A legacy of teaching Senior Seminar at Oakton High School for more than a decade is that I make connections between things, even when they seem unlikely. The Advanced Placement interdisciplinary course I helped create was all about “connections”—literature to government, books to life, the present to the past, the past to the future.
So it is not surprising that a College Board workshop I just conducted for Baltimore County teachers gained significance from the book I was reading, “Alex and Me,” by Irene Pepperberg. Alex was the bird genius immortalized by three decades of scientific studies that forever put to rest the insult “birdbrain.” (Read the book or watch Alex on You Tube to be convinced.)
The workshop had no obvious connection to the studies of Alex the African Grey, but as I spent the day with ten intelligent teachers I saw that, like birds, humans learn best in a community.
The workshop seeks to replicate, in miniature, the training AP English Literature readers receive, as they are about to score the one million essay tests completed by high school students each spring. Their test scores will determine if students will be awarded college credit for the AP English course they have just completed.
Achieving consistency in grading standards is never an easy task, whether there are ten teachers or a thousand, as there are with the annual AP English reading. Teachers first study the written scoring guidelines, and then look at a large number of student essay samples so they are able to determine a range of possibilities for each score. This process follows the traditional teaching format of one person giving information and using questions to reinforce learning.
Alex’s education started out this way, and he learned a lot from Pepperberg when she used this standard method of delivering instruction.
But the even more effective teaching method, used later by Pepperberg with Alex, was to capitalize on the bird’s sociability by engaging another person in the teaching process. Alex learned more quickly when he observed Pepperberg teaching someone else the lesson first.
The Baltimore teachers, likewise, were far more engaged when they worked in small groups—questioning one another and learning from more than one person. Not only were their interactions livelier and more engaged than they had been in a “teacher-centered” lesson, they made more connections to their own classrooms. This bears out what I have observed in every course I’ve ever taught: we learn best in groups.
The final connection to Alex involves his last words on the night he died. As Pepperberg left the lab Alex said, “You be good. I love you.” She replied, “I love you, too.” “Will I see you tomorrow?” he asked. “Yes, I’ll be here tomorrow.”
This Alex/Pepperberg nightly ritual captures something of the spirit of teachers’ interactions with students. We may not say it explicitly, but we want our charges to be good, know that we care about them, and that we will always be there for them. Education—in avian laboratories or human classrooms—is always more effective when there are regular, positive exchanges. Even a birdbrain knows that parrots and people are alike in that way!
What Kids Are Reading
This weekly column will look at lists of books kids are reading in various categories, including grade level, book genre, data from libraries, and data from booksellers. The following list comes from the New York Times list of Notable Children’s Books of 2008.
2008 Children’s Books Recommended by The New York Times
1. Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein (Ages 3-6)
2. The Kingdom on the Waves: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 2 by M.T. Anderson (Ages 14 and up)
3. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Ages 13 and up)
4. Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox (Ages 3-5)
5. Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers (Ages 12 and up)
6. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Ages 12 and up)
7. ABC3D by Marion Bataille (Ages 5 and up)
8. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart (Ages 12 and up)
