Another interesting aspect of the San Francisco Community School's inquiry program was the use of teacher dialogue as a tool for facilitating research. Friedman talks about long inquiry dinners during which members of the staff discuss aspects of their teaching. I found this to be a really interesting concept, less because of the fact that they had inquiry dinners, but more because of the way that the time was structured so much in terms of the different types of dialogues they engaged in.
We do get together as a department outside of school at least once or twice a year. Those are usually non-work occasions, though, and we try not to talk about school too much. I do talk a lot of shop at lunch, though, I really like to use that time to get ideas from the teachers I eat with.
This is not at all structured, though, it usually goes something like this: Nate and I quote some random movie back and forth for like ten minutes before I remember to ask him for a copy of the final he wrote for Tale of Two Cities and then Melissa tells us some crazy story about what strange thing happened to Brittony again--very informal and unstructured. Very useful though, so I can imagine that this kind of much more structured communication would be a great use of time.
We have early release on Wednesdays, and we use that time for meetings and staff development. This kind of dialogue for inquiry would be so nice to set up during those times. Right now our district is emphasizing Critical Thinking, which is something that I definitely support. It's essential for the future job market--it's all about solving problems, not "knowing information".
I think in a lot of ways, though, "Critical Thinking" is like teacher research or "inquiry," in that most teachers think they're already doing it (I admit that with t-r, I truly believed I was already doing it at first--go back to the first couple of these blogs), so it's tough to sell it to them. It's a lot like steph described in terms of staff development that is done by one or two people rather being a collaborative effort.
Everything is so abstract until you actually try to do it in the classroom, lecturing to a group of teachers about critical thinking is a lot like trying to teach my son how to play baseball without giving him a baseball or a bat. The best way to teach Critical Thinking is by getting people to engage in it--sort of like CSUWP, I think.
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Technology & Inquiry. Just like PB&J. But without that sticky feeling in the roof of your mouth.
2 comments:
Actually, I think the movie quoting lasts longer than 10 minutes. :) But I like what you say. We should try to do more. It's like the communication issue that arose at the TALON meeting last week.
Hmmm, when I originally logged on to respond to the blog I discovered that I read the wrong chapter by mistake (I was still going off the original list), then I took my book to work (silly me, actually thinking I could read it between appointments), and then left it there over the weekend. So, here I am, a week late - sorry.
However, when I reread the blog I have to admit I pulled out my new calendar to make sure I hadn't read the wrong chapter again because what I got out of it was pretty far off-track from the original posts. So, I'm not sure how to respond to the post - other than bring up what appeared to me to be the most salient points, at least in reference to what I think I'm doing here.
One frustrating thing that happened several times was I found myself writing "why?" in the margins of my book. Too many references at what happened at this school - but not enough explanations of WHY it was important or HOW it came about. I want to know HOW one teacher's "colleague's observations helped him identify how he unintentionally communicated low expectations." Do I do that too? I don't know because the author just gave me the appetizer and forgot the entree! Grrr.
Beyond the frustration over the lack of specifics (thank you for the SPECIFIC anecdote in the second paragraph on page 133!) the article does a good job of pinpointing one common problem that made the inquiry method work here that is probably a roadblock in many situations - the inclusion of structured time to share! The author states "I believe that such structred time for teachers, whether or not constructivist listening is used, is essential for building trust, which in turn allows teachers to ask hard questions, to take risks, and to make necessary mistakes." Here is the crux of our issue - figuring out how to make this dynamic work in our own situation. Can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that all important face-time where we share our ideas in an atmosphere of trust - and can really learn from each other.
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