Interstitial Discussion: Another Update
Let’s talk, once again, about how we talk to and work with each other. First, comments.
Comments are grouped, archived, and emailed to me by this website. They appear by post and comment thread. Below is a screenshot of the inbox dedicated to this process. It was taken Monday, November 27, around 6AM. I cleared the previous batch before going to sleep at 9PM on November 261.
Comments are also recorded on the website. The dedicated page for this, which was created on October 1, sorts them by time. Below is a screenshot of some of the comments left on November 26 (or in the midnight hours of November 27). If the inbox I maintain helps sort GAP evidence, this website page helps you sort opportunities to collaborate and to discuss.
The most recent post on how and why this interstitial approach works is here: In the Spaces in Between. It was published on November 20. Previously, you had posts that directly instructed you on using these resources, including The Ironic Use of TL;DR and The Aft Agley Gang, which were both published on October 30; Habits and Habitats, from October 20; Scripta Manent, from September 28; a post answering the question, “What Do I Do Next?” on September 22; and these two posts that opened the year. There are many more.
You’ve been told to use these interstitial resources. You’ve been shown why it matters. The work was never optional2. We absolutely need to figure out why it’s not being done.
Riders in the Storm
Comments are just one part of the interstitial classroom. They extend in-class discussion and allow you to think in writing, which gives you another angle on the instruction, feedback, and formal assignments that comprise the rest of the interstitial work we do.
The calendar offers an example of why this matters. Between the Thanksgiving holiday, last Wednesday’s assembly, several lockout and fire drills, teacher meetings, and the occasional illness, we haven’t had much time together in class. That inconsistency will continue in December with snow, which will give us the weird and muted joy of cancellations, delays, and early dismissals. Individually, you will miss time for sickness.
Without this website and a shared focus on interstitial instruction and learning, that fractured a schedule makes learning unsustainable. You lose the momentum necessary for productive reading and writing. Your academic muscles atrophy. You forget what you were up to, back when you had class, and often shrug your way past that feeling.
Or you try to use the survival skills you’ve learned elsewhere to make up that lost ground. You rush through work at the last second. You skip steps, copy answers, make excuses. That’s why there has been a flood of activity today. We are all creatures of habit, and here, again, that creature is a rat trapped in a Skinner box.
What happens is this3: You load Google Classroom, see an assignment, and spam the switch that looks like it will give a reward. If the assignment asks you to copy your notes and submit them, you might have to create those notes. If it asks you to copy ongoing work and submit it, you might have to churn out whatever you can during the class period. Reminded that you must contribute online, you might add several comments to different posts without reading much of what your peers have written.
There is limited efficacy in that. The sudden influx of comments really is too great for any kind of close, careful reading; instead of the ebb and flow of a digital conversation, there is a deluge. Your peers can’t monitor a thread when there are dozens of them appearing at once. I can’t provide ongoing feedback, because your contributions aren’t ongoing.
Similarly, when you try to take a week’s worth of notes in a single period, that deluge drowns any real learning. The work manages to be perfunctory and overwhelming at the same time4. You are rushing to fulfill a checklist, and that’s not how this kind of learning happens.
This sort of perfunctory and sometimes panicky approach also prevents you from recognizing comments that open up discussion, like this one:
That was one of the few comments left before the flood today. It is also a post driven by in-class feedback from me; the question is an attempt to galvanize others to apply Graham’s logic to an unrelated (but interesting) discussion. It would have helped you practice how to write succinctly and how to sign up for follow-up comments. Instead, it sat there for a week, unnoticed and unremarked.
The Chain
Of course, students who rush through assignments are still doing the assignments. That’s something. There are folks reading this who need to admit to greater need, and there are folks not reading this at all — or not reading it until it has been pushed on you by a teacher, either digitally or through printed copies5.
To take notes on this instructional post, all of you should answer one or both of the following questions about what most motivates you.
Do you want a good grade?
Start looking at your desire for a good grade more closely, then. You aren’t entitled to anything, and in here, your performance is all that matters. What you do is all that matters. And that includes when you do it.
If you want to do well, you mean that you’d like a 90 or higher. That requires you to keep up with instructional posts just as much as formal assignments and central texts. That fourth tier of profiles requires you to be metacognitive and reflective, to do those things consistently and insightfully, and to contribute meaningfully to the class as a result of your introspective work. You have to do that over time.
You might be able to justify a GAP score of 6 or 7 without a regular habit of reading, taking notes, and responding to materials. You might be able to meet the criteria by rushing at the last second, since that last-second work still teaches you more than you’d learn by doing nothing (and there are students doing nothing, as always). It’s unlikely, however, that your last-second work is brilliant enough to make up for your lack of assiduousness, organization, self-awareness, amenability, and self-efficacy.
If you want a good grade, you have to work interstitially.
Do you want to future-proof your skills?
In this question, “future-proof” means to give yourself the skills and knowledge to get into college and/or a career, to make the most of your relationships, and to thrive in whatever future you find. I can’t imagine anyone saying they don’t want that sort of strength, but it might be that you don’t see how reading this long post or leaving a comment gets you there.
Which is when I remind you that we’ve gone over the skills and traits of this course, including their connection to the skills and traits employers and colleges want. We’ve done it so often that it’s almost redundant to link to individual posts, as every post covers this. Here’s the one on empathy, for example. You’ve seen me emphasize self-control repeatedly (and through strangely violent metaphors). If you take the time to read Paul Graham’s essay, you’ll see how important writing is to any career, to say nothing of its importance to understanding yourself and your life. We started the year with the importance of reading, especially as it relates to empathy.
The only way to build these skills and traits is to chain them together, one link at a time, with an eye toward overall progress. You can’t fake your way into a good writing process. You can’t take shortcuts to empathy. You can’t sustain an insincere focus on collegiality for very long, and you won’t be productive while you try.
These posts get at the need for regular practice. They link to readings that emphasize other skills and traits. When you contribute interstitially to discussions, you get to practice organization, collegiality, and amenability. You can use the ramiform resources here to practice autodidactic and individualized instruction. You are always encouraged to lean into the kind of feedback that makes the most sense.
Desultory or perfunctory work barely creates the appearance of progress. It will feel like busywork, because you aren’t building anything; you’re rushing to get credit for what you haven’t been doing all along.
If you want to future-proof your skills, then, you have to work interstitially.
