TOP TEN

TOP 10 CEP 882 IDEAS

10. Less imagination and more creation:  You can imagine a rich world but can you describe it in writing?  You can invent the next must have product but can you craft it into being?  To make something compelling we have to have the skills to bring an idea to life.  The degree to which one can compel another is linked to how skilled they are in the manipulation of from.

9. Compelling experiences cause time travel:  Just a fancy way of saying that compelling experiences cause unfold and trap more of our attention, we are engaged in the experience longer and time seems to speed up, give enough time for your experience to sink into the student.

8. Compelling and pleasing are separate things:  As I tell my students while teaching reading comprehension techniques, “you don’t have to be motivated to like what your reading, instead find motivation to learn from your reading.”  Compelling learning experiences do not always have to resemble entertainment.

7. Most everything has forms:  Most things can be made compelling through the manipulation of its forms no matter how basic those forms maybe.

6. Do not underestimate the five senses:  That weird smell in your classroom caused by cheap microwaveable frozen Chinese food impacts student learning.  The color on the walls impacts learning.  The temperature impacts learning.  The volume of your voice impacts learning.  Get all the senses on your side through a compelling experience and impact learning positively.

5. Heavy constraints can be a major catalyst to creative thinking:  We are often times asked to “think outside the box” but rarely are we given enough constraints to construct a situation that requires abstract thinking.  Sometimes limiting your students will invoke creative thinking. 

4. The details matter:  Why does a film editor take so much time to decide if an edit should be made at 1:23:24 or 1:23:26?  It is because the smallest details often make or break the experience.  Students can be distracted or spurred on by numerous small influences.  Acknowledge them and use them to your advantage.

3. Experiences should have focus: Many teachers take an arbitrary approach to the idea of creating experiences.  How many field trips have students taken to the zoo where the main goal of the experience is…to go to the zoo?  Creating something compelling is not enough by itself, nature and design need to push new learning.

2.  Teaching musically:  It was the breakdown of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” that helped me form the idea of teaching through musical form.  I witnessed how music is created in such a way that it becomes quickly familiar but constantly surprising.

1: Teaching artistically: the idea that art is not a product but instead a way of looking at the world.  With this in mind, the teacher of any subject can use an artful approach to create a compelling experience for the student by approaching information in new and exciting ways.

BE HONEST ABOUT THE HOODIE

A hot topic in the media lately has been the hoodie, an article of clothing that has gained some recognition after the death of Treyvon Martin, a teenage Florida residence.   Let me start by stating that I have an adverse reaction to the hoodie mostly due to the time I spend with teenage drug addicts.  By and large their must wear item of clothing is an oversized hooded sweatshirt.

 Let’s take a moment to break down the design of this article of clothing.  From the name sweatshirt we can infer that the original purpose of this item was to serve as warm athletic clothing, the loose fit allows for full range of motion and the ability to layer.  The hood allows for covering your noggin without having to carry a separate hat or an umbrella.  The front pouch is open on both sides to allow easy access to storage while on the move.  Logos and graphics on sweatshirts are primarily but not exclusively related to sports or athletics.

Now ask yourself what is your experience when you come across a group of teenage boys, let’s say at the movie theater, who are all sporting overly large hooded sweatshirts?  Do you think, “hey those guys must really like to play sports!”  A common sentiment is that they are hiding in their clothes and it can give one a suspicious and uneasy feeling. 

Are we narrow minded when look upon the fashion of others and derive negative assumptions from the way they present themselves? I personally think that fashion is an indicator of intention or practice and as an educator a lot of information can be gleaned from these indicators.  I’m not suggesting we judge a child by what they choose to wear.  However, it would be unwise to discount the information that we can gain from how an individual presents themselves to society, even if the information we receive is negative, as is often the case with hoodies. 

Teaching with music in mind.

At one point in this week’s reading Aaron Copland explains that a gifted listener is a “listener who intends to retain his amateur status.”   He goes on to say that he, as a composer, is excited by the thought of someone listening to his music and will react to it in a completely spontaneous and unpredictable manner.  This, to me, sounds much like the payoff teachers receive from their students and that wonderful moment when the metaphorical light bulb of cognitive discovery lights up.  If we approach our teaching content as music, as something meant to invoke imagination and creation then we might be able to draw students to subjects such as biology or algebra with the same zeal as most humans are drawn to one type of music or another. 

Can you imagine a lesson in History constructed in a musical form?  Think of the depth of music, the layers of new experiences overlapping redundant rhythms and circular scales.  The Rhythm is what you really want your students to learn; you bang on it over and over and over again.  On top of that you lay exciting details that push the learning process forward while keeping the listener on their toes.  As a person lacking musical knowledge it is a hard idea to put into words, but if I close my eyes and listen to a piece of music, then imagine a lesson structure in the same form, it starts to make sense to me.

DUB STEP.....WHY?

DUB STEP  SHOWS I’M GETTING OLD

I have read all of the twilight books, subscribe to people magazine, and listened to more Skrillex than is advisable for any single human being , all for the sake of staying connected to my students and building trust through mutual experiences. 

For many of my students music is a large part of who they are.  In fact, I am convinced that some of them will eventually have to have their iPods surgically removed from their ear canals.  There is perhaps one form of music that my students love but I personally cannot wrap my head around.  This, as the above title implies, is dub step.  Dub step is defined by wikipedia as:

“a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London, United Kingdom. Its overall sound has been described as "tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals"^[

This is how I define it, “crap.”  I know that this seems like a closed minded and harsh interpretation but I view it more as a rite of passage, it is the same definition my father gave to hip hop and his father gave to rock and roll.  After reading the  assigned passages I now have a new arsenal of knowledge with which to attempt to understand this type of music.  It is my sincere hope that I’ll be able to engage my students in evaluating the nuances of their favorite music because in my experience, when I’m open minded to what they are telling me, they are more likely to be more open minded to what I’m teaching them.  I don’t have to like dub step to understand it, all I have to do is figure out what makes it so compelling.

Interior Design Project

My Project

The Muppets

    

The other day I had the good fortune to come across a documentary film entitled, "Being Elmo".  This film chronicles the journey of Kevin Clash, the puppeteer who created the Sesame St. character Elmo.  This film had CEP 882 written all over it.  Viewers are given an inside look into the process and thinking behind the creation of some of the most beloved Muppet characters as well as the motivation and personality of the people who bring them to life.

    In the film, Kevin recalls the first time that he saw Sesame St. on his television.  Oddly enough his first impression was not of the actors or the Muppets themselves.  Instead Kevin reacted to the setting of the show and how it resembled his home, an impoverished Baltimore neighborhood. I immediately thought of the genius of the set designers and how hard it must have been to design a space that was both visually unique and familiar to the audience.  The designers used lighting and proportion to give Sesame St. the illusion of a much larger and complex space.

    How does this relate to education?  Think of the importance of the environment created for this show, a show designed for the express purpose of educating children.  It is a place children want to inhabit, to become a part of.  It is a comfortable place because it resembles home and it becomes an interesting place due to the new and interesting characters that populate this space.  As educators we could learn a thing or two from Sesame St. about the importance the physical environment plays in the learning process.  We need to create environments that are simultaneously comfortable and engaging in order to get the most out of a student.  Perhaps we could spend some time populating our classrooms with a character or two and if we are lucky a child will be too busy having fun to realize he/she is actually learning.

Not so NICE

All that I have previously known about interior design I have gleaned from many hours spent in my recliner, reading books, while my wife watches HGTV.  One particular show that she likes to watch has couples searching for their perfect house.  As the couples are shown a house that they enjoy, they almost always reply with something similar to the following statements:

1.       “Wow! This is nice!”

2.       “This fire Place is nice”

3.       “I really like this kitchen, it’s a nice kitchen”

4.       “The bedroom has nice square footage”

These are just a few out of millions of responses from couples on this show that have highlighted, emphasized or suggested how nice something is.  In Sarah Suskana’s introduction on home design she mentions the lack of a common vocabulary to describe why a space feels like home.  I could think of no better example of this than my wife’s favorite TV show. 

The connection to education is one of vocabulary, when the teacher lacks the proper tools to describe an experience or fails to build a fundamental vocabulary related to an experience, then that experience will become extremely hard for the student to reproduce.  How could someone ever make a house feel like home if all they know is that home feels “nice”.