At any rate, that new job I mentioned in my last post – I start it January 5.  As much as I detest New Year’s resolutions, I’ve been thinking about making a concerted effort to get back into blogging at that time.  When I started here, I was sometimes posting 3-4 times a week.  That frequency dropped off after a while, and now in the last third of this year I think I’ve only managed two or three posts, including this one.

My unofficial New Year’s resolution (let’s call it a New Job resolution instead) is going to be a semi-regular blogging schedule of 2-4 times per month.  If I can set aside time once a week to write a relevant post (as well as a return to form in commenting on your blogs), I’ll be grateful.

I’ve also got a few things I’ve been working on for a while that I’ll be rolling out around that time.  If you’re still with me after the holiday blitzkrieg, I’d like to share as I simultaneously transition between school buildings and career roles.

If I don’t post again til then, have a peaceful and blessed holiday season, and enjoy whatever time you get with your loved ones.

Although she does ring the “digital natives” alarm as one contributing factor (meh), she also admits that:

…it’s time to acknowledge that the lure of visual media isn’t the only thing pushing our kids away from the page and toward the screen. We’ve shied away from discussing a most unfortunate culprit in the saga of diminishing teen reading: the high-school English classroom. As much as I hate to admit it, all too often it’s English teachers like me — as able and well-intentioned as we may be — who close down teen interest in reading.

The apathy runs both ways, though, and this bit struck pretty close to home for me:

When students have to produce an essay on a book they care nothing for, it becomes a nightmare for both the student (think “all-nighter”) and the teacher, who’ll spend precious weekend hours reading papers devoid of content. The upshot of this empty drill: teens increasingly resistant to great books.

So what’s happening in our secondary English classrooms?  Certainly, we want students reading material that they find engaging, but most schools, I imagine, also want to push the well-roundedness that a liberal arts education professes to provide, so it can’t be all “Miley Cyrus and Brittany [sic] Spears biographies”, as one particularly hyperbolic commenter wrote at another source.

After reading Dr. Schnog’s article, these are the essential questions I took away:

1. What can we do to encourage, rather than discourage, student interest in reading?
2. How can we “teach the classics” without “transform[ing] them into dessicated lab specimens fit for dissection”? (the words of a parent quoted in Schnog’s article)
3. How important is the literary analysis essay to teaching secondary English? (OK, maybe not an essential question, but one I’ve been wrestling with for a few years now, and this is just as good a time as any to bring it up)

This one’s approaching TL;DR territory already; I’ll continue in a day or two.  Just wanted to clear my mental clipboard and float this out there… I have some thoughts of my own, but I’d appreciate yours as well, particularly on any other key takeaways from the article.

In the meantime, Dr. Schnog held a WaPo-sponsored Q&A session the day after the article was published; here’s the transcript.

Tracy Rosen tagged me in a piece entitled “By Any Means Human”, which asks teachers to consider the human element they bring to the classroom.  As anyone who has been to university taught for any period of time knows, content knowledge alone does not a good teacher make.

For my part, my students have always told me that my sense of humor not only helps make sometimes dry material more accessible, but helps them connect a little more to me (and to each other) personally.  In fact, I got a very nice thank-you card at the end of this past school year from a senior I had in my first quarter Shakespeare’s Comedy class.  In it, she informed me that my sense of humor not only helped her to understand the works we studied*, but also helped the class of to bond considerably.  There’s something about laughter that brings people together; I guess it’s the participation in a shared experience that does it.  As I’ve said before, I’m all for engendering that sense of community in my classes, through whatever means I have at my disposal, technological or not.

This isn’t to say that the jokes I make are GOOD, per se – in fact, I pride myself on the ability to craft a cringe-worthy pun out of almost any situation (although the one I made about Titania and Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream had the entire class LOLing for a good while!).  Maybe it’s more that I can (and frequently do) laugh at myself, which the students may find rare in a teacher.  I take my job and my responsibilities very seriously, but myself much less so.

Instead of tagging individuals, I’ll leave the tag open to anyone who reads this – what special human element do YOU bring to your classroom?

* In a nine-week course, we study three of the greats (OK, two of the greats and Measure for Measure).

So why might I jump ship?

Identi.ca is the new microblogging kid on the block, and at first glance, it not only seems similar to Twitter, Pownce, Plurk, etc., it actually seems like it has less to offer.  No replies buttons or tabs, no search bar, just a steady stream of messages and the ability to ’subscribe’ to one another.

What entices me about Identi.ca is the fact that it’s open source.  While Twitter has been having trouble staying on its feet lately (it has been better of late, to be fair), I wonder how long it would take for Identi.ca users with some technical knowledge to diagnose and attack the underlying problems.  Seems like a good thing to have “more hands on deck.”  There’s more to be said about it, but Mike Bogle covered it in pretty good detail in his post and follow-up comment here.  With add-ons and other contributions from the Identi.ca community, I’m seeing the potential for Identi.ca to play Firefox to Twitter’s IE – highly customizable and community-based.

I also like Identi.ca’s commitment to the OpenMicroBlogging protocol.  Essentially, conversations could take place across services, so there’d be no need for a Twitter account, Plurk account, etc.  One protocol to rule them all, so to speak.  There is already a plethora of services for cross-posting to multiple services, but nothing to aggregate responses and facilitate discussion.

To me, the discussions and exchanges of ideas that take place on Twitter are by far its most important factor, and why I won’t be deleting my Twitter account anytime soon.  Identi.ca may evolve into something great, and I’ll definitely stick with it, unlike a lot of other microblogging services.  Without the people who make up my network, however, it won’t be of nearly as much value as Twitter, broken down and everything.  Ultimately, it’s the people, not the tools, that give the network its value.

In the meantime, I encourage folks to try out Identi.ca and see if it suits you.  I’m @damian613 on both Identi.ca and Twitter; feel free to subscribe, follow, or just read.

I’ve announced it through Twitter and Facebook, but not yet blogwise: I have been hired as a maternity leave school psychologist for next year.  I’ll be working at my current school as a psychologist from September through early February, at which point I’ll transition back into my teaching role for the remainder of the year (we’re on the 4×4 block schedule, so it won’t be as traumatic for the kids as it sounds).

In all honesty, a maternity leave position is not how I thought I’d be starting my career in school psychology, especially a position that isn’t even an entire year long.  I’m grateful for the opportunity to get some paid experience, though, and wondering if it’s not a blessing in disguise.  It’s a low-risk way of entering the field – I’m at the same school at which I’ve taught for eight years, I know the people and the culture, and I’m pretty well-versed in “how things work” around here.

I had my sights set on a full-time tenure-track position from the outset (not necessarily an unreasonable goal in K-12 education), but the more I think about it, the more I think this may be the right position at the right time for me.

–Damian,

who occasionally needs to be reminded he must learn to crawl before he can walk.

What was the “worst job” you ever had that ironically helped prepare you to one day become an educator?

I’ve been extremely fortunate in that I’ve never had any terrible jobs, but for the sake of the meme, I’ll say dorm security at The College of New Jersey during my undergrad years:

• Shifts lasting til 2am enabled me to work long into the night, like I had to during my first few years of teaching
• It was my first taste of working as an authority figure (to use the term loosely), which helped when I was 23 and faced with a class of 18-year-olds
• Conflict resolution (and avoidance!) skills came into play, especially when dealing with drunk freshmen. Similar scenarios have played out in my presence at school (presumably, minus the alcohol), and I learned to always keep the coolest head of the group.

Thanks for tagging me, Christian. I hereby tag some folks whose blogs I most sincerely wish I had more time on which to comment:

1. Jose Vilson
2. Ken Rodoff
3. Kyle Lichtenwald
4. Diane Cordell
5. Jeff Wasserman

Consumerist was one of the first blogs I started reading, and I’ve since developed a strong interest in consumer advocacy. What I’ve always admired about Consumerist is that they not only expose the failings of corporate and retail America, but they also recognize those companies who get it right. This is a story all about how my life got flip turned upside down a company who got it right.

I ordered a CanoScan LiDE 25 scanner from Dell.com last weekend; it shipped on 4/28 and arrived two days later. For two nights, I tried to get this thing to work with my computer, but no dice. I downloaded the latest drivers, updated all the software, shut off my antivirus, made sure the scanner was “unlocked”; no joy. When I finally called Canon Tech Support late that Thursday night, the representative (whose name I didn’t get; sorry!) was patient, knowledgeable, and when it looked like this wasn’t going to be resolvable, gave me all the information I needed to return the scanner to Canon. He told me that if I faxed his office my original proof-of-purchase and the RMA, they’d get me out a refurbished model ASAP.

I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of receiving a refurb, but I wasn’t up to fighting City Hall on this issue, so we went ahead. I faxed the information to Canon on Friday afternoon, 5/2, and sure enough, my new (to me) scanner was waiting for me this (Monday) morning! Additionally, the model they sent me was a few models up from the one I originally purchased, and after a few initial test scans, seems to be in perfect working condition (we’ll see how it handles the photos I want to digitize this weekend). The process for returning the defective unit is pretty easy, too.

At any rate, thanks, Canon, for a positive customer service experience. Unlike many of your competitors, you guys have gotten it right.

Let’s backtrack. We already know that behavior generally serves one of four major functions, and that we have to find an alternate way to meet the function. Simple enough, right? The function is to help me deal with frustration or anger, the behavior we want to get rid of is swearing, and now we just have to figure out how to make it worth my while to knock it off.

But wait! What if we could alter environmental conditions such that I wouldn’t be as likely to curse as much – wouldn’t that be helpful? I’ve found that my fuse is a lot shorter when I’m sleep-deprived, so one of my first steps toward cleaning up my language was actually trying to get more sleep. I didn’t collect hard data on this, but I did notice that on where days I slipped up, I usually had only gotten about 4 or 5 hours of sleep the previous night. Anecdotally speaking, days that followed 6 or more hours of sleep were far less likely to see me curse. Also, I tended to swear more when I drove (my wife and I drive to work together, so this was relatively easy to address – she agreed to take the wheel some days when I just felt particularly worn down from work). This is called controlling the setting event (long-term lead-up to the behavior, like how much sleep I got) and antecedent (letting me ride shotgun).

The flipside to the antecedent, of course, is the consequence. Although the word has negative connotations, it really just means what occurs as a result of the behavior. We already addressed my most consistent consquence: I felt a little better about whatever was bugging me after swearing. Fair enough, but the other consequences were that my son was repeating me and my wife was severely agitated. The cons outweigh the pros here, and things needed to change.

Let’s review!

Setting event _____ leads to antecedent _____ leads to target behavior _____ leads to consequence _____.

If you can successfully fill in these blanks, you’ll have the tools to manage any undesired behavior – yours or somebody else’s. @JackieB, @audhilly, and anyone else who’s trying to break themselves (or a student) of a bad habit, this is one fill-in-the-blank worksheet that might be worth your while. Next time, we’ll add the final two components: time and reinforcement.

Remember a few months ago I developed a wiki for one of the departments at my school? I updated the “Article of the Month” section over the weekend and sent the department an email yesterday to let them know (as well as call for contributors – total number (beside me) in the last 4 months: 0).

One of the teachers sent a nice email to tell me that the wiki was a very worthwhile project, but that she doesn’t even have time to look at it, let alone contribute information to it. Look, I know everyone’s got their own stuff going on, especially in the home stretch of the school year, but damn. At first it didn’t bother me, but like a grain of sand in my sock, it grew slightly more irritating the more I thought about it.

My first thought (vented in a Tweet earlier today): I teach a full courseload, continually develop new projects for my students, parent a 3-year-old and a newborn, do a grad school internship, attend graduate classes, and I found time to WRITE the damn thing – you can’t even look at it?

My second thought: You don’t have time to visit a website, but you have time to write me an email telling me you don’t have time to visit a website?

Is this what it’s like being a technology coordinator?

Shortly after I announced my victory post to the Twitterverse last Sunday night, Jackie inquired:

@garageflowers -As I’m trying to give something up, I’m wondering: how do you know it’s a broken habit? I’m still thinking about mine -a lot

My response well exceeded the 140 characters limit, but as I wrote, I got to thinking about the behavioral and psychological implications of my silly little experiment. Here are my responses, compiled & edited for clarity:

There’s no way to “tell” for sure; I just have learned to better control my impulses – over the last 20 years or so, cursing has become reflexive for me, and I first started this project about a month ago, so I’ve had quite a few false starts. I finally feel like I have more control; I’m better able to stop and think and choose words more carefully before just letting loose.

I don’t know what Jackie’s thinking about giving up, but if you (or your spouse, or kids, or students) find yourself in a similar situation, it may pay to shift your thinking a bit.

Old & Busted: Why do I/he/she/it do that?

The New Hotness: What function does this behavior serve?

Generally speaking, human behavior can be boiled down to attempts to serve one of four major functions:

1. It feels good (self-stimulation)
2. It gets us out of having to do something difficult or unpleasant (task escape/avoidance)
3. It gets (or keeps) us attention (um… pretty self-explanatory, I think)
4. It reduces pain or stress (yeah, this one too)

For me, I think cursing suited functions #1 and 4. Go on, get real angry then say the “F” word – it feels so nice and percussive in that labio-dental sort of way – there’s a reason why we say that instead of “rutabaga” or “sassafrass”, you know. Ridiculous as it sounds, it soothed me when I was frustrated, angry, or in pain. Unfortunately, my wife hates it, and my kid’s starting to repeat it. Intellectually, I know I should stop, but the instant gratification I receive from the behavior is too strong. So what’s a reflective, self-aware pottymouth to do?  In the short term…

1. Figure out the function, then find another way to serve that function
2. Determine an alternate, preferred behavior
3. Provide incentive to choose the preferred behavior over the target behavior

More in Part II…