The Poem

The following is a poem written about me, as if it was me saying it (hope that makes sense). Anyway, I thought it was cool and wanted to share it.

"My name is Heiser and I teach history.
I lie everyday about what, that's a mystery.
All you have to do is listen very well
'Cuz guess what I'm never gonna tell.
It could be about the lesson or even my hair
for all you know it could be about the fair.
At the end of the class if you don't find the lie
you got til tomorrow, cuz you only get 1 try.
Some kids like it, some kids don't care
Some kids think its just not fair.
I see you tomorrow try and find my lie
So get your book and computer and give it one more try!"

What can I say?

Next post: How did I do? (turning the tables presentations)

Turning the Tables

     This entry is a little different from previous entries because I haven't done anything yet. This entry is to set up what is going to happen over the course of the next week or two. Since I've been lying all semester I thought I would turn the tables on myself and give the students a chance to lie to me.Everyday my students come into the classroom under the impression they must have all the answers, or many of them (if that were the case I wouldn't have a job). Today, I will be introducing the research project for this unit. The topic is spices and the project is to do a comprehensive look at the spice of choice. The class will be doing the same project like in previous classes with a twist, they must put in one lie. My rational for this is pretty simply, its hard to find and develop lies, in fact, it takes a great deal of research to find material which isn't obvious to the learner (in this case will be me).


     With the experience I have in this realm I figure, I'm setting myself and the class up for the best set of presentations I've had from them all semester. Since, I've been doing this project for years(or at least a variation of the project) and have heard almost everything there is to hear on the subject they will be presenting. Obviously, I plan on introducing the project to the students today by telling them about my extensive knowledge in this area and the difficulty they could have in stumping me. I think if I introduce it this way they will see my words as a challenge and encourage them to one up me. Now this is the plan but only time will tell how well they learned the material for making a great lie.

     One last twist to this is if they get the lie past me I will award them bonus points for stumping the self proclaimed “expert.” Now anyone who has been following this blog knows I make no pretenses of beingan expert but to them I do. I figure it will make the challenge of finding and/or creating good lies more rewarding. However, knowing the nature of kids, I fear they will talk to their friends about their projects and what they are doing inadvertently leaving the cat out of the bag. So, one last perk will be I'll give to give additional points if they can get the lie past their classmates. If the class figures out the lie they get the points otherwise the bonus goes to the group who presented. If anything this should be an interesting set of presentations in the coming week. This entry won't be complete for a few weeks so I will revisit it after the presentations.

Lesson: When this is all done I hope the students, through their own research learn a lot about the topics being presented.

Next entry: ?

Technology (revisited)

     In my last entry I was struggling with my lies and the students’ ability to fact check me online. Last time I decided I was going let my students use technology to fact check me. To give a quick summary, I formulated great lies in which my student debunked using Google in .15 seconds a million times over, leaving me in a position to rethink my approach. (Fast forward to the present) Over the last week and a half since my last entry I’ve been working on how to challenge this generation while they fact me online. I turned to a resource that has been reliable to me and most of you, I imagine, throughout our academic careers…BOOKS! Yes, the media responsible for replacing the scroll many years ago. I turned to some book resources and started to read more about the topics I would be teaching in the coming days and found a great deal of great information I had not known myself before taking this adventure. Whether or not it would hold up to Google and its amazing search capabilities, remained to be seen.

     My class is doing the Middle Ages and my challenge as a teacher was to find something not only relevant to the time period but it needed to be interesting. Monday, we started class by talking about the Power of the Monarch and traditions of Parliament in England. Now while doing me own research on Parliament I read an interesting story about a Parliamentary tradition in which members of Parliament turn and face walls during prayer, that is true I just had to add my twist. We first discussed Parliament and its similarities and differences between it and Congress. With Parliament fresh on their minds, it was time to set up the lie, so I stated, “Okay, story time”. When I announce “story time” the class will tend to lock on to what I tell them because they realize it isn’t in their textbook (or is it). I proceed with the story about traditions and practices in Parliament and the lie was now out to be scruntized. All the while the students are typing away on their laptops, anticipating a student finding my lie before I could start my next sentence I paused and asked any questions? Nothing! I proceed with the rest of the lesson and as the end of the period neared, students ask “Mr. H did you lie to us today?” to which I answered, “Yes!” From there the guessing started because they realized their homework list just got longer and this time it was graded. Stumped someone asked, “Did you lie to us about Parliament?”, to which I answered “Yes, good luck finding it!”

     The next day came and one of my students came up to me and said, “Mr H I couldn’t find your lie, I searched on line for 3 hours last night and I couldn’t find anything that didn’t check out.” (class is going to be interesting) My class came in 4th block and as expected no one was able to find the answer, anticipating this would be the case. We talked about Parliament traditions and I told them the lie at which point one student remarked, “I looked on line and couldn’t find anything about that on line.” To myself I thought, “Awesome!” I continued this practice the rest of the week and this week, in fact, I even started to record my discussions and post them on line so the students could hear what I said giving them a better chance in finding my lie…

Lesson:

Books are still king. The information about Parliament I found in my book (teachers edition) and it did appear online but wasn’t easy to find even for me. I saw this as the opportunity to tell my class that though the Internet is a good resource for quick information books are still the best resources they have for doing research. Internet should supplement not replace books as the major resource for research.

Next entry: Turning the tables

Technology

Technology

Technology is being promoted heavily in schools and students are using it for research more now than ever, so how can a liar use this to his advantage? I decided since my cart of laptops is working I would expand my lies to include materials from the Internet.  My mission was to find sites and resources which would fall into the category of not so good and use information from them in class. This essentially ups the ante for me, since my students are quickly becoming better researchers.

Recently, I started using my laptops so that students could take reading quizzes but rather than put them back in the cart why not have them fact check me using the Internet with resources they feel are reliable. In using the Internet, they have a broader scoop of information to pull from challenging not only them or so I thought. It, also, challenges me to be more deviant as well. The risk I run by doing this is students will use any Internet site without so much as batting an eye on the validity and reliability of the information. Knowing this I went forward because I see this as something I can build upon for later lessons on validity and reliability in research from the Internet. I found reliable and valid information to use for creating the lie and proceeded.

Recently, we did a unit on Islam and we were looking at the similarities and differences between the Sunni, Shiite, and Sufi, so throwing out a lie in this one would be pretty easy, or so I thought. I threw out my lie and within seconds, literally, they identified the lie. I thought I did a great job formulating this lie and they got it without even blinking an eye. I did this for a couple of days and haven’t been able to get one past them as I had previously; it seems technology has made this too easy for them. So, what do I do? How can I get past the fact the Internet and Google can give them the correct answer in a million different pages/ways in .15 seconds? How do I overcome this obvious advantage my students have in this realm? Trust me (an oxymoron I realize) these were good lies. My task as the teacher now has to be how do I use the technology and still challenge them to find the lie even with the obvious speed of Google…

Lesson:

Under estimated  student’s ability as researchers: This lesson is for me, I seriously underestimated their ability to find information as stated above I have a lot of work to do bring the challenge back to my lies. Granted I could just put the machines away and the challenge is back, but what will that teach them?

Next entry: Technology (revisted)

Stewing

     In recent months I’ve seen a great deal of heated debate, on tv, on a number of hot issues in government and in every instance the same scene seems to play itself out! You know the one, where a person with an opinion contrary to the larger group is being shouted down by the masses, basically quelling any further argument or debate. Recently, I had a similar situation play out in my class only I was the “shouter” and a student of mine would be the one who would lose his voice.
     Recently, I assigned a map exercise to my students and towards the end of the period I decided to bring up a copy of the map on the whiteboard to go over it. I started with the first location called on a student to give the answer and had the student write the answer on the board. I did this a couple of more times when I called on one of my more outgoing students, who we will call “Mr. Wrong”. I asked “Mr. Wrong”, “where is Macedonia, he came up to the board and wrote the answer right where it needed to be. After he wrote the location, I quickly turned and asked the class, “Is this correct?” I had one person from the peanut gallery say "no", and I said, “Right this is supposed to be up here” and moved his answer up further than would be reasonable for the location of Macedonia. He quickly jumped in and said “no its suppose to be lower” and at that point other members of the class said, “No, Mr. H is right it should be higher” Immediately other voices chimed in and quickly all argument ceased.. Had I pulled it off?( I thought to myself). The remainder of the exercise, he sat there quietly just watching and listening. At one point he started to look through his book, but still not a word. I got through the entire map and the end of the period was upon us, so I asked, “Any questions on the map?” Well of course “Mr. Wrong” had something to say, “Mr. H, you are wrong. Here look at this map. Here is Macedonia and it’s in a pretty straight line with this sea which is where I had it. Not up there where you have it..” I looked at his map gave him a smirk and told him to write it up on the board. I then announced to the class on your maps you will need to change Macedonia from here and write it here (pointing to the map as I gave this instruction). I announced, “That was my lie!”

     This unlike other lies was group a effort though they didn’t know it. I got this idea from a psychology experiment where people in a group will give blatantly wrong answers to convince the subject to go along even if they knew the answer was wrong. I varied this of course, rather than the group give the wrong answer I hoped they would side with the “expert” and in doing so pressure “Mr. Wrong” into giving up his argument. If it didn’t work he still caught my lie.

Lesson:

The “expert”. The whole idea of me being an expert is absurd. Many students don’t challenge me for various reasons, the most common one I hear is, “Well you are the teacher”. In a democracy we need to speak up and have our voices heard no matter how unpopular our ideas may be to others. Example, Health Care Reform… (Next time I do this, it will be with one of my more introverted students)
Next Entry: Technology

Really?

How many teachers have ever heard one of the following questions after you’ve given an in class or homework assignment:

1. Is this right?
2. Is this what you want?
3. Will you read over this to make sure I’m doing it right?
4. Am I doing this right?
5. I couldn’t find this one, can you “help” me?

     And the list goes on and on…. Personally, I hate these questions! I hate the fact my students are more concerned with being right then trying and being wrong. Early in my career I loved it when students asked me these questions because I felt I had something to prove. When I got a question like this I was quick to give them the answer and showcase just how much I knew about my content (that’s right I’m the man!) Early on I felt like I would be doing a disservice to them by not answering these questions because I’m the teacher, right? This is what I do, right? In recent times, I’ve come to despise this practice but I still find myself telling them right or wrong, yes or no because I still fear I would be a great disservice by not assisting them in this way. Could lying be my savior from this practice? This brings me to my story.

     I gave the class an assignment from their textbook. It was a reading assignment and they had questions to answer concerning the reading. I went over the directions and questions for the class assignment. After finishing the reading assignment, students broke up into pairs and some opted to do it by themselves. I started walking around the room and I noticed the class breezed through the first couple questions, they were simple recall questions. Now comes some of the higher order thinking questions and true to form I get my first hand. I moved across the room to see what she wanted, “Mr. H. is this right?” pointing to her paper. Obviously, the old feeling of wanting to showcase myself started to rear its ugly head and so did my feelings of dismay at the thought of answering this kind of question, again! At that point it hit me, I’m a liar now… So, I reached down picked up the paper, looked over the answer and said, “You want to know if this is the right answer? (I paused for dramatic effect) You are asking me, a compulsive liar if you have the right answer?” At this point she looked up at me and said, “Really?” I said, “Really! I can give you an answer but can you really trust what I’m telling you is right?” With that statement, she sighed, took her paper, and opened her book. I noticed her discussing this question with others later in the period. I did this for every kid who asked me a question that period. When all was said and done we discussed the questions in class and the class did a really nice job with the material and they seemed to have learned something about the content (without my help). For her, she had to discover the answer which reinforced the idea of reading and research. For me, I had exercised the demon!

Lesson:

Content Experts. This lesson is for me as well as the students. I learned I don’t have to be the expert and my hope as I do this more often with the students is they start to realize they not only can be but they are the experts, even if they aren’t the teacher!

Next entry: Stewing..

Lie of the Day

    With the end of the week, it was time to let the students know what was in store for them the remainder of the school year; I proceeded to tell them “the lying and deceptions I have subjected you to over the last 4 days will continue the rest of the semester starting Monday”. The students seemed relieved it wasn’t happening today. So, I introduced the students to the “lie of the day” much like the article (My Favorite Liar, ZenMoments.org); I figured if I don’t do lie every day it won’t have the impact and students would stop looking for it. I, also, adopted some other practices from the article and decided to make the lie an assignment if not found by the end of the period and used a few of the professors ideas to get started as well (as you will read below). Where I want go to further is I want the students to point out the lie and, later on, require them to find the correct answer and cite it from the material to prove me wrong. Additionally, the lie could be from the reading in the book, paperwork, quizzes, something online etc.. but I explained “ I will not lie to you on a test or if you ask about criteria on a rubric.” I continued, “If you don’t find my lie during the class period it will become your homework to identify the lie. Also, since it is homework it might be graded!”

     Over the course of the next week I did as I said I would do and lie to them once a day. The class would identify the lie and I would point out why it was a lie and we would move on. So, Friday had come at this point they are getting good at finding my lies, so it was time to up the ante and really disguise this one. They came into class and we started with a reading quiz, did a map, discussed the reading, did some group work, but at no time did a student stop me and point out my lie (wow I’m really getting good at this). With the end of the period my students asked, “Did you lie today?” and I responded, “Yes I did and no one caught it! So as part of your homework this weekend find my lie.”

     The weekend had come and gone and judgment day had arrived. Did the class find my lie? I had a couple of students think they knew, but their theories were quickly shot down. After the first couple of students, fewer and fewer raised their hand to answer, until the entire discussion had shut down completely, which is what I had hoped for ultimately (Perfect!). So, I posed the question again, “What did I lie about on Friday? After a long pause I announced, “Nothing! Everything we discussed on Friday was true and no one figured it out! I lied about lying.. You’re welcome!” Since I lied about something from the content the previous 4 days they assumed it would be a content lie every day, and with a magicians sleight of hand they had been duped again!

Lesson:

All is not what it seems. If you are not sure read a store flier during the holiday shopping season, if you ever want to see a sleight of hand buy one of the advertised items that is "on sale".

Next Entry: Really?