Putting it all Together...

For the past few weeks I have been pondering the question, “So what?” At this point I think I finally have an answer. My unit focuses on power and how power functions in society. My lesson is coming together slowly because I am having trouble limiting my scope. I have a vision, but getting that vision down on paper and supporting it with theory and rationale is no easy task. My end goal for the unit is to “prepare students to become citizens in a democratic republic” (Beach, 58). What I mean by that is, I want my students to be critical thinkers and critical consumers of knowledge. I do not want them to grow up to be “sheep” (yes I am using Animal Farm in my unit) who blindly accept what they are told. Instead, I want to teach them how to be conscientious citizens. I want them to challenge preconceived notions as well as social and political hierarchies. I want to foster critical thinking and encourage inquiry. Now my next step (that I am currently working on) is to develop activities and select texts that will help me achieve this end goal.

Another setback in planning is that I am still debating between texts. The texts I am 100% about using are:

Play: The Tempest by William Shakespeare

Poem: Killing the Animals by Wesley Mc Nair (pg 121)

Short Story: Benito Cereno by Herman Melville

Film: Lord of the Flies directed by Harry Hook

Fiction: Animal Farm by George Orwell

I am still debating what YA book to use in conjunction with these texts. I want to utilize a novel that analyzes power from a modern perspective and perhaps with a female protagonist. That is why I chose Persepolis. I am open to different options if anyone has any suggestions.

The texts I am debating about are:

Poem: The Farewell by Edward Field (pg 76)

Short Story: Our neck of the woods by Joe Meno

Non-fiction: Federalist 10 by James Madison

YA novel: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Speech: “I have a Dream” by Martin Luther King Jr.

Speech or Non-Fiction Excerpt: Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler

While reading Animal Farm I wanted to incorporate a lesson on propaganda and have the students do a rhetorical analysis of various pieces of propaganda (and maybe even create their own). Then I was thinking of putting Hitler and Martin Luther King in conversation with each other and have the student analyze their rhetoric. I feel that the juxtaposition of these two iconic figures would make for great discussions. They were both very charismatic leaders. This ties into Lord of the Flies because, Jack, the tyrant manages to gather the majority of the boys support through his bold, strong and charismatic exterior.

Or for my non-fiction piece I could use James Madison’s Federalist 10, Winthrop’s Journal (natural liberty and private property), or maybe brining in Hannah Arendt the political theorist into conversation with one of the texts.

I am also considering these texts:  

-Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (short story)

-Oroonoko by Aphra Behn (short story)

-Current events articles (especially about the rebellions in Egypt and Syria, etc)

I also wanted to incorporate literature circles where students read graphic novels (and comic collections).  I wanted to give the students a chance to read a text and determine how power functions in the world of their text. For example, The Walking Dead takes place during the zombie apocalypse. There is no form of government, it is every man, woman and child for themselves. I don’t HAVE to use these in my unit but they are definitely something I am considering.

EXTRA: Graphic Novel Literature Circles

1.) V for Vendetta, written by Alan Moore and illustrated mostly by David Lloyd

2.) Maus by Art Spiegelman

3.) DMZ (1^st volume of comics) by Brian Wood

4.) The Walking Dead (1^st volume of comics) by Robert Kirkman

Goals:

For this week Sam and I decided that our goal was to layout a timeline of events (in my case it's concepts and guiding questions) for our unit. We also established essential questions.

My essential question for my unit: What is power and how does it function in society? What is the role of the individual in a society?

So in my unit I plan on having these benchmark questions or ideas that structure the unit.

1.)    Define “power”

2.)    Identify individual factors that differentiate those with power from those without power.

3.)    Perform character analyses and analyze interpersonal power relations (how power functions between people

4.)    How does power function in government?

·         Learn about different types of government

·         Learn how corruption and greed effect power relationships

5.)    Political leaders (or charismatic leaders to include MLK)

·         power of propaganda,

·         perform rhetorical analyses

·         analyze the power of language

·         view speeches from Hitler and MLK

·         compare rhetoric between two leaders

6.)    Historical power struggles

·         Genocide: Holocaust, Cambodian, Guatemalan, Rwanda, etc

·         Imperialism: colonization & slavery (oppression)

·         Systemic violence

7.)     Determine what is an individual’s role in society?

·         What power does the individual hold?

This is what I have so far. Let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions!
Thanks

Unit Chunkin'

To be honest, I was feeling overwhelmed.  However, the idea of holding each other accountable sort of made me focus and think, "I need to focus on X, Y, and Z."  The last class, Ramina and I decided to email each other on Monday to sort of keep tabs on one another.  "I've done this so far.  What do you think about this?"  It helped a lot.  In addition to keeping tabs, I think the thing that helped me to sit down and narrow my unit down to a certain concept was a web mapping.
I looked at the handout that Sarah passed out a few classes ago, and then I looked at the one Ramina created.  I opened my laptop and decided to create a web, print it out, and use it as a tool in helping me think.  I knew from the beginning that I wanted to do a Multi-genre Research project.  So, I started to think, "I want to guide my kids and provide them with as much assistance as I can offer them, and then slowly 'ween' them away from having to need me, and allowing them to grow as researchers, thinkers,  and writers."  The problem, I guess, is that I over think things.  So, as I planned my six week unit, I thought, "Ok, I want to focus on psychoanalysis, and PTSD.  Can we, then, use Multi-genre as a tool to conduct research on PTSD?"  This is different, doable, and awesome!  The thing is, after I printed my unit "chunk" to turn in, I began to look at what my chunk is lacking.  So, I think, what genres are my kids familiar with?  Perhaps, it's best to assume that they know nothing at all, and teach different genres so that they are familiar of different conventions, and so that they can have options.
I guess, as I begin to create and draft my unit, I stop and think of everything that it lacks and ways in which I can include these things in my unit, but not do so in an overwhelming way.
On another note, I just read the first sixteen pages of Tom Romano's new book, "Fearless Writing," Awesome!!!  If I knew how to create emoticons on this thing I'd totally type a little "thumbs-up" guy.  Get a copy :)  

Unit Progress

I feel as if my unit is progressing fairly well. So far, I have been able to make several big decisions regarding what will be going into my unit and what the students will be coming away with. I’ll start by talking about my framework of power. I decided to create my unit around the ideas of power and corruption, since those were the big themes (to me) from the Shakespeare play I was assigned (Julius Caesar). With that as my starting point, I started to generate my essential questions in a way that would be applicable, accessible, and interesting to the students.

I then began work-shopping my ideas for what texts I should be using. I made decisions about my texts based on the different ways I could potentially use them to examine power dynamics, but also to look at corruption in government (again to really tie in Julius Caesar). I felt great about my text choices because I was able to link all the texts together in meaningful and scaffolding ways, weaving the texts around my key text, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. This text is the most rich and diverse of my choices and includes a multitude of different examinations of what power is and what it means.

From that point I have been able to let my creative teaching brain generate tons of ideas for activities and assessments. I settled on the idea of concluding my unit with a Multi-Genre project, so with that in mind, I began to create a unit map/schedule based on how I wanted the MG project to evolve and develop throughout the unit. I decided on working on different elements each week for the MG project would help scaffold this large unit assessment over a ten week period so that the students would not feel lost or overwhelmed. With that idea in mind, I then developed my week by week plan by coupling the items of the MG project that we would be work-shopping that week with a reading that is an example of what the students would be creating. This way all of our activities would tie into one another in a way that would scaffold the whole unit, building up to our final unit assessment.

So far, this is what I have. I developed a rough sketch of my MG project and its qualifications, and overall, I feel confident moving forward with what I have. Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions for my plan!

Unit Progress

The Unit..

It’s going…

I feel like I should be more excited to do it, but I’m mostly stressed out about it because it’s hard for me to find just one direction and stick with it. I wish I could do so many things with it, but I know I have to limit myself. Even in doing so, I still notice that I’m trailing off into lesson ideas that would inflate my unit from the original 6-week schedule to a year-long event.

Since my last blog post, I have completely 180’d my lesson. Now, my essential question is, “What is (romantic) Love?” – derived from the lesson Sarah modeled for us in class a couple weeks back. I really liked the idea of this lesson because it was very obvious and vague at first, but once Sarah started branching off into the various texts and directions you could take with it, I decided, “Why not try the obvious!?” Though it was kind of redundant at first, it's shaping up quite nicely so far!

I really am starting to get a bit less stressed because I think I’ve finally chosen all of the “big” texts/short stories that’ll go in my annotated bibliography and will definitely be used in the unit. Not each decision is concrete just yet, and I’m trying to keep my options open just in case other ideas pop up.

One of my biggest struggles is with the timing and schedule of creating the unit. I know we’re supposed to kind of set our own schedule on this thing, but I’m having a hard time backwards designing, when it doesn’t feel like I’m starting with the final project or the end goal. This might be totally due to what chunks my group and I have chosen to turn in when. I don’t know... Does anyone else feel this way? I literally feel like I should start with the last component (like writing the final project prompt or something). It works for me either way, and I’m not minding the steps thus far, but I don’t want to be completely missing the idea of backwards design if I’m doing it wrong!

As a part of this week’s unit chunk, my group and I have decided to turn in a unit sketch (exactly the one we did for The Wednesday Wars at the beginning of the semester), and it’s taking a crapload of time, but, for me, it’s worth it. It’s not a chunk Sarah is asking us for because it’s not technically a component of the unit, but if you liked doing it for TWW, I’d totally do it again. It’s helping me think ahead to some components like the rationale and the individual lessons.

If anyone has any suggestions about the backwards design thing pleeease share!

Thanks for reading!

On creating reading

I spent at least an hour trying to figure out how I would write a lesson about a reading strategy. We've spent literally hours writing lessons about books, creating activities that push the kids to make interesting ideas and readings of the text. But though close reading strategies would seem like something that an English teacher should be able to write a lesson based around a close reading of a text (guided through a reading strategy) I found myself baffled as to what strategy I'd want to use and how I could structure an entire lesson around the strategy, rather than merely a single activity as I was used to.

It was a return to the backwards planning method that gave me my lesson writing salvation. I began by asking myself what I wanted my students to be able to do by the end of my lesson. For most of the texts I used, the "AHA moments" reading strategy (asks the students to pay attention to moments in which the characters of the text have a realization that changes the momentum of the story) worked the best and so I wanted to make sure that my students could express their understanding of the strategy and to be able to connect the strategy to the texts we are reading. In looking at all of them I felt that the short story "The most dangerous game" best fit that strategy.

From there I looked at what I would need to do so that my students could meet my goals for them. First they would need to have the strategy modeled for them, so I would tie it to the book they read previously (The brief and wondrous life of Oscar Wao) accessing their knowledge of the text and associating it to the new strategy. From there I would bridge to "The most dangerous game" asking the students to notice AHA moments on their own. But for me to believe that the students actually understood the strategy I wanted them to be able to articulate why an author might use an AHA moment to affect the story. To me if my students could do that then I would know that they understood everything. It is with that in mind that I finished the lesson with a discussion about the author's intentions in writing those moments.

unit progress...

Greetings all, I hope you are all well and sane. So far, in creating my unit on Identity, I've come up with a unit map (a very sloppy web) of texts, ideas of activities, and questions, all things surrounding the conceptual frame work of identity and viewing identity through different perspectives. Sound confusing? It still is to me. My main goal so far is to make this unit make as much sense to me as I hope it would for my students. I keep asking myself, "so what?" after every activity or idea I come up with.

So far, unit planning has proved to be a huge struggle. I've been researching online and the library to solidify the texts I want to use in my unit. I think the intimidating thing about unit planning is the act of solidifying things. For example, it took me a while to really figure out the texts I wanted to use for my unit because I was scared of making that commitment! I feel like if I make that commitment, there's no going back. As cheesy as it sounds, I think my commitment issues and fear of solidifying aspects of my unit may be holding me back from embracing my unit and getting somewhere with it. Kudos to the teachers out there who can bust out units like it's no big deal. To say this process is really forcing me to realize and appreciate the amount of thinking and planning that goes into the teaching profession is an understatement. 

As of now, I have produced a rough draft beginning of my rational, lit reviews, an annotated bibliography for my texts, a unit map (still in the works), and a rough draft of a final project handout. I find setting our weakly goals to be very productive because it allows me to manage my time and keep up with developing my ideas in a way that makes sense to me and my unit. My goal is to take my vision for my unit and make it apparent through my questions and activities revolving around the conceptual framework. 

I think you guys couldn't see the image I posted a view weeks ago, so I'm attempting to repost it again...Whenever all my tests were coincidentally scheduled on the same day, I would imagine teachers doing this!

Until next time, 

-Ramina Odicho

So for this past week Warren and I have been working on and discussing our unit rationales. I felt it would be more reasonable if we only focused on the first two points that the rationale is supposed to cover: Describing the course and describing the students, class, and community we have cultivated. On top of that, we decided to create a lesson plan on a reading strategy. I plan on teaching the reading strategy that I picked within the first weeks of class to use for my own reading comphrension for Smago. With this reading strategy I am working on implementing I will expect students to actively interact with the text in order to comprehend the content of the text. I figure, if I can get students to master this reading strategy in an article, they will be able to use the strategy for more complex texts that I plan on using in the unit.  Then from there on, students will be able to implement different strategies during the unit for all the texts they will be reading to insure comprehension. I purposely want this lesson to be within the first week of my unit because I want students to know the difference between what an author is “saying” vs what an author is “doing.” Students will be able to identify power verbs and use them in analyzing a text. This reading strategy also scaffolds into teaching summary and analysis, which relates to my working UNIT RATIONALE THESIS.

Thesis- My unit will reflect how student’s need to practice analyzing and evaluating characters and situations, but also take note on their everyday life decisions through the different texts. In order to challenege students to do this I will have them practice realistic skill-based activities that they can apply to their present, past or future. 

Also, I am pretty excited about reading the book, Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. I know for a fact students will find this high-interest and we can make our own 6-word memoirs based on a topic we are covering in the unit. However, I am struggling with the "so what" aspect of using this book. Any help with how I can make it more relevant my unit on little decisions impacting lives in big ways? I have some ideas, but i'd love feedback!

Here is a link to get more information on the book! Some are pretty entertaining, while others more serious, which I think is a great balance.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2252947.Not_Quite_What_I_Was_Planning

Unit Development

I believe my feelings about my unit coincide with what Samantha wrote in her blog below: I love my topic and ideas so far, but I need to hone in on lessons and skills that will make my unit feasible. 

Right now my essential questions deal with marginalization and how/why it is expressed in a text.  Other interconnecting ideas across my unit are people as property, negotiating boundaries, education and suffering.  I think each of my texts gives insight to these topics while being very different from one another.  I see how they could each connect and contribute to one another, but how do I share this with the student?  I need to now begin considering in what form students should explore these texts and how they will demonstrate their ‘take-aways.’

Similar to what Michael wrote in his blog below, I think I need to work on limiting my critique of each text.  Part of the difficulty of transitioning from an English student to a teacher is that I do not necessarily get to do the fun stuff of analyzing a text(besides maybe in our teacher’s log and/or rationale), but need to think about how students are connecting to it instead.  So, what activities will serve the function of my students connecting to these texts? And how will I best plan for carrying them out, then assessing them?  Those are the questions that I am now considering and will hopefully resolve over the next week of planning.

On a side note, I read this article today http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/free-thinkers/ and wouldn’t mind hearing other’s thoughts about it if you feel strongly about the topic.  It reminded me of The Ignorant Schoolmaster by Rancière, which we read last year in a class and I found intriguing. 

My Unit Progress

Well...it's going. I was hoping to have progressed a little more. I have about a million ideas running through my head, and I can't lie, they're good. I'm just having a hard time honing in on them and fitting them in with the texts I want to use. I'm trying to map out my unit, but I'm hitting some dead ends. I love all of the texts and the film I chose, now I need to hardcore start planning what activities or something to do with them. What skills and assessments will I be working with? I don't know just yet.

My overall theme is Dystopian and Utopian Societies: Exploring the "Perfect" World. I decided that my primary text would be The Hunger Games, and supplement it with close readings of Divergent. Essentially with all of the texts I've chosen we will be exploring different interpretations of utopias and dystopias; and discussing how perspective affects reality, and several other things.


The activities that Sarah helped me come up with included Movie "Lit" Circles (with roles such as set designer, screenwriter, etc.) and creating a soundtrack for a book.

As far as the final project/assessment goes...it keeps changing. At first I wanted students to create their own dystopia or utopia, pulling characteristics from the texts we will have studied. Perhaps a paper might also make sense here. Clearly I have a lot of work to do in the coming weeks. I felt like I had it all figured out, and now that I'm trying to put it all together I feel like I'm still stuck at the drawing board.

Weekly Unit Progress - Warren and Tatiana

Hey everybody,

This week Tatiana and I planned on working on, bringing in, and discussing our unit rationales. In particular, we wanted to go over the first two points that the rationale is supposed to cover: Describing the course and describing the students, class, and community we have cultivated. Also, we decided to create lesson plans that would focus on reading comprehension and utilizing a reading strategy.

I feel I am getting along pretty well so far, and have found constructing a unit map to be especially helpful in what kinds of overlying themes and concepts students could explore through the texts. I am planning to design the reading comprehension lesson around Melville's Bartleby, The Scrivener, and thought I would use a What-How-Why chart as a graphic organizer. I got this idea from one of my mentor teachers at Washington who is teaching The Great Gatsby now, and felt that it could be used to teach Bartleby, also. The chart is divided into three columns, the What section having the specific quote or passage, the How section addressing the type of language being used (thematic, characterization, simile, imagery, etc.), and the Why section explaining how each passage is significant in reference to the overall theme. The students at Washington are using these charts to record how hope and despair are shown throughout the novel. For Bartleby, I would consider using the chart to have students focus on how the narrator conveys generosity toward others, or how generosity and beneficence may be exploited or futile.

At this point, I think my unit generally addresses the potential challenges of managing one's own personal desires to find a place in society. One of the biggest feats I have encountered, and will probably continue to, is thinking of how to make writing prompts based on the readings that will engage students with various interests. The methods text I chose, as well as one of the readings assigned for ED 432 this week, talk about how students become more engaged when the work they do gives them feelings of competency. Imagining that students in a full class will have various skill sets and interests, I think it will be especially challenging to think of various writing activities that will allow each student to build on his or her particular skills and interests. However, I think the unit would be highly relatable for many adolescents and present questions from which the texts would present many interesting perspectives to explore. In turn, I think having content that will interest students will be instrumental in developing multiple ways for students to build competency in various forms of writing.

How do I feel about my unit?

            How do I feel about my unit? Have I progressed as much as I hoped I would have by this point? What more can I do to improve the unit? Questions I ask myself almost daily…

            Overall, I think things are going really well. I am really focused on what I am doing and think that I would be able to teach this unit to a class. This week, Chris and I decided we would have completed unit maps to discuss and turn in for review. I think this is going really well for me, however I am having a bit of trouble with deciding what assessments and skills I would like to test with what texts. I keep moving things around, and have basically felt pretty indecisive about all this. Also, I am having a bit of difficulty deciding what standards align with each portion of the unit. I think this comes with practice, and I haven’t been faced with needing to align standards with my lessons before. Now, I think I am being forced to, which in turn could be good.

            Other than that, I am really enjoying creating this unit. I feel really engaged and wish that when I was in middle and high school, my teachers created comprehensive units like this to teach us. I really like the idea of incorporating novels, films, poetry, and other media/texts in order to reach different types of learners and to further understanding in units. Hopefully when I am presented with my own classroom, I will be conscious of this, just as I am right now.

-          - Alexandra K. Wiesyk

Unit Progress Part 1

I'm really into my unit. I feel like it would be something I would actually want to teach. I enjoy the texts, and I believe the topic is a relevant and important one.

No, how do I go about making these ideas turn into language arts skills? All of the texts are so perfectly commenting or exploring my essential questions that I feel like my main obstacle to overcome is repetition. Teaching isn't merely about facilitating the opportunity to see the big ideas of texts, especially when a unit is more or less exploring one or a few closely related ideas. Students and teachers alike will get bored. Furthermore, what else will students get out of these inquiries?

Here is where the importance of skills comes in handy. I think this is where I am going to need to focus my concentration over the next few weeks. I need to get better at outlining and planning which skills will belong with which texts and understand that I need to go into these texts with specific, limited skills in mind. As much as I know how valuable these texts can be, they need to be put to an efficient use.

For instance, this week I decided I would do a lesson associated with The Outsiders. For me, I could do an entire unit on this book. I love it. It's perfect. It speaks so clearly to 6-12 students and adults alike. It's characterization is varied and brilliant. The voice is unique. Its exploration of socio-economics and identity is, to use that overused word, timeless. BUT, this text is merely one of a handful in my unit. So, I had to decide how to focus in on one aspect of the text. I thought forcing myself to write one lesson on the text would help in that goal. The product ended up being a discussion and writing activity that focuses on perspective/point of view. There are so many characters in this novel and the idea of how the story would be different based on varying perspective seems like a valuable activity.

Now to do that for all of the other texts.

Response to Smagorinsky's Notes on Preparation for Future Needs

Something Smagorinsky touches on in the reading for this week that has impacted me especially throughout the teaching program is the idea that teachers may justify units for how they will benefit students in terms of what skills they will need in the future. Smagorinsky writes, "One reason that teachers often give for teaching something is that it will help students succeed in college. . . [but] it doesn't help those who don't go to college (145)." Last week, Professor Olson noted that only 25% of Americans hold a Bachelor's degree, which only reminded me of the popular phrase, college is not for everybody. This is one condition that I am trying hard to prepare for when creating meaningful units for students. But although many future students that I teach will not be making plans to go to college right after high school, I still have faith that they will be able to apply good reading and writing skills in their lives in various ways. In developing prompts for the class unit, I try to be mindful of opportunities in which students may produce business letters, express themselves artistically through drama, music, or dance,  make speeches about important issues, write manuals on how to do something, or even write memos.

I also chose Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, which offers simple yet invaluable views on how to work well with and connect with others. Whether reading this book in its own light or synthesizing it with Twisted (my young adult novel) or Romeo and Juliet, I think it may prove meaningful to many students trying to figure out how they can become assets in various businesses when just starting out in the professional world.

In general, I think it is always important to present options in prompting students to write. While some students might embrace writing in ways that can help them connect with fiction in creative and abstract ways, there will always be the students that want to know how what they do in school will benefit them in real life. To accommodate everybody, students could either write a business letter to Romeo to offer their professional expertise to help him overcome his woes of love, or to the local mechanic with whom they are seeking part-time employment.

Reflective Teaching and Portfolio Assessments

We've been reading about assessments recently in both ED432/330 and ENGL481.  Meanwhile, Sarah and I have been engaging in a robust dialogue via email that centers on assessment.  While reflecting on these texts and emails, I found myself returning to a point I explored in a spontaneous back and forth with Prof. Olson in ED330/432 a couple weeks ago.  Specifically: what will we do as teachers if (when?) our students resist the progressive methods and/or techniques many of us hope to employ?

The specific conversation regarded not assessments but small group work.  Prof. Olson was pointing out that research suggests small group work is better for student learning than individual work.  (While it's not in the scope of this post to review/critique the applicability of these studies across cultures, I would be interested to know the cultural, national, and socioeconomic backgrounds of the subjects; whether or not these studies have been carried out in many different cultures internationally and many different SESs here in the States; what the student/teacher ratio was in these studies; and whether the researchers were present or hidden from the students in these experiments since the presence of adult figures in the classrooms could effect student behavior.  Suffice to say: I'm suspicious of absolutes.)  Having said all that, even if we accept this research to be absolutely true across all cultural, national, economic and gender groups, what do we do when the student consensus in the class is for individual work? Do we ignore Paolo Friere, assert our authority as teachers and impose the progressive educational inter-personalities on them by force?  Doesn't that undermine the "progressive education" part?  

Back to assessment: what if we want to follow Smagorinsky and assess via portfolio, but the students come to a consensus against this?  What of the students prefer multiple choice and short answer tests, believing it will better equip them for the ACT and, ultimately, college?  Do we force portfolios on them in a top-down hierarchy, allow them to dictate assessment, or (as Prof. Olson suggested) allow them to come to a consensus within top-down, hierarchically dictated parameters?  What if one student prefers to be assessed in multiple choice or essays while others prefer portfolios?  Do we differentiate?  

These thoughts evolved into me wondering whether I agree with Smagorinsky when he says, "[i]deally...grades will correspond to student's learning" [Kindle loc 5536].  I'm not sure if that's the case.  I had very many negative experiences in grade school, but one very positive experience I had was in eighth grade language arts.  We had to submit a Young Authors text, and my teacher said the class couldn't do poetry.  (The implication was because students would use poetry in order to avoid writing a full length text.)  She made on exception: me.  She explained that this was because I'd already excelled in writing the lengths of texts the assignment required and that she knew I was taking an interest in poetry outside of class.  There were some complaints (she did not run a Frerian-style classroom and didn't claim to), but I felt both special and pressured to deliver something worthy of that exception.  I reviewed all my poems.  Chose those I wanted to include.  Thought about the process.  Not because I was trying to prove that I had learned something for an A nor for the A itself (she'd basically given me free rein).  It was because I knew I already had an A.  (As this was a language arts class, I don't think this is "mobile-making" assessment.) 

In my email exchange with Sarah, I came to realize I believe in something I call the academic hierarchy of needs (which is basically just a wholesale appropriation of Maslows hierarchy of needs).  That is: it seems to me that academia can (more or less) correspond with the hierarchy:

Physiological ≈ is the student in the academic system at all (school, online learning, etc.)?

Safety ≈ does the student feel as though they are in a safe space both literally and academically?  That is to say: do they feel not only literally safe, but safe that at least their teacher won't judge them for asking a weird question, that their effort will correspond with good grades, and that an A is attainable for them?

Love/belonging ≈ does the student have at least a small core of peer friends or significant other who will support them through a comment the rest of the class laughs at, or a quirky interest in the something or other the class covers?  (Here, I think of my private hobby while I was the captain of the soccer team: rose gardening.  A lot of relevancy was lost in biology because I, correctly from a real-politic social sense, withheld that information from even my close friends...and certainly my science teacher.)   

Esteem ≈ does the student feel like the class in general (not just their close friends or peers) will be respectful of them as a meaningful, legitimate contributor to the class?  (At least enough to feel safe and confident speaking up in class-wide discussion without having to be called on?) On a school wide level, does the student feel that they can join both the chess club and the football team?  The debate team and pom squad without having to choose or be judged?  

It seems to me that here, once the previous academic needs have been met, do we have opportunities for academic self actualization.  (Of course, there's a whole other conversation to be had, using the Maslow's actual hierarchy, about how ridiculous it is of our society to expect students to effectively learn academics (which generally involves the "self-actualization" level) while not providing them the literal (not academic) "safety," "love/belonging," or "esteem" supports.)

It seems to me, when I reflect on my own academic history, that my most meaningful learning experiences were not times when I was working to attain or demonstrate student learning. (I remember I stayed up all night to pass the physics bridge project junior year, which required I apply and demonstrate the physical properties used in my bridge design, and the ones I used  were...um...gosh...can't remember....glue?    I was working from a place of fear.)  My most relevant academic experiences occurred when I knew I had an A already (and, later, when knew I was passing a pass/fail college course) and was being allowed freedom to work on something I considered relevant for a teacher who respected me enough to give me that freedom.  But here's the necessary risk: if some students (after demonstrating the assessments or benchmarks of A work) blossom under assurances of As plus freedom and relevancy, some students will not.  

And having said all this, if my classroom rejects this structure in favor of one more aligned with Smagorinsky, Paolo Friere's spirit will be scolding me if I don't comply.