Changing a Culture of Violence with Digital Writing

Last year, some of the teachers at my school spent a Saturday learning how to deal with intruders, and I returned to school on Monday to discover that the training had been very realistic. The high school science teacher thought he had a foolproof hiding place in the ceiling of my classroom, but the intruder flushed him out along with a few ceiling tiles. I thought I had "dodged the bullet" of training, but as a result of the Newtown shootings, intruder training may very well become mandatory along with gun safety classes for first graders.

I am a pacifist and should I be required to participate in such drills, I would hope to have at the ready some non-aggressive ways to deal with violence and a persuasive argument to get opted out of the training. I have wanted to craft a response to the numerous Second Amendment posts, but I have never felt sufficiently eloquent--or bold. I waited, hoping that someone would speak for me.

Poka Laenui, executive director of the Wai'anae Coast Community Mental Health Center, has said what I wanted to say.  The author of  "Violence, Guns, and Deep Cultures" says we choose to focus on what is different about the perpetrator of violence and we then go on to exclude that person or persons. Laenui blames our culture of "domination, individualism, and exclusion--or DIE" for tragic events like the shootings at Sandy Hook. Whereas others would counter violence with a focus on treatment for autism and other mental illness, Laenui says our focus should be much broader.

"The very deep culture of DIE itself must be replaced with...a culture of inclusion, loving, caring and sharing...We would find group and individual achievements and excellence praised, rather than superiority or domination. Tests would be taken by groups helping one another get to the correct answers, rather than separating children and ranking one higher or smarter than the other after the tests."

Laenui would certainly agree with Richardson who writes, "Learning has traditionally assumed a winner-take-all competitive form rather than a cooperative form...Networked learning, in contrast, is committed to a vision of the social that stresses cooperation, interactivity, mutual benefit, and social engagement. The power of ten working interactively will invariably outstrip the power of one looking to beat out the other nine" (133).

We watched the involvement of social networking in the Arab Spring uprising, and we know the power of digital writing to create change. Can we imagine our use of digital literacy as a factor in moving our own culture away from violence?

Laenui, Poka. "Violence, Guns, and Deep Cultures." Yes! Spring 2013: 11.

Richardson, Will. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2010


 

Teacher Isolation in the Digital Age

When I want to know something about technology, I don't pick the brains of my colleagues in Fair Grove even though my school is taking some giant leaps into the digital age. Wi-fi is available, there's an active technology committee, the talk is that every student in high school will get an iPad, and every classroom has a projector. But there's an RCET workshop taking place at the school on Tuesday at which an elementary teacher will speak about setting up a classroom blog, and I sincerely doubt that she knows much about my experience with blogging. I know that she has a lot of talent when it comes to technology, but other than an RCET class I took from her, I never visited with her to ask her for help. There is a go-to person I can count on, but she is employed part time and stretched thin to help the teachers in the entire district.  It ends up that I frequently look for help outside the school when I suspect there's a world of knowledge available right in the district.

So why don't we heed the prophet in our own land? There's nothing sinister going on. I may suspect that Joe in the high school has achieved computer geekdom and I know he prides himself on using technology in the classroom, but I don't have the time to engage him in a sit-down conversation. And my notion of what he does in his classroom is so vague, I wouldn't know how to begin a conversation. "Hey, Joe, what do you do that I can take to my classroom?" lacks focus; only pure luck would yield a useful answer. We're so busy that when I do speak with him, it's about our shared chess club sponsorship and upcoming tournaments or the slogan on a chess t-shirt. 

I've learned a lot in some chance conversations at conferences while waiting for the next speaker or event--no students or lesson plans to disturb us. I don't recall how the conversation started, but I do remember learning a lot about wikis from Kyle Wallace at a conference on campus. I immediately went home and put his suggestions to use.

So I want to know what my colleagues in my own school know--how our pooled knowledge can advance what we're doing individually. The solution seems pretty straight-forward and only occurred to me as I was writing this blog. I propose a Yellow Pages of in-house tech experts: I know how to set up a classroom blog to use as a class portal; Mark can do some wizardry with a wireless mouse; Heather has expertise in classroom publishing. This directory could be supported by a discussion board where we post our tech questions and everyone benefits from the answers.

Richardson says "a great entry point for Weblog use is to build a class portal to communicate information about my class and to archive course materials" (21). That's what I can offer as my expertise. I also was able to use the class blog as an effective e-portfolio for student work, but I would have benefited from someone's knowledge about tagging and labeling to make it even more useful. Another question I would pose to my colleagues is how to deepen the collaborative conversations that a blog can make possible. "...the Read/Write Web opens up all sorts of new possibilities for students to learn from each other..." (Richardson 23). We lacked the purposeful commenting that could have pushed our writing further.

Technology is not the only area where teachers work in isolation--sometimes it feels like my individual classroom is a world unto itself--but it's the area where I feel most adrift. Send in the lifeboats.

Richardson, Will. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2010

Creating an Online Persona

Because I’ve deliberately taken some time off for reflection and reinvention, I’m called to a deeper examination of my teaching style. What worked? Where would I like a do-over?

If you asked me the first thing I’d like to make amends for, I’d say my teaching persona as it relates to making connections with students. I’m not the warm and fuzzy type and not a likely candidate for a degree in elementary education, but at the time I got my degree, I didn’t have the imagination to try anything else. Like many other women my age in rural Iowa, I was foreordained to be a farm wife and the teaching degree was a back-up plan. Well, my marriage failed, and I had to go to work, a fifth grade teacher.

Keep in mind that I was named my school’s Teacher of the Year in the third year of the award and I was also Missouri’s DARE educator of the year, so I’m no slouch as a teacher, but I never felt close to my students. Imagine my sense of failure when I read this statement by Regie Routman: “We can and must bond with them all. This is not a choice but a duty and responsibility.” (2003 p.12) Wow! A duty! She includes a list of what bonding looks like and I felt like I could only give tepid answers to her questions. Well, I kind of celebrated them; I kind of knew their interests.

So I wasn’t a rah-rah cheerleader, but I did connect with students through their writing. When our fifth grade departmentalized and the job of English teacher fell to me, I found my niche. Many a student will say I helped them believe they were writers; I felt close to a student when I sat down with him or her for a writing conference.

I’ve been a facilitator for Ozarks Writing Project for the past two years, working with teachers to make them believe they are writers. A blog posting by one of the participants made me come to value what I could offer people. He wrote, “She listens. Plain and simple. Perhaps this is the key reason that her feedback is always helpful, always purposeful, and always well-received (even if it's semi-corrective).”

I’m reserved and here was someone who valued that in me. I think this kind of connection through listening and facilitating is transferable to an online writing class.

Scott Warnock writes, “…the personality we adopt to communicate textually in the electronic realm might differ from the way we customarily think of ourselves. As writing teachers, this difference can be a good thing and can help us reconceptualize ourselves.” (2009 p. 2) Imagining myself as someone whose reflective style is a suitable fit for an online writing course is indeed a good thing.

Warnock says it’s worth spending time to consider your online voice (3). Here again, I am fortunate to be taking some time off and spending my time writing online in a number of spaces: a personal blog, a professional blog, a blog and wiki for student use, Blackboard and a wiki for teachers, a wiki connected to the school website, and Facebook pages for service groups—each reaching a different audience and calling for a slightly different voice.

References

Routman, Regie. Reading Essentials. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003.

Warnock, Scott. Teaching Writing Online: How and Why. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers English, 2009.