Escape from Pl@n3t Sc@ntr0n

The Alfred Hitchcock Instructional Strategy: The MacGuffin

I’ve lost track of how many trainings I’ve sat through to learn the latest pedagogical innovation. Over the years I’ve heard that this particular strategy, that lesson plan format or this other writing program is it. Whatever we used to do is the teaching equivalent of a lime-green leisure suit. If we really do hope to save our kids from imminent non-achievement, we must adopt this new idea. I remember being trained in reciprocal reading, cooperative learning, History Alive!, and Foldables to name a few. Most recently I’ve learned the crucial place of the Think Aloud in modern education. And I’ve been made aware that peace in the Middle-East is attainable if only we would all implement the use of sentence frames. Indeed, my district and site administrators are convinced that these are the two most important pedagogical devices ever conceived – use of them in my classroom is crucial to achievement. After doing this for thirteen years, though, I’ve come to the conclusion that teaching strategies and learning activities, pedagogical devices, if you will, are so many MacGuffins.

If you’re not familiar with it, The MacGuffin is a film term popularized by the great Alfred Hitchcock. It’s basically a plot device that makes the characters act the way they are supposed to. The Miriam Webster definition is, “an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance.” Hitchcock himself explained that in a spy movie, the MacGuffin might be a set of secret documents or a code. Chasing the secret papers makes the characters in the story act like spies, but what the MacGuffin is, is really irrelevant – interchangeable. Perhaps the most famous MacGuffin of all is the Maltese Falcon. It could just as easily be the Cypriot Emu. As long as it got Bogey and Peter Lorrie to act like Bogey and Peter Lorrie, it worked.

I do not believe that there is an instructional strategy, learning activity, or lesson plan format that is, in and of itself, anything more than a MacGuffin. I don’t think it matters which one you use as long as it gets the students to do what you want them to do, which I believe most of us would agree, is to interact in a meaningful way with the content being covered at some desired level of Bloom’s taxonomy. From the lowly reading handout to the most elaborate research based project they can all work depending on what I call the RAF. To my knowledge, neither Dagget nor Marzano have ever mentioned this term, despite its vital role in the educational process. The RAF is the Rat’s Ass Factor – as in, do you give a …

For my money, the variables to be considered when choosing how to present a particular lesson are; what will get the students to do what you want them to do – learn stuff, analyze, discuss, evaluate, classify, practice a procedure, etc.; and what will produce the highest combined RAF between you and the students? After all, we, the teachers, have personalities and teaching styles – the MacGuffin has to work on us too. So, use the Maltese Falcon or the Arc of the Covenant. Doesn’t really matter; as long as it works well with the thirty five individuals sitting in your classroom at the time. It just depends; are your students Sam Spades or Indiana Joneses? Students (and even, at times, whole classes) have personalities and learning styles – play to those. I truly believe that most any learning activity that is engaged honestly by teacher and students can produce positive results.

And that is down to my, or any teacher’s, ability to establish rapport. Getting the kids on my side; getting them to buy in to the value of whatever we’re doing, is more important that the activity itself.

Let me make clear that I’m not disparaging professional development or the study of pedagogy in general. I enjoy going to some seminars and trainings. Sharing best practices with colleagues is a process I find particularly useful. For me, though, the purpose of being exposed to new teaching strategies should not be the wholesale adoption of a given strategy by everyone at my site, but rather a chance to increase the number of effective MacGuffins at our disposal. What I am pooh-poohing is the presentation of instructional ideas as panaceas that, if adopted wholesale, will solve our problems. It’s more complicated than that.

Howdy Do

I am:

a 14^th-year public high school teacher in California. My school has a diverse student population – highly second-language, lower socioeconomic status, but also a liberal chunk of articulate, motivated, high functioning kids. By the way, those two groups are not mutually exclusive, more like a Venn diagram. Most of my career has been spent teaching juniors and seniors with the occasional sophomores sprinkled in. I have taught AP classes, regular classes, and TR (transitional English) classes.

a bit of a smart-ass. I think you can still laugh while taking something seriously. When it is generally agreed that everyone should be zigging, I desperately want to zag, just out of principle. When it comes to major issues, I truly believe that if everyone agrees, it must mean that we don’t really get it.

becoming a bit dispirited by the dystopia public schools have become in the wake of No Child Left Behind. That is, the notion that standards based testing is the be-all and end-all of whether or not we have done our jobs. In case you’re worried that I’m about to go off on a partisan diatribe against Dubya, let me assure you, Obama hasn’t done much better. Race to the Top was grounded on the same faulty premise.

I am not:

a cranky old man, resistant to change, hiding behind my union (whatever that means) or, all evidence to the contrary, a cynical asshole.

What you will and will not find on this blog:

One of the stereotypes that circulates among supporters of standards-based testing is that those of us who are not on board are old farts who resist “reform” because it is inconvenient to us. We don’t want to change the lesson plans we have been using, unaltered, since Rose Mary Woods manned the White House tape recorder. I want to give voice to the notion that our recalcitrance has more noble motives. I don’t oppose standards-based testing because I’m old and lazy (although I may be those things, I suppose). Rather, I have serious misgivings — ethical, educational, cognitive – regarding the validity of what is being done. This Blog, then, is simply my attempt to explain my beliefs, behaviors and concerns.

What you will not find here (or maybe rarely) is reference to, or quotations from, educational experts. If there’s anything I’ve learned to loathe over the last few years, it’s the high paid, published consultant who breezes into town selling the snake-oil cure for low achievement (My district buys two or three of these a year). While I understand the value of research and pedagogical experts, it has become clear to me that whatever your pedagogical belief, you can find a published guru to support your position – it’s all a matter of which gurus you choose to believe. To quote the old axiom, there are lies, damned lied and statistics. If you want to hear from famous educational celebrities who don’t automatically make me do a face-palm, I suggest Googling Stephen Krashen, maybe watch TED lecturer Sir Ken Robinson, or read something by Diane Ravitch.

If this Blog had a thesis statement it would be:

When reform takes the guise of standardization, whether that be in grading policies, information being taught, teaching strategies or whatever – anytime we all agree to do something the same way, it will be to the detriment of someone. Because we know about learning styles, modalities, and just plain-old human nature, it should be common sense that there is no one approach to anything that works for everyone – especially in education. Even if we do adopt a policy that is to the benefit of most of our students, it will, inevitably be to the detriment of others. Standardization without flexibility dooms some to failure – often the brightest, who don’t do well when penned in. The current push towards lock stepping, for the sole purpose of improving test scores, is misguided at best, disingenuous at worst. Standardization is an attempt to simplify what we do at a time when the role of public schools and the needs of our students are becoming more complex by the day.

What follows is simply observations and musings that I’ve thought over and elaborated on over the last year or two – just the reactions of one classroom teacher to what’s been happening to classrooms.