(A little jazz for your listening pleasure. I think there is a point, which I'll get to later.)
I have three methods classes this semester, plus a reading intervention and tutoring class, and this class, Creativity and Critical Thinking. All of them require unit and lesson plans of some sort. I spent the Thanksgiving break working on my Social Studies and Science Units, pictured below:
If you squint a little bit, you can see a nice bit of symmetry, as well as an interesting juxtaposition. You don't have to squint, or even think too hard to understand why I chose these images to metaphorically represent my handiwork.
A lot of it comes down to being hard on myself. Remember, a few weeks ago, I shared another image that is more representative of how I envision a lesson plan:
But, there is still time to make lemonade out of these lemons, or, as in my case, a poop-mobile out of...well you get the idea. I imagine it will look something like THIS.
Actually, now that I think about it, the Adobe Car is probably a perfect metaphor for a unit plan--malleable, affordable, and rife with built-in problem solving opportunities. So yay! I'm right on track. Plus, it has cupholders. Which reminds me of this great teacher I had in the sixth grade. Out of the goodness of his heart, he created an after school program for a few of us, where he taught us photography, art, etc. It was pretty memorable, and all seven of us turned out to be valedictorians or salutatorians, so it must have worked--not bad out of a class of 37. Anyway, I'll never forget he had invented a cupholder that could adapt to any car. In 1985, cupholder technology was still in its infancy, you see. His invention, which was a sewn piece of webbing with some velcro attached (to make it adjustable) simply hung from the door lock or something, and then the cup basically rested in it. I bring this up mainly to point out that we often see the innovations in electronic technologies, but even something as simply as a cupholder built in to the actual car was once considered ground-breaking. Beyond that, I don't really have a point for telling that story. Next slide please.
After staring at that for a little bit, my eyes glaze over and I start wondering, "Who was this person? And why did they have deer antlers?" No, wait, that happens when I stare a this picture:
No, when I ponder that unit plan template, my initial reaction is that it is a plan for the some sort of space station:
And then I start wondering, "who was the doctoral candidate and/or committee that wrote this schematic, and did he/she/they have any actual experience teaching the targeted consumers who may or may not be predisposed (a word that could mean "thrown away before being served," like what my co-worker Buzz used to do on river trip Mexican Burrito breakfast days: toss the whole can of refried beans in the garbage, unopened, rather than open it, burn the beans to the inside of a pot, then throw the beans away, then spend ten minutes scrubbing the pot)...where was I? Oh, "predisposed" --to proper preparation of the prerequisite precognitional permutations present in the post-Permian professional pedagogologist. (I think that sentence needs a question mark, but best to just move on and not dwell on it too long.)
Objectively, though, when I set aside the snarkiness, the part of the plan that jumps out to me is right there, the first part of Phase 2: "Meaning, relevance, background, context." It even says "creating meaning." Seems like that deserves more than a lower-case "a," but whatever.
Listen, I get why we have these highly structured lesson and unit plan formats, and I have in fact learned a lot through deconstructing these types of plans, but I'll be honest--I feel like I could have used an entire class at some point that began with reading the second section of the Barell text and others like it. It's kind of like learning to cook Mexican, Thai, Greek, and Italian food without having first learned how to make cold cereal. Well, not really. The fact that I can't describe how I feel about unit planning literally or figuratively tells me all I need to know. Which is a lot, and that is actually great! Because that means teaching is an intricate and interesting craft that should provide decades of engaging challenges for me to grapple with.
So where does that leave me with regards to the Unit plan for this class?
Given that I planted the seed for this unit way back on September 29th, and have since neglected to even check on it, let alone water it, even I was a little curious how in the heck this video had anything to do with writing a unit plan, other than a very surface level connection to the idea of "chocolate."
I think I go back to Seinfeld because the show was such a great example of making something out of "nothing." The program was famous for that notion, in fact. Where some programs needed convoluted plot lines that involved something "big" happening, Seinfeld reveled in its ability to be about nothing--or if not exactly nothing, than simply about the mundane minutiae of day to day life. In the case of this episode, the writers managed to create a whole storyline centered around George's ATM code. Believe it or not, but this is one way I look at writing a unit plan. The beauty of Seinfeld is that it wasn't just about nothing at all--it was chock full of relatable, real-world situations, as opposed to those overly dramatic stories everybody else was doing. In other words, Seinfeld was full of "meaning, relevance, background, and context." This was my intent when I created page one of my Unit Plan and titled it "Bosco."
(And lest you think I am the only person relating Seinfeld to education, here is a little video some YouTuber cobbled together that shows Bloom's Taxonomy as portrayed in different clips from the show.)
The real genesis had come as I sat observing a fifth grade classroom. I'd randomly come across the "Chocolate" book at the BSU library while attending a presentation on how to find and use books for teaching a couple of days before. The fifth graders were learning about explorers of the New World, and I'd just been reading about how Cortes had come across the Aztecs and their wonderful cacao bean based economy, and I thought, what a wonderful way to tie social studies and science together with a "mundane" but extremely relevant topic that kids could find highly relatable: chocolate. That, was the plan.
I thought that growing a cacao tree would be an interesting challenge, and I found out I was right--acquiring viable seeds is not easy, and of course the Idaho environment is not conducive to the growth of an organism adapted to the tropical rain forests of central America. Problems! And a perfect metaphor for the tree I want to grow together with my imaginary students. This idea may require some Master's Level botanical time and effort, however. Having grown up on a farm, I know that no amount of time in the college classroom can compare to being in the field, so for now, Bosco will have to wait. Cacao seeds take a while to germinate.
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I'll be honest, I'm sorely disappointed to be at this point in the semester, and my unit plan is no more than a tiny seedling. There is a storm on the horizon, but it doesn't promise nurturing rain, just wind and dust. At least that is what it looks like when you focus too much on it. I really don't know what is in those clouds. What can I do with that little green thing in the foreground? Really, that is all that matters. There always comes a point when the perfect becomes the enemy of the good, at least when faced with the reality of an approaching storm or semester deadline. And that is a good thing. I'll set aside what I can imagine for a while, and work with what I actually have. And what I see in this picture is not the storm, not the seed. I see all that dry, clay-like soil. I bet I could gather that up and form it into some kind of...adobe.
As to the musical selection for this post--I think I tend to want to compose a Magnum Opus unit plan, a veritable symphony carefully orchestrated, instruments finally tuned, with an overwhelming message of my choosing. But in that image, the students end up sitting in their chairs, reading music and dutifully following my waving baton. Probably better to consider jazz. Messy and complicated, and I'm just the man in the back-- the drummer. Not sure where this is going, but I'll keep the beat while the students lead the way.
_______________________________________________________________
I'll be honest, I'm sorely disappointed to be at this point in the semester, and my unit plan is no more than a tiny seedling. There is a storm on the horizon, but it doesn't promise nurturing rain, just wind and dust. At least that is what it looks like when you focus too much on it. I really don't know what is in those clouds. What can I do with that little green thing in the foreground? Really, that is all that matters. There always comes a point when the perfect becomes the enemy of the good, at least when faced with the reality of an approaching storm or semester deadline. And that is a good thing. I'll set aside what I can imagine for a while, and work with what I actually have. And what I see in this picture is not the storm, not the seed. I see all that dry, clay-like soil. I bet I could gather that up and form it into some kind of...adobe.
As to the musical selection for this post--I think I tend to want to compose a Magnum Opus unit plan, a veritable symphony carefully orchestrated, instruments finally tuned, with an overwhelming message of my choosing. But in that image, the students end up sitting in their chairs, reading music and dutifully following my waving baton. Probably better to consider jazz. Messy and complicated, and I'm just the man in the back-- the drummer. Not sure where this is going, but I'll keep the beat while the students lead the way.
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