Teaching Content Outrageously: How to Captivate All Students and Accelerate Learning, Grades 4-12

chapter ONE

Why Teach Outrageously in All the Content Areas?

Most teachers enter the teaching profession with an idealistic vision of impacting the lives of their students. They see themselves in a classroom in which their students hang onto their every word. It is of course a rude awakening when they actually first enter a classroom to teach, and find that they must fight for their students’ attention and interest. It is a battle that is often lost.

As many teachers realize, conventional approaches to content instruction, even approaches employing state-of-the-art, best-practice strategies, are often inadequate for serving the large percentage of students in public schools who are reluctant, superficial, or resistant learners. They are often inadequate for meeting standards-based content objectives, even in high-performing schools. If anything, the problem of student disengagement is becoming more prevalent due to a combination of social problems, such as poverty and the increasing availability of on-demand entertainment options for filling one’s time outside of school. Indeed, veteran teachers often report that it is increasingly difficult to hold students’ attention.

A major challenge for teachers is how best to motivate and engage students who are discouraged or underachieving their true potential. Underperforming learners, be they students born into poverty or from advantaged backgrounds, often do not see purpose in what they are taught and respond with boredom, apathy, and misbehavior. Conventional approaches to instruction have been inadequate in reversing the low achievement and high dropout rates now prevalent in all too many schools. Dropouts report that boredom is a major contributor to their decision to leave school. There are also large numbers of reluctant learners who do well generally but have lost motivation to learn in a particular content area. Examples include students who have decided that they are mathphobic or that science is not cool. Alternatively, they may find it impossible to understand selected key topics within content areas that are crucial to future success.

Student boredom and the resultant misbehavior are also major factors behind the high turnover rate among new teachers, who are simply unable to hold students’ interest and consequently have to spend inordinate amounts of time trying to maintain order. This inability is typically viewed as not having the skills to maintain discipline. However, the discipline problems themselves are symptomatic of teachers not having the stagecraft and presence to hold their students’ attention.

Indeed, little has changed since Charles Silberman documented the absolute boredom of students in the typical classroom in high-poverty schools in his classic book Crisis in the Classroom: The Remaking of American Education (1971). The experience of walking through a high-poverty school is much the same today as it was thirty or a hundred years ago. The dominant expression on the faces of disadvantaged students is generally boredom or resignation. The same is true when teachers in all schools and in any content area teach particular lessons and units. But this need not be so! And that is why this book was written.

It is time to recognize that this era of on-demand, individualized, and YouTubed entertainment is producing as fundamental a shift in communication and learning patterns today as the printing press did 550 years ago. The key to teaching reluctant and resistant learners who have grown up with unsurpassed access to on-demand entertainment is to transform the classroom into a highly intriguing learning environment, to make it entertaining, dramatic, visually captivating, and a multisensory experience.

It is time to accept that we cannot always teach content conventionally! This approach does not work anymore for most students. Unfortunately, even if you agree with this sentiment, chances are that you teachers were not trained in how to produce highly creative unconventional instructional environments that can increase learning. Nor were you administrators trained to encourage the use of unconventional instructional approaches as part of a systematic approach to school improvement.

But even if you did want to create very dramatic learning environments, most of the published work on using drama and humor focuses primarily on using them to develop the literacy or self-expression skills of young children, to review and reinforce what has been learned conventionally, or to develop students’ artistic sense. All of these are important uses of dramatic techniques. However, they only scratch the surface of the potential of using dramatic instructional approaches.

MOVING FROM CONVENTIONAL TO OUTRAGEOUS TEACHING

The ideal is possible. We can transfix students even while teaching seemingly prosaic content. Later in this book you will read about lessons in which hard-core problem students and classes in the toughest schools were transfixed and hanging on every word and gesture of their teacher. When that happens, it is an inspirational and fun moment for the teacher as well. After even one such experience, student and teacher come to view each other differently—with mutual heightened respect and admiration.

The big need is for a practical way to use dramatic approaches as a primary technique for teaching new content across the curriculum in grades 4 through 12—that is, to teach the content Outrageously. Outrageous Teaching is a powerful tool for all teachers to use to stimulate learning in those lessons and students for which conventional instruction is not likely to be effective. This book goes beyond conventional notions of using dramatic technique in education. The goal is to use dramatic technique, humor, and imagination in combination to create lessons that are so different from conventional instruction, and so far out, that the only words to characterize them are Outrageous and amazingly effective.

What is Outrageous Teaching and why is it so effective? Why is it able to captivate reluctant and resistant learners and squirrelly classes? Why is it able to stimulate high levels of learning in otherwise passive or confused students? Can drama and humor really be the basis of a large-scale tool for improving content instruction and increasing academic achievement? To understand what Outrageous Teaching is and why it is so effective, it is important first to understand dramatic technique, the base on which the method is built.

DEFINITION OF DRAMATIC TECHNIQUE

Some key components of drama are as follows:

A composition . . . intended to portray life or character or to tell a story usually involving conflict and emotions through action and dialogue. . . . (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)

Exciting, tense, and gripping . . . either in a work of art or in a real-life situation. (Encarta World English Dictionary)

‘A deed’ or ‘an action.’ So anytime you’ve acted something out, you’ve done drama! (The Play’s The Thing: Drama Definition, retrieved from http://jfg.girlscouts.org/how/girlslife/dramadef.htm. Note: This site no longer exists. The quote currently appears at http://suzynarita.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_archive.html.)

A collective experiencing, celebrating, or commenting, not on how we are different from each other, but on what we share. . . (Bolton, 2001, p. 154).

On the basis of these definitions, this book views classroom use of dramatic technique as

Teacher actions that turn lessons into a collective experience by creating a story or context that produces excitement and other emotions central to acquiring and consciously processing the key content ideas and knowledge.

Although this definition includes what most educators think of as drama—that is, theatrical productions—it is a much broader definition that includes all aspects of artistic expression that performers—in this case, teachers—can use to create a dramatic tension that enthralls and draws in an audience—in this case, their students.

THE POWER OF DRAMA AS AN INSTRUCTIONAL TOOL

Dramatizing content instruction has tremendous potential for teaching students who have not been successful learners or are intimidated by a particular subject or type of content, because it taps into their deeply held emotions and beliefs, their imagination, their sense of life’s possibilities, and their role in the cosmos. As such, it is the most underused and powerful teaching technique in American education.

Philosophers as far back as Confucius and Aristotle have been fascinated with the power of drama as a teaching tool, as evidenced by the following quotes:

I hear, I know. I see, I remember. I do, I understand. (Confucius, 551 B.C.-479 B.C. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/confucius.html) Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember. Involve me and I will understand. (Attributed to Aristotle by some and said to be a Chinese Proverb by others; originally retrieved from http://www.geocities.com/broadway/alley/3765/why.html—Note: This site no longer exists. In addition, another version of this quote has as the middle phrase, Show me and I may remember.)

Indeed, drama has been used as a teaching technique since ancient times. (See the history of drama use in Appendix A.)

Dramatic practices are also widely used in the modern classroom. Many teachers are already familiar with conventional techniques that engage students in role-playing, improvisations, games, and simulated experiences. These practices are most often used to supplement lessons previously taught—to develop particular skills, such as reading fluency; to deepen understanding of a particular content topic; or to review and reinforce learning. Although these practices are important, they barely scratch the surface of the potential of using dramatic technique as a teaching and learning tool.

The method featured in this book places great importance on the role of the teacher in incorporating dramatic practices into the design and staging of the original content instruction, rather than first teaching the content conventionally. The goal of these practices is to capture the attention of students at the onset of the content instruction, and to gain their willingness and commitment to fulfill specified content learning objectives.

DEFINING OUTRAGEOUS TEACHING

Most conceptions of using drama to teach content involve first teaching a lesson using conventional approaches and then using dramatic techniques such as student role-plays, reader’s theater, games, and simulations to review, reinforce, and deepen the learning. Although the conventional reinforcement approach to using dramatic technique is valuable, it tends to be inefficient. In other words, you are basically teaching the content objectives twice—first conventionally and then using dramatic technique to reinforce it. Why not just teach the content from the beginning using the more creative, enriched approach? That is the goal of Outrageous Teaching.

Outrageous Teaching it is not designed to replace all instruction. However, for those lessons and content objectives that a teacher has decided will be of greatest value, Outrageous Teaching is used as the primary teaching approach. It is how the content objectives are taught from the very beginning—as opposed to being merely a supplemental approach. In Outrageous Teaching, the teacher teaches the same lessons he or she would teach using conventional methods, covering the same content, but in a very different, far more compelling fashion. No lessons are added to a unit to incorporate Outrageous Teaching. Outrageous Teaching is thus the first classroom use of dramatic technique that does not require incorporating additional lessons to teach content in an enriched fashion.

Outrageous Teaching integrates humor, imagination, and dramatic technique to develop inventive storylines that provide a context that seems important to students in terms of how they think. For most of the lesson, students have no idea what the content objective is—even as they are learning the content. In the early parts of the lesson, a sense of suspense is created and students do not recognize what the teacher is trying to accomplish or the reasons for the teacher’s behavior. All they know is that whatever is happening seems interesting and strange.

The storyline also contains a dilemma that students are called on to resolve and, in doing so, to unknowingly, at first, learn and apply the formal content. The more Outrageous the storyline is, the better it is. (The specific techniques for creating such storylines and for planning Outrageous lessons are presented in Chapter 4, and examples of real lessons and storylines are presented in Chapter 5.)

This form of teaching is called Outrageous Teaching because although the same content objectives are being taught as in conventional teaching, the resulting lessons are different from and more imaginative than those taught by conventional teaching methods. Outrageous Teaching provides a whole new motivation and a new context for the student learning to occur in.

Outrageous Teaching is equally applicable across all content areas in grades 4 through 12, and equally applicable to all students and to all content objectives. The techniques are especially valuable for lessons in which all the other techniques a teacher has tried have failed to create student interest or understanding, or to engage resistant and reluctant learners.

Outrageous Teaching is a powerful tool that all teachers can employ to

• Increase simultaneously, in powerful ways, how much students learn and their interest in learning.

• Deepen understanding.

• Enrich the quality of school life for both teacher and student while creating new bonds between them.

• Involve students who previously have not responded to conventional instruction, whether across the board, in specific content areas, or in meeting specific content objectives.

Indeed, although Outrageous Teaching derives from the traditions of dramatic technique and humor, the methodology provides a practical way to operationalize other progressive conceptions such as constructivism and discovery learning.

Of course the best way to understand Outrageous Teaching is to observe an example of it. (All of the sample lessons and units in this book are highlighted.)

DWIGHT’S OUTRAGEOUS LESSON: INTRODUCTION

What does Outrageous Teaching look like?

Let me introduce a lesson taught by one of my student teachers, whom I will call Dwight, to a class of high school sophomores.

The Lesson Begins

The students file in, and once they are settled, the teacher announces that Dwight is home sick today but a special guest is coming to make them an exciting offer.

The visitor then arrives. He has a huge, bushy white beard; wears a tall, Amish-style black hat; is dressed in overalls; and carries a tree stump. He emphatically puts the tree stump on the floor and announces in a booming voice:

I am a master salesman and have heard that all of you in this room have wonderful social skills and would make great salespeople. I am here as part of a national search to find the next generation of salespeople to sell a new, exciting line of products, the next great product, a complete line of stumps!

By now the students have recognized Dwight and are starting to titter a bit, although they are also curious. Dwight continues:

I see that you are skeptical about the importance and sales potential of stumps. Well, let me tell you all the things you can do with stumps and I am sure that in five minutes you are all going to want to know where you can buy one.

What Is Going On?

Dwight is teaching a traditional content objective that is very hard to communicate and get students interested in. Most of them struggle with learning the content. What objective do you think he is addressing? And in what content area do you think he is teaching?

Hint: He is not teaching a woodworking shop course, and he is not preparing students to learn how to use a chainsaw.

If Dwight is correctly using the techniques described in this book, at this point you should be as much in the dark as the students are about what is going on. Dwight’s opening is not just a spur-of-the-moment idiosyncratic creative outburst, nor is he being Outrageous for the sake of being Outrageous. Dwight is using, in a very conscious manner, specific techniques described later in this book, and the lesson is designed to teach a critical content objective.

You will be exposed to more of Dwight’s lesson in subsequent chapters.

WHY TEACH OUTRAGEOUSLY?

As you might assume, daring to conduct a lesson such as the one taught by Dwight might take more preparation time, not to mention a bit of courage. Why go to this trouble? Why does Dwight feel it is worth the effort and daring to make a critical content objective come alive for his students?

Teaching the Reluctant or Resistant Learner

Some students have become reluctant to learn from conventional instruction and others actively resist such learning. They have stopped responding across the board and are unmotivated, or unable, to make more than minimal effort. They find conventional instruction boring or unenlightening. Other students do not understand what is being taught even when and if they try to learn it. Such students are disproportionately composed of students born into poverty, minority students, those whose native language is not English, and those with special needs. As these students experience difficulty and even failure, their reluctance to learn turns to active resistance. This results in social concerns about inequity in educational outcomes—the unfortunate learning gap.

One of the revelations that teachers often experience when they teach an Outrageous lesson is that reluctant and resistant students suddenly emerge and shine and their innate intelligence comes to the fore. Many students who have not responded to conventional approaches or other suggested best practices suddenly seem to come alive. The emergence of such students is not only a revelation to the teacher but also an affirmation to the student that he or she really can excel and that the classwork is relevant and interesting.

Other reluctant learners are highly motivated and do well generally but have a dread and a seeming inability to learn the concepts of particular types of content. Math phobia, whether real or imagined, is an example. Most students dread certain academic areas or content topics, and all teachers do not look forward to teaching particular lessons and units because they know that students will have trouble or purposely resist. We all, whether students or teachers, are weak in certain academic areas. For example, as a student I was able to understand the intimidating subject of calculus but could not grasp the details of chemistry, and almost all of the middle and high school students I taught had trouble with math word problems.

What were your weak content areas and topics as a student? I suspect you would have benefited if your teachers had used some Outrageous Teaching, and your students will benefit if you use it now to teach selected learning objectives.

Finally, some students generally do well but learn superficially. They learn by relying on their memory, or they want to learn only what they need to know to answer test questions correctly. Such students are reluctant to understand the deeper meaning or inferences of what they are learning. These reluctant learners generally do well in the early years of schooling but are at a disadvantage at some point later on.

Reducing the Learning Gap

The learning gap in our public schools is one of the most vexing social problems facing our society. As education becomes more important in achieving economic success, a persistently large gap remains between the performance of white students and that of African Americans and Latinos. The gap exists when students start school, and grows ever larger after the fourth grade. Progress was made in reducing the gap between 1965 and 1988, but it widened again thereafter. (You can examine the national trend of the learning gap by downloading the National Center for Educational Statistics’ report card Trends in Academic Progress from http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/main2005/2005464.pdf. The graphs on page 33 show that the black-white reading gap for thirteen- and seventeen-year-olds was smaller in 1988 than in 2004.) The consequences for individuals of color are higher dropout rates and fewer opportunities after school. The consequences for society are the continued marginalization of a substantial portion of our population and a major social inequity.

Recent reform efforts to reduce the learning gap have relied on conceptions of learning from behavioral psychology, which view poor test performance as simply lack of knowledge, and students as vessels that have simply to be filled up with knowledge. If they have not learned it, teach it again, and again, and again—the same way. Pound it in! Some schools are now teaching basic reading skills three hours a day in an effort to get test scores up.

This approach simply has not worked. As recently as 2005, after a decade of such reform, results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed that approximately half of urban black and Hispanic students are not meeting basic standards in fourth grade reading. Another effect of sole reliance on simplistic instructional approaches is the high dropout rate. A recent study funded by the Gates Foundation found that almost half of high school dropouts report being bored with what was being taught (Bridgeland, Dilulio, and Morison, 2006).

Clearly, relying on force-feeding content to students is not reducing the learning gap. Something more, or something else, is needed. Judicious use of Outrageous Teaching provides potential to produce substantially higher and deeper learning outcomes and test scores for reluctant and resistant learners than relying only on traditional, or teach-to-the-test, approaches. Indeed, Outrageous lessons and units are viewed as key tools for reducing the learning gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students.

It is therefore important that Outrageous Teaching not follow the traditional pattern, in which progressive techniques are adopted only in high socioeconomic status schools. Although the techniques are appropriate for such schools, I hope they will also be widely adopted for teaching those reluctant and resistant learners who were born into poor families, they can make an even bigger difference, and help solve one of our most vexing social problems: the learning gap.

Yellow Feathers, Pus, and Warfare: Tapping into Students’ Sense of Culture and Reality

The biggest cultural shock that many students face when they first arrive in school is that the teacher is not wearing yellow feathers. Research has shown that students raised in caring, low-income homes generally have substantially less verbal interaction with adults at home compared to their peers from moderate and high-income households (Hart and Risley, 1995). As a result, most of their preschool learning comes from passive TV watching. Even children from higher-income households are raised on a heavy diet of TV. Children who grow up watching Sesame Street and other cartoons and video games come to view learning as watching animated characters engaged in dramatic situations and getting new information from dramatic contexts. When they walk into the first grade classroom, the culture shock is that the teacher is not a big bird—there is no costume, no graphics, no animation, and no compelling dramatic contexts. There is just an adult talking . . . and talking . . . and talking!

My point is not to argue that such massive passive learning from entertainment is good. Rather, schools need to recognize the dissonance experienced by students when they enter dramaless learning environments such as those typically found in American classrooms—particularly now that we are so sensitive to other forms of cultural disconnect. We have made great strides in making instruction more sensitive to students’ cultural heritage relative to race and ethnicity. We continue, however, to ignore the need to gear instruction to the cultural sense of youth—in other words, to the shared experiences of youth worldwide in learning from dramatic contexts.

Educators also need to recognize that the dramatic contexts of TV shows and YouTube promote powerful forms of learning. Of course our students are often learning things we would prefer they did not. Indeed, there is an old joke that TV is called a medium because it is seldom well done. At the same time, it makes sense for schools to capitalize on the power of dramatic contexts to teach that which we in fact do want students to