Reflections on Personal Vision

More Reflections on the “Personal Vision Project”
Not to Mention My Own Ever-Evolving Personal Visions
By Barbara Saxton

Picture our “bubble students” as they encounter this sample multiple-choice “question” on their next English-Language Arts STAR test:

Sample Question 1: Genuine, sustained learning results when students are—

A. learning in safe, caring environments populated by people who recognize, encourage, and build on everyone’s talents and strengths.
B. asked to reflect, using their own powerful voices, on the facts, meanings, and values of their lives and then relate these concepts to the rest of their world.
C. attended to in effective, caring ways by all members of their learning community, and granted input and choice about their programs of study, products and outcomes of learning.
D. All of the above answers are correct.

Now, fast forward to me, the teacher, reading aloud from the Official Test Administrator’s Booklet (ahem): “Students, which letter did you bubble in as the best answer to Sample Question 1? What was that, Tiffany? Yes, that’s right! The best answer is D. All of the above. But, before I leave you to tackle Test Questions 1 – 75 by yourselves, is there anything else you want to ask me (other than, of course, ‘Why are we doing this at all?’)”

Well, obviously, we’re “doing this,” and not just in English/Language Arts, but in ALL the major academic disciplines, because, as Abraham Maslow, noted American psychologist who helped conceptualize the "hierarchy of human needs,” explained: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.” If one test is good and helps boost “overall student achievement,” then ten must be better! In case you wondered, one of my reasons for writing this to is debunk that very notion!

As many of you reading this are already aware, my SJAWP ISI08 workshop presentation centered around a “Personal Vision” mini-unit plan I designed for and implemented with eighth grade language arts classes at Crittenden Middle School, in the Mountain View (CA) Whisman School District. In my narrative explaining as much as I could about the project and my involvement with it, I mentioned how impressed and inspired I had felt several years ago when John Creger, an educator at American High School in Fremont CA described and outlined his “Personal Creed Project,” designed originally for high school sophomores. I went on to read his fascinating book, The Personal Creed Project and a New Vision of Learning: Teaching the Universe of Meaning In and Beyond the Classroom (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2004 ) and also created a modified version of the “Creed” project better suited to the needs and developmental capabilities of middle school students.

During the two consecutive years I offered it, the “Personal Vision” essay, and all the various stages of its creation, became one of the most meaningful and powerful projects of my students’ eighth grade year. To recap, the essential components of this project/essay are:

1. An attention-grabbing introduction, or thesis statement (usually created after the body paragraphs of the essay are completed!)
2. Paragraphs (revised from student journal entries and other verbal/written responses to various prompts) about the following more or less prescribed topics:
“Big questions” –Up to three important questions students wonder/are concerned about, want to try to answer at some point, etc.
Three influences: people (no celebrities!), experiences, or a combination of both which have shaped the student’s life, and why they were or became important. Two of these influences should be, for the most part, positive, and one primarily negative.
Presenting two or more quotations about education, learning, community, and life (either the student’s choice or from a list I make available) and comments on reasons for their choice and relevance or importance of these quotes in our lives.
What each individual student stands for, or a cause (or causes) worthy of working for and toward, and the reasons why it or they are important, both to the individual and the world.
3. An effective conclusion that restates the thesis in a different way, summarizes key points, and looks to the future.

Creating the powerful essays that emerged from the personal vision project was hardly a stand-alone exercise. Experiencing first hand the value of learning to talk and write about things that truly mattered to them and their world gradually informed every other aspect of the curriculum. When we read Steinbeck’s The Pearl, they discussed economic disparity and injustice, greed and materialism, and related these themes to their own lives and experience. We eagerly debated both sides of a New York Times article about the ethics and plausibility of paying students on the basis of their performance on standardized tests. They became more active, involved learners. (Note: this process was forced into temporary hiatus as we performed the obligatory “test prep” in April just before the annual STAR testing window opened…)

Although mine was one of the earlier presentations at this year’s ISI, the “personal vision” workshop was only the beginning of a cascade of literacy techniques and activities aimed at promoting student engagement, satisfaction, and voice, Herein a smattering of titles and topics: “This is Not about You: Giving Students Choice in the Educational Process,” “Teaching Comparison and Contrast to Stimulate Social and Self Awareness,” “Personalities: The Importance of Being Earnestly Yourself,” “Taking the Fear Out of Responding to Poetry,” “I-Search: When My Dad Was My Age,” “Creating Safe Places for Learning,” “Who Cares? A Response to Literature Unit,” “From Martin Luther to Walt Disney: Engaging Aliterate Secondary Students with What They Read,” “Raise Your Voices! Integrating Research with Lead-ins, Voice and Attitude,” “The Magic of Mehendi: Studying Process Analysis through Culture,” “Healing Grief in the Classroom,” “World Citizens Program: Students Making a Difference.” Obviously, when over twenty of Silicon Valley’s best K-12 English/Language Arts teachers select and present what they know will bring forth the best, both personally and academically, in their students, some common threads pervade the entire series: vision, choice, engagement, voice, measurable learning, values, and satisfaction.

As John Creger pointed out, “such a vision would increase the value our society places on learning…and offering real long-term hopes…for solving intractable societal problems.” (pg. 48) The “two-legged classroom” Creger envisions is “as much devoted to the care and unfolding of persons as to the acquisition and honing of skills.”(pg. 155) Another way of putting it is that, without developing our students’ core beings, recognizing and developing their sense of character and moral compasses, we risk sending out into the world highly-trained automatons who care deeply about nothing. Maybe we’ve done enough of that already.

Like Creger, I am a child of the 1950’s and 60’s. During that period, in the faraway (and educationally much better funded!) land of Ohio, the elementary and secondary education I received was, in its many positive aspects, rigorous, competitive, and thorough. I emerged a highly educated individual—knowing many, many important facts about a wide variety of subjects (and capable of reading, writing, and speaking about all of them), well-read (and a lifelong reader), sufficiently proficient in math and science to flourish in the worlds of business and my husband’s physics lab holiday parties, fluent in another language (French, and later Chinese) than English, and even in pretty decent physical shape, despite being descended from chain smoking alcoholics! What was missing, you might ask? For many years after I left high school, what lurked beneath the veneer of this successful A+, student was a veritable garbage dump of psychological insecurity, lack of direction (or even a real moral compass), and a fundamental distrust of teachers and my fellow students (who were, after all, my “competitors.”)

We “Track One” students were a nice fit for a Cold War society that demanded a highly competent workforce, and reasonably well-behaved scholars, who (at least for a while) were not overly concerned about why they were busting their guts, or for whose benefit. Certainly, there were less standardized tests than now, but real learning nevertheless played second fiddle to shameless grade-grubbing. We quaked in fear of being “lowered a track” to the level of those incompetent, non-college bound students who didn’t matter to anyone. In my own family, the fate of my bright but relatively unmotivated sisters showed me what being treated like academic chaff was like. So, I was careful not to screw up, at least not until later, when the absurdity of it all finally hit me, with gale force. The Vietnam War, or rather the act of protesting against it, also alerted me to realities and injustices I had been too busy to consider, while maintaining that 4.0 average. Once I woke up, though, I never really went back to sleep, and I try to make sure none of my students do, either.

Unfortunately, the multiple-choice non-learning opportunities are not going away soon. As a matter of fact, California is about to add yet another test (Algebra I) to eighth graders’ already burgeoning plate of year end assessments. The irony is that, even if they fail any or all of these tests, they will more than likely be promoted to high school anyway. It’s absurd, and the students know it. Although it is not a complete answer to this growing conundrum, I’ll close on what is hopefully a more positive note, with a quote from one of my students’ personal vision essays. Isaiah M. wrote: “One of my big questions is:“Why do some people hate each other? I think one reason…is that they have become afraid of other people, or jealous, or maybe they just don’t want to change, and they think other people will make them.” We will continue to work for change in education, not through hatred, but by being the change we want so desperately to see.