are components for solving problems like these:

What does it mean to be educated?
What is the purpose of school?
How does each of us learn best?
What are the most important skills and traits for our futures?

In a Humanities makerspace, we experiment to find solutions to these problems and answer these questions. We collaborate, ask experts, do research. We try to think outside the box. We dismantle the box to build a better one, when necessary.

So the tools and components we pour out on the table in English are

  1. a set of universal skills and traits;
  2. our connections to other human beings; and
  3. the literature and nonfiction that best teaches us how to be human.

Makerspace Building Blocks

The rest of this post explores the specifics of writing, reading, and thinking in the space, since those are the primary tools and resources used to solve problems in the Humanities. It’s critical, though, to understand the building blocks of this kind of learning:

Humanities Makerspace Building Blocks

Makerspace Writing

Writing is the fundamental creative act of a Humanities makerspace. it is driven by essential questions (like these), central texts (like this), prescribed prompts (like these), and much more.

We use a writing process built from the ground up to emulate college-level writing workshops and STEAM makerspaces. We focus on component understanding, modular experimentation, and constant metacognition.

Importantly, as the FAQ emphasizes, the makerspace applies this process to the same grade-level and course-specific prompts done by non-makerspace classrooms. We hit the same targets, from MLA-formatted research papers to college essays.

Below is a direct link to this writing process, followed by an instructional essay that explores the importance of writing, the history of makerspace-inspired writing guides, and the need for a different kind of assessment.

DIRECT LINK: THE WRITING PROCESS: V4 (2019)

The Writing Process

Makerspace Reading

Reading in a makerspace is an intricate, flexible process that emphasizes student choice while adhering to grade-level and course-specific text requirements. We cover the skills of literary analysis, including test-driven terminology prep; close reading, both with fiction and nonfiction; and and the balanced study of contemporary and canonical essays and novels.

You can see what I mean in these posts:

We usually start with this video:

As that suggests, literature is one of the many tools available to people in the real world, and it is easily the most powerful tool we can use to develop empathy and expand our life experiences. In our makerspace, it’s a tool connected to all the rest. It’s one of the components we pour out on the table, so to speak, when we need to answer the most important questions.

It’s not the particular book that matters, as a result; it’s how that book is read. We stress choice. We use essential questions to drive those choices. We still tackle the canonical requirements, from American short fiction to Shakespeare, but often allow students to branch out in order to invest fully in the reading process.

Above all else, we are focused on the component experiences that make students lifelong readers, not children who hate reading. To see a 2019 attempt at developing this habit, look here:

Good Reads and Goodreads

Makerspace Thinking

Metacognition is the key to the thinking in our space. The most important thing students learn is always something about how they learn, and a makerspace embraces that. Many of the most powerful lessons come from this, and the skills associated with thinking are universally important.

That’s why we have a daily check-in form, for instance, that invites mindfulness and clear goal-setting. We also spend substantial time on the habits of in-class focus and feedback, which is how the space can let students individualize many assignments.

The content still matters! This is critical: The content, assured experiences, etc., are still approached with fidelity. The makerspace prepares for tests, gives quizzes, studies literary devices, and hits however many pieces of canonical literature we need to. Consider this reading calendar from 2018-2019.

Makerspace Instruction

Here is an essay on how technology shifts instruction in a makerspace:

The Interstitial Classroom:
The key to collaborative and autodidactic learning
Or, how an English teacher learned to stop worrying and love the Internet 

There are many others that grapple with “interstitial” teaching, but that one best covers the philosophy behind the shift. Technology is a tool for learning, and it can become part of a lifelong habit of reading and writing. Consider one of the flipped lessons used to start a discussion about reading in a makerspace:

Well, Why Read?

That post discusses hyperlinks, responsiveness, and the freedom students have to engage with different levels of instruction. It is about turning the Internet into a tool for the Humanities and a resource for student growth.

Makerspace Assessment

Finally, there is how a makerspace treats assessment as a tool. This is covered in the post on building blocks, as well as many other posts on this site. Student feedback on the process is especially helpful.

The use of grade abatement allows us to give embedded, individualized feedback; teach 21st century skills in context; encourage risk-taking; and avoid grade obsession, gamesmanship, and the hit to self-esteem and self-efficacy caused by traditional grades.

The process is modular and responsive. It works for all grade and ability levels, because it makes universal skills and traits clear, discrete, and actionable. It enables a better form of feedback. Here is the process in full:

The GAP Process

But it is just as helpful to see posts that clarify grade abatement in the context of makerspace problem-solving:

Clarifying Grade Abatement

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“What Do I Do Next?”

  By Opening Salvo, Space Explainers

Note: This post applies to all students in all classes.

Every year, we watch Ken Robinson’s talk on education as an introduction to the Humanities makerspace. That video, in fact, gives us the icon for the most important skill taught and strengthened in here:

Click the image to load the full set of profiles, skills, and traits.

That list of the universal skills and traits of learning includes a similar icon for each pair. For an explanation of the other icons used to signify these universal skills and traits, load this document:

You can also scan a QR code posted on the wall of our classroom to read it. You’ll notice that these are annotations of another handout — one titled “What do I do next?”

“What Do I Do Next?”

As you explore the ramiform links of various instructional posts, you’ll repeatedly encounter the idea that what we do together in person is more important than any other aspect of your education. I’m here to redirect you, but you really need an internalized mechanism for staying productive. That’s where the following handout comes in:

That is a three-step process for filling any spare moments in class with productive work. There is a QR code on some of the printed versions that loads the annotations embedded earlier.

Start with a working definition of the critical verbs: delve, collaborate, create, gather, and analyze. Then use the annotations of this handout — annotations that are embedded earlier, hyperlinked earlier, and now hyperlinked again — to learn about how this handout was constructed, which includes the origins of each term and image.

This reading is absolutely essential to your success in this course. It will give you the tools you need to be productive, and being productive is the key to success. It fuels the development of every skill and trait. Use this:

That handout details the most basic calculus for determining a profile. How you spend your time during class is, therefore, probably the single most critical component in the score you earn three times a quarter. In fact, the Google Form that caps the self-assessment process is built around this idea — that in-class focus and feedback loops determine your success.

There are many other essays, handouts, and posts that explain how this all works, but it will always come back to how you use your time in the space. And that will always be under your control.

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The Half-Percent Problem

  By Opening Salvo, Space Explainers

0.56%, to Be Precise

You meet in Room 210 for English once a day for 42 minutes. Over 180 days of school, that adds up to right around 7560 minutes. Each class period is, therefore, only 0.56% of your total learning — and that gives us the half-percent problem.

We already work in a system that promotes a factory-line mindset. The system chops learning into periods, rings bells to force a kind of Pavlovian shift in us1, etc, which all compartmentalizes learning and truncates development. It somehow manages to be rigid and arbitrary at the same time.

This is all part of the “gene pool of education,” as Ken Robinson put it. Another part: the belief that each lesson is a discrete, repeatable artifact, with “Do Now” openings and scripted transitions. Traditional lessons are performative, even at their most authentic, and that’s true for students as well as teachers. Units are just larger versions of lessons.

I think this is why so much prescribed instruction is content-driven, and why grades are the transactional currency of it all. It’s also why not every 0.56% chunk is meaningful. Some periods are worth devoting more time and energy to — the period that has a test, the one with a presentation, the one with an essay due. The formative build-up doesn’t invite the same focus. The Skinner box does its job.

In here, you can’t have a half-percent mindset. Your learning is embedded in everything you do. You can’t use the same regurgitation skill you might rely on elsewhere, for instance, and missing or missed work requires your attention. In the past, I was guilty of converting missing work into a zero — at the beginning of this essay is a screenshot of my old gradebook — which does a strange thing: It tells you, the student, that the work isn’t necessary. You don’t need to do it; you can take a zero and move on, which is very much like saying that the assignment was non-essential.

This goes for poetry, novels, and other experiences we have to together, but the best example from the first month of the year is the complete set of grade abatement profiles. If you haven’t studied that yet, you must study it now. Again, most of you are used to a transaction: You don’t complete work, you get a bad grade, and you move on. The course can’t wait for you, so it doesn’t.

But you aren’t a bystander in here, swept along by a content-driven curriculum. You are the course itself.

In other words:

Filling the Time

Terra Incognita

 

  1. The bell rings, and whether you were ready to move on or not, you’re moving on. Your mind lurches to the next thing. ↩

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Filling the Time

  By Opening Salvo, Space Explainers

The Carrot and the Stick

What we do in this class is obviously more complicated than this, but if you needed to whittle it down to one thing, that thing would be how you spend the class period.

This works because the assignments and texts and feedback are all designed to reward investment. The more time you spend on our work, the better. There is no busywork here, precisely because we can change the work to be more authentic if it is busywork. We can tailor the work to be more meaningful and helpful for the individual. So the work is always worth doing.

That said, you don’t need an understanding of the material or an inherent investment in learning to understand that you have to work during class. To understand that, you just need access to a copy of the assessment profiles. And if we want to make it even simpler, and we do, you only need to look at that hyperlinked poster, which is now hanging in our classroom.

And then, if we want to simplify it even further, you only need to consider four words:

  • basic requirements
  • required assignments

Those phrases appear in the profile language that corresponds to a 70 and 90, respectively, in Infinite Campus.

Focus on the fundamental similarities between “requirements” and “assignments.” Assignments usually are more formal, and are usually posted to Google Classroom; they include, however, any assigned task, such as the one indicated by this instructional post. It’s not semantic.You must meet the basic requirement of the course, and if you do not meet it, you must accept the repercussions.

The most basic requirement is that you work from the time the bell rings until the time it rings again. That’s your persistent, unchanging assignment. If you do that, you are overwhelmingly likely to keep up with formal assignments and writing responses and test prep and so on, simply because you’re going to have to find things to occupy your time. You’re also overwhelmingly likely to get the feedback you need for an upper-tier profile, simply because you’re going to need to ask for direction and help as you work to fill the class time.

That’s the built-in circuit: To meet that basic requirement, you’ve got to fill the time, and filling the time means being productive.

In other words, if you commit yourself to being productive for 40+ minutes a day, you’ll find that your productivity can’t help but move you along in the right ways. You’ll have to read and annotate and re-read the interstitial instruction, if you hope to fill that time. You’ll need to flag down the teacher for help and guidance, if you hope to fill that time. You’ll have to collaborate with your peers, write reflections, or read a book.

Because if you don’t find something to fill that time, you are no longer meeting the most basic requirement of the course. You are no longer completing all required assignments. You can, therefore, no longer say that you fit the profile of a 7 or higher, which means you are at best looking at an 85 for the assessment period. You must also entertain the serious possibility that you fit the profile of a 4, which means you might see a 70 for the assessment period — and it probably is even lower than that.

That’s due to the nature of feedback in a makerspace like ours. The first time you stop working during the class period, it might be an honest mistake, even with the clear language of the profiles and the extraordinary amount of front-loaded instruction in the course. The second time you stop working during the class period, it might be another honest mistake — but it’s a mistake that indicates a lack of self-awareness, a lack of internalization, and a lack of assiduousness. It suggests a lack of amenability, too.

The third time you stop working during the class period? That’s a deliberate failure to follow instructions. It’s a conscious decision to ignore posts like this, face-to-face feedback, redirection during the period, speeches at the start of class, etc. You can’t not know that the single most basic requirement of the course is to work diligently and consistently during the class period.

And that drops a profile into the lowest tiers, where it is certainly possible to see scores of 60 or 50 every three weeks.

Just the Carrot

This system has been built to be modular and responsive, which is a way of saying that it adapts to your needs and has a lot of combinable elements. If you do nothing but invest in the class time we have, you’re going to unlock something you want to do, either for the final grade or because you see the value in it. Your motivations are far less important, especially early on.

I invite you to think about what you could do with what we have in Room 210. Ask questions here about how to fill the time. Ask about how to individualize the work. Ask about how to navigate exhaustion and distraction and that panicky feeling when you have a History outline due next period. I’ll help you to do this.