Art Titzel's Page

Hi Art,

I saw your post on Weblogg-ed. I have some questions for you. But first some background to provide some context to the question.

I am an experienced teacher, but an 8th grade newbie. I've taught a variety of grades. For some reason, I seem to be most successful teaching 6th, 7th and 11th grades. Now 8th graders are a different breed.

I just read the Dorothy Sayers piece "Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning” http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html recommended by Nathaniel Jones in the Weblogg-ed thread. In this piece, she eloquently describes my 8th grade students: "The Pert age, which follows upon this (and, naturally, overlaps it to some extent), is characterized by contradicting, answering back, liking to "catch people out" (especially one's elders); and by the propounding of conundrums. Its nuisance-value is extremely high. It usually sets in about the Fourth Form. The Poetic age is popularly known as the "difficult" age. It is self-centered; it yearns to express itself; it rather specializes in being misunderstood; it is restless and tries to achieve independence; and, with good luck and good guidance, it should show the beginnings of creativeness; a reaching out towards a synthesis of what it already knows, and a deliberate eagerness to know and do some one thing in preference to all others." She then goes on to recommend a curriculum designed to direct this energy. It seems to be exactly what you have set out to do in your Web 2.0 enabled American Culture class.

Like you, I happen to have the great fortune of doing some very creative things with my 8th graders. I am a rare bird in my district though as I am a solo biotechnology teacher in a state that has no standard curriculum for the 8th grade. So I'm free to create as I will.

The taste of freedom is so wonderful, I'd like some of the other 8th grade teachers to have some as well. It would be nice to have a compelling quantitative argument that is research-based. Until I do, I will be satisfied to collect equally compelling success stories.

As an experienced 8th grade teacher, I imagine you have some compelling success stories that sheds light on what works and what doesn't work well with 8th graders.

This line of thought leads me to these questions:

1. Would you be willing to start a thread about what works in 8th grade to allow Classroom 2.0 teachers to publish their success stories with newbie teachers like myself seeking advice? I'd start the thread myself, but I have no compelling stories to tell that could serve as a model for subsequent entries.

2. Would you be willing to work with me in constructing a compelling case for freeing 8th grade teachers from the standard narrowly focused mile-wide and inch-deep curricula and replace it with innovations that better suit the needs of teachers and their students at this critical age of social and cognitive development?

3. Along those lines, I am wondering what you think of Dorothy Sayers recommendation to take advantage of the inherent argumentativeness of this age group by focusing 8th grade curricula on teaching the tools of argumentation, namely logic and rhetoric?

3. I have a conjecture that 8th grade teachers have the highest turnover rate relative to the other grades. What is your opinion about this idea? Would you know of any research done on this topic? I intend to use this information to firm up the case to free 8th grade teachers from the problems generated by standardized testing.

All the best,

Greg