MACUL and More: Greetings from Grand Rapids

Learning: Ignite It!

A week ago, I made the sojourn to sweet and sunny Grand Rapids, Michigan to attend the final day of the 2014 conference for the Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning. I attended two presentations, each of which were highly relevant to my English Language Arts pedagogy. I also had the good fortune of attending an hour-long session of five-minute lightning talks, some of which were no less than inspiring. I don't use this adjective lightly. What made the entire experience even more valuable to me was that I had the chance to share ideas, laughter, and excitement with some of the most talented and fun-loving professionals whom I've ever had the privilege to meet.

The first session I attended was presented by Andy Schoenborn, an ELA teacher dedicated to providing authentic feedback to his students in a digital format. He examined differences between feedback that treats and inquires about features of student writing at the level of the paragraph and the whole piece as opposed to sentence-level "corrections." In doing so, he asked us to recall memorable experiences with a teachers' feedback. In my quick-write, I wrote this:

The first experience with a teacher's feedback that I remember happened in 7th grade, when my ELA teacher noticed a poem that I was writing, asked to read it, and then took it away to spend some time with it. After, she wrote me a short thank-you card that thanked me honestly for having shared my writing with her. I think this was a huge part of my formative experience as a creative writer; I sometimes wonder if I would have written poetry so much or had such success in the art if this teacher were never to take notice of what I was writing and for asking to see it. 

I don't remember much of exactly what my teachers said, but I do remember that the most important feedback that I would receive would be a brief little blend of positive commentary and goals for improvement, including honest criticism as to what wasn't quite working and why not. I favored less those teachers who would slap a grade on an essay, copy-edit the draft, and then release it back to me. I favored large-order change-making; those teachers who told me about large-scale changes to make were most effective. I suspect that my students have similar feelings.

Among other recommendations that Schoenborn made were to also provide students with the opportunity to provide authentic feedback on each other's Google-Drive-based drafts, to understand and appreciate students' intentions and "stay in touch with what is good" about the essay, and to assign students the regular task of writing metacognitive blog posts about how their thinking is changing. I plan on applying many of these practices in my own classroom.

The second session I attended, called "Friday Night Lights" and delivered by David Theune, was characterized by the authenticity and gregariousness of its presenter. Theune (pronounced "Toony") began the presentation by providing his audience with little cups of seltzer water and then asked the room to make a toast to "progressive failure," the idea that mistakes are healthy because they lead to significant learning. Theune went on to denote the importance of providing our students with authentic audiences rather than settling for the sole audience of the teacher-examiner. Among the authentic audiences he mentioned and elaborated on were parents, fellow peers, the world (via the internet), younger in-district peers, and non-profit organizations. Theune is dedicated to putting students in communication with such audiences because it gives students' work a sense of real, authentic meaning. Theune demonstrated the potential of this strategy to result in beautifully meaningful products by showing us one result of a video narrative assignment that he gave to his students. His student's poignant and heart-breaking account of a bully on a bus spoke for itself and revealed how much our students are capable of, provided that we give them an avenue for sincere expression.

The day's final session, an hour-long cluster of five-minute lightning talks, featured ten different speakers, including a reprise by Theune that examined the importance of developing students' ability to empathize with others. Mike Kaechele delivered a solid speech on how standardization is, really, about comparing schools and encouraging conformity. He described skills that he (and I as well) would rather be given attention to in our curricula, such as caring, acceptance, relationships, collaboration, problem-solving, tinkering, citizenship, killing stereotypes, passions, love, originality, and personalization. His refrain, "Standardize that," will remain in my memory for a long time. And I can't exclude mention of Trevor Muir's incredibly moving spoken-word piece about how our actions and words as educators will stick with students for years. My follicles were on end for the duration of his talk.

Listening to such caring and talented educators' philosophies and practices was a richly rewarding experience, but I think it also merits mention that my favorite aspect of the day was sharing in these ideas with some of my favorite people. As of late, teaching has become a little lonely. We began our journey toward becoming teachers by taking coursework and engaging in a practicum together; we spent more than 40 hours a week learning, laughing, and sweating it out together. As of late, our increased time spent in the classroom has meant seeing less of each other. While this is necessary and an educational experience in itself, it means that we've had less opportunity to explore theory and practice and to simply benefit from participating in our tight-knit support network. Our day at MACUL provided a respite from the daily 14-hour grind we've become accustomed to. We gave our fellow student teachers fun nicknames, listened to cheesy pop playlists, and busted it out to Whitney Houston on the two-hour trip back to Ann Arbor. We had a brilliant lunch at Founders Brewing Co. marked by, again, more laughter. We had fun. Such is the reason why March 14 will be present in my mental reel of highlights from this year. It was, in the immortal words of Ice Cube, a "good day". 

Many thanks are due to our educational technology instructors, Jeff Stanzler and Rory Hughes, for securing for us the opportunity to visit this year's MACUL conference. I hope to see them both there in 2015.