Author Archive for Diana Senechal

Tonight for homework you will memorize…

Published on February 1, 2010 in Children, Culture and Education. 15 Comments Tags: memorization, poetry, Richard Wilbur, sonnets. By Diana Senechal

This is my last of my guest-blogging posts. Thanks to Joanne Jacobs for inviting me to do this again. And thanks for all the interesting and thoughtful comments.

It would be announced with great fanfare across the land: the seventh-grade sonnet experiment. Across the country, seventh graders who participated in an intensive ten-week course on sonnets would be compared with those who did not. “Research would show” that two years later, the sonnet studiers would be better writers than the control group—that their essays, letters, and other compositions had benefited from the sonnet course.

Then the objections would come rolling in: How can you tell it was the sonnet study that brought about the improvement? Perhaps they were learning good writing over the course of the sonnet study? Perhaps their schools (which participated voluntarily) had an advantage to begin with? Who is to say that the effects would be replicated? Why do we need such a study to justify the memorization of sonnets or any other poems?

Indeed, why should we have to do double backwards somersaults to justify the idea of having students memorize a sonnet? Why isn’t poetry memorization—including sonnet memorization—part of the curriculum in every grade? Why has it become something for the privileged, or for an unusual school or class here and there?

There are plenty of good reasons to memorize poems; one does not have to scrounge for them. The most obvious reason for memorization is to have the poem with you always. It is a great thing to tilt and turn in the mind. If you have a long train commute, if you are waiting in a long line, you can recite it silently. In her 2000 introduction to The American Reader, Diane Ravitch writes, “Words that are learned ‘by heart’ become one’s personal treasure, available when needed.” Sometimes a line might come to you by surprise, or you might understand a phrase in a new way. Or it may help you in a difficult time. You can find some pleasure, as Wordsworth says, “Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground.”

When you memorize a sonnet in particular, you know a compact train of thought. The sonnet has room for many shapes of argument, all in the space of fourteen lines. You develop an instinct for the motion, rhythm, and balance of an argument, for the combination of logic and word play. It’s like holding a rubber band and knowing just how far it will stretch. (For more on the logic of sonnets, see Richard Wilbur’s interview in the Atlantic.) Continue reading ‘Tonight for homework you will memorize…’

Bringing back Voltaire

Published on January 31, 2010 in Education. 4 Comments By Diana Senechal

I continue guest-blogging for Joanne Jacobs, with one more post to come.

One thing I appreciate about the Internet is the availability of books online. Recently I have been reading John Tallis’s two-volume History and Description of the Crystal Palace (1852), illustrated with steel engravings. Tallis comments on the Crystal Palace’s origins, preparation, and construction; the nations that took part in the 1851 Exhibition; the excitement, the press, the opening ceremonies, the visitors, and of course the exhibits: sculptures, model ships, bridges, locomotives, cloths, gemstones, papier-mâché, glassworks, machines, electric telegraph, and more. He vividly describes the history, significance, cultural particularities, and workings of item after item. It is exciting to read. While some of the exhibition was probably a bit gaudy (he hinted as much himself), one can understand why visitors were awed by it. Charlotte Brontë wrote, “It is a wonderful place—vast, strange, new and impossible to describe. Its grandeur does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things.”**

But there is a curious digression in Tallis’s book. At one point he imagines Voltaire coming back from the dead to visit the exhibition. Actually, Tallis admits that he has extracted this account from columns of “Christopher North” (pseudonym of John Wilson, apparently), but Tallis clearly enjoys the story enough to retell it. North’s fictional Voltaire scoffs at progress from the start:

What a din this age makes about its progress! it travels fast enough, if that were all. Rapid progress of that kind. For the rest let us see whether the world is revolving in any other than its old accustomed circle.

Voltaire inspects a locomotive, which a professor of mechanics proudly introduces as an “iron slave.” Voltaire points out that this locomotive will require much tedious human labor:

Putting my head out of the window of my railroad carriage, whilst we were yet at the station, I saw an industrious mortal going from wheel to wheel with a huge grease-pot, greasing the wheels. He greases wheels from morning to night; eternally he greases.

Voltaire criticizes not only the false progress but the “ornamental nonsense”: Continue reading ‘Bringing back Voltaire’

Exodus from the empty spaces

Published on January 30, 2010 in Education. 18 Comments By Diana Senechal

I continue guest-blogging for Joanne Jacobs.

In “Death by Suicide: The End of English Departments and Literacy” (Minding the Campus, January 25, 2010), Mary Grabar writes that “students are leaving English departments in droves” as the field cedes more and more territory to theories that have little to do with literature itself.

“Who are you kidding?” I wanted to get up and ask the English professor who was giving a talk at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association convention in November. He was analyzing a graphic novel, the spaces between panels, the line widths of the panels, the lettering inside the “speech bubbles.”

Indeed, the “spaces” may have much to do with the exodus. Why spend a lifetime on empty space? Continue reading ‘Exodus from the empty spaces’

Tell us, six-year-olds, what’s the author’s purpose?

Published on January 29, 2010 in Children and Education. 15 Comments By Diana Senechal

I continue guest-blogging for Joanne Jacobs, with three more posts to come.

Last night I watched a video of a Reader’s Workshop (Balanced Literacy) lesson for first graders. The objective of the lesson was to “determine the author’s purpose” (a strategy that they were apparently learning in anticipation of second grade). The teacher presented two basic purposes for writing a book: “to entertain the reader” and “to teach the reader.” She taught the children hand signals that corresponded with each purpose, gave them some practice with examples, and then sent them to their independent reading, where they were supposed to practice the strategy and give the appropriate hand signal.

The following comments do not reflect at all on the quality of the teaching. The teacher was giving a fine Reader’s Workshop lesson, by Balanced Literacy standards. She was well prepared, spirited, and very clear, with good command of BL procedures. The problem lies not with her teaching, but with the premises behind the lesson. (I am not going into decoding here–this lesson doesn’t even touch on it.)

First of all, Balanced Literacy lessons usually revolve around a strategy. This limits the instruction, as the literature is subordinated to the strategy. In this case, the teacher read short passages from books in order to determine the author’s purpose. The only reason she read these passages was to illustrate and practice the strategy. The stories themselves hardly mattered. Continue reading ‘Tell us, six-year-olds, what’s the author’s purpose?’

To “rest upon” an opinion

Published on January 27, 2010 in College and Education. 5 Comments Tags: Marianne Moore, poetry. By Diana Senechal

I will be guest-blogging several times for Joanne Jacobs while she is away. I have had Marianne Moore’s poem “The Student” (1941) on my mind for a while; I keep returning to it and thinking about this “student” that she describes.

It is difficult to quote from the poem, because of the enjambment from stanza to stanza. Not one of the stanzas (except for the last) ends with the end of a sentence. Another difficulty is that Moore’s poetry has many quotes, each one worthy of explanation. So be it. What intrigues me is the ending, but it makes little sense without the rest of the poem.

It is written in syllabic verse–no set meter, but a set number of syllables for each line. In each stanza (with a few exceptions), the syllable count per line is as follows: 7, 10, 8, 10, 6, 5, 11. This gives the poem a visual structure that contrasts with the relative lack of sonic structure.

The poem seems at first to defend the American idea, criticized by a lecturer, that everyone should have a college degree.

“In America,” began
the lecturer, “everyone must have a
degree. The French do not think that
all can have it, they don’t say everyone
     must go to college.” We
incline to feel, here,
     that although it may be unnecessary

to know fifteen languages,
one degree is not too much. With us, a
school—like the singing tree of which
the leaves were mouths that sang in concert—
     is both a tree of knowledge
and of liberty,–
     seen in the unanimity of college

Now Moore has moved beyond the idea of the college degree. College is important not for the degree, which seems incidental, but for the thought that takes place within it. But Moore hints at a pitfall of such institutions of thought: perhaps Americans have opinions and not much more. Continue reading ‘To “rest upon” an opinion’

The limits of evidence

Published on September 25, 2009 in Culture and Education. 48 Comments By Diana Senechal

This will be the last of my series of guest-blogging posts, and perhaps the most controversial one. Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful and stimulating comments.

Much of education discussion rests on the assumption that we can and should demonstrate the efficacy of what we do in the classroom. We have concrete aims, and it is our responsibility to ensure that these aims are achieved. These include: ensuring that students learn the basics, bringing them up to a desired proficiency level across the subject areas, teaching them to communicate and debate ideas, exposing them to subjects that they will need for work and life, helping them do well on tests, seeing to their well-being at school, preparing them to participate in a democracy, and more. Our practices are deemed good insofar as they bring us closer to our goals.

But there are parts of education that cannot be explained or justified in a concrete way. Why teach literature? Because it is useful? Because it prepares us to participate in a democracy? Those are secondary reasons. Ultimately many of us teach it because it is beautiful and urgent and because we do not have it in our hearts to do otherwise.

It is not that a student must know Shakespeare in order to have a rewarding life or be part of a democracy. We do not study for concrete purposes alone. There are other things that pull us. Think of the times when you see something beautiful outside–a leaf with unusual colors taking its time to flutter to the ground, then bouncing on the sidewalk as if in a dance; a dirty littered sidewalk gleaming with chestnuts, their shells just opened, and yellow butterflies flying above–and trucks roaring by, and grass taking over the sidewalk cracks. If you tell someone what you have seen, it is not useful information. It will not help the other person, except perhaps to change what the person notices when walking down the street. You pass it on because it came to you as a gift, and you wanted to pass it on. So, too, with literature. We pass on what has held great meaning for us. One may argue that it will not have the same meaning for young people. But that does not make the gesture futile. Students respond to a teacher’s love of literature; they come to see things in it; what’s more, they learn that they may find more in it later. They are given a glimpse into what they do not yet understand. And this is intangible.

This does not mean that we abandon evidence and do only what the spirit moves us to do in the classroom. I would be among the first to laugh that sort of suggestion out of town. In The New Education (1915), Scott Nearing describes the Oyler School in Cincinnati, where, if a teacher felt it was the right time to go visit an absent student, she would simply leave her class to another teacher and do so. That is going a bit far. Likewise, it would be absurd for a research study to conclude, “Policy X is good because I know in my heart that it is.” But not all our purposes can be spelled out, and not all of them can be justified by evidence. Evidence does have its place, but we should not confine ourselves to evidence any more than we should confine ourselves to utility.

I brought this up in a comment on Deborah Meier’s latest column in Bridging Differences. She asks what students truly need to learn to participate in a democracy, and suggests that there’s no evidence they need Milton or Dante. This may or may not be so. But in any case, whatever the arguments for and against certain works of literature, our reasons for teaching them go beyond the arguments.

I can hear the objections to this, and part of me objects to my own argument. If we allow for things in education that we cannot explain or justify, how can we sort out the valuable from the loony? How do we keep wacky ideas and irresponsible practices from taking over? That is a serious question, not easily answered. I would suggest that there is a touch of the loony in the valuable, but only a touch. We have to use our logic, observation, intuition, experience, belief, and faith (not necessarily religious), all together. One on its own will not do.

Autumn has declared itself here in New Haven. I remember teaching on a day like this, a year ago in Brooklyn. I was teaching my second-grade class the Christina Rossetti poem “Who Has Seen the Wind?”

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

They were taking turns reciting it in groups while acting as the wind and trees. We had done it a few times, and suddenly a girl started bouncing in here seat and pointing.

“They’re doing it!” she cried. We turned to look. She was pointing out the window.

“They’re doing it! The leaves are trembling!”

And then a chorus of children chimed in, “The wind is passing through!”

Evidence of what? A “text-to-world connection”? Oh, more than that! And one of the most beautiful moments of my teaching experience. I would not trade that moment for a 100-percent guaranteed research-proven practice.

Principals seek to expand Core Knowledge pilot program

Published on September 24, 2009 in Education. 1 Comment By Diana Senechal

The Core Knowledge pilot reading program in New York City for kindergarten has shown such striking results that nine out of ten participating principals have asked to expand it into first grade. According to a NYC DoE press release, “The progress of students in the ten participating schools was more than five times greater than the also-significant performance of students at ten peer schools with comparable student populations, and was reflected among students at all levels of literacy.”

I am not sure what is meant by “more than five times greater” and how this is measured, but in any case these children are now entering first grade with strong reading skills and much more.

The program, which consists of a phonics/decoding strand and a listening/learning strand, combines explicit decoding instruction with lessons and readings in literature, history, science, and other subjects. As students learn to read, they also build their knowledge, vocabulary, and listening skills. The Core Knowledge blog has some good commentary on the program and its results.

I hope it continues to grow, with the support of dedicated principals and teachers. As I commented on the CK blog, I am glad that it is not a citywide mandate. Why? Because when things are mandated on a large scale, they are often dumbed down, miscommunicated, or otherwise poorly conveyed. Sometimes the trivial aspects are elevated to the status of inviolable rules. Sometimes the unconvinced end up training the uninformed–or the dogmatic end up training the resistant. Sometimes teachers have good ideas that are not taken into account. It is harder to be thoughtful about a citywide mandate than about a pilot program.

I am confident, though, that if given the opportunity, it will expand. Teachers and principals will see what is happening and decide to adopt it too. Parents will ask for it. It does not surprise me that it is doing so well. As E. D. Hirsch has pointed out, the greater effects may be seen over the long term.

Dreamy teacher

Published on September 24, 2009 in Education. 6 Comments By Diana Senechal

One day, in my first year of teaching, I was giving a lesson to English language learners on nouns and adjectives. At one point I had them pair nouns and adjectives in unusual but plausible ways–I wanted them to consider combinations that weren’t obvious.

One student offered the combination “dreamy teacher.”

Another student said, “You’re a dreamy teacher, Miss.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Yeah, Miss. You’re always dreaming of things you’re going to do with us in class.”

I gulped. “You can tell?”

“Yeah, Miss.”

(Later I started insisting that they learn my last name, difficult as it might be.)

I often think back on that class. I was a dreamy teacher in my first year. Nothing seemed impossible to me; I directed English language learners in a full-length production of the Wizard of Oz, and I spent most of my time planning things for my students. I was also an inexperienced teacher (at least in public school teaching–I had taught a few college courses and summer classes). Over the next few years I gained experience and lost just a sliver of the dreaminess–not much, but a perceptible amount, at least to me. I think exhaustion was the main cause, but I also became aware of what teachers were supposed to do–and most of that stuff wasn’t dreamy.

This year I have stepped back from teaching to write a book. I sense some of that dreaminess coming back. I hope that when I return to the classroom I will be both practical and dreamy.

(This is my last day of guest-blogging for Joanne Jacobs. It has been an honor to do this. I hope to post one more piece today.)

What would a good PD be?

Published on September 24, 2009 in Education. 18 Comments Tags: brain-based learning, Dan Willingham, professional development. By Diana Senechal

We hear often from teachers (including myself) how useless the professional development sessions often are. But what makes them useless, and how could they be useful, meaningful, or interesting?

The number one complaint is that they are just a waste of time–redundant information, mindless activities. I have attended my fair share of those.

Then some PD leaders assume that the best way to teach teachers is to bombard them with consultants and make believe they are brainless. Put them in little groups and have them write quick little responses to little folktales, and then regroup and fill out charts to post on the wall. Once all the charts are on the wall, the teachers are told to circulate in a “gallery walk” and write comments on Post-its to put on the charts. And then, of course, they are told to go implement this in the classroom right away.

Then there are those that teach a hypothesis as though it were truth–for instance, in connection with “brain-based learning.” Neuroscience is a lively and fascinating field, but its findings are not immediately applicable to the classroom, as Dan Willingham has pointed out. Nonetheless, many PDs push “brain-based learning” without acknowledging the uncertainty around the theories.

There are also practical training sessions–how to administer or score tests, how to use computer equipment, etc. Those may be informative, or they may be old news.

But what sort of professional development would actually be good?

It depends much on the school’s programs, curriculum, etc., and the level. But one idea would be to have teachers give each other seminars in their own subject–that is, we’d have an algebra seminar one week, a Dostoevsky seminar the next, and a seminar on the Reformation the following week. (Or maybe one per month.) The seminar leader would basically give a class intended for adults. But since the adults would not all be versed in the field, the instructor would need to adjust to their knowledge levels. There could be prerequisites or required reading for some seminars.

Why would this be useful? Teachers would be teaching in front of each other, seeing each other teach and respond to teaching, and they would all be learning about each other’s subjects. They would be engaged in the subject matter itself, while the seminar leader would gain new angles on pedagogy. They could then discuss how the same material might be presented to students.

Another kind of PD would involve a visit from a special guest with knowledge in a particular field. This scholar would give a presentation and then open the floor for discussion and debate. For instance, there could be PDs on controversies surrounding pedagogy, neuroscience, etc. Teachers would frankly discuss the pros and cons of various approaches and leave with new insights.

There are many other possibilities. But in general the level of PDs would be lifted if (a) they dealt with subject matter at the teachers’ intellectual level; (b) they allowed teachers to lead PDs regularly; and (c) they included philosophical and controversial topics and presented them as such.