Melissa sent this link about why teachers dress so badly. :-) I'll be testing the assertion that "students don't actually notice how we look" when I do the fishbowl on the teachers' body. Dang - better get busy on that informed consent! Paperwork SUCKS.
teaching: September 2004 Archives
I've been thinking about David's involvement in my class's weblog....he asked, "How do I get [these students he's never met] to participate in a discussion about human interaction with me?"
I have a wild proposal. ;-)
Well. I talked with both the principals at Hannah's school where I'm doing the media literacy project about this opening with the 6th graders to show how they're influenced by media images about "sex". The school does great interpersonally ~ everyone is treated well with a lot of respect and regard ~ but sexual orientation or sexual identities never comes up in "normal" conversation. So, while the school treats everyone the same, everyone is not talked about in the same ways.
I played this game as an icebreaker with the 6th graders today - Day 1 of "media literacy" as part of the Health Curriculum. Each person has to give three statements about themself, two that are true and one that's a lie. The others have to guess which is a lie. For instance, I said:
I was born in Rhode Island.
Dogs are my favorite pets.
I go to school in Massachusetts.
Can you guess? :-) Anyway, the kids have fun with it and so did I. However, one "truth" threw me (and the teacher). He (the teacher) recovered and tried to save it but we'd already missed the moment and agreed we'll have to come back to it. One boy shared, "My sister died." When he said it, I had an odd reaction - like, that's not something someone would joke about it, and when one of the kids guessed that was the lie and he said, "No, it's true" there was a bit of a silence. Then a kid guessed one of the other statements correctly...we started to move on. A kid said, "Did your sister really die?" He said, "yeah"....bit of a silence, then the teacher shared his sister had died too but the next kid (at my request) was starting to share their three statements.
I was too caught off guard. We "should" have dealt with it as we had some of the other topics that came up, by asking who else had lost a sibling or member of their family, but somehow it was shocking in comparison with the other kinds of statements. Anyway, the teacher and I agreed that we'd come back to it at some point.
Well, David has successfully entered my COM250 class's blog, posted, and was immediately responded to by one of my intrepid students! :-) We'll see how far this can go. I don't want to dilute the group dynamic, sense of belonging and identity being developed, but I can see a broader interaction adding a lot to the students' learning. It's also giving me concrete ideas for next semester's Small Group course....he he he. :-)
I've been thinking about sharing the earlier post about the youth vote with my class, especially since Ben commented. Does sharing my passion that they ought to vote violate Fish's prescription not to my position as an educator to try and cultivate citizens? The fine line we were discussing about encouraging active and deep critical thinking without telling students WHAT to think is at issue here. If they look closely at my blog, they will be able to discern that I have a distinct preference as to WHO I wish they would vote for....
Sarbjeet told me about an activity he did with his students that I thought was awesome (and want to remember). :-) He showed them part of Jerry McGuire, when he shares his optimistic, value-based new plan with his co-workers and receives their applause. The cut-away shows people betting on how long he'll "make it" in the company. Sarbjeet then asked his students why they needed to know Jerry's values and led them into a discussion that I wish I could have witnessed!
I asked my students on Wednesday if any of them would be interested in volunteering for a video-session that might help me prepare for this panel presentation. It came up because some of the students had assumed Iíd use video as one of the teaching methods, and I explained that the only way Iíd use it would be to tape us doing our thing, then we would watch ìus doing our thingî and analyze the interaction. :-) There was a rather deep silence. I provided an example by introducing the notion of volunteers discussing my panel topic. Someone asked, ìWhatís the topic?î ìThe teacherís body.î Silence. ìWhat does that mean?î ìWhat I look like, how I move. How what I look like influences my teaching, what it means to you.î Silence. ;-) We moved on, but after class I got three volunteers! One of them asked me, ìWonít that be hard for you?î I explained that Iíd done similar things (being under that kind of scrutiny) but not for this particular topic. A kind of ìyes and noî answer. (Iím sure Iíll have plenty of visceral reactions when it happens!) And one of the students said to a peer something about turning around in slow motion. ìYeah, When she said that...it was like...whoa, did I just hear that? What did she mean?î
Iíd say weíre already up and running! I have to crank on informed consentÖ.
Class today was great. :-) Thoughtful debate about face-to-face and computer-mediated communication (F2F, CMC) ~ are they both, equally, "interpersonal communication"? We'll tease this out a bit through our use of the class weblog: how will it compare to the interactions we have in class?
We only got through a small portion of what I'd planned, but the time was well-spent and will serve us well as we develop norms for classroom discussion.
The goal of today was to demarcate what we'll study in this class, compared to other communication courses. The group charged with the task of giving us an initial definition of interpersonal communication came up with: "Any form of interaction between two or more people." We took each part of this definition and wound up reducing "any form" to F2F (mostly) and some CMC - physical presence, in the moment, simultaneous give & take, responsive. We eliminated all forms that are essentially monologic or performance-oriented (to an audience), and mass media. The word "between" took on a lot of meaning to several; and "interaction" emphasized connection and contact...we kept adding to this things like the importance of emotion and timeliness, as well as distinguisheing between intra- and inter-personal.
I went ahead with the reading assignment (on listening) even though we didn't get through all the small group share outs today. Most folks (if not everyone!) seem to be listening carefully, but there's nothing wrong with moving ahead on two fronts simultaneously. :-)
I am wicked psyched for my interpersonal communication class. They jammed on thier first blog posts. What an amazingly upbeat and inspiring tone they've already set for the class! No glitches with getting in, everyone posted on time, no drops (yet, smile). As far as I know, I still have a few slots open...
