Monday, August 23, 2010

Pop Flies in the Sun


I have a friend, Kate, who tells about her son’s frustrations on a baseball team here in Arizona. The coach, a rather strict disciplinarian, has all the members of the team catch pop flies in the sun. A pop fly is, for those of you unfamiliar with baseball, a ball hit ridiculously high into the air. Pop flies are routinely caught by professional players, but can still cause lots of problems for the under-initiated.


This is because as soon as the ball is hit, it can seem to disappear into the sky and then, just as quickly, come hurtling back to earth. With the sun in your eyes, this difficult task can become nearly impossible. You try to shield your eyes with your glove, your hand, your cap, but the sun is ALWAYS larger than the ball. You try squinting or looking at a different part of the sky, but as the ball approaches you say, “To heck with this!” and brave the pain of direct sunlight. Since you are crazy enough to put your FACE between the ground and this seemingly meteoric object, you are absolutely certain that you are about to be bludgeoned to death. And just before impact, you have a deepened appreciation for a peculiar law of nature: staring at too much light causes you to see pitch black.

Can you imagine how you would feel if your coach actually MAKES you endure this exercise. On purpose? And not only make you catch one pop fly in the sun, but make a repeated drill out of it.

As I mentioned, Kate’s son comes home upset. “Coach made us catch fly balls in the sun!” he complains. He continues his tirade by expressing how it doesn’t make any sense, it hurts the eyes and the face, and he doesn’t see the correlation between burned eyes and actually playing in a baseball game.

It isn’t until game time, however, that coach’s seemingly cruel drills pay off. The team is in the midst of a crucial game. Kate’s son, predictably, plays in the outfield and, as is the case in Arizona, is facing the sun (inexplicably, this happens in Arizona no matter what direction you are facing). A ball is struck, disappears high in the air, and then descends upon our hapless player. He stares at the sun in hopes to see the ball, grits his teeth, and with the determined ferocity and tenacious hope that comes with practice, he catches it. This causes the team to burst into celebration. A crucial game is won.

Kate relates this story to the student/teacher relationship inside the classroom. The coach is the teacher in a classroom; Kate’s son is a lot like the students we teach. They tend to complain and to moan when they don’t understand our purpose, and sometimes even see us as cruel dictators intent on harming them. Sometimes, I submit, that is true (teachers can be a melancholic bunch), however, more often than not, teachers aim to prepare students for future contexts. Teachers, good teachers, seek to anticipate what the students need even before the students know it.

You see, teachers, good teachers, love their students. Burned corneas and all. And that is why I invite you to go out to the middle of the field and prepare to be bludgeoned. Just trust me.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Undiscovered Country


Anyone know what bulimic learning is? You can probably guess the meaning without too much effort, but let me give you my definition. Bulimic learning refers to the student body practice of memorizing facts exclusively for a test, then disregarding those facts (purging) as soon as the test is over.

Bulimic learning is the kind of learning most of us, I believe, were accustomed to in high school and college. We memorized a bunch of facts the night before, we regurgitated these facts onto the test paper the following day, and then promptly purged ourselves of the information we had just gorged upon. And just as someone who suffers from bulimia gains no nutritional value from food, so we gained no educational value from our classes.

I remember that in college, usually on Fridays, my friends and I would have particularly difficult examinations. It was after these arduous exams that we would pay a visit to the apartment hot tub and begin the process of "freeing" ourselves from the burdens of what we regarded as useless information. We would soak into the hot water and literally feel our knowledge melt away. Thus freed from such space-hogging clutter, we were left to ask those questions that burn upon the minds of the most gifted scholars. (Questions such as "Why do hands get so pruney?" and "whose turn is it to turn on the jets?")

"Ah!" I would think to myself, "I can FEEL myself getting dumber." When farting in the hot tub seemed funny to us, we knew our purge was complete.

My point in bringing up bulimic learning is to start a little investigation into true learning environments. Obviously, as a teacher, I want to encourage students to move beyond bulimic learning, and I think that this must start with me. I want to move beyond cramming my students full of irrelevant information, and I want to do this by giving them ideas that truly matter. And I want to find techniques that will allow them to care about this information and keep it in reserve for when it is truly needed.

One of the greatest problems in American education is the belief that a test proves students have learned. I think many people would agree with me when I say this, yet it remains a cornerstone of how education works all over the world. I guess this is because people are always thinking that there is no way around it. Maybe you, yourself, are thinking, "but Shane, what do we do? What are the alternatives?"

Well, thanks for chiming in, Sparky. That is an excellent question. What ARE the alternatives to this memorization madness? Gosh, first off. I don't know. It isn't that I'm opposed to tests, it's just that....well, I'll give some of my own ideas on in my next post. Remind me to tell you the pop fly story.

Until then, how about some of YOU tell me? I'll ask this question in a different way so that you can see what I'm fishing for. Could anyone tell me a story about a class where they really learned? About a class that moved beyond the words in a textbook and into the skills and ideas that currently shape who you are and what you do? Into that undiscovered country from whose bourne few travelers return?

Tell me about it. Let the ideas soak in the hot tub of your own brains (Seth, Abdu, and Sparky, I'm especially looking at you). I'll meet you next Friday and we can discuss. Bring your own towels.