Notes from
Academia
A Quarterly Newsletter from the Office of the Assistant Head of School for Academics
Spring 2016
In the 1950s, anthropologist Victor Turner wrote about Ndembu milk tree rituals in way that insisted that he, the impartial observer, knew far more about the meaning of these rituals than the Ndembu people themselves. This set off a wave of controversy in the ensuing decades about the degree to which the observer’s frame of reference colors the representation of what is being observed. By the mid-1980s, a post-Foucault world was hungry for what would become the seminal text on this subject, a collection of essays by leading thinkers entitled Writing Culture. The thesis was that any recorded observation is the result of a dialectic, a reflection of both the observer and the observed, essentially a collaborative product that tells you as much about one as it does about the other. That’s a lot of nerdspeak, I know, but bear with me. Here at Fort Worth Country Day, we were one of the first schools in the country to adopt Folio, a cloud-based system for goal-setting, observing teachers, and offering feedback. It creates a record in which the teachers, who are observed, have direct input into what they are trying to achieve in a given year and the reporting of how well they feel they are doing it. That input is then recorded alongside the observation of the teachers’ Folio supervisor (typically an administrator) and their department chair. The premise is that instead of rotating through which teachers get observed in a given year, every teacher gets direct, formal feedback every year as part of a consistent process. The architecture of the system essentially holds the administrator accountable for holding the teachers accountable. The end result is a record not only of the teacher’s year, but also what we, as a school, value. Goal-setting in this context is an art, as Folio participants are expected to make clear action plans delineating the steps they’ll take to achieve each goal and setting a timetable for doing so, a process vetted through a formal goals meeting. As the year progresses, we learn as much during the observation as we do talking about the observation, examining the rationale for the choices the teacher makes, understanding the motivations, the risks, the rewards—even the small good-intentioned failures. My role in Folio is primarily in Upper School and Middle School, in working with department chairs, team leaders, counselors, and specialists there. I have a few people under my purview in Lower School, but as I continue to grow as a K-12 educator, I am still in sponge mode down there, soaking up all I can. In this edition of Notes from Academia, please ride along with me on two of my formal Folio class observations, along with a special non-Folio visit, my day spent as a kindergartener last month to better learn the rhythms and demands of a day in primary education.
Lower School Kindergarten is tough. I’m not kidding about that. I’m not saying I can’t do the math (crushed it) or reading (like a boss), I’m just saying that the pace is dizzying. A few weeks ago I showed up, as prearranged, in Lisa Davenport’s kindergarten class in my light blue FWCD polo and navy pants, ready to conquer kindergarten, but I’m afraid it conquered me. The day started off easily with Morning Movement, and some pretty standard primary stuff, like the calendar and some turn and share activities. Then came time to write about what makes us different and illustrate our stories. I’m not saying my handwriting is of fourth-grade caliber, but for kindergarten, my fine motor skills are not too shabby. My story is still up on the wall down there. I’m not bragging, just stating a fact. We shared our stories with each other, then began rotating through some activities—reading quizzes on the iPads, handwriting activities with Kris Johnson, and math activities with Legos.
with us on pinch pots. Back in class, we rotated in groups again, working on telling time, learning words and classifying them by vowel sounds, and painting pictures of butterflies. There may have been more reading, but, frankly, I was in a daze by the time I got back to the other side of campus for my after-school meetings.
At this point, my back may have started to ache with all of the getting up and sitting down on the floor. Then we had a break to get our energy up—with Kid Zumba. This went less well for me than the writing. I have degrees in writing. Not so much the Zumba. We went back to activity rotations after that, but the damage was already done. By the time we got to recess, I wasn’t even surprised to discover that I didn’t have the best jump shot in my kindergarten class. After lunch was PE. This is not the PE I remember. There were actual calisthenics, as or more challenging than I’ve had in the boxing classes I used to take. Coach Aimee Jenkins made them fun, but, again, exhausting. It may not have helped that I spent a good chunk of the period evading a pack of 6-year-old girls bent on spending the class within my immediate
vicinity. I may have had Aimee set a few picks during the running portions of the class. By the time we got back to the classroom, I was asking Beverly Michael, posted at the kindergarten desk, for ibuprofen. My notes get shaky from there. We did some reading, I remember that. We went to art class, and Rebecca James worked
In my near-delirious state of exhaustion, though, I couldn’t help but smile at the teachers and students who had welcomed me into their world with such open arms that day—in the case of the kindergarteners, literally, open arms, as I still have a hard time walking by the class without one of them running up to hug me. Perhaps, most importantly, I felt well prepared for my day as a first-grader a few short weeks later—but I made sure to schedule sufficient recovery time in between.
Middle School Middle School sometimes feels like the future—sitting in creative seating arrangements, technology awhirl, Taylor Swift playing faintly in the background like Muzak (that last part may only be in my head). In team leader Michael Parker’s sixth-grade science class, the students were sitting at paired lab tables on my visit, three students to each pair of tables. All had their iPads out and the day’s lesson pulled up on the Notability app as he walked around the room. “Why do we classify things?” Michael asked the class, and hands shot into the air. I saw a twinkle in his eye as he scanned their faces. “Okay, since we have hands at every table, turn and tell your table your answer.” I wondered, looking around at the mix of boys and girls at each table, whether seating was assigned. I made a note to ask Michael later about this. There was a healthy buzz about the room. He regained their attention and went back into the lesson, standing at the Promethean Board projection and jotting
Michael Parker takes care of announcements before starting the day’s lesson. down notes as he went. The students had the same document on which he was writing loaded into their iPads, and, with a reverse pinch, they zoomed in and filled in notes by writing with their fingers—this is a neat trick, as they can write more largely on the zoomed document, and when they
zoom out to normal size, their handwriting is neater. Michael led the students through a discussion of how they might classify themselves from earth to continent to country to state to town to neighborhood
to street to home to room. In some places, the students were entering whole sentences and ideas into their notes, but in others, their digital handout had blanks to fill, prearranged key words Michael wanted to zero in on. Michael’s focus was based on Carl Linnaeus’s system as applied to fossils, but I couldn’t help but think of the foundational import of this knowledge. One of these students could one day be sitting in an organizational behavior class as an MBA student, studying Margaret Spencer’s Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST) and think—“Hey, this PVEST structure has distinct parallels to the basic classification stuff we did in sixth-grade science.” Activities shifted to individual work for the final third of the class, as students worked on classifying fossils they had found during a field trip to a nearby park. Each fossil had to be identified using their Field Guide to Texas Fossils and paired with its classifications on an index card. “How did you find a fossil of coral?” I asked one student. “This part of Texas used to be underwater,” he replied. Michael overheard from where he had been working with another student and joined the conversation. “Tell Dr. Philipson what period that was,” he said. “The Pennsylvanian,” the student correctly answered, referring to a later portion of the Paleozoic Era, a fact I had to look up to learn more about later. The Pennsylvanian period is so named because the flooding of inland areas created the great coal deposits in what we now call Pennsylvania. It also significantly impacted our geology here, as the students were learning. As the class ended, I took careful notes of the parallels I had seen between Michael’s and other Middle School classes, about what I thought he had done exceptionally well, and what questions I had to ask him later. It was a great class, and I was thrilled to have been let in to see a master at work for just a short while.
Students review the bill the week after the observation.
Upper School Do you ever watch a football game and try to focus on the blocking instead of the ball? Ever try to really focus in on the rhythm guitar or bass line of a pop song instead of the melody? Ever focus in carefully on what a painter has chosen not to paint? If you’ve done any of the above, you’re likely someone who appreciates the nuances of craft, how the less-obvious actions and choices sometimes require the greatest expertise. That’s what observing History Department Chair Dean Barker was like last month, as he executed a lesson designed together with fellow teacher Sara Teegarden. Dean barely spoke during the 75-minute period, but what happened without him speaking was what was so impressive The premise was that students in his 10th-grade Government class were randomly assigned the identities of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee. After students researched their assigned representative, they were then to debate a proposed immigration bill. Regardless of their own beliefs, though, the students had to adopt the viewpoint of their assigned committee member. The desks formed a large square around the room, and rather quickly in the class, after setting out some expectations for procedure, Dean retreated to his own desk to observe and take notes, and the student portraying Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) took charge. The debate was lively, and Dean kept careful watch on it all. Technology had played a large role in preparing for this assignment, but now most of the computers were closed as the students engaged each other directly (as I frantically researched each committee member on my iPad to try to pick up on the subtext beneath the debate). Dean chimed in a few times to remind them of procedure and set boundaries, but this was a student-driven lesson. They debated the issues surrounding the bill and proposed amendments, some ludicrous, some very practical. Not every student was as outgoing as the others, as would
be the case in an actual committee meeting, but every student was engaged. I tracked their eyes and facial expressions in response to others’ comments, and every single one of them was wrapped up in the activity. When Dean and I met later, we talked about the engagement of the students and where this fit in preparing the 10th-graders for their Washington, D.C., trip and their upcoming white paper project, for which they will be presenting a policy proposal before a faculty member taking on the role of a senior cabinet official. We discussed the rubric upon which students are graded for this activity and the challenge of keeping the discussion lively but not too lively. Most importantly, we had a chance for Dean to talk through how this already outstanding unit could evolve in the future, what it has already achieved and what it has the potential to achieve—and I can’t wait to see it next time around.
Dean Barker, bemused, observes the debate.
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