She paused by the dining-room door. There were still three little china figures in the middle of the table. Vera laughed. She said, "You're behind the times, my dears." She picked up two of them and tossed them out through the window.
Two, truck-sized spotlights beaming toward the evening sky, limousines pulling to the curb, a long red carpet, top hats and long gowns, a string quartet playing deliciously in the lobby...
The glittering marquee explaining it all...for it is Module 10 Opening Night and...
There is palpable excitement and anticipation in the air!
Hip-hip-hooray! At long last...Module 10 is now officially underway! You thought you'd never reach this point, didn't you?
Teams (students) continue to interact with other teams on Blackboard, offering pointed yet helpful critiques and plentiful feedback on the Chappuis scripts.
This concluding module is to center on students' discussions of their field work from the assignments launched long ago in Modules 3 and 4 and to get ready for CHECKOUT.
ED 235 draws to a close.
Part A
Share your fieldwork experiences set up in Modules 3 and 4 with others. Blackboard forums will be erected whereby students possessing similar majors (same academic speciality) will exchange views and share experiences gained during field work.
"It takes two to tango!" Make sure you interact freely with your peers and they will do likewise, I'm sure.
Specifics will be forthcoming, as needed, when we reach this point in the course.
Repeat: Talk, talk, talk!
Part B CHECKOUT
1. Find the link, "CHECKOUT" (after Module 10 at the bottom of the Welcome section), print out a copy and complete it thoroughly with your team when the instructor directs you. This exercise represents the last official task you will complete with your team in ED 235. Congratulations, the team work in ED 235 is done!
2. Your instructor will not release any course grade for ED235 without receiving all requested information. Leave nothing out.
A PASSING QUESTION...
How did ED 235 turn out? Was it just another "ho-hum" education course?
Well?
ADDENDUM # 1
Excerpts from Saturday COMMENTS 4/15/06...
CHECKOUT
"One More Thing..."
1. Give me everything I ask for, please.
2. Be honest. Don't distort or exaggerate. If you do, you're only fooling yourself.
Students (including the Captain): Do not...do NOT sign off on a CHECKOUT form if you know it to be untrue or a serious distortion of the truth.
You are not obligated to sign anything...unless is appears to you to be truthful and fair.
3. Field Work:
A. Signed Yellow Sheet: You must submit one. Be sure to indicate the school(s) you did your observations in.
B. You get credit for 3 hours extra "field work" IF (and only IF) you participated in BB regularly, especially in Module 10 (Part A).
If you made little effort there, then you are not entitled to these "bonus hours". My decision. I'm watching and taking notes.
I will mark on your Yellow Sheets if you get those extra hours. Most of you will. But earn them!
4. Staple or use paper clips when you can. Kindly avoid giving me loose papers, if possible.
5. Captain: I will make available for the team large brown envelopes to stuff the materials in.
Use as many envelopes as you need. Use a different folder for each team member.
If you are not ready to give me your team's CHECKOUT material during designated class, please bring the package to the Secretary, Secondary Education Office, on the second floor of Tinsley and leave the materials in my mailbox slot.
6. Captain: e-mail me if a problem arises on any issue. Thanks.
ADDENDUM # 2
Excerpts from Saturday COMMENTS 5/12/07...
Good morning!
These brief remarks constitute the last in the long series of Saturday COMMENTS you've all grown accustomed to and love.
The Spring edition of ED 235 is rapidly drawing to a close.
At noon Monday, I will travel to BSC and pick up all available CHECKOUT material.
I will cart everything home and begin the process of evaluating each student for purpose of determining final grades.
On Friday same week, I will submit the set of final grades online to the Registrar. I do not know when the Registrar posts grades for students to view. It could be same day...I don't know.
My evaluation will take several days. I will coordinate what you report in CHECKOUT with past notes I've taken on your performance in the course, quiz grades, and (of course) your Blackboard activity, past and present. Yes, I will go to BB and attempt to validate the information and data in your CHECKOUT with actual postings.
As a whole, all students in the three sections of the course performed in reasonable or better fashion, week after week in the semester. There was no student who acted irresponsibly. Therefore, with the exceptions of a few "Incomplete" grades to be issued because Field Work has yet to be completed, the final grade range should be restricted somewhat..."B" to "A" in all liklihood.
We'll see.
I like the way I said good-bye to students in Module 10. Thus, I will say little here, other than to inform you that I am not scheduled to teach summer school at BSC and will be off-duty as of next week for three months.
I have "tons" of leaves to rake and a whole house to restain..damned damp Cape Cod weather!
And, of course, whole sections of ED 235 to revise.
I will return in September, haunting Maxwell Library in my usual manner. When I die some day, can there be any doubt that my ghost will take up permanent residence there?
And if I managed to enter your nightmares this semester, please take comfort in knowing that my staying power is measured only in years. I will disappear..in time!
And YOU! Have the very best of summers!! That's an assignment, you hear?
See you all in September.
Respectfully,
Dr. ZuWallack
ADDENDUM # 3
Excerpts from Saturday COMMENTS 5/12/07...
If I may be permitted to simplify what is really a complex area of study, I think there are two major "types" of INTELLIGENT students in schools.
One type or style is the "Book-learner" (BL), or highly Verbal student. The BL is skillful at dealing with and succeeding in traditional school settings, where there is an emphasis on textbook-centered instruction, lectures and conventional testing (essays, standardized testing, etc.) The BL doesn't mind teachers or texts breaking information to be learned into a multitide of discrete, fragmented, abstract, remote categories. The BL doesn't complain much when the task calls for memorizing a great deal of half-understood information for a test.
BLs tend to make the honor roll, win scholarships and go on to good colleges. They have high verbal skills and can usually write reasonably well. They like school.
They tend to get high scores on standardized tests such as the SAT, MTEL, MCAS. Thus they get into medical schools, law schools, etc., in great numbers.
BLs can come from any socioeconomic strata but generally come from the upper middle class (think private secondary school here) or the middle class (public school).
Although there are many, many exceptions, it is hard for kids from "working" classes and "ethnic" kids (like I was and am!) to be fully a BL. It's a struggle.
The second major type of intelligent learner in the schools is the Practical Learner (PL). PLs are frequently uncomfortable with or turned off to traditional teacher-centered instruction. They tend to get excited only about things that interest them and prefer to display their basic "smarts" in realistic settings.
They usually don't give a d--- about how many elephants Hannibal had when he crossed the Alps or what the subjective case is or does in English.
And they will shut you off in the classroom when you follow the book.
PLs generally test poorly and, as a result, often get shut out of scholarship money, top-flight colleges, professional schools.
It is likely some PLs would make great scientists if they were allowed to enter the field. Not likely, for they would not score high enough on the required VERBAL standardized tests to break into the field in the first place.
It is likely most of our scientists are BLs. They passed all those hard, conventional verbal tests along the way.
It is my way of thinking that a signficant number of these BL-scientists are not particularly productive, creative or innovative on their jobs, once they get there. They are overly verbal and great with book learning...but what else? Can they think in new ways, "out of the box"?
Had some of the more talented PLs been allowed into science--well, who knows what they could have come up with!
Many, many pure BLs enter college teaching and prefer to teach the way they "loved" or accepted in their formative, learning years--teacher-centered, textbook-dominated instruction.
They must find it puzzling that so many "resist" whay they do in the classroom once they start teaching themselves.
Many more BLs enter secondary level teaching and tend to perpetuate the status quo. "It worked for me, why not you?"
Don't get me wrong: large numbers of BLs are brilliant, talented, capable and productive OUTSIDE of a school situation as well as in one. But not all by any measure.
Once free from school, many PLs do very well in life and in the marketplace. They establish businesses in town and, at risk of failure, often make them work. They become firefighters, the police, plumbers...
And more! Some PLs invent new procedures that have considerable impact up on the world. This happens far more than most imagine.
One of my uncles, a PL who dropped out of school to join the Navy in WWII, did just that. After leaving the military service, he designed something new for a door-lock. I don't remember the details. But today's sophisticated door hardware springs from, in part, Uncle Elliot's idea, circa 1946! That's how it goes. PLs often change the world in significant ways.
When I returned for my 40th high school reunion in Connecticut in 1996, I learned that one of the obvious PLs in my class, an ethnic kid who flunked every algebra test ever put in front of him, invented several parts for modern-day roller-blades. His inventions led to the mass-production of the sport. MASS production!
PL Vinny became a millionaire by the time he was 40! He retired more than 20 years ago, to raised horses in Colorado.
There were others.
But not all the PLs were raging successes either. Far from it.
Meantime, the BLs in my 1956 graduating class, adept at coping with conventional teaching and able to tolerate if not thrive in absorbing knowledge straight from textbooks, gravitated toward teaching as a career at one level or another. Three of the 90 attending the reunion were or had been college professors including yours truly, obviously. (I am a BL-PL "blend"!). One entered the law, but apparently was not particularly successful at it, and another served in the CIA, doing something--classified. He could not wait to retire and coach basketball at some level. He wanted out!
Four or five went on to become teachers in the public schools.
My most vivid memory of my 40th high school reunion, however, was when I showed up in the parking lot late for the event at the restaurant and saw two of my classmates being wheeled up the ramp in wheelchairs!
The last time I saw these two "girls", in 1956, they were dancing the night away to Bill Haley and the Comets.
Here it is, almost ten years later, since my last high school reunion, the one referenced above.
I've just received a formal invitation to attend the 50th reunion!
I don't think I'm going to go. I don't want to see any more of my classmates in wheelchairs. I prefer to remember them as they were in Mrs. Royale's Algebra II class fifty years ago!
-And Then There Were None
- -Agatha Christie, 1939
- (when Lil' Rayzie was but 1-year old... and already looking forward to our encounter!)
- GOOD-BYE, EVERYONE, AND THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
- R.Z.
- Dr. ZuWallack smiles and nods...