Should there be guns in schools?

I intend to share this letter with my governor and as a letter to the editor. I would appreciate your feedback in the comments. Thank you in advance.

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Dear Governor Snyder,

On November 8th, the Michigan Senate passed legislation (584, 585, and 586) allowing individuals with concealed weapons permits to request permission to carry guns in schools (and other previously gun-free zones) with extra training. “[A gun-free zone is] a target-rich environment for people that don’t abide by the law, and people should have the ability to protect themselves, wherever they are,” explained State Senate Majority Leader (and my senator) Arlan Meekhof. This follows the narrative often accompanying such legislation: the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. 

I understand why this is a compelling story; it makes us feel safe, empowered, and may even touch on our dreams of being a hero. There's even a recent example of a good guy with a gun helping to stop a bad guy. But law enforcement officials, like the Houston Police Department, want you to consider a different story when involved in an active shooter event: run first; hide if you can't run; and fight only as a last resort.

Why would the police discourage you from being a hero? A couple of storylines come to mind:

• Good guy with a gun shoots an innocent student or teacher while trying to stop a bad guy (with or without a gun); and
• Good guy with a gun shoots some other good guy with a gun after misidentifying him as a bad guy with a gun.

We must also consider that confronting an active shooter isn't the only story that can be told around a good guy with a gun in a school. In fact, the good guy with a gun is unlikely to actually encounter an active shooter in a Michigan school given current statistics. So what other stories might we tell that involve a good guy, a gun, and a school - minus a bad guy?

• Good guy with a gun gets angry about something and shoots the student, teacher, administrator, or parent that made him angry;
• Child finds good guy's gun carelessly left laying around and shoots self or another child; and
• Child finds good guy's gun carefully hidden away and shoots self or another child.

I get why we would rather not consider these tragic storylines. Most everyone would prefer the happy ending associated with "good guy with a gun stops bad guy with a gun." But just because you like one ending better than the other doesn't make it more likely to happen - especially when you compare the hundreds of children accidentally shot each year with the handful of heroes.

We ought not be making laws based on Hollywood happy endings. Instead, we need to consider the reality and the possible unintended consequences that occur when a gun is added to any situation. If we truly want to use "common sense" when addressing gun violence, just remember that no one ever got shot in a place without guns.

Should these bills reach your desk, please exercise your veto. Do not put our children at risk just so a few people can dream of being a hero.

Sincerely,

David Coffey

Which character are you?

WARNING The following post contains incomplete thoughts that might be uncomfortable to some readers. The author is simply attempting to write his way to understanding. Readers looking for coherent thoughts about teaching are encouraged to seek elsewhere. Possible Side Effects: head shaking, eye rolling, and muttering.

Some stories are meant to be told, not just read. Fred Stella reminded me of this as he recited the first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. The translation by Edwin Arnold helped, but it was Fred who brought the text to life. His inflection and gestures helped to give the sense that we were a part of the scene being described.

And according to Fred, that was the point of the Bhagavad Gita. He explained, "In myths, like dreams, we ought to be able to see ourselves in all of the characters." Consequently we are able to identify with everyone in the story, regardless of whether the character is good or bad.

Maybe that's why those Which Character Are You? tests bother me so much. In good storytelling, I can see myself as being anyone in the story - not just Aberforth Dumbledore.

What does this have to do with teaching? I'm not sure. However, I am convinced that good teaching is related to good storytelling. Therefore, I wonder how the "story" we are telling in our lessons is inviting learners to relate to all the "characters." The open questions described by Marian Small come to mind, but I think there's more to it than that.

I'm still thinking about this, but I wanted to get this out there in case anyone else had some wisdom about it. I'll get back to you if anything more comes to me. And don't blame me if this post left you wanting more - you were warned.

Where were we?

or

Why teachers ought to use re-caps instead of warm-ups

With the exception of news and sports, I rarely watch live television. It is just so much more efficient to use our DVR to record a show and then fast-forward through the title footage and the commercials. There was a time when I also skipped the re-caps that started each show - until Lost.

What I came to see was that these re-caps offered more than a simple review of what had happened previously in the story. The information provided at the beginning of each episode was meant to prepare me with what I needed to know to understand what was going on. It highlighted certain points that I might have missed or dismissed as unimportant. At times, it also foreshadowed a plot point that would be uncovered in the episode; this helped me to see the story as connected (and gave me the feeling that I had solved some puzzle). In other words, it got me to engage at a deep level.

This is what I want to happen at the beginning of my lessons. Instead of spending time on a typical warm-up, I want to use a re-cap that highlights what is important and foreshadows what is coming up in the lesson. We know that learning is supported when it builds on prior knowledge and is seen as fitting into some larger structure (How Students Learn). In The Teaching Gap, there is a description of how a Japanese math teacher uses something similar at the beginning of a geometry lesson:

One lesson ... began with pure memorization. The teacher asked students to recite three properties they had learned already about parallelograms ... As it turned out, the three properties they had just memorized were the key pieces they needed in order to work out a proof. Most students were reasonably successful. (pp. 75-6)

As Hattie points out that, "Too often, students are asked to relate and extend with minimal ideas on which to base this task - leading to impoverished deeper learning. It is for this reason, the workshop model puts such attention on the Schema Activation phase of the lesson and why a traditional warm-up does not cut it.

If professional storytellers understand the importance of activating the schema of a viewer (just look at the number of shows that use re-caps in the video below), then why don't educators make better use of this approach?

Here is where I need your help. What would a re-cap look like in a lesson? Is it the First Act in the 3 Act framework (or perhaps Act 0)? Maybe it is student-work or video of students doing work collected previously that the current lesson will build on. Could it entail students developing a video at the end of a lesson synthesizing what had been done that could be shown during later lessons to provide a reminder of important information that relates to new content?

What do you think?

Huh?

Have you ever been reading a book where things are getting tense and you wonder how the hero is going to get out of the crisis he finds himself in, only to be surprised by some solution that seems to come out of nowhere? This is a writing device called, deus ex machina (god from the machine), and I find it to be a very dissatisfying way to address plot problems. Unfortunately, this same method is used frequently in math lessons.

From Science Cartoons Plus

I have written before how I like to view teaching as storytelling. What I have not shared is the story I used to tell early on in my career to my middle school classes whenever a student asked, "Why?" It goes something like this:

Do you know what the largest animal on Earth is? <brief pause, but not long enough for anyone to answer> It's the blue whale. The thing is huge! But its throat is less than a foot wide. Do you know why? <another brief pause> Because that's the way it is. And that's why we invert and multiply <or some other mathematical rule>, because that's the way it is.

There you have it - my own version of deus ex machina in my teaching. In retrospect, I am sure it was as dissatisfying to my students as it has been to me in my reading, but I needed to move the plot onward and did not want to get bogged down in details.

I am not proud of this chapter in my teaching history, but like so many others I taught the way I was taught. Consider this a cautionary tale. So the next time a student asks why we subtract one from the exponent in the explicit formula of a geometric sequence but not in the exponential function, do not just respond with, "Because that's the way it is." Help the students to come up with a better reason. If you do, they are more likely to stick with the story of math instead of discarding it because it doesn't make sense.

What's your story?

This past Friday we attended the release party of the Harvest Queen cd at Kauffman Auditorium in Marquette, Michigan. (The story of how this project came to be is told here [Kickstarter Video] and here [WNMU interview].) The concert, which included traditional and new waltzes, was amazing, but it was only a portion of the overall event. Crossing Paths was intended to be an opportunity to explore various connections between local food and music.

In the afternoon, Kailin Yong conducted a violin master class for players of all ages and abilities. While my wife attended this hour-long class, I went for some local coffee. When I returned, Kailin was answering questions from those assembled on the stage. Someone asked him to explain when he started improvising in music.

Kailin responded by playing a beautiful, classical melody and then said (to the best of my memory), "I was very good at telling this story - an old Italian's story. But I wanted to tell my own story. I had been playing for years before I felt free to improvise. I do not want my students to have to wait as long as I did, which is why I had you working on improvisation today."

This reminded me of what Jonah Lehrer shared in Imagine about Yo-Yo Ma

"I was nineteen and I had worked my butt off," Ma told David Blume of The New Yorker in 1989. " I knew the music inside and out. While sitting there at the concert, playing all the notes correctly, I started to wonder, 'Why am I here? What's at stake? Nothing. Not only is the audience bored but I myself am bored' Perfection is not very communicative." (p. 86)

In both cases, expert musicians found being perfect was not enough. They longed to express themselves. They wanted to tell their own story or, at the very least, find a way to add a part of themselves into the retelling of the story of some other songwriter.

It seems to me we spend a lot of time in math class trying to get our students to retell someone else's story perfectly. The standardization of the curriculum leaves little room for learners to improvise and add their uniqueness to the mathematics. It is no wonder that most students see mathematics as a static set of rules. Whether we "tell" them the rules or have them "discover" the rules it amounts to the same thing - they are playing someone else's tune.

I am glad that I returned before violin master class was over (It turns out my compulsive timeliness can come in handy.) Thanks to Kailin's answer, I want to plan more opportunities that allow learners to improvise. I, too, do not want them to have to wait as long as I did to pick up this skill.

What's the story?

Hogwart's Express?

I am a huge fan of J. K. Rowling's work. She is a fantastic writer who has introduced a new generation to the magic of reading through her Harry Potter series. My guess is that she was also an excellent teacher. While I have never seen her teach in a classroom, I believe effective teachers are essentially storytellers.

First, there is Ms. Rowling's phenomenal ability at writing backstory. This is the part of the narrative that provides background supporting a better understanding of story. She flawlessly weaves this information throughout her writing. It is akin to what effective teachers do when they help learners to activate schema during a lesson - providing a firm foundation on which to construct new ideas. The ability to make connections is fundamental to teaching and learning.

Could this hat do more than sort?

Foreshadowing is the literary device used by authors to provide readers a subtle peek at future plot points. Again, here Ms. Rowling is a master. Once I was aware that her books included clues about the upcoming story, I began reading (and rereading) the text even more deeply. Imagine teaching a lesson that has learners engaged with every moment because it has purpose - they don't want to miss something important that they can use in later learning. I see this as being related to Cambourne's ideas of engagement and immersion.

Another thing I like about the Harry Potter series is that there doesn't seem to be any wasted effort. The story always moved forward. And while there were times that we were introduced to characters, settings, or events that seemed superfluous, they almost always ended up playing an important part in the resolution of the story. This reminds me of what I have read so far in Mike Schmoker's book, Focus. In order to be effective, teaching needs to maintain momentum toward a clear set of manageable goals.

This car plays a part in several books

Certainly, storytelling is not the only simile that can apply to effective teaching. It just seems fitting to explore it the day the second part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is released in US theaters. Maybe I'll write my "teaching is like kayaking" post after my next trip to the UP. It is the rationale supporting the simile that is most important - that is where we find the characteristics of effective teaching.


(If you want more evidence of Ms. Rowling as an effective teacher, then consider her 2008 graduation speech at Harvard and her characterization of effective teachers in her writing.)