This week we’ve been preparing to write a descriptive paper in class.

What is a very focused description? A riddle.

So on Monday we read riddles. I did a historical introduction to the ones I used.
(“This will be easier if you played a particular children’s game growing up.”
And “George Washington probably heard this one when he was growing up.”)

Eventually I gave everyone five riddles from the Exeter Book (circa 950 AD) translated into modern English. I tell them that the riddles are old.

Then I had them come up with answers on their own.

The students still came up with modern answers. But even those were interesting.

There is one riddle that scholars disagree on the answer. (The book has no answers in it.) I had the students get in groups and told them I would give them extra points if they could figure out what all the possible answers were. Everyone got it!

Wednesday I brought in art cards.

(Did I already tell this story?) I handed each student one and told them not to show it to anyone else. Unbeknownst to them I had at least three others that were very similar to theirs.

Then I told them to write a one line or sentence description of their piece. Then I took up the cards.

I had them give me their line and then I showed them the cards I thought might be theirs. They were surprised by how many cards fit their description.

Then I gave out another set of cards and had them describe the picture they received. This time when I took up the cards I placed them with other similar cards on the table at the front of the room. Then I had them exchange descriptions and come up and find the card matching the description they got.

It was a lot of fun. People were flabbergasted at how many of the cards looked similar. Overall, though, the students were able to find the cards with those second descriptions.

On Wednesday one of my students asked if we were having kindergarten week. Another student thought that would be fun. I laughingly said we would be playing hide and seek. Several of them were excited about that!

Then Calandra gave us the “non-astounding” alphabet technique.

So on Friday, I had them brainstorm on people, places, and things. Then I had them pick one and come up with 26 details starting with letters of the alphabet. I allowed one skip. And for each they came up with extra letters for, they received extra points.

I learned a new word, “xanthic.” It means yellow, which was some special someone’s favorite color.

It expanded their thinking and gave them a finite number of details to shoot for. They loved it! Thanks, Calandra.

Something that didn’t work so well:

I’m not very fond of group work. Mostly because I was always the kid doing all the work for everyone’s grade.

But I have been trying to include more of this for the sake of the students for whom it is a blessing.

I’ve found that if I want them to have productive group discussions I have to be very clear about what I want them to discuss. If I just say “discuss X” they will talk for less than two minutes on topic and then get off on their own lives.

I can give them a checklist or a set of questions to help stop this.

And I tell them I’ll be calling on them for answers afterward.

This is from my adjunct certification course.

Berkeley has a new study that shows that “the brains of low-income children function differently from the brains of high-income kids.”

“Kids from lower socioeconomic levels show brain physiology patterns similar to someone who actually had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult,” said Robert Knight, director of the institute and a UC Berkeley professor of psychology. “We found that kids are more likely to have a low response if they have low socioeconomic status, though not everyone who is poor has low frontal lobe response.”

Previous studies have shown a possible link between frontal lobe function and behavioral differences in children from low and high socioeconomic levels, but according to cognitive psychologist Mark Kishiyama, first author of the new paper, “those studies were only indirect measures of brain function and could not disentangle the effects of intelligence, language proficiency and other factors that tend to be associated with low socioeconomic status. Our study is the first with direct measure of brain activity where there is no issue of task complexity.”

The Washington Post has an interesting article on whether or not people should ignore poverty’s impact. Or at least that’s what the title says.

Should teachers ignore poverty and teach and be held responsible if the students don’t learn? Or should teachers teach and know that poverty is going to have an impact on their students?

One writer said:

Of course, there are teachers who give up far too easily and make excuses. I think of myself as a reasonably hard worker and someone who gives every child my best effort.

But there are fantastic doctors who have patients that die. Is it always the doctor’s fault? Certainly there are patients who will not survive despite a great doctor’s heroic efforts.

Another agrees with that idea, but has a different metaphor:

Imagine a football coach who designs his plays with no regard to the talents of his players, half of whom are on crutches, deaf or blind. And even if they are not so handicapped, if they have no ability to catch or throw a ball, running a pass-oriented West Coast style offense will not work.

Someone else had a very different view:

Full personal responsibility for student achievement and refusing to blame other factors does NOT mean we ignore the other factors; it simply means we view other factors as challenges and problems that require solutions, and we view the possibility of solutions as fitting inside our personal sphere of influences vs. shrugging our shoulders and giving up.

I think that there can be a middle ground. Don’t give up just because they are in poverty. Those students can learn. But don’t hold the teachers responsible for teaching them everything their parents should have been teaching them for the first six years of their lives either.

Question:
Is it possible that the issue of the brain isn’t poverty so much as it is low stimulation?

I would like to see the study replicated and split the poverty kids into two groups. Have one group where the parents are attending college or clearly doing something to move themselves out of poverty. In the other group they can have whomever. Does that change the picture?

Could it be that the damage is not poverty but the lack of intellectual involvement?

Just a thought.

It comes from the fact that my family was desperately poor when I was younger. Until I was about 10 we often went to bed hungry. But I doubt sincerely that my brain shows any dysfunctions.

The US News had Top 10 Signs you’ve been cutting too many classes. Some of them are outrageously unrealistic. Some of them are so realistic it is heartbreaking.

An example of the latter:
#10 You show up Wednesday at 9 only to find the class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3 to 4.

This happened in my eight a.m class this year. A student showed up at twenty after and wanted to know where her class had been moved to. She insisted that she was in the right classroom at the right time. I finally got a look at her schedule, which she had in her notebook. She had the class in that room. But it was at 7:50 on Tues/Thurs. So she was thirty minutes late on the wrong day for a class.

An example of the former:
#3 The hottie you were trying to hook up with is now married to the guy at the end of the row.

Living together, yes. They could be doing that inside a week. But married? Not happening. At least not anywhere I teach.

This type of student belongs in the snowflake compendium.

#8 Your classmates roll their eyes when you do show up and “contribute” to the discussion.

#7 You ask when the midterm is going to be only to find out it was held three weeks ago.

#6 It’s the 10th week of the semester and the prof mistakes you for a prospective student.

I was talking to an associate dean today. I am not sure that she said what I think she did, but this is how I interpreted the conversation.

I told her that I was getting a critical analysis of Gulliver’s Travels published by Ignatius Press.

She said, “Don’t you want to teach composition?”

I said yes.

That was the end of the conversation because someone came along and interrupted us.

But I got the feeling that she meant, “Why are you writing something on literature if you want to teach composition?”

I have a couple of answers.

1. If I am going to teach composition, shouldn’t I be able to prove I can write?

2. Just because I want to teach composition does not mean I have no interests in English outside of rhetoric.

3. Because they accepted my proposal.

Maybe I was taking the question the wrong way. But if I wasn’t, those are my answers.