What Would You Do?

(Full Disclosure: Jose Antonio Vargas interviewed me when he was at the Washington Post, but never wrote that story when he was there. He interviewed me again when he was at The Huffington Post and did write a story.)

I tend not to blog about anything political here unless it's pretty focused on education, but I'm going to make an exception tonight because I found Jose Antonio Vargas's question pretty compelling:

What Would You Do?

• What would you do if you were a 12-year-old sent to America?
• What would you do if you were a 16-year-old and found out you were in America illegally?
• What would you do if you were a teacher/principal/superintendent of that 16-year-old and found out he was here illegally?
• What would you do if you got into college, graduated, and then had a chance to pursue the profession you fell in love with and make a meaningful contribution, but had to check a box on a form that wasn't true?

I don't intend to get into a discussion of immigration here on this blog for several reasons, not the least of which is it's a very complicated issue, my area of expertise (if I even have one) lies elsewhere, and nobody particularly cares about my political opinions. But I think as educators, and as human beings, it's worth our time to think deeply about this issue. Here are some resources about this particular part of the story:

My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant (New Yorker piece by Jose Antonio Vargas)

Define American  (Website created not necessarily to advocate, but to change the conversation around immigration)

Video currently featured on Define American







NPR Interview with Jose Antonio Vargas

Jack Shafer's Slate piece on the ethics of journalism

ABC Interview with Jose Antonio Vargas (longer version on Nightline but I'm not finding a link as of yet)

Update 6-25-11: Here's the longer Nightline piece:



So, again, I'm not interested in having an immigration debate on this blog, but I am interested in each of you thinking about how you define "American" and what actions you might take as an educator (or a citizen) if you discovered one of your students in this predicament.

What would you do?

Twitter Chat with (and without) a Purpose

I just left a long comment over on Bud Hunt's blog and thought it might be worthwhile to duplicate it here. First, please go read his post and considering participating in the #engchat conversation on June 27th.

Then here are the comments I left (first very brief comment, and then the follow-up comment when Bud asked me to say more):

I wonder how this conversation intersects with the idea of “productive eavesdropping” here and here.

 Follow-up comment:

Well, I’m not exactly sure where this #engchat conversation is heading, but my overall sense of it is that some folks may be concerned that there’s a whole lot of talking around the various chats on Twitter (and outside the chats), but that perhaps it’s not all that useful because the talk isn’t very purposeful and doesn’t translate into change. That made me think of your earlier musings around “productive eavesdropping” and perhaps how that has a role to play in this conversation.

I think we need to be careful about insisting on everything having a clear purpose. I’m in favor of purposefulness as much as the next guy, and I agree that sometimes we engage in non-productive behavior (whether in meetings at school or online). But I also think we can learn a lot in situations that don’t have a well-defined purpose; that learning (especially online) can occur serendipitously and often without a fixed, defined plan going in.

It’s awfully hard to tease out what effects my online experiences have had on my own practice, so let me use my wife as an example (with her permission). She got on Twitter about two years ago, initially very much as a lurker but more recently as more of a participant. Twitter, in turn, hooked her up to conversations on blogs and she’s now a very active user of Google Reader and just started her own professional blog. It has definitely impacted her practice and it’s fascinating to watch as she now is helping bring other staff members in her building into these spaces.  The conversations, at least among many in her building, have definitely changed, and they’ve changed at least somewhat due to my wife’s “unpurposeful” (at least initially) use of Twitter. As an even more concrete example, her very experienced Building Resource Teacher decided to attend ISTE this year for the first time (she did not attend last year . . . when it was in Denver), at least partially as the result of these conversations.

I guess I think we need to be careful of dismissing the usefulness of “idle” chatter on Twitter and in other spaces. I think for many of us, we may not always be using it purposefully, yet the accumulated effect of the conversations ends up changing our practices (for the better), sometimes in small ways and sometimes in larger ones. I think that simply being involved in conversations, sometimes as active participants and sometimes as more passive observers, is an important part of the ongoing learning process, even when it doesn’t have a clearly defined purpose. That’s not to say that conversations with purpose are bad; they’re not. But it is to say that we need to be very careful about dismissing the usefulness of things that may not appear to have a purpose to us (in the learning place we’re currently occupying), but may very much have a useful purpose for someone else.

Your thoughts?

Transparent Algebra: Take Two

While I attempted to blog my way through my first year back in the Algebra classroom, I ended up not being able to keep up with it. So, as I'll be teaching one section of Algebra again next year, let's try take two:

What I'm going to try to do (at least for a while, we'll see how it goes) is begin to blog about my plans for next year. This summer I'm going back over my lessons from last year and trying to figure out where I should tweak a lesson, where I should do a major overhaul of a lesson, and where I need to come up with a completely different lesson. I hope that by sharing that process here that some of you will help me become a much better teacher (my students thank you in advance).

So far I have Day 1 and Day 2 up, I would appreciate any feedback you'd be willing to share. Hopefully with the extra time that summer affords I will be able to keep up with this a little better and then we'll see what happens once school begins. My goal is to blog about my plans for each day of the year in advance (although it will likely not be much in advance once school starts up). So, if you're interested, head on over to Transparent Algebra and follow along.

Calling All Colorado School Leaders

The TIE Conference is holding a special "Leadership Academy" this year. While I think it would be great if all Colorado school leaders attended the entire TIE Conference, you can just sign up for the Leadership Academy day.

They have a variety of interesting folks scheduled to speak, but I'm particularly excited about the keynote speakers Pam Moran and Ira Socol. Pam is a very thoughtful superintendent in Virginia with a wide variety of leadership roles in education. Ira is at Michigan State and has a wealth of knowledge that's applicable to all students, but especially for special needs students. I guarantee that they will get you thinking and most likely making changes that will benefit all of your students.

So, if you're a school leader in Colorado (or even outside of Colorado for that matter) and you're available on June 23rd, I would highly recommend that you make time for this important day (in beautiful Copper Mountain, Colorado) in your schedule.