Category Archives: Michael Schooler

Always New Lessons Learned

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Sometimes it feels like being a teacher is being a sorter. We sort papers, sort lesson plans, and sort through our calendars. And with so many students, we often sort them into the categories to which we feel they belong. Usually this is based on some combination of academic ability, effort and behavior. There are high-flyers, overachievers, mid-packers, strugglers, Ivy League, U.C., Cal State, D.V.C., future CEO’s, future managers, future receptionists, future “I hope they don’t screw ups”. Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin.

While grades often feel like the crystallization of all of our sorting, I’ve been wondering how much my own biases play into it. Whether I’m conscious of it or not, my approach to teaching many students is often impacted by the category I have placed them in. This might be based on something I heard from a previous teacher, or how courteous they are when they walk into class, or the tone of their parents’ emails, or whether or not they understand my lesson on thesis statements. While this can be helpful in some ways, I think it can also be problematic because it limits the range of expectations I have for my students.

A few weeks ago, I came across this quote: “The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence” (Krishnamurti). As I think of ways to apply this to my teaching, I’m tempted to think of this as a refutation of grading, which would be convenient, but miss the point. The more I grapple with this quote, the more it calls on my teacher self to strive to see my students for who they truly are, and not project my own limited ideas of who they are.

Recently I was thinking about a lesson I learned from my own kids while teaching each of them to ride a bike. Lucas, my older son, got to a point when he was ready for me to take off his training wheels. I had begun to notice that while he rode, he could find that balance and the clanking training wheels would silence for brief moments. My strategy was to do what I have always seen dads do on television – I took the training wheels off and ran alongside him so he could get the feel of riding. Then I started taking my hands off until I was confident that he understood the balance. This moment was absolute joy, the transfer of understanding and his own new independence. He called out to me, “I’m doing it Dad!” Pure Hollywood magic. He was now a member of the category called “bike rider”.

Evan, on the other hand, was different. When the three of us would go on bike rides around the neighborhood, Lucas and I were trailed by the cacophony of Evan’s clanking training wheels. He relied on them so much that they were beginning to grind down to little nubs. There was no moment when he seemed ready for them to come off; he just reached an age where I didn’t want him to be embarrassed that he couldn’t ride a bike yet. On our first attempt without training wheels, I quickly realized he was nowhere close to riding on his own. He had absolutely no sense of balance and would even turn the handle bars abruptly while I ran alongside him. To let go would have only resulted in a bloodied kid.

We went through a cycle of doing this every week or so, but the result was always the same: me shaking my head in my garage, putting the training wheels back on yet again. I honestly worried that the kid would just never learn to ride a bike. What had worked perfectly with Lucas was clearly not working here.

After a few months of frustration, I decided to go to the internet. I was so fixed on the idea that there was one way to teach your kid to ride a bike, that I couldn’t imagine other possibilities. A brief search led me to one suggestion that I find a grassy hill, and have the kid ride down without pedaling first to understand the balance. Then do the same with pedaling. That Saturday we packed up the bikes and went to Arbolado Park. We went to the top of the hill and I explained the method to Evan. Ten minutes later he was riding a bike across the entire grassy field. Five minutes after that, he added the sidewalk and rode back to me. It was that easy.

This is one of my most valuable lessons as a parent, and is also something that I often think about in my teaching. If I had simply assessed the bike riding abilities of my two kids from the beginning and believed in these categories, Evan never would have learned. It took me a while to realize that I was evaluating his performance by what I had experienced with his older brother. It wasn’t until I was able to see him for who he is and adapt my approach accordingly that he was able to succeed.

I see a similar dynamic in my kids’ academic performance too. Things that come quickly to Lucas do not come as quickly to Evan. But that doesn’t mean he won’t get it; it just means we need to find a grassy hill method to help him learn. I’ve talked to him about this, and he is aware that he learns differently from his brother. But I also emphasize that there is no higher value to either learning style. In fact, Carol Dweck might argue that learning to struggle and persevere will serve Evan better in the long run.

This is a reminder of the need to differentiate my approach with my students. I need to look beyond the categories I might want to place them in and believe that all of them can meet my learning objectives. The pace and pathway will look a little different for each one. One silver lining about teaching through a pandemic is that I have learned to use so many tech tools that give me immediate, concrete data about how well my students did on any given lesson. The challenge now is to use the data and create grassy hills that give all students access to learning.

A few weeks into the pandemic, my boys dusted off their bikes and started to ride around the neighborhood. Over the months, riding bikes has become a daily activity, and they now ride with neighborhood kids every afternoon after school. This is something that didn’t happen when their schedules were packed with sports. The other day I was outside and Evan called out for me to watch him. When I looked up, he was actually riding with no hands down the street. I’m so grateful that I was able to get out of my own way and learn about grassy hills.

A Call for More Community Reading

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One of my most important
responsibilities as an English teacher is to create conditions for books to be
read in community. Whether it’s whole class books, online book clubs, or just
the constant conversations about what my students are reading, my hope is that
these regular discussions will lead to a deeper understanding and a more
fulfilling experience. My students often report that they enjoy listening to
what their classmates have to say about books, that hearing others’ viewpoints
allows them to see things they do not notice when they read by themselves.
Sometimes I find myself wishing I had
more opportunities to read books in community like my students do. As an adult
with limited book club experience and very minimal social media presence (does Strava
count?), most of the interactions I have with others to discuss my own reading
seem brief and superficial. I sometimes worry that my own lack of reading
community might limit the potential impact of the books that I read. With
nobody to challenge my thinking or reinforce ideas, it’s hard to tell how much
of what I read just washes over me before slinking away.
I currently have 14 books sitting on
the desk in my home office. They sit in three different stacks and are loosely
organized in a sort of hierarchy, the top ones placed there to get my attention
first. About half of these are books that I have already finished, but I just
don’t feel ready to place on a bookshelf yet. I keep hoping some opportunity
comes up to share the experience with others before I get sick of the clutter
and find them a new home, somewhere out of my way.
Two of those books, Drive and Mindset, are books that I read earlier this school year, and can’t
quite let go. While reading each of these books, I found myself peppering some
of the ideas into my conversations with colleagues, but it’s hard to have a
substantive conversation about a book with someone who has either not read it,
or read it years ago. So before I cram them onto a bookshelf, I’m going to use
this blog to share a few of my key takeaways from these books, and invite
anyone who has read, or wants to read either of these books, to continue the
conversation.
When school started this past August,
I was talking to Tiz about intrinsic motivation, and she loaned me Daniel
Pink’s Drive. I found this book
fascinating and relevant, especially the overwhelming evidence that humans are
intrinsically motivated by nature, and that many of our most deeply embedded
societal institutions (work, education) have been largely designed under the
assumption that humans are motivated by extrinsic forces (money, grades). One
of the core principles that has stuck with me is the idea that all workers (and
students), desire autonomy, mastery and purpose in their work above everything
else, including money. Of course, it is necessary to make enough money to
satisfy basic needs, but research shows that the desire for more is not a
strong motivating factor, and does not produce better workers (or students).
When I finished Drive, I decided it was finally time to read Mindset by Carol Dweck. I devoured this book, half of it on a
flight back from London at the end of Thanksgiving break. Of course, all of us
are familiar with the term “growth mindset”, but I believe that this term has
been transformed and reinterpreted (sometimes falsely) over the years. My
greatest takeaway from this book was as a parent and little league coach to my
two sons. Lesley and I have recently begun talking about having my older son
Lucas try out for travel ball teams, and I have been making more time to
practice with both of my boys during the offseason. On every car ride to the
batting cages or to the field, I have been working the idea into our
conversations that we practice to get better, and that the very best baseball
players are not the most naturally talented ones, but the ones that work the
hardest. I also enjoyed the section of the book on relationships, as it
reminded me that growth is possible in so many dimensions of life. I know that
some of our students are sick of hearing the term “growth mindset”, and
interestingly see it as some sort of fixed mindset that they do not possess. So
while I show restraint in using that term, I do emphasize that you only get
better at writing by practicing writing, because it takes resilience and hard
work to get better at anything.
I am currently reading Make it Stick by Brown, Roediger and
McDaniel. The authors are cognitive psychiatrists who have done extensive
research on what methods of learning are actually most effective. Not surprisingly,
they identify that students and teachers often place too much emphasis on
memorization, which has limited benefits to deep, long-term learning. They also
make a case for frequent testing, and their research shows that being tested
after reading something is much more effective than rereading or reviewing
notes.
I would love for our faculty to figure
out ways to better coordinate our reading and build more reading communities. I’ve
heard great things about the Dare to Lead
book club, and maybe we can start other books club opportunities. I also think
it would be valuable if we had some repository (like a Goodreads-type platform)
where we could archive our individual responses to books and make
recommendations. We could also use Schoology discussion groups to hold online
book clubs, which is one of my favorite classroom tools.
I have always believed that reading
impacts us as human beings deeply, and that what we read shapes our lives in
ways that are not easily identified. While I still believe this to be true, the
reading that we do to improve our teaching practices should be shared, and it
is important that our own learning is happening in community. If anyone has any
interest or ideas about how we can continue sharing our reading experiences,
feel free to reach out to me – this is something I’d love to work on.

Surrounded by Experts

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Sometimes our school focus on collaboration has felt like an added pressure, a box to check or a goal to complete. When asked to be intentional about collaboration and include it in my goals, I have sometimes felt that I am trying to force something to happen. Who will I collaborate with within my department? What about across departments? How do our subjects align or complement each other? How can we help students make connections?

    At the beginning of this year I created goals to help me collaborate effectively. My most collaboration-centric goal focused on my teaching of the Frosh Wellness: Mind, Body, Spirit course, which requires intense, daily work between religious studies and kinesiology. While I have been focusing a great deal on effective collaboration for the Frosh Wellness course, I have also found myself collaborating in surprising ways. 

    This year I have taken advantage of the fact that I am surrounded by experts in their fields. For those who may not know, this is my 8th year at Carondelet, but my first year full time teaching. As you can imagine, this new role has brought about new challenges and opportunities. I teach 3 sections of the junior religious studies course, Symbols & Ethics. The two central focuses of this course are Sacraments and social ethics. The students learn about the 7 sacraments, as well as topics such as sustainability and the environment, abortion, poverty, hunger, immigration, racism, the criminal justice system, sexism and a variety of other topics that impact our world today. My background is in theology and yet I find myself touching on climate (the environment), art (sacraments & spirituality), biology (abortion), economics (poverty & hunger), globalization & politics (immigration) and the list goes on and on. With every social/ ethical topic that we cover we look at 

Sacred Scripture – What does the Bible have to say about this topic?
  1. Sacred Tradition – What does the Catholic Church have to say about this topic?
  2. Logic/ Science/ Reason – What can we learn about this topic from experts and from the world around us?
  3. Personal Experience – What experiences have you had that impact your understanding of this topic? (Example: Your race may impact how you understand racism)
  4. When teaching #3 – What science and experts in the field can teach us about a particular topic – I have found myself seeking out colleagues for help. When I taught about our responsibility to care for all of God’s creation, I sought Susan Domanico and Michelle Koshi for help. I had the students research environmental concerns and write advocacy letters to people in positions of power (politicians, CEOs of companies, etc). Susan helped me come up with a list of potential environmental concerns and gave me an extensive list of resources. Similarly, Michelle, connected me with a number of online resources based on the different topics that students would be researching. Susan’s knowledge of environmental science and Michelle’s competency in library science empowered me to teach with greater confidence and depth. 

    When I taught the Sacrament of baptism, I wanted to incorporate religious art to highlight the important symbols and theological themes of baptism. I reached out to Andrew Kjera and he was able to come into my class to share a guest-lecture on symbolism within religious art. The students were then invited to create a piece of art using Sketchbook (an app that I was not familiar with, but that Andrew recommended), to express their personal connection to the themes of baptism through symbols. The outcome was tremendous! See a few examples below…

    When teaching about Hunger, students watched a documentary called “A Place at the Table,” which tells the story of hunger in the United States. The documentary touched on US agricultural policies and farm subsidies. Knowing very little about this topic, I sought out Mitch for conversation. Our short conversation in room 26 during break helped prepare me to tackle this topic in class. Similarly, when teaching about poverty, I wanted to touch on income inequality, and taxes. I went to Christina Leveque who teaches Financial Algebra with my questions and after a brief conversation felt ready to include these topics in my lesson. 

    I have brainstormed best practices to help students think critically about assigned reading with Michael Schooler. Phil Miller and I have talked about the history of labor unions in the United States (my class studied labor unions as part of our unit on the Dignity of Work)… and the list goes on and on. 

    If you are like me, you may feel slightly intimidated by the culture of collaboration at Carondelet. However, I have began to overcome my apprehension to collaborate by recognizing the great resource that my colleagues are to me. Collaboration is not a forced goal to achieve, but instead begins with an acceptance of the gift of my colleagues – experts in their field, thoughtful and eager to share what they know. Any time I have asked colleagues about their area of expertise I am always humbled by their willingness to share their knowledge and time. They are excited about their subject and have such great insights and ideas. I have truly learned so much from these mini collaborations that have taken place this year and will continue to seek out the expertise of my colleagues in the future. 

    I’m wondering – what kind of mini collaborations have taken place for others this year? Who has helped you understand a topic with greater depth or brought expertise to your curriculum that has enriched your classroom? 

The Seven Samurai

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This past
Friday afternoon, the members of the English Department got together after
school to take on The Warrior’s Way challenge at Red Door Escape Room. When we
all arrived, our game master took us down a dim hallway with closed doors on
either side. Behind the doors we could hear the frenzied sounds of people
trying to escape, and even a few screams when a masked game master jumped into
a room and scared his group. Our game master wore a Where’s Waldo costume, and
immediately informed us that we were about to undertake an advanced-level
escape room challenge. I took this as a compliment that Kevin must have had
great confidence in our department when he signed us up.
With very
few clues and little context, our game master split us up into two groups and
locked us into two parallel rooms, where we had to puzzle our way through the
samurai kitsch if we wanted to be reunited. Undaunted by this first challenge,
we used our communication skills (after all, we are English teachers), which
included knocking on the wall to one another, and we quickly made it to a second
room where we came together again. In this room Kate mastered the steps of
Akido, Tiz honed her Samurai sword skills, Lisa utilized her tea-sniffing
skills, and Leila saved the day by simply standing up from the bench she was
sitting on to allow a trap door to open.
This took
us to the next room, a samurai library of sorts, and the clock on the wall
reminded us that we only had a few short minutes to make it out. With the clock
ticking down, we had to harness our inner-samurai calm to solve a puzzle that
involved the different tones of bells. With very little assistance from the
game master, we dashed out of the escape room with only 58 seconds on the clock.
We made it out, triumphant, and all of the game masters were in awe that we had
made it through their challenge so quickly. More importantly though, we worked
together as a team and laughed together on a Friday afternoon. It was a great
way to start the weekend, and reminded me of how grateful I am to work with
such a dynamic department.

The Ongoing Grading Conundrum

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I used to be the King of Grading. Self-anointed, I walked
around school with a huge stack of essays under my arm and a red pen behind my
ear. Many nights I’d head out to Peets after putting my kids to bed, and grind
through essays until the workers started mopping the floor to close. Then I’d
come home, still jacked up on caffeine and grade a few more, quitting when the
words started blurring. Life was a constant tally of the paper load. A passable
day would be ten, a fair day fifteen, and there were a few epic bender weekend
days where I could touch forty.
I burned through red pens in those days and left the essays
bleeding with feedback. I considered myself a master at articulating personal
writing advice that would make each student more aware of her writing self. I
was part judge, part coach, part machine. It became my mission to give students
feedback that would present a clear path towards improvement.  
Before each class began, I returned the work I had graded
face down on the desks. The anxiety in the room was thick, as students entered
and began flipping over the papers. But instead of diving into my feedback and
considering my carefully articulated suggestions, most students just looked at
the grade on top and put the essay away. Often, they would ask the nearest
classmate what she had gotten to affirm their own place in the class hierarchy.
It made me wonder how many of my comments were read, let alone applied to
future writing assignments.
My feedback in those days started to feel like a
justification of the grade more than anything else. I learned early on that many
Carondelet parents really care about
their daughters’ grades. Those parents had a strong voice, and I needed a
well-mounted defense before the attack came. While I would sometimes force my
students to read my comments, or write metacognitive responses to my feedback,
most of that time I had spent gouging away at their essays had merely been for
the possibility (and hope) that something would happen afterwards.
Grading and assessment has always felt like one of the holes in my teaching. I’m sure that’s why I overcompensated for so many
years by pouring feedback onto every piece of writing. I have used many
different rubrics in many different ways, but I still feel like this last piece
of my students’ writing process is lacking. One challenge is having so many
students, and knowing that they need to write often to really grow. We all know
that feedback is best when immediate, but how can we orchestrate that with 150
students? Staggering major assignments can only buy so much time. Is carefully
crafted feedback that comes back two weeks later better than cursory feedback
given two days later? My gut tells me that the value of any feedback diminishes with each passing day.
So here I find myself, rocketing into another school year,
still searching for the magic bullet that will resolve my issues with assessing
writing. Despite my best intentions, once the essays start coming in, I usually
settle for whatever works to keep the paper flow from bogging down. I still don’t
know if rubrics are best, or wholistic grading is best, or conferencing is best.
I suspect that a paper saturated with red ink is overwhelming, but how much
feedback should I give to really direct my students? Does every piece of work
that students turn in deserve credit that impacts the grade, or should a grade
be truly an assessment of student skills and mastery? What about portfolios?
And how do I take something as complex as a piece of writing and use some hocus-pocus translation to quantify it with a number? Eighty-seven or eighty-eight?
Seventy-two or seventy-three? Can someone get a hundred? Why sixty?
As with many aspects of teaching, I’m left with more
questions than answers. And that’s with twenty years of experience. But I
remind myself that this is what also draws me to the field of education. It is
such an ever-changing puzzle, and correct answers are slippery and transform
with time. If you’re not able to face constant ambiguity, this profession can
make you crazy. Fortunately, I kind of like puzzles.
I started this blog intending to declare that this is the
year I face the assessment question head on. I’m working as part of a team of
English 2 teachers who are recreating our curriculum. My team members often
don’t let me settle for what is going to be easiest, which is something I
really value. Tiz has given me two books on grading that are slowly moving
upward on my stack of next books to read. But the papers still keep coming in,
and I need to keep churning them back out. I think the best I can commit to is
wandering out blindly in this direction and see where the journey leads me. Hopefully
my thinking is transformed when I get to the other side. If you have any
epiphanies or struggles, please share – I know there are better ways; I just
don’t know what they look like yet.

Discovering the Value of Teaming

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I have to admit, the concept of teaming kind of goes against my nature. While I do truly enjoy people, I am an introvert who feels totally comfortable running alone for hours in the mountains. I once spent three weeks backpacking the John Muir Trail through the Sierra by myself. I even drove across country by myself once, perfectly content with just music and the road. Every time I reread Into the Wild (the junior summer reading book, which happened to be my recommendation), I feel a kinship with Chris McCandless as he travels alone from place to place, learning about life on his own terms. 

Whenever I was forced to do group work in school, I would quietly resist. When I first came to Carondelet and our PD days inevitably required groups of teachers to create and perform skits, I felt a muted dread. Maybe it was the nature of these assignments, or never explicitly being taught how to work with others, but I generally believed that I could complete most tasks better and more efficiently on my own. So when Sarah and Rachel from Teaming by Design came last year to present their work, I was an unlikely candidate to subscribe to their ideas. But something clicked for me that day, and I began to see teaming in a totally different light.
I have made it one of my main goals this year to learn more about teaming, and how to implement teaming into my classes. Over the summer, I read Amy Edmondson’s Teaming to Innovate, and became more aware of the overall purpose and effectiveness of working in teams. When done well, teaming promotes experimentation, embraces failure, and encourages diversity. When I imagine the future working world that our students will enter into, I believe that collaboration will be a skill that is just as valuable as reading or writing. Earlier this year I talked to a friend of mine who works for a major tech company about the role teaming plays in his work life. He said that just about everything is done collaboratively, and that when he hires people, problem solving skills, creativity and interpersonal skills are the most important qualities he’s looking for.
I have always tried to mix in some group work assignments into my teaching, but mostly with the intention of breaking up the monotony and giving students a chance to socialize. The point of my group work was never to teach students how to work together. I did always quietly hope that my group activities would inspire students to collaborate equitably and tap into each other’s strengths to produce a quality piece of work. But what would often happen was the student who cared most about the grade for the assignment would do the majority of the work, and the other group members would stay out of her way and let her proceed. 
Something important I have learned this year is that there is a difference between group work and teaming. Teams determines their own goals for a project, and determine their own process for meeting those goals. Teaming is not a matter of giving students an assignment and explaining the steps or assigning roles; teaming happens when students have the opportunity to create the terms of the project themselves then determine the process that will work best for them.
While I mostly consider my Podcasting and Storytelling class a writing class in disguise, it has also evolved into a teaming class. About six weeks into the semester, I begin transitioning from a whole class environment to one that is entirely team-oriented. Before my students choose the two people they will be making a podcast with, I take a week to mix the students up in as many different teams as possible and have them complete mini-teaming activities. One activity requires the team to build a structure using only the contents of their backpacks, and the highest structure wins candy; another asks them to develop the best possible podcast idea in ten minutes then pitch it to the class. It’s like speed dating for podcast partners, and I want them to see the possibilities for who they might collaborate best with.
During the fall semester, I let my students have free choice for who they would work with, and despite all the teaming activities and discussions about how heterogeneous groups often work best, many still chose to work with their friends. But I decided that if I was going to learn about teaming dynamics, I would have to set my micro-managing tendencies aside and just watch as the different groups went about the very complex task of creating a podcast. 
As the weeks went by, it was like I was watching a social experiment unravel, and I gathered as much qualitative data as I could. A handful of teams worked unexpectedly well together, agreeing on a topic that they were all interested in and taking personal responsibility for completing their share of the work. Some went through ups and downs, struggling for a few weeks, then making comebacks and bursts of progress. And some absolutely crashed and burned – a few friendships fell apart and one team turned in each of their parts of the podcast individually because things had turned toxic.
Here are a few of the reflections I got throughout the semester:
“I am a bit of a micro-manager and control freak. It was easy for me to be this role because I am a total type A personality. I think my micromanagement worked well overall for our team because I made sure everyone was finished in time. I really hope they weren’t annoyed with me being up in their business, but we did get our work done and that is what matters.”
“They kept asking throughout the research what our topic is for the podcast. It was somewhat frustrating because I kept having to repeat myself. I felt like I made it clear what our topic was, but they showed otherwise. In the first place, I should’ve forced (teammate) to speak about a topic she’s interested in.”
“At times, it was easy for me to freak out on my teammates, but I remembered that this project is a team effort and that my teammates are there for me. Collaborating with them taught me to think outside the box, try unfamiliar editing ideas, and not be afraid to speak up. After this project, I feel very confident about my communication skills with others.”
One of my biggest takeaways so far is a reminder of how absolutely complex human beings are, especially when they come together to collaborate. Also there is no formula for teaming – the point is for students to get into that messy interpersonal space and learn something about themselves and how they interact with others. Like most everything in my teaching, this is a work in progress.
If anyone is interested in meeting up to continue the conversation on teaming, there is a small group of teachers that meets in my room every few weeks to talk blended classes, teaming and other new things that we’re trying in our classes. Just let me know and I’ll add you to the email list. Or come observe my podcasting class sometime – I’d love to get more feedback.
One of the best teams ever!

Winton and Treat Podcast Episode 2

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As promised, here’s another student-produced podcast from the first semester of my Podcasting and Storytelling class. This one is titled “Carondelet Conspiracies” and is produced by Danielle Javier, Jana Labib and Jewelle Segarra. As always I welcome any feedback so that I can continue to make this class better.

https://soundcloud.com/michael-schooler-904465153/carondelet-conspiracies/s-tkYXM

Thanks to everyone who listened to “Behind the Screen”. The girls were really excited that people were listening to their work and appreciated everyone who talked to them about it. If you missed it, here’s the link:

https://soundcloud.com/michael-schooler-904465153/behind-the-screen-121618-1057-am/s-xo5mn

Bryan Navarro is helping me get all of these in one central location so that more people in our community can listen to them. This project has made me remember the importance of producing work for a real audience, and how much this increases the attention our students put into their work. Thanks for listening!

Winton and Treat Podcast Episode 1

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I’m really proud of the first semester of my Podcasting and Storytelling class. Overall, it was a great experience, and I learned quite a bit. One of the great things about semester classes is that you don’t have to wait a year to make revisions and improvements. I’m still in the process of putting together an iTunes channel, and more ambitiously, a website to share the work that my students produce. The tentative name of this podcast is Winton and Treat since both Carondelet and De la Salle students take the class.

I’ll be dropping a new episode to the blog every week or two for now, and I would appreciate any feedback you can give. I am by no means an expert in podcasting and am trying to learn as much as possible. Here’s the link to “Behind the Screen” produced by Hayley Hoover, Ella Collier, Angie Anderson and Cielo Gamboa:

https://soundcloud.com/michael-schooler-904465153/behind-the-screen-121618-1057-am/s-xo5mn

A Writing Class Disguised as a Podcasting Class

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In the first few weeks of each of my English classes, I always open up a real-talk discussion about writing. I start by acknowledging that writing is one of the most challenging tasks that students are asked to do in school, which usually elicits vigorous nods throughout the room. Writing is nuanced and abstract, and requires students to consider ideas, structure, evidence, arguments and precision all within the great messiness of language and syntax. Many students lack confidence in their writing abilities, and their approach to writing assignments often consists of suffering through the process, like a trip to the dentist, with the assurance that it will be over eventually.
While I am aware of the challenges my students face, time constraints often reduce my instruction of the writing process to a series of steps: brainstorm, research, thesis, outline, draft, revisions, final draft (with consideration for audience, voice and tone thrown in if time allows). Sometimes I fly through all of these concepts in a matter of days, hoping that something will stick to each student. Sometimes I have my students turn in each part of the writing process for points, hoping that this will inspire some sort of epiphany, like “Mr. Schooler, some really unexpected ideas came up in my mind map that I never would have seen if you hadn’t reviewed the process of circling ideas and drawing lines between those bubbles!” At the end of this rushed process, the essay is turned in and I boomerang it back to each student within two weeks with a grade on top and feedback that is skimmed and tossed away.
 
But the writing process is so much more sacred than what I often reduce it to. In its highest form this process can produce clarity from abstractions, allow for discovery of new insights and can actually transform one’s understanding of themselves and the world around them. Writing is often a big messy struggle that can teach lessons of resilience and perseverance that transfer to so many aspects of life. My approach to many projects in life mirrors my own writing process, whether it’s building a chicken coop, cooking a holiday meal or redesigning my back yard.
Two years ago, I attended the CCCC (Conference on College Composition and Communication), and one session that stood out to me was given by a professor who shared his experiences teaching a podcast project in his class. At first this seemed somewhat out of place for a conference that focused mostly on writing instruction, but I started to wonder whether a podcast wasn’t just another form of writing. A podcast producer must work with ideas, organization, evidence, tone and word choice all while considering the audience at the other end of their work. This idea stuck with me for a while, germinating, until I decided to create a Podcasting and Storytelling class.
When I started telling people I was teaching a podcasting class, they often asked me about recording. As someone whose recording experience is limited to making mix tapes and CD’s in college, I started to wonder whether or not I was in over my head. In fact, my knowledge with podcasts is pretty limited too – I have spent hours listening to them running the trails of Mount Diablo, but I have never tried to make one.
But I took solace in the fact that I do know quite a bit about the writing process, and that this class is really just a writing class disguised as a podcasting class. And, while in the first few weeks, many of my students thought that it would just be a chill, blended class where they would listen to interesting podcasts, I knew what the class would turn into, and I was thrilled that I had successfully duped them into an extensive writing project.
After an introductory unit in which we deconstructed the art of storytelling, my students formed teams that would work towards the long-term goal of producing a podcast. The first phase of the project was to identify a topic that everyone was interested in and research all they could about that topic. Each team member was responsible for documenting their research, and writing reflections on how it would direct the team’s project. One of my teams started out by wanting to do a podcast on the Byron Hot Springs, an abandoned building in Byron that teenagers sneak into since it is supposedly haunted. Over the next few weeks, this team went into a full deep dive, learning all they could about this location. They discovered that it had originated as a train depot, then became a luxury hotel that stars like Marilyn Monroe visited, then served as a satellite Japanese internment camp, then burned down twice mysteriously and now stands as just a shell of a building. One student read about how Charlie Chaplin used to visit the hotel and she decided to watch one of his films. This team even found the owner’s name and the current value of the property on Zillow. I like to think that this team got much more out of this research experience than simply searching for usable quotes from the internet, which is what many of my students do when I assign research papers.
As we shifted from the research to the production phase of the project, each team had to brainstorm and determine a central idea for their podcast. They had to give a quick two-minute pitch to the rest of the class, then receive feedback on their ideas before writing a formal proposal. As we have now shifted to the production phase, the goal is to create original content that can be used in the final cut. This involves writing scripts and monologues, conducting interviews, and considering the best organizational structure to tell their specific story. This has turned out to be a spontaneous process full of dead ends, revisions, regrouping and improvisation. But the attention that these students are putting into their work is greater than the attention my students usually put into a rushed essay process. Most of our class sessions are collaborative workshops, and I bounce from team to team listening to them discuss various rhetorical choices, like word choice, structure, tone, audience and voice. Instead of me flying through these skills that I have always tried to instill, these students are implementing these skills within the context of their projects. They have determined that these are the important qualities of their writing that they need to consider.
My ultimate goal for this class is to create a Carondelet podcast channel that gets thousands of subscribers, and becomes something our school is known for. But I still have no idea what these final projects will be, and I expect that some will be better than others. This class has made me consider which is more valuable for my students, the process or the final product, but that’s a subject for another blog. One of the great things about teaching a semester class is that it allows me to make my own revisions, and I don’t have to wait a whole year to do things better. And while I still think it is important that students write essays in school, it has been invigorating to reimagine the different forms essays can take. 

The Value of Student Agency

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At this point in the school year, I am starting to see some of my students emerge from the pack. These are the ones who write five engaging paragraphs when I ask for a 300-word response, the ones who listen to every episode of Serial when I ask them to listen to the first one, the ones who find it fun to write an original “form follows content” sentence. These are the ones destined for the parking lot banners, our showroom students. They seem to shrug off the notion of points and grades, and are just bursting with intrinsic motivation to learn for the sake of learning.
In high school, I was never this type of student. I was a diligent homework doer, and was lucky enough that school always came pretty easily to me. But my primary motivation to achieve was instrumental – I wanted to go to college so that I could get out of Yucca Valley, the small desert town where I had lived my whole life.
When I started college at UCSD, I tried to employ the same academic approach that had always been successful to me. I was a structural engineer major, mainly because I had been good at math in high school. But I only had a vague sense of what exactly a structural engineer did – I figured it had something to do with structures or buildings, maybe something like architecture. I persisted through, doing my homework and taking tests, and by the end of my freshman year, I was struggling to earn C’s in some of my engineering classes. I trusted my professors and expected the learning to just come to me, and with each subsequent semester my frustration bloomed. 
One of my favorite places at UCSD was the bookstore – I spent hours browsing the walls of books that had nothing to do with structural engineering. I took it upon myself to read all that I could, starting with the Beats then Gabriel Garcia Marquez then Dostoyevsky. I aspired to fill in some of my knowledge gaps of the human story, and even if I could not understand what Faulkner was saying exactly, I knew that if I persisted, I could see his vision of the world.
At the end of an especially dismal semester as an engineer major, I decided to try something different. I registered for introductory writing classes and decided to take a break from engineering. I figured at worst, I would take a sort of vacation and earn a minor in English. But the whole course of my life changed that semester. Even though writing was challenging to me and I did not find immediate success, I discovered that I had deep internal motivation for the written word. I remember feeling stunned that I could earn a college degree for something that I had genuine passion for – it sort of felt like I was pulling one over on everyone – I was finally learning for the sake of learning and getting credit for it.
Now as a teacher, I identify this concept that I found in college as student agency. A quick Google search of student agency will lead to several definitions that have to do with autonomy, engagement, self-efficacy and being self-directed. In short, it seems to be the concept of students taking the control of their own learning. Students who have agency are those who are internally motivated to learn in their classes. They are the ones who stay after class to continue the conversation, the ones who read on their own, the ones who make us feel like we must be doing something right.
Lately I have been wondering whether the concept of student agency is largely undervalued in high school classes. We all have our curriculum and content that we want to impart into our students, and our students have numerous motivations for why they do what we ask of them. Many of these motivations are extrinsic though – from parents to grades to the fear of not getting into their top college. I wonder what happens to these students when they leave us, if they can keep it up, or if they run smack into their own versions of my structural engineering wall.
This semester, I’ve been considering what a class would look like if student agency was the most valued skill. What if the coursework and the daily lessons were crafted to promote student autonomy first? What if course content was not the main priority? What if the development of content-specific skills was not even the highest priority? What if I put all of my attention and energy into creating conditions that would promote student agency above all else? What if the goals of becoming a strong writer, reader or lover of literature became secondary in my class to becoming someone who learns for the sake of learning?
After sitting with these questions for a while, I came up these four characteristics that I would prioritize in an agency-first class:
·     Choice
Students would be able to choose their own academic pursuits within the scope of my class. They would choose what they read, what they write and determine the pace that works best for them. I would create a curriculum structure that articulated the goals of the course, and give students the freedom to demonstrate their mastery of those goals. I would be a collaborator, constantly checking in with their progress, and they would be responsible for documenting their progress. 
·     Authentic Engagement
While it is easy to leverage points and grades to get students to do work, it is much more of a challenge to make course material engaging. When planning my classes, I generally operate under the assumption that none of my students would choose to come to my class if given an option for how to spend this block of time. They mostly just want to do the work to get the points to keep their parents happy. To create a class that is authentically engaging requires me to be attentive to my audience, to relate to my audience and to earn buy-in from my audience. It is constant work to cultivate intrinsic engagement, but it needs to be a starting point.
·     Accessible Entry Points
To nurture intrinsic motivation for a subject requires me to make the connection between the individual student and the course content. If I ask them to read a book that they don’t care about then give a writing prompt that they don’t care about, the results will be expectedly uninspired. All of our students can and should be challenged to learn new things, but these new things need to be put in the context of the world as they know it first.
·     Ban “Should”

Being a teacher can be frustrating, and sometimes I find myself saying that my students “should” know this or “should” be able to do something. As soon as I start “shoulding”, I defer my responsibility to meet that student where they are at. When I ban the word “should” from my thinking, I stop looking at the class as a whole, and am forced to see my students individually and differentiate my instruction according to their individual needs.
If these were my primary objectives for an English class, I wonder if it would be enough. Where does academic rigor fit in? Would this class be negligent in teaching course content and course-specific skills? Is my head so far in the clouds that my students would be unprepared for college reading and writing? 
Or maybe students in a class like this would actually get more out of my academic content than they would otherwise. Maybe they would become stronger writers and readers because I had created a space where they could engage with my instruction better. Maybe they would find internal motivation for reading challenging works of literature, crafting arguments, or even using semi-colons.  

Is this too idealistic? Maybe. Is it possible given the current system of college admissions? Maybe not. But as a teacher, I never have the delusion that I will find the magic lesson plan or book that solves all of my issues. This work is messy and beautiful, and the only thing I can ever hope is that I get better at it from year to year. The world is fundamentally different from when I was in high school and will be fundamentally different 25 years from now. One of the most invigorating aspects of this profession is that we get to be visionaries and look beyond how everything has gone up until now.