Greece vs Persia seems easy to us raised in the "Western Tradition." Who doesn't love Greece? The temples, the statues, the philosophers, the plays and poems...the birthplace of democracy, of Socratic reasoning and scientific inquiry...These are all beloved icons of our cultural heritage. And then the wars with Persia: brave, outnumbered Greeks fighting the hordes of Persian soldiers to preserve their independence. What's to debate?
Of course a little bit of objective inquiry might balance the picture. Greek society was heavily dependent on slavery, not only in militaristic Sparta but in glorious Athens as well. Women had almost no status in Greece, and peasants and other poor people were routinely exploited. Greek society was also warlike with constant fighting among the city-states. Not an easy place to raise your family if you're just a regular working guy.
On the other hand, the Achaemenid Persian Empire had much to recommend it. The dominant religion of Persia, Zoroastrianism, discouraged slavery and invited everyone to seek salvation. The empire allowed conquered regions to maintain their religions and other cultural traditions. Persia built roads and irrigation canals to improve agriculture and commerce. Perhaps most important, peace prevailed throughout the empire. Maybe an easier place to raise your family if you're just a regular working guy.
Students sort of get the debatable points here. They've all seen The 300, but some of them thought the tolerance and prosperity of the Persian Empire were attractive. The prevalence of slavery certainly gives them pause as does the rigid patriarchy. This sort of historical comparison and analysis is the main stuff of AP world history, and it's so much more interesting than just a bunch of factoids.
Next up: the main event of the classical era, the Roman Empire vs Han Dynasty China.
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Thursday, September 10, 2015
The first big value based discussion in AP World History is about the Neolithic Revolution, the transition to agriculture and animal husbandry from a hunter gatherer lifestyle. The result was a more reliable and abundant food supply, but less varied and thus less healthy. The cost was harder work and the emergence of class and gender hierarchy. Agriculture led to settlements (cities eventually) in which some people could accumulate more wealth. It also led to more children that women tended to stay home to raise, and the field work was harder than hunting and gathering so men's upper body strength was useful. Voila! patriarchy and class divisions.
It's hard to imagine a world of hunter/foraging, and there certainly wouldn't be 7 billion people. But humanity got along just fine thank you for a couple hundred thousand years that way. Less work, more free time, healthier diet, more equality...leaves and rabbit salad anyone?
When confronted with this choice, most students choose agriculture, but some actually say they'd prefer the hunter/gatherer lifestyle. They like the freedom and the ability to travel around. And some opt for the "compromise" pastoral lifestyle. Good luck to all of them!
Next: Life in Persia or in Greece...which was better?
It's hard to imagine a world of hunter/foraging, and there certainly wouldn't be 7 billion people. But humanity got along just fine thank you for a couple hundred thousand years that way. Less work, more free time, healthier diet, more equality...leaves and rabbit salad anyone?
When confronted with this choice, most students choose agriculture, but some actually say they'd prefer the hunter/gatherer lifestyle. They like the freedom and the ability to travel around. And some opt for the "compromise" pastoral lifestyle. Good luck to all of them!
Next: Life in Persia or in Greece...which was better?
Saturday, August 29, 2015
Now I'm teaching AP World History at the fabled Los Angeles magnet school LACES (Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies). It's my fourth year at LACES teaching this wonderful subject, and it cries out for blogging! (one blog per century maybe?) Anyway I'm going to resist the tendency to write long posts this time around. Suffice it to say that I like LACES a lot. I am struck by the fact that 30 years ago I worked in a group called the Integration Project to integrate the LA schools and now I teach at one of the outcomes of that struggle, a series of integrated magnet schools. Karma? You decide.
Historically speaking, I become more and more interested in the Bronze Age Collapse in which a series of interconnected and complex societies in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East area all collapsed or declined within about a hundred years around 1200 BCE. That would be the Hittite Empire, Minoan and Mycenaean cultures, and the kingdoms of the Levant and Mesopotamia (all destroyed) and Egypt (permanently weakened). All of these cultures were connected by a dense web of trade, diplomacy and war (sound familiar, 21st century?). The cause of this system-wide collapse is one of the great historical mysteries. Was it the legendary "sea people" invading from the north? or a devastating "earthquake storm"? or peasant rebellions? or some combination of these factors? This remains a topic of lively debate.
The similarity with the current world situation is striking. A series of independent cultures all highly interdependent through trade and diplomacy, a world-system delicately balanced on a fulcrum of law and finance hanging precariously over a roiling sea of poverty and injustice. Silicon Age Collapse anyone?
Historically speaking, I become more and more interested in the Bronze Age Collapse in which a series of interconnected and complex societies in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East area all collapsed or declined within about a hundred years around 1200 BCE. That would be the Hittite Empire, Minoan and Mycenaean cultures, and the kingdoms of the Levant and Mesopotamia (all destroyed) and Egypt (permanently weakened). All of these cultures were connected by a dense web of trade, diplomacy and war (sound familiar, 21st century?). The cause of this system-wide collapse is one of the great historical mysteries. Was it the legendary "sea people" invading from the north? or a devastating "earthquake storm"? or peasant rebellions? or some combination of these factors? This remains a topic of lively debate.
The similarity with the current world situation is striking. A series of independent cultures all highly interdependent through trade and diplomacy, a world-system delicately balanced on a fulcrum of law and finance hanging precariously over a roiling sea of poverty and injustice. Silicon Age Collapse anyone?
Saturday, July 14, 2012
First project: Getting to Know You
I started off in September with a project called “Getting To Know You” that I got from my friend of many years Linda Guthrie. The goal of the project is to get to know the other students in the class. This knowledge is then presented in description, graphic, and oral forms.
I began the project with large and small group discussions of what it means to get to know someone. Students reflect on what they want others to know about them and what they want to know about others as they get to know them. Thinking about their own qualities and how they want to be seen by others is a red meat topic for adolescents which makes this a winning project. Writing on this topic is one part of the project.
From these discussions students develop a set of questions they would ask other students in an effort to get to know them. They use these questions to interview a certain number of other students in the class, taking notes on the answers. These interviews are the basis for multi-paragraph essays on individual students. Some of these were done on the laptops.
Again through discussion the students develop a set of simple preferences that each student can express, such as “favorite movie” or “favorite food.” Each student then asks every other student to answer these questions, and the results are entered into a grid. This information can be graphed, and I asked the three math teachers my students had if they would handle this part of the project. This had mixed results, but in the best case it resulted in a nice set of graphs of different types. Students then wrote brief explanations of the data in each graph.
Another written part of the project asked students to discuss how they thought the class would be during the year ahead. This also involved some discussion before writing.
Another written part of the project asked students to discuss how they thought the class would be during the year ahead. This also involved some discussion before writing.
The final part of the project was to make a podcast or movie of some part of the project--interviews, graphs, etc. This could have been supplemented by a class blog or small group dramatizations, but it was already getting a little long.
I really liked this project as a way to start the year. Students develop a sense of unity as a class. They got to know students they didn’t know before. They spent a lot of time talking to each other (which they’re going to do anyway). There was a nice variety of writing assignments and many possibilities for extension into other media. The link with the math teachers worked well with one teacher, not so well with the others. More preparation would be needed on this part next time.
I look forward to improving this project and using it next year. It could be adapted for any grade level.
Next: Narrative Project on learning about right and wrong.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
The view from the ice floe
Whew! Another year of seventh grade boys is over! I have worked my butt off these past two years at Young Oak Kim Academy. This year was just as hard as the one before, but I was more successful. I implemented a completely project based curriculum, and I did less yelling. My classes were still noisy, (and unfortunately I had a neighbor who was very sensitive to noise and called the principal frequently to complain), but they also did a lot of very interesting work, much of it on the computer.
For some reason I didn’t have the energy to blog this year, but I was even more engaged in my teaching. Thanks in part to my friend Linda Guthrie I had a set of five very engaging, high interest projects that corresponded to the writing domains in the district curriculum. I was actually one of the few teachers to use a project based curriculum at YOKA, notwithstanding the school’s and district’s stated intention to encourage PBL. I also used the computers extensively, more than most of the other teachers. My seventh grade boys learned to write and research on the computer, and they produced documents with headings, illustrations, title pages, bibliographies, tables of contents, etc. Bravi ragazzi!
My reward for all of this hard work and successful teaching was...to be displaced from YOKA, cut loose to find another school to start over at. It could have been worse since I did get a RIF notice, but at least that was rescinded. I’m not happy about having to start over at another school with different classes & students, different colleagues, etc. I like to stay in one place long enough to be part of the culture. Teaching is hard enough without having the stress of a new situation. I can’t help feeling like I’m on a shrinking piece of ice being pushed out towards the deep water.
Now this isn’t anyone’s fault (except maybe Ronald Reagan’s). The school had one too many English teachers, and I have low seniority since I only returned to the district six years ago. So now I’m looking for a job...calling principals every day...asking for an interview...wondering how they react to my unusual resume (and my obvious advanced age)...hoping I don’t get something too far away or too awful.
That’s life on the ice floe.
In the meantime, I’m going to write a series of entries for this blog about the past school year, the projects I assigned, the problems I had, the victories I enjoyed. Stay tuned.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
I'm back....and YOKA goes to MOCA
Whew! It's been a while since I posted. I'll try to bring you up to speed, but first some comments about my field trip last week:
Today the art teacher Mr. Greene and I took about seventy students to the Museum of Contemporary Art on Grand Avenue. Before that we also visited the Central Library on Fifth Street, and then we walked up the Library Stairs to Bunker Hill and MOCA. After visiting the museum we had lunch in the Water Court. All in all it was a wonderful day. The students were well behaved and enjoyed the new experiences, new places, new environments.
This was our second field trip as part of the Pacific Standard Time project in education. In December we went to Disney Hall to hear the LA Phil rehearsing for their evening concert. I love to take students on outings like this. You can almost literally see them stretching their wings as they encounter a new part of the big world around them. There is NO substitute for this kind of exposure, and it’s a real loss to our children that field trips have become so rare.
A couple of aspects of this trip made a big impression on me. First of all, their reaction to the art in MOCA was perfectly appropriate to first seeing Rothko or Pollock or Segal or a bent piece of wire or a blue plastic tube. “This is art?” “I could do this!” “My little brother could make this!” “This doesn’t even look like a person!” etc. But they looked, they discussed, they studied these things. Who knows what thoughts lodged deep in their minds, only to emerge later as they mature and remember that strange painting they saw on a field trip in 7th grade?
Then at lunch I watched as they sat around the tables at the Water Court among the office workers and executives from the towers of Bunker Hill, eating lunch, chatting, laughing, having a good time. Mariano was so excited to have had TWO frappacinos, and Luis discovered Angel’s Flight and showed his friends. At moments like these I can imagine them as grown ups, and that definitely gives a good spin to the backbreaking labor of teaching them in seventh grade.
So although a field trip is a long day on my feet, with a lot of preparation and no duty free moments, it’s well worth the effort. I hope there will be many more.
Today the art teacher Mr. Greene and I took about seventy students to the Museum of Contemporary Art on Grand Avenue. Before that we also visited the Central Library on Fifth Street, and then we walked up the Library Stairs to Bunker Hill and MOCA. After visiting the museum we had lunch in the Water Court. All in all it was a wonderful day. The students were well behaved and enjoyed the new experiences, new places, new environments.
This was our second field trip as part of the Pacific Standard Time project in education. In December we went to Disney Hall to hear the LA Phil rehearsing for their evening concert. I love to take students on outings like this. You can almost literally see them stretching their wings as they encounter a new part of the big world around them. There is NO substitute for this kind of exposure, and it’s a real loss to our children that field trips have become so rare.
A couple of aspects of this trip made a big impression on me. First of all, their reaction to the art in MOCA was perfectly appropriate to first seeing Rothko or Pollock or Segal or a bent piece of wire or a blue plastic tube. “This is art?” “I could do this!” “My little brother could make this!” “This doesn’t even look like a person!” etc. But they looked, they discussed, they studied these things. Who knows what thoughts lodged deep in their minds, only to emerge later as they mature and remember that strange painting they saw on a field trip in 7th grade?
Then at lunch I watched as they sat around the tables at the Water Court among the office workers and executives from the towers of Bunker Hill, eating lunch, chatting, laughing, having a good time. Mariano was so excited to have had TWO frappacinos, and Luis discovered Angel’s Flight and showed his friends. At moments like these I can imagine them as grown ups, and that definitely gives a good spin to the backbreaking labor of teaching them in seventh grade.
So although a field trip is a long day on my feet, with a lot of preparation and no duty free moments, it’s well worth the effort. I hope there will be many more.
Monday, August 22, 2011
In training, training, training
Since I had the summer off without income I went to as many paid trainings as I could. All in all I participated in three multi-day trainings:
1. Teaching reading to students who were many years behind grade level. I went to this with three colleagues from YOKA. One day covered a very elaborate system of teaching phonics (fawniks? phaunicks? fonix?). The other days reviewed many techniques and activities for remediating students reading abilities. I think these techniques will be useful, although they hardly ever mentioned writing which I think should be part of improving reading skills.
2. Project Based Learning. Seven of us from YOKA attended this five-day training held at my son’s alma mater, Miguel Contreras Learning Complex. We were given some basic guidance in designing projects and lots of time to work together to plan projects. This was like heaven for teachers--paid time to collaborate on lesson planning. A couple of other teachers and I took the time to plan a project for advisory called “High School Here I Come.” The goal of the project is to prepare our eighth grade advisory students for high school through various kinds of research and group work. Later I worked on a project for the first writing domain--a narrative anthology done by small groups. And I got to know some of my colleagues! Five days well spent.
3. Scholastic’s “Read 180” reading program. This is the District’s big bold and beautiful remedial reading program (the latest in a looooooong line of such programs). It required a three day training downtown in the big house, with an appetizer day devoted to “Reducing disruptive behavior.” (More on that later.) Read 180 is a comprehensive, thorough, multifaceted program. It provides a wealth of materials--novels, workbooks, posters, cds, dvds--and a detailed prescription of how to structure class time and student work. (And I do mean DETAILED!) The trainers were experienced classroom teachers with extensive experience teaching reading using this program. The program was better than I expected, although again writing was sadly neglected. I’m not even sure I’ll be teaching reading, but it was interesting to see what the district is using to try to meet the needs of students who have fallen behind in reading.
I also learned something very important about stopping disruptive behavior. There are plenty of studies showing that behavior acknowledged by the teacher will be repeated more often. In one study, for example, some teachers responded immediately to students who interrupted the lesson while others continued the lesson. In the classes where the teacher responded immediately to the disruptive behavior, that same behavior became more frequent. In the classes where the teacher ignored the behavior, it diminished.
The lesson is: DON’T ACKNOWLEDGE THE DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR. Instead, when a student disrupts the lesson, the teacher should somehow acknowledge the correct behavior that most students are exhibiting and only indirectly indicate to the disruptor that he should stop. Later, privately, the teacher can speak directly to the disruptor.
This makes sense to me, although it’s going to be hard to ignore disruptions. The natural impulse is to tell the student to sit down or be quiet or put down the pencil or whatever. The correct action, however, is to say something positive to the students who are listening or reading or otherwise doing what you asked them to do, thus implying to the misbehaving student that he should cut it out. The basic premise is thus: Don’t let anything short of an earthquake interrupt your instruction!
That’s good advice, and it fits with the intensive planning I’m doing in preparation for the start of school. More on that in coming posts.
Also coming up: A wonderful teacher story, inspiring to all of us in the profession.
1. Teaching reading to students who were many years behind grade level. I went to this with three colleagues from YOKA. One day covered a very elaborate system of teaching phonics (fawniks? phaunicks? fonix?). The other days reviewed many techniques and activities for remediating students reading abilities. I think these techniques will be useful, although they hardly ever mentioned writing which I think should be part of improving reading skills.
2. Project Based Learning. Seven of us from YOKA attended this five-day training held at my son’s alma mater, Miguel Contreras Learning Complex. We were given some basic guidance in designing projects and lots of time to work together to plan projects. This was like heaven for teachers--paid time to collaborate on lesson planning. A couple of other teachers and I took the time to plan a project for advisory called “High School Here I Come.” The goal of the project is to prepare our eighth grade advisory students for high school through various kinds of research and group work. Later I worked on a project for the first writing domain--a narrative anthology done by small groups. And I got to know some of my colleagues! Five days well spent.
3. Scholastic’s “Read 180” reading program. This is the District’s big bold and beautiful remedial reading program (the latest in a looooooong line of such programs). It required a three day training downtown in the big house, with an appetizer day devoted to “Reducing disruptive behavior.” (More on that later.) Read 180 is a comprehensive, thorough, multifaceted program. It provides a wealth of materials--novels, workbooks, posters, cds, dvds--and a detailed prescription of how to structure class time and student work. (And I do mean DETAILED!) The trainers were experienced classroom teachers with extensive experience teaching reading using this program. The program was better than I expected, although again writing was sadly neglected. I’m not even sure I’ll be teaching reading, but it was interesting to see what the district is using to try to meet the needs of students who have fallen behind in reading.
I also learned something very important about stopping disruptive behavior. There are plenty of studies showing that behavior acknowledged by the teacher will be repeated more often. In one study, for example, some teachers responded immediately to students who interrupted the lesson while others continued the lesson. In the classes where the teacher responded immediately to the disruptive behavior, that same behavior became more frequent. In the classes where the teacher ignored the behavior, it diminished.
The lesson is: DON’T ACKNOWLEDGE THE DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR. Instead, when a student disrupts the lesson, the teacher should somehow acknowledge the correct behavior that most students are exhibiting and only indirectly indicate to the disruptor that he should stop. Later, privately, the teacher can speak directly to the disruptor.
This makes sense to me, although it’s going to be hard to ignore disruptions. The natural impulse is to tell the student to sit down or be quiet or put down the pencil or whatever. The correct action, however, is to say something positive to the students who are listening or reading or otherwise doing what you asked them to do, thus implying to the misbehaving student that he should cut it out. The basic premise is thus: Don’t let anything short of an earthquake interrupt your instruction!
That’s good advice, and it fits with the intensive planning I’m doing in preparation for the start of school. More on that in coming posts.
Also coming up: A wonderful teacher story, inspiring to all of us in the profession.
Musical Marathon, parts 3 & 4: Charles Dickens meets the Ice Princess
Monday, July 18
On Saturday I saw the musical “Twist” at the Pasadena Playhouse. It’s a jazzy retelling of the Oliver Twist story set in depression-era New Orleans. It was a very enjoyable evening with lots of wonderful singing and dancing by the mostly Black cast. The story of course is touching and the songs were catchy and plentiful. It wasn’t the life-affirming apotheosis triggered by Bob Dylan the night before, or the thrilling inspiration of Les Miserables the night before that, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening of theater in my favorite venue, the Pasadena Playhouse.
Then on Sunday I went to the Hollywood Bowl for a concert performance of Puccini’s last opera, “Turandot.” Our own wunderkind Gustavo Dudamel was conducting and the cast included Christine Brewer and Hei Kyung Hong. I love this opera, which was unfinished when Puccini died suddenly of throat cancer. The title role is known as a voice-killer for its high tessitura and dramatic power. Turandot is a Chinese princess who dares her suitors to answer three riddles and then beheads them when they can’t. Great Turandot’s have included Maria Callas, Birgit Nilsson, and Joan Sutherland. The other soprano part, Liu, is a slave girl in love with the tenor Calaf, who is smitten by the icy princess and risks his life to woo her. Liu’s singing is tender and poignant. Calaf's is ringing and heroic. His most famous part is the aria “Nessun Dorma” made famous by Pavarotti.
I enjoyed the performance very much. Dudamel is a thrilling conductor, and he drew every bit of high drama from Puccini’s lush score. Christine Brewer is a vivid singing actress with the vocal chops to survive Puccini’s challenges, and Hei Kyung Hong has a beautiful lyric voice filled with pathos. The tenor was energetic if not very memorable. All in all it was a fitting conclusion to my July musical marathon.
On Saturday I saw the musical “Twist” at the Pasadena Playhouse. It’s a jazzy retelling of the Oliver Twist story set in depression-era New Orleans. It was a very enjoyable evening with lots of wonderful singing and dancing by the mostly Black cast. The story of course is touching and the songs were catchy and plentiful. It wasn’t the life-affirming apotheosis triggered by Bob Dylan the night before, or the thrilling inspiration of Les Miserables the night before that, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening of theater in my favorite venue, the Pasadena Playhouse.
Then on Sunday I went to the Hollywood Bowl for a concert performance of Puccini’s last opera, “Turandot.” Our own wunderkind Gustavo Dudamel was conducting and the cast included Christine Brewer and Hei Kyung Hong. I love this opera, which was unfinished when Puccini died suddenly of throat cancer. The title role is known as a voice-killer for its high tessitura and dramatic power. Turandot is a Chinese princess who dares her suitors to answer three riddles and then beheads them when they can’t. Great Turandot’s have included Maria Callas, Birgit Nilsson, and Joan Sutherland. The other soprano part, Liu, is a slave girl in love with the tenor Calaf, who is smitten by the icy princess and risks his life to woo her. Liu’s singing is tender and poignant. Calaf's is ringing and heroic. His most famous part is the aria “Nessun Dorma” made famous by Pavarotti.
I enjoyed the performance very much. Dudamel is a thrilling conductor, and he drew every bit of high drama from Puccini’s lush score. Christine Brewer is a vivid singing actress with the vocal chops to survive Puccini’s challenges, and Hei Kyung Hong has a beautiful lyric voice filled with pathos. The tenor was energetic if not very memorable. All in all it was a fitting conclusion to my July musical marathon.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Musical Marathon, part 2--Bob Dylan
Fri, July 15
My July music marathon continued with Bob Dylan’s concert at the Orange County Fair. Here’s a brief timeline of my relationship with Dylan:
I am especially crazy about his music since Oh Mercy in 1989 (Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, Modern Times, Together Through Life). To my peers who haven’t followed him recently, I highly recommend these five CDs. I think they are the equal of his early triumphs. Dylan has aged and his music evolved just as we all have. Rather than endlessly recycling early hits Dylan has written original, profound, and tuneful songs about getting old, being old, looking back on your life and facing your death. These recent five CDs provide the view back at a life lived just as the early songs shone light on an uncertain and frightening future.
With all of this under my belt, I went to see Dylan last year in Las Vegas. I invited a good friend and former student who lives there and who had no particular attachment to Dylan. Despite all the build up, I couldn’t help being a little disappointed in the concert. I couldn’t understand most of the words and I couldn’t see Dylan very well. Even the tunes were hard to identify since he never tries to reproduce the original versions. I still loved all the music, and I heard many accounts of Dylan concerts that were similarly ambivalent. (My friend was totally frustrated at the incomprehensible lyrics and gave up on Dylan, at least in live concert.)
When I heard that Dylan would open the Orange County Fair, I decided that I wanted to see him as often as I could since I had missed so many years--and at 70 he might not have that many concerts left. So I headed down to my old stomping ground of coastal Orange County to the OC Fair. I resisted the deep fried twinkies and chocolate covered bacon and headed to the amphitheater. The first thing I noticed was how many old geezers were there....Then I realized they were my peers! Yes a lot of folks in their sixties actually made it to another big outdoor rock concert! Good for us!
There was no opening act. Bob just came out with his current band and started playing. He played 17 songs:
Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
Things Have Changed
Tangled Up In Blue
Beyond Here Lies Nothin' (Bob on guitar)
Sugar Baby
High Water (For Charley Patton)
Tryin' To Get To Heaven
Summer Days
A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
Highway 61 Revisited
Forgetful Heart
Thunder On The Mountain
Ballad Of A Thin Man
(encores)
Like A Rolling Stone
All Along The Watchtower
Blowin' In The Wind.
You’ll notice that they range from old songs (Blowin in the Wind, Like a Rolling Stone, Ballad of a Thin Man, etc.) to new songs (Beyond Here Lies Nothin, Thunder on the Mountain) and some in between (Tangled up in Blue, Watchtower). I can’t think of anyone who could put together such a powerful concert with songs spanning half a century.
(By the way, you can find playlists and reviews from all of Dylan's concerts back to 1995 at boblinks.com. This website makes clear that Bob Dylan still has an incredibly loyal following around the world. Check it out. You can also see the set list with links to the lyrics of all his songs at bobdylan.com.)
Dylan doesn’t talk between songs, except for introducing the band members before the encores. They just play and he sings. This time I was prepared. I had binoculars and I spent most of the time looking through them. Dylan definitely has moves! They are sort of old man moves, but he moves to the music in his own way. And he smiled every so often as he sang.
Perhaps because of this visual connection I could identify most of the songs. Although they sounded different from the CD, they were all undeniably great songs. I got more and more into the music with each song. As always, Tangled Up in Blue stirred me with its glimpse into life’s complexity, and A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall is still ominous and menacing.
I was especially taken by Ballad of a Thin Man (Because something is happening here--But you don’t know what it is--Do you, Mister Jones?) which seems so timely (Mr. Boehner? Mr. Rove? Mr. Romney?). With that song I realized that Bob Dylan still speaks to us from outside the halls of power, outside the conventional wisdom, outside the comfortable illusions that flood our lives and drown out our true voices.
Bob Dylan still follows his own path and just sings it like it is. He’s been rich and famous for over 50 years, but he’s not part of any establishment. He continues to represent the best of our generation by urging us to eschew conformity and conceit and to be true to ourselves. And he still travels around the country singing for all of us night after night. Bravo Bob!
So I drove home from Costa Mesa inspired and exhilarated, Dylan blasting on the stereo. What could top this?
Tomorrow night--a new musical at the Pasadena Playhouse called Twist (from Charles Dickens, not Chubby Checkers).
My July music marathon continued with Bob Dylan’s concert at the Orange County Fair. Here’s a brief timeline of my relationship with Dylan:
- 1960’s: I loved all his earliest work up through about Nashville Skyline while I was in college. He was the king of attitude, the poet of my generation.
- 1970’s-2000‘s: Dylan was in the background of my musical life. I listened to opera, then great American songbook. I didn’t know his music at all.
- 2008: I saw jazz singer Paula West in San Francisco, and she included Like a Rolling Stone in her set. I realized what a great song it was and decided it was time to revisit this idol of my youth.
I am especially crazy about his music since Oh Mercy in 1989 (Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, Modern Times, Together Through Life). To my peers who haven’t followed him recently, I highly recommend these five CDs. I think they are the equal of his early triumphs. Dylan has aged and his music evolved just as we all have. Rather than endlessly recycling early hits Dylan has written original, profound, and tuneful songs about getting old, being old, looking back on your life and facing your death. These recent five CDs provide the view back at a life lived just as the early songs shone light on an uncertain and frightening future.
With all of this under my belt, I went to see Dylan last year in Las Vegas. I invited a good friend and former student who lives there and who had no particular attachment to Dylan. Despite all the build up, I couldn’t help being a little disappointed in the concert. I couldn’t understand most of the words and I couldn’t see Dylan very well. Even the tunes were hard to identify since he never tries to reproduce the original versions. I still loved all the music, and I heard many accounts of Dylan concerts that were similarly ambivalent. (My friend was totally frustrated at the incomprehensible lyrics and gave up on Dylan, at least in live concert.)
When I heard that Dylan would open the Orange County Fair, I decided that I wanted to see him as often as I could since I had missed so many years--and at 70 he might not have that many concerts left. So I headed down to my old stomping ground of coastal Orange County to the OC Fair. I resisted the deep fried twinkies and chocolate covered bacon and headed to the amphitheater. The first thing I noticed was how many old geezers were there....Then I realized they were my peers! Yes a lot of folks in their sixties actually made it to another big outdoor rock concert! Good for us!
There was no opening act. Bob just came out with his current band and started playing. He played 17 songs:
Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
Things Have Changed
Tangled Up In Blue
Beyond Here Lies Nothin' (Bob on guitar)
Sugar Baby
High Water (For Charley Patton)
Tryin' To Get To Heaven
Summer Days
A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
Highway 61 Revisited
Forgetful Heart
Thunder On The Mountain
Ballad Of A Thin Man
(encores)
Like A Rolling Stone
All Along The Watchtower
Blowin' In The Wind.
You’ll notice that they range from old songs (Blowin in the Wind, Like a Rolling Stone, Ballad of a Thin Man, etc.) to new songs (Beyond Here Lies Nothin, Thunder on the Mountain) and some in between (Tangled up in Blue, Watchtower). I can’t think of anyone who could put together such a powerful concert with songs spanning half a century.
(By the way, you can find playlists and reviews from all of Dylan's concerts back to 1995 at boblinks.com. This website makes clear that Bob Dylan still has an incredibly loyal following around the world. Check it out. You can also see the set list with links to the lyrics of all his songs at bobdylan.com.)
Dylan doesn’t talk between songs, except for introducing the band members before the encores. They just play and he sings. This time I was prepared. I had binoculars and I spent most of the time looking through them. Dylan definitely has moves! They are sort of old man moves, but he moves to the music in his own way. And he smiled every so often as he sang.
Perhaps because of this visual connection I could identify most of the songs. Although they sounded different from the CD, they were all undeniably great songs. I got more and more into the music with each song. As always, Tangled Up in Blue stirred me with its glimpse into life’s complexity, and A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall is still ominous and menacing.
I was especially taken by Ballad of a Thin Man (Because something is happening here--But you don’t know what it is--Do you, Mister Jones?) which seems so timely (Mr. Boehner? Mr. Rove? Mr. Romney?). With that song I realized that Bob Dylan still speaks to us from outside the halls of power, outside the conventional wisdom, outside the comfortable illusions that flood our lives and drown out our true voices.
Bob Dylan still follows his own path and just sings it like it is. He’s been rich and famous for over 50 years, but he’s not part of any establishment. He continues to represent the best of our generation by urging us to eschew conformity and conceit and to be true to ourselves. And he still travels around the country singing for all of us night after night. Bravo Bob!
So I drove home from Costa Mesa inspired and exhilarated, Dylan blasting on the stereo. What could top this?
Tomorrow night--a new musical at the Pasadena Playhouse called Twist (from Charles Dickens, not Chubby Checkers).
Monday, July 25, 2011
Musical Marathon, part 1--Les Miserables again
Bastille Day! Thurs, July 14
My summer music marathon began very appropriately with a second performance of Les Miserables. I was reasonably certain that I would enjoy the performance as much as I did a couple of weeks ago, and I was right. I loved it! Perhaps because it was on Bastille Day, the audience seemed even more excited and enthusiastic.
As with any great work of music, the more I listen the more I hear. I was again swept along by the emotional and historical waves in this opera, but I also noticed more about how musical themes recurred in different forms at different points in the story. This serves to connect the sprawling narrative into a focused story and also amplifies the emotional echoes among the many characters and events.
(By the way, I think Les Miserables is an opera. It is sung through with no spoken dialogue, and it requires operatic type voices. If Nixon in China, Dead Man Walking, and other modern works are operas, why not Les Miserables?)
I was again struck by the Verdian aspects in this opera. Verdi often addressed the issues that arise when individuals try to reconcile their personal life situations with their roles in history, and this is a major theme in Les Mis. Javert's ultimate self-destruction is rooted in his inability to reconcile his personal feelings with the social order. Marius and his fellow student revolutionaries sacrifice their personal lives for a social movement, while Valjean intervenes to rescue Cosette's personal happiness from the defeat of the revolution.
Verdi also often wrote about parent-child, and especially father-daughter relations (Nabucco, Luisa Miller, Rigoletto, Traviata, Trovatore, Boccanegra, Aida, etc.), and they are often more important than the romantic relationships in the story. This is also the case in Les Mis where the relation between Valjean and Cosette is central to the whole story and links Valjean’s past and Fantine with Marius and Eponine and the student uprising they are part of. (Note how the degraded father-daughter relationship between Thenardier and Eponine parallels the Valjean-Cosette relationship.)
It’s clear to me that Boublil and Schonberg were Verdi lovers, but their primary inspiration is obviously the French Romantic writer Victor Hugo. This provides another link with Verdi who used dramas by Hugo for two of his most popular operas (Ernani and Rigoletto). Both Verdi and Hugo were Romantics and tried to reflect in their art the vast panorama of individual and collective human life. Much of popular culture today, Les Mis included, continues the traditions of the Romantic Era.
As for the abundant tunefulness and mass popularity of Les Mis, Verdi’s middle operas especially were endless founts of tunefulness and massively popular in their day. After all, everybody was humming La Donna E Mobile after Rigoletto burst on the scene.
Now Les Miserables might not be the equal of Rigoletto or Traviata, but it is part of a long tradition of music dramas in European culture. It is neither better nor worse for being so popular. The ultimate value of Les Miserables lies in the ability of the music and the drama to move audiences to a deeper understanding of their own lives and of the world around them. That would be my thumbnail description of what art is about, and Les Miserables is a brilliant work of dramatic and musical art.
Tomorrow--off to the Orange County Fair and Bob Dylan!
My summer music marathon began very appropriately with a second performance of Les Miserables. I was reasonably certain that I would enjoy the performance as much as I did a couple of weeks ago, and I was right. I loved it! Perhaps because it was on Bastille Day, the audience seemed even more excited and enthusiastic.
As with any great work of music, the more I listen the more I hear. I was again swept along by the emotional and historical waves in this opera, but I also noticed more about how musical themes recurred in different forms at different points in the story. This serves to connect the sprawling narrative into a focused story and also amplifies the emotional echoes among the many characters and events.
(By the way, I think Les Miserables is an opera. It is sung through with no spoken dialogue, and it requires operatic type voices. If Nixon in China, Dead Man Walking, and other modern works are operas, why not Les Miserables?)
I was again struck by the Verdian aspects in this opera. Verdi often addressed the issues that arise when individuals try to reconcile their personal life situations with their roles in history, and this is a major theme in Les Mis. Javert's ultimate self-destruction is rooted in his inability to reconcile his personal feelings with the social order. Marius and his fellow student revolutionaries sacrifice their personal lives for a social movement, while Valjean intervenes to rescue Cosette's personal happiness from the defeat of the revolution.
Verdi also often wrote about parent-child, and especially father-daughter relations (Nabucco, Luisa Miller, Rigoletto, Traviata, Trovatore, Boccanegra, Aida, etc.), and they are often more important than the romantic relationships in the story. This is also the case in Les Mis where the relation between Valjean and Cosette is central to the whole story and links Valjean’s past and Fantine with Marius and Eponine and the student uprising they are part of. (Note how the degraded father-daughter relationship between Thenardier and Eponine parallels the Valjean-Cosette relationship.)
It’s clear to me that Boublil and Schonberg were Verdi lovers, but their primary inspiration is obviously the French Romantic writer Victor Hugo. This provides another link with Verdi who used dramas by Hugo for two of his most popular operas (Ernani and Rigoletto). Both Verdi and Hugo were Romantics and tried to reflect in their art the vast panorama of individual and collective human life. Much of popular culture today, Les Mis included, continues the traditions of the Romantic Era.
As for the abundant tunefulness and mass popularity of Les Mis, Verdi’s middle operas especially were endless founts of tunefulness and massively popular in their day. After all, everybody was humming La Donna E Mobile after Rigoletto burst on the scene.
Now Les Miserables might not be the equal of Rigoletto or Traviata, but it is part of a long tradition of music dramas in European culture. It is neither better nor worse for being so popular. The ultimate value of Les Miserables lies in the ability of the music and the drama to move audiences to a deeper understanding of their own lives and of the world around them. That would be my thumbnail description of what art is about, and Les Miserables is a brilliant work of dramatic and musical art.
Tomorrow--off to the Orange County Fair and Bob Dylan!
Sunday, July 10, 2011
West Side History
This is the 50th anniversary of the film West Side Story. In 1961 when I was a freshman in high school this brilliant movie hit the country like a meteor. With a seemingly endless collection of great songs by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim and a new style of daring and exciting choreography by Jerome Robbins, all in service of a classic romantic tragedy with Shakespearean roots, West Side Story pushed the national artistic vision into the future.
To celebrate this half century anniversary the Hollywood Bowl and L. A. Philharmonic presented a hybrid version of the film this weekend--a live orchestra to play Bernstein's brilliant score and the film itself on a big screen for the original vocals by Natalie Wood, Rita Moreno, Richard Beymer and the incredible ensemble of singers and dancers who are the real stars of the film. I hadn't seen West Side Story in many years, and my memory was a little fuzzy. The individual songs are of course unforgettable--Maria, Tonight, Somewhere, Officer Krupke, Life in America, I Feel Pretty, Cool, the Jets' theme song, etc. These we hear in many versions in many settings, and it was awesome to hear them one after another in the film.
But I hadn't remembered as clearly the brilliance of the orchestral parts that underscore and amplify the action. Bernstein's music is a muscular combination of romantic drama and near-dissonance that pulls us inexorably into the tragedy that unfolds on the streets and alleys of New York.
And then there's the dancing--bold, daring, aggressive, it propels the action deeper and deeper into a realm of myth and legend. Robbins draws on the raw energy of youth found in the dense urban environment, harnessing it to serve the ageless story of a passionate love that defies all social norms. At the same time he ennobles the rivalries and struggles for survival that motivate the players in this drama.
After fifty years and many losses of innocence, some of the dialogue and situations seem a little corny or dated, but the core contradiction facing the Puerto Ricans seems spot on as immigrants today weigh the opportunities offered in the US against the hostility and resistance they often encounter. Bernstein's basic idea of linking the characters and problems of modern urban life with Shakespeare, our most revered artistic icon, is deeply progressive. Rewarded as the movie was with 10 Oscars, it was still controversial at the time. I suspect the surging right wing movement of today would still be uncomfortable with West Side Story.
So I was blown away by this movie again on Friday. It deserves to be celebrated after 50 years. It remains one of the most vibrant, original works of American movie-making.
My musical July is continuing in fine form. Next: Les Miserables (again) on Bastille Day. Vive la revolution!
To celebrate this half century anniversary the Hollywood Bowl and L. A. Philharmonic presented a hybrid version of the film this weekend--a live orchestra to play Bernstein's brilliant score and the film itself on a big screen for the original vocals by Natalie Wood, Rita Moreno, Richard Beymer and the incredible ensemble of singers and dancers who are the real stars of the film. I hadn't seen West Side Story in many years, and my memory was a little fuzzy. The individual songs are of course unforgettable--Maria, Tonight, Somewhere, Officer Krupke, Life in America, I Feel Pretty, Cool, the Jets' theme song, etc. These we hear in many versions in many settings, and it was awesome to hear them one after another in the film.
But I hadn't remembered as clearly the brilliance of the orchestral parts that underscore and amplify the action. Bernstein's music is a muscular combination of romantic drama and near-dissonance that pulls us inexorably into the tragedy that unfolds on the streets and alleys of New York.
And then there's the dancing--bold, daring, aggressive, it propels the action deeper and deeper into a realm of myth and legend. Robbins draws on the raw energy of youth found in the dense urban environment, harnessing it to serve the ageless story of a passionate love that defies all social norms. At the same time he ennobles the rivalries and struggles for survival that motivate the players in this drama.
After fifty years and many losses of innocence, some of the dialogue and situations seem a little corny or dated, but the core contradiction facing the Puerto Ricans seems spot on as immigrants today weigh the opportunities offered in the US against the hostility and resistance they often encounter. Bernstein's basic idea of linking the characters and problems of modern urban life with Shakespeare, our most revered artistic icon, is deeply progressive. Rewarded as the movie was with 10 Oscars, it was still controversial at the time. I suspect the surging right wing movement of today would still be uncomfortable with West Side Story.
So I was blown away by this movie again on Friday. It deserves to be celebrated after 50 years. It remains one of the most vibrant, original works of American movie-making.
My musical July is continuing in fine form. Next: Les Miserables (again) on Bastille Day. Vive la revolution!
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
My musical July
I have a very exciting set of musical events planned for July, ranging from the icy empress Turandot at the Bowl to the gravel-voiced guru Dylan at the Orange County Fair.
It started spectacularly at the 25th anniversary production of “Les Miserables” at the Ahmanson Theatre. I took my younger son Lorenzo and his friends Gerald, Alexi, and Ranly--all about 19 years old. We loved it. It is of course a deeply moving work in so many ways--exhilarating at times, then tragic, comic, inspirational. Like the novel, the musical is firmly on the side of the oppressed--prisoners, prostitutes, workers, students, children--and it captures both the sweeping historical drama of struggle against authority and the poignant personal dramas of love and loss that play out on that big stage. In this sense it reminds me of the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, my favorite operatic composer.
I know Verdi’s operas pretty well, and many of them take place at the intersection of history and personal drama. I’m thinking of early works like Attila, Nabucco, Giovanna d’Arco, and of course the later masterpieces Simon Boccanegra, I Vespri Siciliani, Don Carlo, and Aida. Some may find my comparison of Les Miserables with Verdi a bit of a stretch, but I’ve been asking myself why we don’t call Les Mis an opera? It is completely sung with no spoken dialogue, and otherwise exhibits all of the characteristics of opera. I’d love some comments on this matter.
In any case, I love to be swept up in the passions of historical struggle, and so I love Les Miserables. I confess to coming late to being a Les Mis fan however, and I know most of you have probably loved it for decades. I was basically ignorant of the work until about a year ago when I started hearing songs from it at the opera and show tunes singer showcases I was going to. I think I was too rigidly focused on opera to notice a mere musical.
I thought I should find out about it so I listened to a recording, then another, and then another! In my usual semi-obsessive way I found and listened to all the various versions on CD and read all about the history of the musical. I also watched as many of the film versions of the novel as I could find. Then I listened to the other Boublil and Schonberg works--Miss Saigon, Martin Guerre, Pirate Queen, La Revolution Francaise.
I came out of this whirlwind of listening and reading a genuine fan of Les Miserables, so when I saw that it was coming to LA I snatched up a bunch of tickets. Lorenzo and his friends (whom I had previously taken to see Verdi’s great opera Rigoletto) enjoyed it very much, even though they had some trouble with the details of the plot. We were all blown away by the drama and spectacle of the production as well as by the great singing.
I liked it so much I went right over to the box office and bought another ticket for next week. I figured I might not have a lot of chances to see it for a while, so what the heck!
After the matinee performance we walked over to Clifton’s Cafeteria at Broadway & Seventh for dinner. I remember going there as a child and try to go every so often now. It hasn’t changed a bit. By the way, Clifton was a real progressive during the depression and fed thousands of people at little or no cost.
I have lots more great music lined up for the month.
It started spectacularly at the 25th anniversary production of “Les Miserables” at the Ahmanson Theatre. I took my younger son Lorenzo and his friends Gerald, Alexi, and Ranly--all about 19 years old. We loved it. It is of course a deeply moving work in so many ways--exhilarating at times, then tragic, comic, inspirational. Like the novel, the musical is firmly on the side of the oppressed--prisoners, prostitutes, workers, students, children--and it captures both the sweeping historical drama of struggle against authority and the poignant personal dramas of love and loss that play out on that big stage. In this sense it reminds me of the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, my favorite operatic composer.
I know Verdi’s operas pretty well, and many of them take place at the intersection of history and personal drama. I’m thinking of early works like Attila, Nabucco, Giovanna d’Arco, and of course the later masterpieces Simon Boccanegra, I Vespri Siciliani, Don Carlo, and Aida. Some may find my comparison of Les Miserables with Verdi a bit of a stretch, but I’ve been asking myself why we don’t call Les Mis an opera? It is completely sung with no spoken dialogue, and otherwise exhibits all of the characteristics of opera. I’d love some comments on this matter.
In any case, I love to be swept up in the passions of historical struggle, and so I love Les Miserables. I confess to coming late to being a Les Mis fan however, and I know most of you have probably loved it for decades. I was basically ignorant of the work until about a year ago when I started hearing songs from it at the opera and show tunes singer showcases I was going to. I think I was too rigidly focused on opera to notice a mere musical.
I thought I should find out about it so I listened to a recording, then another, and then another! In my usual semi-obsessive way I found and listened to all the various versions on CD and read all about the history of the musical. I also watched as many of the film versions of the novel as I could find. Then I listened to the other Boublil and Schonberg works--Miss Saigon, Martin Guerre, Pirate Queen, La Revolution Francaise.
I came out of this whirlwind of listening and reading a genuine fan of Les Miserables, so when I saw that it was coming to LA I snatched up a bunch of tickets. Lorenzo and his friends (whom I had previously taken to see Verdi’s great opera Rigoletto) enjoyed it very much, even though they had some trouble with the details of the plot. We were all blown away by the drama and spectacle of the production as well as by the great singing.
I liked it so much I went right over to the box office and bought another ticket for next week. I figured I might not have a lot of chances to see it for a while, so what the heck!
After the matinee performance we walked over to Clifton’s Cafeteria at Broadway & Seventh for dinner. I remember going there as a child and try to go every so often now. It hasn’t changed a bit. By the way, Clifton was a real progressive during the depression and fed thousands of people at little or no cost.
I have lots more great music lined up for the month.
- This Friday I’m going to the Bowl to see the hybrid presentation of the movie “West Side Story” with the voices from the film and a live orchestra. That should be exciting.
- Then next Friday I’m going to hear Bob Dylan at the opening night of the Orange County Fair. This is another case where I’m making up for lost time. I had a mixed experience seeing him last year in Las Vegas (couldn’t understand a word!), but I love his music so much, especially the more recent CDs, that I feel I should see him again when I have the chance. Dylan has been an artistic and cultural institution for half a century, and he is clearly one of the most profound and brilliant musical geniuses of all time. And he belongs to MY generation! I grew up listening to Dylan and now I’m growing old listening to Dylan.
- I just got a ticket for the new musical “Twist” at the Pasadena Playhouse. It sounds like a lot of fun.
- Then I’m going to see Puccini’s “Turandot” at the Hollywood Bowl with Dudamel conducting and a great cast headed by Christine Brewer as the ice princess in a concert performance. This is a thrilling opera with plenty of vocal pyrotechnics to fill the night air at the Bowl.
School is OUT!
Friday June 24 was the last day of school. I had forgotten the emotional intensity generated by the rhythm of the school year. The excitement and anticipation (and trepidation, even dread) of September may have mostly been due to my return to the classroom after 20 years absence, but I know it’s an annual set of emotions for teachers. Then, as you who have followed this blog know so well, the year was a roller coaster ride of contention and self-criticism leading to a surprisingly successful project in the final five weeks.
That project, in which the boys explored a neighborhood problem of their choice, provided a very satisfying ending to the year for all of us. The boys enjoyed the well known benefits of project based learning. They felt more in charge of their learning and thus responsible for their own destinies and less harassed by me. I felt satisfaction at seeing them working together diligently to accomplish a shared goal based on the learning standards.
Thus the “Solving a Neighborhood Problem” project effectively set the stage for the rapid swirl of emotions that characterize the final weeks of school. Some of these boys--after a year of battling with me, resisting my directions, disrupting lessons and inciting rebellion--are suddenly my best friends! For my part, I am equally visited by a growing affection for even the most troublesome boys. I even find myself regretting the failing grades I had to give some of them (although I didn’t change the grades).
As we approach the end of the year, students begin to experience classic “separation anxiety” and act out in all of the diverse ways that any feeling of anxiety leads to. I think they act on the unspoken (and unspeakable!) feeling that they actually like coming to school, seeing their friends, doing school work, etc., and they will miss it over the summer. Or at least they may like it better than doing nothing, even with all the complaints and conflicts with teachers and counselors
As a teacher, I am going through the same emotional stages as the school year ends and a summer of idleness begins. Of course I’m thrilled to get more sleep, read novels, fix up my house, work in the yard, and generally RELAX, but....there is a little voice deep in the back of my mind anxiously asking what my goals, deadlines, preparations, and obligations are. “Make a list!” this voice is saying. “Make more lists! Start doing things! Get something done! Prepare for next year!” etc. etc. Clearly the mental habits of nine months of hectic, relentless, overwhelming obligations and tasks won’t dissipate easily. Still....I am finally getting enough sleep!
(Summer lassitude has clearly arrived; it has taken me over a week to get this post finalized and on the blog. Coming up: My musical July; plans for the fall; more on the state of education.)
That project, in which the boys explored a neighborhood problem of their choice, provided a very satisfying ending to the year for all of us. The boys enjoyed the well known benefits of project based learning. They felt more in charge of their learning and thus responsible for their own destinies and less harassed by me. I felt satisfaction at seeing them working together diligently to accomplish a shared goal based on the learning standards.
Thus the “Solving a Neighborhood Problem” project effectively set the stage for the rapid swirl of emotions that characterize the final weeks of school. Some of these boys--after a year of battling with me, resisting my directions, disrupting lessons and inciting rebellion--are suddenly my best friends! For my part, I am equally visited by a growing affection for even the most troublesome boys. I even find myself regretting the failing grades I had to give some of them (although I didn’t change the grades).
As we approach the end of the year, students begin to experience classic “separation anxiety” and act out in all of the diverse ways that any feeling of anxiety leads to. I think they act on the unspoken (and unspeakable!) feeling that they actually like coming to school, seeing their friends, doing school work, etc., and they will miss it over the summer. Or at least they may like it better than doing nothing, even with all the complaints and conflicts with teachers and counselors
As a teacher, I am going through the same emotional stages as the school year ends and a summer of idleness begins. Of course I’m thrilled to get more sleep, read novels, fix up my house, work in the yard, and generally RELAX, but....there is a little voice deep in the back of my mind anxiously asking what my goals, deadlines, preparations, and obligations are. “Make a list!” this voice is saying. “Make more lists! Start doing things! Get something done! Prepare for next year!” etc. etc. Clearly the mental habits of nine months of hectic, relentless, overwhelming obligations and tasks won’t dissipate easily. Still....I am finally getting enough sleep!
(Summer lassitude has clearly arrived; it has taken me over a week to get this post finalized and on the blog. Coming up: My musical July; plans for the fall; more on the state of education.)
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Viva PBL!
I believe in Project Based Learning. I have taught as much in my classes at National University. My son went to a PBL high school. I speak out in favor of PBL at every opportunity.
But….this year I haven’t practiced what I preached. I have been so dismayed by the difficulty of simple class management that I have taken refuge in lots of individual assignments rather than risk the disorder that can come with small group projects.
Boys, was I wrong! My school encouraged everyone to close the year with a project, so another teacher and I came up with one for the persuasive writing unit. The project asked students in small groups to identify a neighborhood problem and then research that problem and develop solutions. This project continues the neighborhood theme I've followed all year. They've previously written a neighborhood narrative and a neighborhood news story. It was a natural idea.
It was a lot of work to create all of the worksheets and guides for the project. The project requires the groups to write letters to their city council member, create a page in Comic Life (a computer program to create comics-like pages), and make an oral presentation with power point support about the problem they’re working on. They also have to interview people in their neighborhood about the problem. They are using the laptops for a lot of this work.
I began implementing the project in all of my seventh grade English classes three weeks ago. It’s a long project that won’t conclude until next Friday. From the beginning I have been very happy about how these students have responded to this project. What I believed about project based learning (but hadn’t yet practiced) turns out to be true!
The boys have worked hard on all the many parts of this project. Classes that have been very difficult to manage (like 5th period) have worked diligently. To be sure the classes have been noisy, and not every boy is working hard every moment. Nevertheless I have been consistently impressed with the level of focus and collaboration displayed in all of the classes.
It turned out to be perfect timing. During the final weeks of school it is always difficult to keep students focused. This project is succeeding at keeping them involved….so far! They make their oral presentations at the end of this week, and I’ve invited the principal and assistant principal (big proponents of PBL) to visit.
So what have I learned? Students work eagerly in small groups on interesting projects. Next year I will act on this knowledge from the beginning. The key is establishing clear and regular procedures to be followed and then providing interesting content for group and individual work.
I’m glad to end my incredibly difficult return-to-teaching year so successfully. It was very uncertain at many points how this year would end. I am eager for next year.
But….this year I haven’t practiced what I preached. I have been so dismayed by the difficulty of simple class management that I have taken refuge in lots of individual assignments rather than risk the disorder that can come with small group projects.
Boys, was I wrong! My school encouraged everyone to close the year with a project, so another teacher and I came up with one for the persuasive writing unit. The project asked students in small groups to identify a neighborhood problem and then research that problem and develop solutions. This project continues the neighborhood theme I've followed all year. They've previously written a neighborhood narrative and a neighborhood news story. It was a natural idea.
It was a lot of work to create all of the worksheets and guides for the project. The project requires the groups to write letters to their city council member, create a page in Comic Life (a computer program to create comics-like pages), and make an oral presentation with power point support about the problem they’re working on. They also have to interview people in their neighborhood about the problem. They are using the laptops for a lot of this work.
I began implementing the project in all of my seventh grade English classes three weeks ago. It’s a long project that won’t conclude until next Friday. From the beginning I have been very happy about how these students have responded to this project. What I believed about project based learning (but hadn’t yet practiced) turns out to be true!
The boys have worked hard on all the many parts of this project. Classes that have been very difficult to manage (like 5th period) have worked diligently. To be sure the classes have been noisy, and not every boy is working hard every moment. Nevertheless I have been consistently impressed with the level of focus and collaboration displayed in all of the classes.
It turned out to be perfect timing. During the final weeks of school it is always difficult to keep students focused. This project is succeeding at keeping them involved….so far! They make their oral presentations at the end of this week, and I’ve invited the principal and assistant principal (big proponents of PBL) to visit.
So what have I learned? Students work eagerly in small groups on interesting projects. Next year I will act on this knowledge from the beginning. The key is establishing clear and regular procedures to be followed and then providing interesting content for group and individual work.
I’m glad to end my incredibly difficult return-to-teaching year so successfully. It was very uncertain at many points how this year would end. I am eager for next year.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Alert! Alert! Contradictions detected in education “reform” movement!!
Last Saturday I went to the “Linked Learning Symposium” at Roybal Learning Complex in downtown Los Angeles. This was a district-sponsored professional development session attended by a few hundred teachers and administrators, lured no doubt by the $25/hour training rate offered. Actually, I was impressed that hundreds of teachers gave up their Saturday mornings for a paltry $100. After all, these are the professionals who according to Republicans and billionaire neo-liberal school reformers are the main obstacle to quality education in the US. Anyway, more politics later.
(I also want to comment on the venue of this training, Roybal Learning Complex, nee Belmont Learning Center. It’s a beautiful new high school that should have opened years earlier than it did were it not for a rogue’s gallery of political opportunists who tried desperately to block the school. More on that later too.)
“Linked Learning” is the latest formulation for an instructional pedagogy that is student-centered and holistic. “Linked” refers to connecting academic disciplines with career paths and technical skills. I wasn’t familiar with this term, but it is clearly derived from the career academy movement of a decade ago that lead to many small learning communities in our high schools. The idea behind "linked learning" is that students, especially in high school, should be immersed in a rich array of academic and technical courses that together prepare them for a career broadly defined as a general area of work extending from entry level to advanced positions.
The main content of last Saturday's symposium consisted of a series of workshops describing various high school programs that exemplify this approach, including medical careers, law enforcement, graphic arts, etc. Teachers and students presented each program, and they all included some form of direct activity in the career field as well as academic courses.
There were also several workshops on Project Based Learning (including an excellent presentation from the LA School of Global Studies, my son Lorenzo’s alma mater!). The pedagogy of Project Based Learning and of constructivism in general underlies all of the Linked Learning programs. That pedagogy is that students must “construct” their own meaning by working on projects that generate learning and understanding through student initiative.
All of the programs were very impressive, and they certainly give the lie to the claim that only billionaire faux-reformers can save education. These rank-and-file teachers (many of them with a lot of seniority!) actually addressed the needs of young people for both intellectual development and career preparation. The billionaire reformers' claim that only by busting unions and districts can we get reform was soundly disproved by the kind of programs we saw at this conference.
NOW HERE’S THE CONTRADICTION!! While the district and many educators are promoting project based learning and a constructivist, student-centered approach to instruction, the billionaire reformers and their allies in city halls and boards of education are fighting fiercely to evaluate teachers on test scores, which are at least secondary if not outright antithetical to the holistic goals of project based learning. While the LAUSD’s proposed new evaluation process has some room for assessing the extent to which teachers implement project based learning, the big battle is to include test scores in teacher evaluations.
The L A Times, for example, has devoted immeasurable resources to jury-rigging some way to evaluate teachers based on test scores but has never so much as mentioned the kind of programs that directly prepare students for both higher education and a career--programs that require intensive teacher involvement in design and implementation and can't be left to the latest computer program.
It’s not easy to measure the degree to which a teacher implements project based learning, much less the level of benefit to students who learn a wide array of interpersonal and thought process skills which won’t appear on any standardized test. The benefits of the “linked learning” programs we heard about and of project based learning in general are much deeper and broader than the puny California Standards Test can even come close to measuring, and yet the leadership of the LAUSD and even of the federal Dept of Ed continue to insist that CST scores be used to measure teacher success.
By the way, in the early 1990's we had a test that tried to measure this broad array of student abilities. It was called the CLAS—California Learning Assessment System—and it included group projects, writing, and other holistic activities. Read more about it here. But it was expensive to administer and for some reason the right wing medieval talk machine went on the attack against it, so it didn’t last long. And now we’re stuck with the CST, which is inexorably sucking up all of the oxygen in the room so that really beneficial programs like the ones on display last Saturday are harder and harder to implement.
(More on the Belmont Learning Complex later, plus my own tardy foray into project based learning with the seventh grade boys. And I want to share my thoughts about one of the most exciting and profound concerts I've ever attended, the LA Master Chorale's presentation of selections from Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts last Sunday. Stay tuned.)
Friday, May 13, 2011
Hasta la vista, CST!
Well, we're through with the CST for this year. Four days of testing for almost two hours each day, followed by movies in my class ("Holes" and then Simpsons episodes) and crafts in others. The boys were very serious about the test. I think they really tried, and with a little shushing they stayed quiet until everyone finished. The logistics were well handled by some of the support staff. In general we all feel good about it.
Now we have to go back to work. We're not really teaching when we're administering the test, so it's easy duty for the teachers. Next week we may experience some degree of the "holding the lid down on a boiling pot" syndrome as we try to launch instruction for the final six weeks of school.
I have a pretty ambitious plan for these final 6 weeks. I regret that I haven't done a single small group project all year. This is an instructional model that I really believe in, but my difficulty managing student behaviors left me reluctant to try small group activities. I think this was a mistake, and I'm determined to conclude the year with a project.
The teacher for 7th grade girls and I have developed a project based on identifying a local neighborhood problem and developing solutions to that problem. The end product will be some material advocating for the solution to the problem--a poster, essay, power-point, i-movie, or brochure--plus a written description of the problem and solution. This project fits with our final writing domain, persuasion, and with the neighborhood theme I have used all year (neighborhood narratives, neighborhood news stories, etc.).
I hope it's simple enough to accomplish even though I haven't really gotten them used to working in groups. The local dimension should keep them interested, and they will also use the internet for some research. Of course I want them to put everything on their pages on the YOKA server.
Anyway, I'm determined to end with a project. I have been making a lot of plans for next year, although recently I have learned that I may not be returning due to my low seniority. I want to return and teach 7th grade English again, but I guess I'm flexible, or maybe stoic, enough to accept whatever comes. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Meanwhile, hasta la vista CST!
Now we have to go back to work. We're not really teaching when we're administering the test, so it's easy duty for the teachers. Next week we may experience some degree of the "holding the lid down on a boiling pot" syndrome as we try to launch instruction for the final six weeks of school.
I have a pretty ambitious plan for these final 6 weeks. I regret that I haven't done a single small group project all year. This is an instructional model that I really believe in, but my difficulty managing student behaviors left me reluctant to try small group activities. I think this was a mistake, and I'm determined to conclude the year with a project.
The teacher for 7th grade girls and I have developed a project based on identifying a local neighborhood problem and developing solutions to that problem. The end product will be some material advocating for the solution to the problem--a poster, essay, power-point, i-movie, or brochure--plus a written description of the problem and solution. This project fits with our final writing domain, persuasion, and with the neighborhood theme I have used all year (neighborhood narratives, neighborhood news stories, etc.).
I hope it's simple enough to accomplish even though I haven't really gotten them used to working in groups. The local dimension should keep them interested, and they will also use the internet for some research. Of course I want them to put everything on their pages on the YOKA server.
Anyway, I'm determined to end with a project. I have been making a lot of plans for next year, although recently I have learned that I may not be returning due to my low seniority. I want to return and teach 7th grade English again, but I guess I'm flexible, or maybe stoic, enough to accept whatever comes. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Meanwhile, hasta la vista CST!
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Teaching in the ether
Last Saturday I went to a meeting of adjunct (part-time) professors in National University's School of Education (of which I am one). Enrollment in National's education classes is sharply down, as it is in all schools of education both public and private, and there hasn't been much work for us part-timers. More dramatic, however, is the shift to online courses. Over two thirds of National's enrollment is now online. This shouldn't be surprising since so many teacher credential candidates are already working and very limited in the time they have for classes. Many of them also live scattered throughout the state and nation and thus unable to attend classes "on the ground."
Most of us at the meeting were experienced teachers and administrators from the LAUSD and other districts. We are struggling to be successful in online teaching. We have found that there tends to be a lot more writing and assignments in online classes. At the same time the university is encouraging us to use various interactive, real-time options to mix up the otherwise somewhat abstract and, frankly, dreary relationship between students and professors in an online course. We discussed at length how to make use of the new capacity for real-time discussions with students.
The university is aware, as all of us at the meeting were, that there is something counter-intuitive about preparing teachers to interact with groups of students without actually requiring them to interact directly with anyone! National is even planning to require that the advanced class on instruction and classroom management be taken "on the ground" rather than online. This is clearly a recognition that learning to teach means learning to interact with real live people.
I was struck by the way that this trend to online teacher preparation parallels the trend to standardized curriculum and testing for the students themselves. Both are ways of spending less money to educate people. Online courses for teacher candidates cost less than ground classes, even if they are less effective. (That's not a provable claim, but it seems clear that online courses develop interpersonal skills less effectively.) Standardized curriculum and testing allows schools to run bigger class sizes, a necessity in this era of dismantling public institutions and services.
But online courses are also THE FUTURE. Everything is moving online in one form or another, and who are we to exempt education and teacher preparation from this trend? Am I just a cranky old guy showing my discomfort with the ether age, clinging desperately to my old-style classroom that students and teachers traipse into and out of, spending hours on the freeway to sit face to face when everything could be handled on the internet in the comfort of our own homes? Maybe. Oh, and I still love paper books too! and live music! and theater! and walks in the park and dinner with friends.
Anyway....notwithstanding this little rant, online courses are here to stay. We'd better make them as good as we can, taking advantage of features like instant communication, access to widespread resources, and geographical diversity while preserving the development of traditional teacher abilities to relate directly to students. Some things about people really don't change even when many other things change dramatically.
(Literary postscript: On the subject of electronic communication replacing face-to-face contact, I am reminded of a wonderful novel by Isaac Asimov that I remember vividly from many years ago--The Naked Sun. It's one of his robot series and is set in a breakaway Earth colony called Solaria. You can read a little summary of the novel here. You'll see what I mean.)
Most of us at the meeting were experienced teachers and administrators from the LAUSD and other districts. We are struggling to be successful in online teaching. We have found that there tends to be a lot more writing and assignments in online classes. At the same time the university is encouraging us to use various interactive, real-time options to mix up the otherwise somewhat abstract and, frankly, dreary relationship between students and professors in an online course. We discussed at length how to make use of the new capacity for real-time discussions with students.
The university is aware, as all of us at the meeting were, that there is something counter-intuitive about preparing teachers to interact with groups of students without actually requiring them to interact directly with anyone! National is even planning to require that the advanced class on instruction and classroom management be taken "on the ground" rather than online. This is clearly a recognition that learning to teach means learning to interact with real live people.
I was struck by the way that this trend to online teacher preparation parallels the trend to standardized curriculum and testing for the students themselves. Both are ways of spending less money to educate people. Online courses for teacher candidates cost less than ground classes, even if they are less effective. (That's not a provable claim, but it seems clear that online courses develop interpersonal skills less effectively.) Standardized curriculum and testing allows schools to run bigger class sizes, a necessity in this era of dismantling public institutions and services.
But online courses are also THE FUTURE. Everything is moving online in one form or another, and who are we to exempt education and teacher preparation from this trend? Am I just a cranky old guy showing my discomfort with the ether age, clinging desperately to my old-style classroom that students and teachers traipse into and out of, spending hours on the freeway to sit face to face when everything could be handled on the internet in the comfort of our own homes? Maybe. Oh, and I still love paper books too! and live music! and theater! and walks in the park and dinner with friends.
Anyway....notwithstanding this little rant, online courses are here to stay. We'd better make them as good as we can, taking advantage of features like instant communication, access to widespread resources, and geographical diversity while preserving the development of traditional teacher abilities to relate directly to students. Some things about people really don't change even when many other things change dramatically.
(Literary postscript: On the subject of electronic communication replacing face-to-face contact, I am reminded of a wonderful novel by Isaac Asimov that I remember vividly from many years ago--The Naked Sun. It's one of his robot series and is set in a breakaway Earth colony called Solaria. You can read a little summary of the novel here. You'll see what I mean.)
CST: The saga continues
(Written Thursday, May 5, 2011)
We’re in the final days of preparation for the California Standards Test next week. The four of us who teach the 7th grade boys developed a plan for addressing the academic and affective aspects of testing. We’ve all been practicing the type of questions they will get on the tests and also giving out tips for the test such as “Get a good night’s sleep” and “Read the questions first and then the selection.”
It’s clear that the boys’ attitude is at least as important as these practical tips. Confidence in your own intellectual capacity and the desire to do well are crucial factors in any testing situation. Recognizing this I have devoted more time this week to addressing the confidence and desire of the students.
The students have all written an essay on how they will improve their performance on the test. Then they put this essay into a word document on the laptops. I have printed them out and will share them with the other teachers on the 7th grade boys team.
Each of us will also have students write letters of advice and encouragement to one of their classmates. These letters will be delivered right before the test. We will also write brief notes of encouragement to each student in our advisory class.
So what am I thinking about the whole CST thing? The process of building up to an important challenge for the students has value, of course. Creating a feeling of teamwork and shared effort is good for emotional and intellectual development.
On the other hand, the test itself is such a pale shadow of what’s really going on in their emotional and intellectual development that it almost seems anticlimactic after all the buildup.
Anyway, we’ll see next week how it all goes. More later.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Teaching to the test--Hooray!!
At school we are in full out CST (California Standards Test) mode—all CST, all the time. The test is two weeks away and now all we do every day is prepare for the test. No more writing, no more computers, no more projects—just practice questions, test taking tips, and motivational speeches.
I don’t know how it will go. I have such a hard time getting them to focus on a brief set of questions that I have difficulty imagining them sitting and focusing for the four 2-hour sessions coming up. On the other hand, they claim that when it’s the real test and not a practice test, they will act differently.
Anyway, I guess there’s some value in focusing on a specific event like a test. The CST measures valuable skills, but it still accounts for only a small fraction of what students should be learning and practicing as they grow up. These other important milestones of maturing academically and emotionally are less measurable however and thus less valued. That’s not good.
I haven’t posted for a while. There’s a lot of new stuff happening, and the job remains fascinating and engaging. I have more things to write about from the couple of months I have not blogged, but I’ll get caught up later.
I confess to being a little discouraged by the lack of any feedback. There are so few comments that I start feeling like no one is reading my brilliant and insightful posts. Maybe no one is reading them, or maybe they’re not so brilliant or insightful. Anyway, if you’re reading, could you leave a brief comment? Thanks.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Seventh grade lives 3
Forget pedagogy, curriculum, lesson plans, learning theory, brain research and all that for a moment. This teaching business is often just an emotional hurricane from the first bell in the morning to the last in the afternoon. Take today for example:
Second period: today was the last day at school for the boy who lost his mother over the weekend. We spoke briefly of it in the class, and the boys were visibly affected by his misfortune. I could see them trying to imagine how it would feel if it happened to them. I continued to feel troubled by what this fragile boy was facing.
Advisory: Today was the final game of our basketball tournament. My class was playing Mr. Beach’s. Emotions ran high at the game. The other classes were cheering from the stands. My students constantly wanted only the best players to play while I insisted on playing anyone who wanted to. Everyone was very excited--it was wonderful! We lost but the whole event was very positive for the 7th grade boys and for the five of us who have their advisory periods. (Next up: spelling bee!)
Sixth period: The excitement of the game carried over into this period, always my most difficult. Somehow one boy who is always pretty hyped up and volatile was pushed off the edge by something someone said. Next thing I knew he was in a violent rage, trying to throw tables and chairs, screaming and sobbing. I hustled him outside asked him to just stand still for a moment, get hold of himself, and calm down. He was shaking and sobbing, but he did slowly calm down. Later he came back into the room and soon, in typical boy fashion, he was his usual rambunctious self. But the display of raw emotion was awesome and hard to forget.
Meanwhile the provocateur in this case continued to be the most willful, determined, and successful disruptors in all of my classes. This boy doesn’t even try to control his acting out, but rather issues a steady stream of mockery, goofiness, and impudence. Yelling doesn’t have more than a transitory effect, so I began ignoring him. Unfortunately the rest of the class continued to find him hilarious.
I ended up addressing myself to them rather than him. “He just wants an audience,” I said, “and if you are his audience ask yourselves, what will he teach you? Is it more than I can teach you? It’s up to you to deny him his audience so we can get on with the job of learning and teaching.” Maybe they heard that, maybe not. I intend to repeat this argument at every opportunity. We’ll see.
The emotion I feel is anger at this boy for making my job so difficult, even while I keep in mind that he’s only 13 and must be deeply troubled to manifest this behavior. This is a common dichotomy--they piss me off while they evoke my concern for their futures. This is a basic teacher issue--we care deeply for them even when they infuriate us. It's sort of like parents, but with scores of kids and only for school hours. It's what makes teaching so energizing and so exhausting at the same time.
And so another day in the hurricane of emotions that makes up seventh grade lives.
Second period: today was the last day at school for the boy who lost his mother over the weekend. We spoke briefly of it in the class, and the boys were visibly affected by his misfortune. I could see them trying to imagine how it would feel if it happened to them. I continued to feel troubled by what this fragile boy was facing.
Advisory: Today was the final game of our basketball tournament. My class was playing Mr. Beach’s. Emotions ran high at the game. The other classes were cheering from the stands. My students constantly wanted only the best players to play while I insisted on playing anyone who wanted to. Everyone was very excited--it was wonderful! We lost but the whole event was very positive for the 7th grade boys and for the five of us who have their advisory periods. (Next up: spelling bee!)
Sixth period: The excitement of the game carried over into this period, always my most difficult. Somehow one boy who is always pretty hyped up and volatile was pushed off the edge by something someone said. Next thing I knew he was in a violent rage, trying to throw tables and chairs, screaming and sobbing. I hustled him outside asked him to just stand still for a moment, get hold of himself, and calm down. He was shaking and sobbing, but he did slowly calm down. Later he came back into the room and soon, in typical boy fashion, he was his usual rambunctious self. But the display of raw emotion was awesome and hard to forget.
Meanwhile the provocateur in this case continued to be the most willful, determined, and successful disruptors in all of my classes. This boy doesn’t even try to control his acting out, but rather issues a steady stream of mockery, goofiness, and impudence. Yelling doesn’t have more than a transitory effect, so I began ignoring him. Unfortunately the rest of the class continued to find him hilarious.
I ended up addressing myself to them rather than him. “He just wants an audience,” I said, “and if you are his audience ask yourselves, what will he teach you? Is it more than I can teach you? It’s up to you to deny him his audience so we can get on with the job of learning and teaching.” Maybe they heard that, maybe not. I intend to repeat this argument at every opportunity. We’ll see.
The emotion I feel is anger at this boy for making my job so difficult, even while I keep in mind that he’s only 13 and must be deeply troubled to manifest this behavior. This is a common dichotomy--they piss me off while they evoke my concern for their futures. This is a basic teacher issue--we care deeply for them even when they infuriate us. It's sort of like parents, but with scores of kids and only for school hours. It's what makes teaching so energizing and so exhausting at the same time.
And so another day in the hurricane of emotions that makes up seventh grade lives.
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