Fourteen 5-minute videos: A class about a shoe (personalized and using a poem to include history, science, math, and language)

You can reach this playlist at http://tinyurl.com/metcenterplaylist

Part 1 of 14:  The students take turns reading the Bertoldt Brecht poem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0aLz5Kpyyc&feature=youtu.be

part 1 of 14  

This is the first of 14  5-minute videos from a recorded session in November 2005.

This will give you an indication of the direction that a single teacher can go to weave:

science

math (percent, statistics)

geography

poetry

history

With some effort, a foreign language could be added.

LESSON PLAN

Start with Bertoldt Brecht and a poem about a worker's work.

http://allpoetry.com/poem/8503711-A-Worker-Reads-History-by-Bertolt_Brecht

Here is the text... and it forms the core of the lesson / "advisory" session.

The teacher asks students to read the poem and then interpret the poem through the shoe.

Here is the text of the poem

A Worker Reads History

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?

The books are filled with names of kings.

Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?

And Babylon, so many times destroyed.

Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,

That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?

In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished

Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome

Part 2 of 14  

Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom

Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.

Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend

The night the seas rushed in,

The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.

Young Alexander conquered India.

He alone?

Caesar beat the Gauls.

Was there not even a cook in his army?

Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?

Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War.

Who triumphed with him?

Each page a victory

At whose expense the victory ball?

Every ten years a great man,

Who paid the piper?

So many particulars.

So many questions.

SOURCE of the poem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0aLz5Kpyyc&feature=youtu.be 

Steve Math Teacher

Here are the links to the next five videos.

Part 3 of 14:  Students describe details of the shoe

Part 2 of 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNPCNFS_jdc

Part 3 of 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYKeRPZr7kI

Students describe details of the shoe.

Part 4 of 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3zhffdZSfE

Look at the poem and then look at the shoe differently.  Look at the shoe through the eyes of the poem's author.   "There are all of these other people involved in the process, why don't they get credit?"  So many questions...   Great things are built but only a few people get credit... 

Part 5 of 14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUpNslo5eE

Part 6 of 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MpfVXGeONM   "Read what you wrote"

Jordan gets the credit for the shoe but we don't know who the people are who made the shoe.

Part 7 of 14   Look at the labels in your t-shirts, your coats, your hats...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqZLnb9QWPw

Part 8 of 14

Let's remove the map from the wall

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0JPhK-KHtw

7 of 14
look at labels on
your clothes

Part 9 of 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZh0m_6Xw3w

Part 10 of 14    Students put pins on the map

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKH-lI-gIF0

Part 11 of 14   How did you figure that it was about 60 percent?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-kCBMQsu_I

Part 12 of 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuMzvZKer2w

Part 13 of 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ryFMBBnH0

Video 14 of 14

Part 14 of 14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXc6aFuVq-k

At the end of the viewing, please write at least three things that you notice from each photo.

The entire 14-video playlist is available here http://tinyurl.com/metcenterplaylist

An additional reading:   Suggestions to Principals by S. McCrea

SCRIBD:  LINK

Orange Session (2) Advisories

Session (2)
Advisories

People who use the advisory system believe that a school is more than just academics.  

An advisory is defined in Dennis Littky's book as follows:  "the entire school is divided into advisories of small groups of kids (I like 14) and one adult who stay together much of the day through all four years."

What happens in an advisory?

Dennis Littky says, "Spending my mornings with those kids just talking about their lives and their learning was the best part of my day. It was the most significant way I was able to use my time to get at the heart of what my role as principal was and how I could best support my staff and students."

1. an advisory system increases the range and kinds of communication among students and staff, and by spreading out the counseling function, makes problems more manageable and better solu- tions easier to come by. 

2.  an advisory system includes an adult advisor who becomes that one true advocate every student (and every student’s family) deserves.  There is one adult in the school who really knows the kid as a person and as a learner.  The advisor can make sure that all the other school structures are meeting that kid’s personal and educational needs. 

3.  With an advisory system, parents know exactly who can tell them how their kid is doing; they don’t have to chase down six or eight different teachers, each of whom only knows a small part of the big picture of their child’s education. 

What are objections to the advisory system?

Some teachers see a zero-sum situation.  Time spent in advisories takes away from academic time.

Here's a response by a student at Littky's school:  “No time to talk with kids!? Isn’t that the main thing about being a teacher?”

Please read the excerpt from Big Picture and think about the questions.

The reading from Big Picture:

page 61-62

The Advisory System

I used to think that creating an advisory system was the core of my vision for changing the way schools are structured. I now see there are a number of critical things that must be in place if we’re really committed to creating effective learning environments for kids (see this entire book). But I am still committed to the idea that an advisory system is the best structure to improve a school’s atmosphere and culture and make an already small school feel even smaller and more personalized.

George Wood talked about advisories in his piece on Thayer in Schools That Work. Here’s an excerpt I love:

Don Weisberger, a special education teacher at Thayer, describes the system’s effect this way: “Advisory in one word is communication. It makes the school smaller. . . . [Students] know someone’s there for them, they are not getting lost among all the other students. . . . In advisory we don’t talk at kids, we talk with kids.”

There are many variations on the advisory system, from the way we did it at Shoreham-Wading River, where kids met with the same small group of students and adult every morning to “check in,” to the way we do it at The Met, where the entire school is divided into advisories of small groups of kids (I like 14) and one adult who stay together much of the day through all four years. I know that the way we do things at The Met is unique and may not be possible in all schools. But I also know that setting up a system where students have a consistent environment where they are able to truly connect with a small group of kids and one adult can radically change their entire schooling experience. It was a shy and awkward but very bright kid who told a visitor to The Met, “I have 14 friends here. At my old school I wouldn’t have had any.” That was his advisory. An incredibly strong community of 15.

For Discussion

1.  What advantages would there be to you if you could work as a teacher who has an advisory?