English Class and…Martial Arts?

Originally posted on Medium on January 8, 2017

I wanted to gamify my 9th grade English class this year. I looked into different programs, like Classcraft. However, I already had a number of programs I was using in my class, like Achieve3000, IXL, and Membean, so I didn’t want to add yet another program to the class. It was partly because I was using different ed-tech programs that I wanted to create a unifying classroom game/ theme for the year. I didn’t want students to just become skilled at these various ed-tech programs, and I wanted a way to generate excitement and promote more participation and character development. So instead of signing up for another program, I decided to create my own year-long classroom game: The Hero’s Journey.

I wrote in my first post on Medium why I wanted to unify my class around the idea of The Hero’s Journey. I wanted both the students and myself as a teacher to view our educational experience this year as something heroic, as an epic quest. Students wrote narratives about a time they were heroic and created a visual project on a hero in their lives. We discussed the stages of the hero’s journey and how their high school and overall educational experiences could be viewed through the framework of the hero’s journey: call to adventure, departure, cultivation of skills, transformation, and return.

The Hero’s Journey game is a mixture of different elements. I started with the idea of gaining and losing XP, as in video games or something like Duolingo. Many of my students are avid video game players, and some view a possible passion in their life as video game designers. The Hero’s Journey game is also sort of like the points system in Harry Potter. I will set forth a difficult challenge, and if a student accomplishes the challenge (like getting a 100 on a vocabulary quiz), they will earn XP. Finally, I was influenced in the creation of the game both by popular heroic films like Star Wars as well as the progression of belts in martial arts.

I view the class as a journey of discipline, mastery, and new skills. To me, this is a different framework than merely looking at a class as homework, tests, multiple-choice bubbles, etc. It also changes the role of the teacher. In his book Zen in the Martial Arts, Joe Hyams explains the symbolic nature of the belt system in martial arts: “Many martial arts systems have various colors of belts between white and brown as well as degrees of brown and black, a constant reminder to the student that there is more to learn beyond whatever proficiency he or she may already have” (31). Students are on different levels and stages of their journey, but they should be united in their pursuit of continuous improvement, kaizen.

At first, I tracked students’ XP through a massive Google spreadsheet. Over Thanksgiving, I searched for a better way because I wanted students to be able to see their XP without seeing all of their peers’ points. The only way I was telling students their XP was through conversation or through a weekly leaderboard posted on Schoology. I researched different platforms and the one I ended up going with was ClassDojo. I converted their XP for the year onto ClassDojo and got students signed up when they returned to school. Unfortunately, ClassDojo only allows students to see their weekly points and not their overall point accumulations for the year, so I am still on the lookout for a better point-sharing program.

I award students XP for excellence; a message I repeat is “Pursue excellence.” Excellence is not necessarily perfection, but it is going beyond your comfort zone with dedicated effort. I award students for doing particularly well on an assignment or assessment, but I also award students XP for character traits, such as the “Ignatian Jedi” award for demonstrating a Grad at Gradcharacteristic, such as Open to Growth. That way, I didn’t want The Hero’s Journey game to be merely reflective of grades and aptitude, but also character development, persistence, and effort.

Here are some of XP awards I give:

• Writing Beast- A on an essay- 20 XP
• Wordsmith Award- 100 on a Membean Quiz- 10 XP
• MVP: Most Valuable Participant- 10 XP
• Achieve3000 Lexile Growth Monster- 20 XP
• Collaboration Sensation- 20 XP
• Grit and Growth Gains- Demonstrating grit or growth mindset- 20 XP

On the Hero’s Journey, the hero will be faced with trials and obstacles. I deduct XP for certain actions, but the ultimate goal is positive recognition rather than a disciplinary system of classroom management.

Based off their cumulative XP for the year, each student is on a belt level. Each belt level has a different “superpower” associated with that level after the initial white belt stage. The game is divided into five levels:

Level One: Young Grasshopper: White Belt- 0–149 XP

As Shunryu Suzuki writes, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” This is our beginner’s mind stage, as students set off on their journey. There are no superpowers associated with this stage.

Level Two: The Seeker of Wisdom: Blue Belt- 150–299 XP

The student is on the path of wisdom, learning, and understanding. To recognize this accomplishment, the student earns the following superpower: 10 points extra credit weekly on a grammar or vocabulary quiz.

Level Three: The Artist of Life: Purple Belt- 300–499 XP

The student continues on the path of self cultivation. They create art with their poems, writing, projects, discussions, and actions. Their superpower at this stage is that they are free to go to any station they wish within the classroom (i.e. they are not assigned a particular station).

Level Four: The Jedi: Brown Belt- 500–699 XP

The student is like a Jedi in the classroom, absorbing wisdom and helping others on their path. In addition to the other superpowers they have accumulated throughout the year, students at this level are allowed to turn in an essay a week late for full credit.

Level Five: Sensei: Black Belt- 700–1000 XP

This is the highest, most sought after level of the game. The student at this level has become the sensei, a master. They can face any challenge with courage and persistence, and they act compassionately to all of their peers.

After the black belt, there is no higher level. I joke that I as a teacher will disappear, leaving the black belt in charge.

This has been an interesting way to re-frame the class through a different lens. It is an ongoing journey of learning, character development, and skill cultivation. The classroom has become the dojo.

My Year in Books in 2016

Originally posted on Medium on January 3, 2017

According to Goodreads, I finished 28 books in 2016 for a total of 7,910 pages. The shortest book I read was Thich Nhat Hanh’s Work and the longest book I read was George R.R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords. My most popular book was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and my least popular book was Adisa Banjoko’s Bobby, Bruce, and the Bronx: The Secrets of Hip Hop Chess.

I signed up for Goodreads in the summer, so I’m hoping I forgot some books and read more than 28 for the year. My goal for 2017 is to read 52 books. I encouraged my students to sign up for Goodreads and to track their reading on the site. I wanted a different way to encourage independent reading.

To me, what matters the most in the reading process is inspiration. A sign of a powerful book is one that makes you think differently about the world, to see things in a new light. A powerful book causes you to live differently, to live in a more inspired way. Even if it’s just one idea, one quote, or one word that illuminates something in you.

With that being said, here are the books that I read in 2016 that I enjoyed the most, in order of the time I read them:

Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Pavel Tsatsouline, Kettlebell- Simple and Sinister

Gabriel Wyner, Fluent Forever

George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

Ken Robinson, Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education

Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

Michael B. Horn, Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation To Improve Schools

Matt Zoller Seitz, Mad Men Carousel: The Complete Critical Companion

Alan Sepinwall and Mark Zoller Zeitz, TV: The Book

Francisco Jimenez, Breaking Through

Joe Hyams, Zen in the Martial Arts

Joe De Sena, Spartan Fit!

Here are the other books I read, which I also enjoyed and learned a lot from:

Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Daniel T. Willingham, Raising Kids Who Read
Perle Besserman, Crazy Clouds: Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers
Adisa Banjoko, Bruce, Bobby, and the Bronx: The Secrets of Hip Hop Chess
Carol Dweck, Mindset
Thich Nhat Hanh, Work
Josh Waitzin, The Art of Learning
Gary Snyder, The Real Work
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Joe De Sena, Spartan Up!
John Tiffany, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Jack Maguire: Waking Up: A Week Inside a Zen Monastery
Miguel Ruiz: The Four Agreements
Mark Divine: The Way of the SEAL
Paulo Coelho: The Alchemist

It was definitely motivating and helpful to track the books I was reading for the first time. Here’s to another year of reading and opening up new worlds in 2017!

The Hero’s Journey in Education

Originally published January 2, 2017 on Medium

Over Christmas Break, I immersed myself in different stories, different worlds. I entered a world of violence and power in Westeros as I read A Feast for Crows. I went back to J.K. Rowling’s world of magic as I watched Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I watched season four of Lost and transported myself to some mysterious island in the Pacific Ocean.

We are surrounded by stories, all day, all the time. Even people who don’t consider themselves readers are constantly immersed in storytelling. Our Facebook feeds present non-stop stories, as do quick Snapchat videos. Turn on the TV- stories. Read a newspaper- stories. Listen to the radio, to podcasts, to an album- more and more stories. Stories are embedded in our DNA.

What stories do we tell about education? When we go to the classroom, what is the dominant narrative? I feel many teachers do have noble visions of their career and can articulate their values in resumes and interviews and applications. But often in the midst of the daily grind of teaching, we often get bogged down in the minutiae of teaching: the lesson plans, the grading, the classroom management, the meetings, and so on.

For the first time this year, I went into the school year seeking an overarching theme in my 9th grade English class. I wanted a theme that could resonate throughout the school year. Inspired by Joseph Campbell, I chose the theme of “The Hero’s Journey.”

How about viewing the role of teaching and learning through an epic lens, a heroic lens? For the role of the teacher is all about transformation. Based off my understanding, the hero’s journey can be boiled down to the following stages:

(1) Call to Adventure

(2) Leaving the Ordinary World and Crossing a Threshold into a New World

(3)An Adventure that Features Obstacles, Lessons, Mentors, Allies, New Skills, and Antagonists

(4) A Return to the Original World with New Skills: Transformation

I challenged my students to view themselves on this hero’s journey. They have received a call to adventure to a new school, a new world. They left behind the world they knew. They have gone on an adventure where they will face many challenges, meet new friends, and learn new skills. They will go on to college and careers and hopefully will return to their communities transformed.

This was the model and goal for many of the students I taught at my previous school, Red Cloud High School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Here was a place of amazing cultural richness: sweat lodge ceremonies, pow-wow dances, strong Lakota values, and so forth. At the same time, it was a place of suffering and poverty. Many students sought to leave the reservation after high school. I helped many students with college application and scholarship essays, and most students wrote about how they wanted to return to their home community after college in order to transform it in positive ways. The Hero’s Journey.

During this school year, with my new chosen theme, I asked students to consider a time when they were heroic in some way. They wrote a narrative essay that provided me some window into their lives. I wanted students to reflect on their own “superpowers” and skills. I also asked students to create a project that integrated both visual art and storytelling as they presented a person that has been heroic in their own life. I was inspired by High Tech High’s project on heroes to undertake this project. I also showed different short videos that introduced this idea of the hero’s journey. I started with this one.

When students come into the classroom, I sometimes will play some epic-sounding music score from a film or TV show. To me, it gives the idea we are doing some big here in the classroom, something epic. I want to shake off the doldrums of monotony and boredom and change our perspective on education. Here’s my favorite entrance music:

Going along with the theme of the hero’s journey, I wanted to gamify the classroom this year. In the last two years at my current school, I feel I have had success. Students work hard on the challenges I throw at them every week: essays, class novels, Achieve3000 articles, IXL grammar skills, Membean vocabulary training. But I wanted more of a feeling of excitement and joy in the classroom.

So this year, I created my first experiment of a year-long classroom game: The Hero’s Journey. It is a mixture of video game XP, Harry Potter-style points awarding, and martial arts. Students can progress to five different belts as in the martial arts. Each belt symbolizes a different superpower that students can use. I hope to write more about this at another time. I like to view the classroom as a dojo, a spiritual place to refine skills and seek continuous improvement, kaizen. Or as a type of environment like Plato’s Academy, a place to explore ideas and seek wisdom.

For in the hero’s journey, the protagonist seeks some sort of wisdom and self-knowledge. For students, I hope they are on a journey of discovery, a way to explore and pursue their passions. As Joseph Campbell once said, “Follow your bliss.” We are reading Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist in my 9th grade English class in a unit on passions that I have entitled “Set the World on Fire” after the saying from St. Ignatius. In The Alchemist, Coelho recounts a parable about seeing the wonders of the world but at the same time not dropping the oil from the spoon that you are carrying. We discuss what this means: living passionately but also not forgetting about one’s responsibilities. Joy and discipline.

This school year I wanted t0 re-frame my course and my overall mindset, and hopefully my students’ as well. Hopefully, the hero’s journey can bring more excitement into the classroom. In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks writes, “To enter classroom settings…with the will to share the desire to encourage excitement, was to transgress” (7).

To transgress is to cross over, to transform…to take what we have known and infuse it with more spirit, vitality, and joy.