What does it mean when we say something is “human nature”? I love these broad questions – are we basically good (thanks Locke) or evil (shout out Hobbes)? Do we have the capacity for altruism? Who are we at our worst moments? Stanley Milgram, a social scientist in the 60′s, pushed the limits of experimentation about one area of human nature – our obedient responses to authority. Milgram was filled with questions that sprouted initially from Nazis in WWII. How could a baker or college professor become a guard at a Nazi death camp? Didn’t they feel a sense of responsibility? Why didn’t they stand up? His research came up with one answer, an answer that also comments about our nature.
Activities:
- Prior knowledge – ask students to write or talk in pairs about the response to the following, “Think about a time that you did something you that you were uncomfortable about because a person you perceived as an authority told you to. Describe the situation, the people involved, and the outcome. What happened? Who was the authority? Why? Why were you uncomfortable?” Help students share responses and tell them they will learn about an experiment that probes how humans react to the authority.
- Depending on your access – either read the NYTimes article or watch one of the video’s below (each is about 8 minutes) that reviews the Milgram experiment. (Ideally – watch the video in advisory and discuss and use the short article for homework).
- Encourage students to take notes on the basics:
- Who are the participants?
- Which of these people are actors?
- What is the machine that the “teacher” is using?
- What is the experiment testing?
- What “Pressures” were put on the teacher when they began to feel uncomfortable? (list quotes if you can).
- What are the results of the experiment?
- What do you think from these events?
- Discuss the Milgram Experiment and the dark side of authority and obedience (and shedding responsibility).
- Why do you think they use roles like “teacher”, “experimenter”, and “student” instead of names? What do you think this means?
- Does authority have to be a “guy in a white coat”. What are other ways we might think about authority? How have you seen people respond to this?
Resources:
- The original 1960′s experiment (10 Min Video) (You can fast forward to get the basics).
- The a recreation of the experiment
- NY Times Article “Decades Later I would Pull the Switch”
- Related Discussion Questions
- Wikipedia Overview of the Experiment
Update: (3.28): Well you might have heard the ruckus all the way from France, but a live French TV show (“The Game of Death”) just used the basis of the Milgram experiment for a reality show. They asked members of the audience to flip switches to pulse electricity through a man who needed to be “punished” until the actor (though no one knew this) appeared dead. This has started a hot debate – are humans programed to listen to “experts” and act out on others or do they understand the artifice of the tv context and they are playing out fantasies because they must know it can’t be real?
Extensions:
- This experiment has obvious relations to the behavior of Nazis in World War II. Many asked, how could a whole country, usually common working people become part of a discriminatory murder machine? Consider reviewing Facing History and Ourselves materials on Obedience and Conformity specifically in the context of the Holocaust.
- As a reflection from this experiment – assuming this is true, what safeguards do we need to put in place to make sure that people don’t shed their responsibility and act (in some cases) barbarically?
Enciendalo!
Give me some of that input/output! – Give me some of that Math! Introducing your advisory to the concept of variables early helps them see algebra in their LTI projects. Also, the concept of a variable will make discussing budget equations, compound interest, credit card debt, and car loans much easier in future advisory activities.
Advisory Activity:
Start by putting the following charts on the board:
You Say… The Machine Says…
0 6
1 7
3 9
4 10
7 13
Explain the chart. Ask your students to call out a number. “The machine” responds with a number. The machine is, well, a machine—it has some sort of rule it uses to figure out its response. What’s the rule in this case? (Answer: Add six to the number you say.)Here are a few other examples:
x y
2 5
3 7
5 11
8 17
The machine doubles the number, then adds one.You could write that as y = 2x + 1. The 2x means two times x.
x y
2 0.5
5 0.2
10 0.1
12 .083
The machine divides one by the number you give.You could write that as y = 1/x.Ask your students to write the rule as a function (a formula). “The number that you say” we call x. “The number the machine responses with” we call y. So we add six to x to get y. You can write this using algebraic notation as y = x+6. It is standard to use x for the input and y as the output. Now, turn the machine idea into a game. Have someone come up with a rule and stand at the board, acting like the machine. (Ask a student to come up with a function, or use one you suggest)Have other people give “the machine” a number. “The machine” then responds using the rule. The group then has to figure out the rule and devise a formula that represents the rule.Students can take turns trying to stump each other. Make sure everyone gets a chance to be the function machine (this can be a fun game to play for a few minutes a week – your students will be pros!)
Reflection:
The more times you can come back to this activity, especially during those five or ten minutes in advisory when you don’t have anything else planned, the better. Some students will find this activity easy, and some will find it very hard. How can you make it challenging for all students? Should you have certain students challenge other students? Should you make teams? Help students to introduce harder formulas into the game, like x2 or 3x? Make sure you help students learn more about equations as you go.
Resources:
Enciendalo!
There were some good comments about the posts about bullying and racism in the past couple of weeks. One of my favorite activities with my advisory was to read and talk about The Sneetches – Dr. Seuss’s book that looks at how people construct judgements of value and cultural behaviors that support hierarchies all based on physical differences (star bellies).
Activity:
- Have people write a quickwrite or journal about what discrimination is and some time they have witnessed or experienced it. Allow a couple of people to share.
- Let students know you are going to read a story – in some ways a parable about prejudice and discrimination. Define Parable with the group.
- Get a copy of The Sneetches to read with the advisory. (or watch the video on YouTube).
- Discuss basics – what happens in the story? What is the outcome? (Summarize).
- Have students cut out stars (or have them cut out) and write on each star a characteristic that makes people different, that is judged differently and used as a reason for inequality (eye color, height, race, etc). Create a wall of these. Follow out discussions.
- Consider if this happens in real life? In what ways? What plays the role of Sylvester McMonkey McBean?
Resources and Extentions:
Enciendalo!
Here are more current political cartoons to look over with your advisory.
- What current events do these cartoon talk about (satirize)?
- What is the overall meaning of each cartoon? How does the author get across these ideas?
- What symbols are used in these cartoons?
- What does the characterization tell you about the author’s belief? What other techniques does he use to create meaning? How does the cartoonist show rather than tell the reader what he believes?
- Why do you agree with the cartoonists’ opinion(s)? Why or why not?
- What political or social issues do you feel strongly about? Explain to a peer what these are and why you feel this way about them.
Extensions:
1) Have students find a cartoon from when they were born, or an important time of their life? What event, movement, person, or group is it about? What is the message? How does it show its meaning? What do you believe about this? What did your parents believe at the time?
2)Have students create their own political cartoon.
- Find an interesting current event
- Pick a belief or opinion you have about that event
- How can you express this in a picture? What symbols might you use? What techniques can you use to show the reader what you mean?
- Look at the tone of the cartoon: is it serious? sarcastic? ironic? angry? sad? What tone do you want yours to present?
Resources on the Political Cartoons:
Enciendalo!
Yup. It’s time for a clip show. Either that or some wierd postmodern blog within a blog situation. I just posted my 50th Blog and like every sitcom on tv ever programmed, I’m going to take a look back.
Overall, I try to post three entries per week, Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays for a MWF Advisory Activity. That’s been pretty good, but the best laid plans, you know, and all that….
Features: A couple of features that may help find things potentially interesting to you.
- I just added a Subscribe feature (Right side at the top). Just put in your email and click the button and each new entry goes to your email.
- If you’re into RSS feed = you can get this on the top as well.
- Top Posts
- Search by Category or Tag Cloud (good way to find related posts).
Top Posts:
Since I started the blog in September, the Most Popular entries have been:
But that doesn’t tell me that they are most useful. If you have a comment, general or specific, post it on the website or send me an email. I would love some input.
Thanks for reading (anyone out there?)
Joe
Activity:
- Present Me: (a Variation on Ranking Traits on Ed World). If you can get enough Post it notes, this works well (10 per student) or cut a piece of paper into ten strips (per student). On each students write a word or phrase that describes themselves. Depending on the relationships within your group, you might try two variations. One in which students work in pairs and get suggestions from their partner, another where it is private and confidential. Then the student arranges the traits in order from what he most likes about himself to what he least likes. When done, I say, “Do you like what you see? Do you want to keep it? Now give up one trait. How does the lack of that affect you? Now give up another. Give up three. Now what kind of person are you?” After giving up six of the qualities, I have students regain the traits one by one. After the session, I have students write in their journals what they kept and what they learned about themselves from the experience.
- Future Me/Homework: Based on the activity, have the students write a letter (or email) of intent to yourself for the next 6months. What traits do they want to maximize? Explore? Minimize? What goal do they have? If you use the site (Future Me.org) they can write this letter or email and have it automatically sent to themselves. What do they want to check in on for their work and development later in the year (by the end of the school year). Write the letter and schedule a send. (You may want students to have it come back on the same day so you can plan a follow up activity).
Resources and Possible Extensions:
Enciendalo!
Competitive Crooning on the agenda.
Hard couple of weeks? Need to get everyone involved and buzzing? Our friends at Big Picture Lafayette have passed on the perfect cure – a singing Pick Me Up (or Kick Me Out). This week, they staged a PMU where the students were divided into groups and they were asked to choose a song with a particular word in it and then sing as a group. (Who hasn’t been to a wedding where tables had to sing songs with “Love” in it?). You can choose any word that might be on your mind: heart, learn, love, work….
You may have to lay out a few ground rules (appropriateness of lyrics and choreography, the judges rulings are final…etc.) You may have then judged by song choice, delivery, choreography – you can take this as American Idol as you want (or the students want). Don’t forget to have prizes or candy for the winners! (and if you could take a short video and send it along, we’d all LOVE to see it.)
Other Contests:
- Another rainy day song contest – Name that Tune. Have students pair up agains one another and negotiate for how many seconds of a song they need to hear in order to “Name that Tune”. Have an IPod handy and let the games begin!
Enciendalo!
In the spirit of exhibitions and the year anniversary of the swearing in of Barak Obama, it is time to look at accountability. Everyone wants to know, how successful was his first year in office? This is very broad, and can be answered many ways – one way is on the Obamater: by Politifact. The creators of the Obameter went through hundreds of campaign speeches and listed the specific promises that he made. They then tracked each of these and gave them a rating of promis kept, broken, in the works, compromise, not yet rated, stalled. Take a look, not only at the content, but the process of how they choose to hold him accountable.
Activities:
- Content - Look at the promises outlined in the Obameter.
- How, overall, has he rated? (according to this site)
- Look over 3 promises kept, 3 Broken, 3 compromises, etc. What can you tell from looking at these specific examples? Does it change your opinion abou this success or failure? Are all promises created equal?
- Personal Connection – Bring it home, more personally. Work with parents and friends to identify 5 – 10 promises that they made in the last year. How would they rate these? Based on the responses, would you rate them a success? What are the challenges in doing this?
- How would you demonstrate this on a graph?
- Process - Engage students in a brainstorming activity - What other ways could you gauge the success of a president (other than keeping promises)? How would you go about collecting that data?
Resources:
Enciendalo!
If you’ve read this blog before, you know that whether it is “Gingerism”, anti-semitism, racism, or generalized bullying, I believe we need to do more to encourage respect, moral courage and self examination at our motives and actions toward those who are “different”. Here is another example, in Mohawk, NY, Jacob Sullivan no longer at Gregory B. Jarvis Junior/Senior High School after students and a teacher bullied him because of his sexual orientation. How can we use this example to discuss issues of respect, self-awareness, and social justice?
Activity:
- Read the news article and listen to the NPR story and have build a discussion around some of the main topics in this case:
- What is the responsibility of a school in making a safe place for students to learn?
- What if any are the boundaries to that?
- What should the role be of a staff in a school to protect difference and individual expression? Why? Under what instances would you as a teacher intervene? Why?
- What about your role as a student in school? When is it your responsibility to act and intervene (if ever)? Why?
- Why did the justice department enter into this case? What article are they citing? What does that article say?
- Ask students to examine their own “codes” for treating people. What rules do they live by? Do they have a code or belief? How does their feelings about this situation mesh with their code?
Resources:
Related Blog Entries:
- Bystander Responsibility
- Kick a Ginger Day
Enciendalo!
Estimation is a key skill for all students to learn. You use this skill more in everyday life than most mathematical concepts. It allows one to check the validity of possible outcomes and gauge the reasonability of everyday life. It is a key to good judgement, and there are many ways to exercise this skill. Here are a few:
Activities:
- Estimation Jar – An old standby for estimating number and volume, but one of the reasons this works so well is that it can be modified in so many ways. You can have different items in a jar (cookies, beans, pennies, jelly beans – though I’d recommend something not edible). Make it a contest. Give an award for the best or most creative thought process and explanation of how the calculated the number.
- Google Maps or Google Earth – Population Density. (This is a good activity also in that the point is not the final answer, but the reasoning and the presentation of the reasoning.) Have students pic a city or town to look over and make some guesses as to how many houses per square mile there are in that area. How many might there be if the town was 50 square miles? 100? How many people would you guess live there? (How many people per house? What type of housing is there? Single Family? Many Unit?).
- Estimating Length - Give groups different lengths of string (8 inches or less) and have groups estimate how many of their “units” (which if you are brave, you can encourage them to name) equal the length of the item. Create a class chart. A follow up exercise could be creating ratios between the created “units”. (In this case you don’t want them to use rulers to compare).
Resources:
- Online Estimation Game (different math concepts – the one on length might be interesting for non-visual learners)
In these, think about offering them strategies, ways to make EDUCATED or REASONABLE guesses. List all variables you can think of which may change the answer. Use measuring tools (or create your own). Compare elements to things you know (use a “middle man”). Show your work. Use a calculator.
Enciendalo!
Activities:
Listen to your gut about how to approach this. Find out if students have family or friends there that they are worried about. Be sensitive to various ways students process difficult information.
- Review the News: What has happened? Where did it happen? (locate this on a map). What do we know so far about the ‘aftermath’? (Who, what, when, where, why). You might also just show pictures and ask them what they see.
- Discussing Aid: What have people done to help? What do you think we (as a class, a school, a community, a nation) should do to help? Maybe explore with the advisory: When is helping a moral question? A spiritual question? A political question? An economic question? What does it mean when we describe it in these ways?
- Incredible use of technology: Recent advances in Red Cross – they pioneered a way to text a donation (right onto your phone bill). Text “Haiti” to 90999 to send an immediate $10 donation to the Red Cross. (What do they think about this use of technology?). Look into how satellites, twitter and facebook were so important to the initial reaction to the Haitian Earthquake.
- Look at the science of the Earthquakes.
- What are earthquakes? (source 1, USGS)
- How do they work? How is their strength measured? (How much more powerful is a 7.0 earthquake than a 6.0?)
- What specific fault is Haiti on? What do scientists know about what type of earthquake this is?
- How do individuals deal with grief? Look at the Kubler-Ross 5 -stages of grief model and discuss what they think about this.
- Discuss a country’s infrastructure and why it is a “race against time” to get help. Consider why the relief efforts are “trickling” in. How would you go about some of the challenges? (Closed roads, no phones, no water, cracked runways).
Resources:
Enciendalo!
In high school, we often forget about the importance of doing some structured short kinesthetic and fun physical activities to break up the day. We’ve all seen it; the students come back from lunch heavy with grease and soda and about to crash in advisory. You want to get them going, but “Grab your journal!” just doesn’t have the compelling pull you think it should. This is the time for an energizer – a short activity designed to engage people, get them up and moving around – life the spirit and pump the blood. They don’t have to be fancy or heavily planned: you could teach students a couple of yoga poses, a dance, or play “Simon Says.” You can also try these activity:
- Gotcha – (Grab the Finger) – this one works (Description is from this web page)
- Participants stand in a circle, arms out to the side. Left hand palm up, right index finger pointing down and touching on neighbor’s outstretched palm.
- “When I say the word go, do two things…. grab the finger in your left hand, and prevent your right finger from being grabbed… 1 … 2 … 3 … [add suspense] … Go!”.
- Repeat several times. Try doing best two out of three, rotate to different partners
- Tom Leahy advises “put big energy, and your own style to it…it never fails to grab everyone’s attention, bringing them immediately to the present…Provides perfect off the bus spark for the day….Good for 10 minutes”.
- The trick is dramatizing the “Go!”, the build up of suspense, and most will jump the gun, adding to the fun.
- Try a different trigger word, e.g., “Cheese”, and mention lots of other “eeze” words for humor – peas, sneeze, wheeze, please and freeze.
- Or use the word/theme of the day – this is a good way to reinforce topics that you have been working on in advisory.
- Can transition to talking about “assumptions” and “temptation”, etc.
- Remember, as a leaderDon’t be afraid to be goofy (if you won’t, no one else will).
Resources:
Enciendalo!
We have all heard the stories from our parents and grandparents about how, when they were young, they had to “walk to school three miles in the snow uphill (both ways)” and that they didn’t have “these cell phones, we had to write letters to people (on the back of can labels).” As funny as these hyperboles may be, they are based on a truth, and this truth helped to define the experience and mindset of the people who lived then. We are all children of the times in which we live.
If only there was a way to better understand some of these specifics? Well, thanks Beloit College, who publishes yearly MINDSET LIST. This list shows each year, some of the environment in which a new college student to Beloit (18) developed.
Activity:
- Have students, in groups, look at sections from the list (10 – 15) items.
- In these small groups, have students read them all together, and discuss why these would matter in helping to create a “mindset”.
- Take for example the item, “Women have always outnumbered men in college.” What do you think this means What do you think this does for a young woman’s perspective about their future?
- You may have students (in groups) comment on 5 – 8 of the items on this list.
- Have students write an entry about the item that they think most effects the way they live in the world. We often ask them about past experience and history, but how does their current experience define them?
Resources:
Extensions:
- Have students make lists of the inventions, changes in culture, religion, everyday life, science, etc. that they think they will see or would like to see in their lifetime.
Enciendalo!
What could be a better intro than that? A picture of a cat with a funny saying and “sloe” spelled not like the speed but the kind of gin. (I still don’t get that…)
In many schools, it is exhibition time again and you are helping students get ready to present their work to a public panel, and nagging at the back of your mind is the idea – I hope students come up with an engaging way to present their work. Just like in great writing, a solid introduction is essential to engage, foreshadow, explain, and describe. Great writers have an artful way of doing this.
“Call me Ismael. Some years ago -never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”
Oh, understatement…
So let’s look at some options for Exhibition Introductions, so you escape the cat’s fate.
Basics:
Brainstorm with students the different items they want to have in an introduction.
- Consider What to include in your introductions:
- Name, grade, interest, internship, (serial number)
- Introduce handouts (learning plan? Agenda? journals to read? feedback form?)
- Review the agenda and expectations for the presentation.
Taking it to the Next Step:
The basic intro is like a scooter, it might get you to dinner, but you’ll end up their alone. After a couple of exhibitions, it is time to get more creative and bring the panel with you.
- Start with a Relevant Quote
- Quiz the panel on a point that you will be teaching them later on.
- Ask the panel to write a short response to a question that you will answer or to a
- Play a song and/or slideshow at the beginning to set the context or the mood.
- Do an activity for each person to introduce themselves and say why they are there.
- Make a word jumble out of important themes that will come up in the exhibition.
- Stage the room to have work spread around the room, like a true gallery – let the introduction be people wandering looking at and reading student work.
Resources:
If you have any great examples, please send them in comments.
Enciendalo!
What We Want
What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names–
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don’t remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.
Activities:
- Solicit Prior Knowledge: Ask students to write or talk in pairs (or both) about some of the things they want. Can they put them in a continuum- things they want the most to least?
- Review metaphor and imagery as theme and ideas.
- Have students read the poem aloud as a group, then silently to themselves.
- What line (or lines ) in the poem seem most important to you. Write it down in your journal, and explain why in a free write.
- Divide advisory into three small groups and give them each a definition of a literary technique (tone, figurative language, and theme). With the definition, have the group identify
- Figurative language: give at least two examples of figurative language in the poem. Explain what they mean. Why would the speaker use these?
- Tone: How would you describe the tone of the poem (the author’s attitude toward the subject). If you were acting it out, how would you change your voice to make it sound this way? What clues are you reading that help you understand the tone?
- Theme: What are some of the themes explored in this poem (list at least 2). For each
- Then, after working in small groups, have each group report out to the whole advisory – they should prevent the definition of the term and provide an example.
- Write a journal entry that is like a conversation with a 4th grader explaining what is the speaker of this poem trying to say.
Resources:
Extentions:
- Ask the students to show this poem to a parent or friend who has not read it. What is their interpretation of it? Did they read it the same way you did? Explain the similarities and differences?
- Draw a picture inspired by the poem – a scene of an important line, a symbol of the theme, a connection to the mood or tone.
- Write about times that the things you have wanted took control over you – when was that? Why do you think that happened? Do you think this is a human experience (across all cultures)?
Enciendalo!
