I came at this exercise from the position of a teaching 180 students six classes, serving on five committes, running STARS program from 3:30 to 5:30 every day, and coaching basketball. I called each of the three vinders and explained this reality to the support presonnel. I then said, ” I have 250 instructional minutes per week, and 200 sleeping minutes per week, how many sleeping minutes will I lose to do this mapping?”

I’ll admit that I resent wasting time and breaking my concentration. My experience has been that precious little of the time that I spend on line is terribly productive because my mind does not really work along the lines of the technology. That said, I found that the curriculum mapping products we reviewed contained a high level of conviviality as a tool; leaving clear tracks because you cannot tell where you are unless you know where you have been. 

Of the three products I was the most impressed by the Rubicon Atlas, and not because of the Greek God, nor the river that Julius Caesar crossed, but because I was able to speak to a human being in three minutes and she was able to fix my problem in a fraction of the time that it would have taken me to shamble through on my own.

This paper is a partial requirement for MED 531, Curriculum  Theory and Development.  This document consists of three parts; a UbD lesson, data collected as part of the lesson, and a phenomenological consideration of associated impressions.

UbD Lesson: The Card Trick.

Stage 1-Desired Results

Establish Goals
8th Grade Writing EALR 3.0
1. 3.1.1 Develops convincing characters and settings through Point of View.
2. 3.1.2 Writes from more than one Point of View.

Understandings
1. The audience will see what you show them.
2. Performer is sender, audience is receiver.
3. The difference between the two is Point of View.

Essential Questions
1. How does the effect work?
2. How does moving from audience to performer change your Point of View?
3. How does this change in Point of View change how the effect works?

Students Will Know
1. Point of View.
2. Sleight of hand.
3. Misdirect.
4. Patter.

Students Will Be Able To
1. Perform an effect before an audience.
2. Identify the following,
a. Sleight of hand
b. Misdirection
c.  Patter
3. Write their impressions on Point of View.
2.

Stage 2- Assessment Evidence

Performance Tasks
1. After explicit instruction and practice, perform an effect before an audience.
MB: The effect will be the same for each student, they will develop their own patter.

Other Evidence
1. Write an Impression Statement before and after learning the trick.
- Impression as audience.
- Impression as performer.

Stage 3- Learning Plan

1. Experience effect as an observer. Write an impression statement.
2. Learn the effect.
3. Practice effect with a partner. Develop personal patter.
4. Perform the effect before an audience. Write an Impression Statement.
5. With a partner, in writing, interview each other with a focus on how your point of view changes during the lesson.

Observations

The Card Trick has been an outstanding hook for this kind of experiential lesson. Magic tricks are both high interest and high in good will. Most people want you to be successful in your performance as magician, because most people like to be amazed. I was once at a work shop where the presenter used a really nice close in magic effect to bring home the point of his presentation. His effect, tearing up a news paper, then ’putting the pieces back together’ works well as long as the audience was directly in front of you. His trouble was that there was a person standing off to his right side, and could see how the effect was done. This wing-monkey bellowed out the trick before the presenter had finished, and was roundly jeered by the audience. How much teaching is greeted with so much good will, or creates such vivid impression? That was fifteen years ago and I still remember the presenters name and that he was talking about nontraditional job search strategies.

The Card Trick was an economical choice because the shift in point of view was natural as one moves from audience to observer. The effect I chose is a very easily mastered sleight where the performer palms a card, then misdirects the audience creating the effect that a card is passing through the table. I gave very little instruction on writing the Impression Statements. I told the participants to write their impressions on a three by five card. I asked that they try to make their impressions more than a reaction to the effect, the “Oh, wow!” response, and to try to make it a complete thought.
3.
Data.

The data was collected as two Impression Statements. One written immediately after the first viewing of the effect, and the second written immediately after performing the effect before an audience.  Responses were labeled A for the audience impression, and B for the performer impression. There were six responders.

A.                                                                                      B.
1. “That was amazing. So tricky.                    “ I am not a magician for a reason, not
Mr. Mayo”                                                a talker or a tricker. My eyes tell all.”

2. “I thought I actually followed                     “ It took a bit of practice to get it down.
the chosen card, but I was                           I got it the second time.”
Wrong.”

3. “ Very impressed. I could not have             “ Not utter confusion. Smoother, not so
Selected the correct card.”                         much amazed I knew the secret.”

4. “I was duped! And I was                             “ Much more confident once I had good
Watching.”                                                   control over what I was supposed to do.
I felt like I was dooping (sic) someone else.
Creativity helps.”

5. “ Did you pick up the card and                    “ You have to have showmanship to
move it? Part of me wants to know             sleight the hand.”
how to do it.”

6. “It’s Magic!”                                                “ Need more practice, and at first had to
really think it through. Can see how it
could become easier and more natural
eventually.”

4.

Orienting to the Phenomenon

As taught the Card Trick contains two lived experiences. These are audience and performer. The effect, which is passing a selected card through a table top, remains  constant for both experiences. The shift in Point of View changes the lived experience, which also modifies the impression of the lived experience; a  variation of  Piaget‘s themes of Equilibration and Assimilation, Piaget (2004). The small sample collected from this activity does suggest that the participant’s impression of the Card Trick did change as a result of the adjusted lived experience. Since the noteworthy phenomenon in this activity is some hint of a functioning relationship between lived experience and impression, the orientation of this writing will be on the phenomenon of impression.

Formulating the Phenomenological Question

The difficulty with writing this phenomenological question is largely semantic. The focus of this inquiry will on the being of impression, in written language. So, if my question is, “ How does an impression work?”, my writing will be a grammar describing the functioning of impression. If my question is, “ What is impression like?”, I would have to compose a long string of similes. As my interest is in postulating upon the linkage between lived experience and impression. In Poetry, Language, Thought, Martin Heidegger considers a bridge. An object, and easement, a symbol, the bridge gathers meaning and language around itself. “ The bridge gathers to itself in its own way earth, and sky, divinities and mortals.”  Heidiger (2001).  As Heidigger’s bridge gathers, so does the impression. What gathers into an impression from the lived experience?  So, for this paper the question will be: Whatis an Impression?

Explicating Assumptions and Preunderstandings

As subject matter impression seems better represented in art and literature than in science. In Art impressionism is a movement, of European origin, where the artist creates the impression of the picture with splashes of color and light. If you stand back and look at an impressionist painting it will appear to be a ‘picture’ more than under closer scrutiny, where the canvas looks more like a drop cloth. Impressionism is also a movement in writing, the novel in particular, where rather than stick with detailed description, the author gives the reader glimpses, or impressions, in to the smaller aspects leaving the reader to assemble  impressions into story. One on-line dictionary defined impression as,” An effect, or image, retained as a consequence of experience.”, ( Free dictionary).  In a multi stage memory course written for undergrads, Dr. H. Kitson lables Impression, along with Retention, Recall,  Recognition as the four parts of memory.
(Kitson, 2007.) What is interesting is how the common thread connecting Impression through Art, Literature, Language and Memory is experience. Without experience Art, Literature, Language, and Memory would all be somewhat less than they all now are.
5.

What is an Impression?

(Aside: This is Mike’s Aside Voice. William Shakespeare used asides to allow a character to have a private conversation with the audience, aside from the other players. My Aside voice allows me to have a conversation with my reader, aside from the text. Look to hear me through this writing, after the end, look to hear me no more.)

We all carry around notions of impressions. We know that you only get one chance to make a first impression, we all want to put our best foot forward to make a good impression, and that we all form our impression of another in the first three seconds. This reveals two widely held notions on impression; we  can create them, and others will retain them. So, what is an impression?

When I was a kid we lived in Seattle while Dad got his doctorate at U. W. For my twelfth birthday we had dinner at the top of the Space Needle. I remember looking at Mt. Rainier and thinking that Mt. Rainier looked like a mountain that was wearing a hat. And, if you put a bill in just the right place, Mt. Rainier looked like a mountain wearing a baseball cap. That was in 1968. Last year my wife and I moved to Tumwater from Las Vegas. During the trip I told my wife the story about my birthday dinner and the Mt. Rainier Baseball Cap. We rolled into Tumwater on a beautiful summer day, clear enough to see Mt. Rainier. I stopped to look at the mountain, and it did not look right. The hat was gone. I have since learned why. Thirty nine years had passed since I constructed my impression of Mt. Rainier and the baseball cap, and during that time the glacier in the top of Mt. Rainier had melted. It had melted so much that Mt. Rainier no longer looked like it is wearing a baseball cap.

(Aside: What I have tried to do here is to describe my  most vivid experience with impression. Did you notice how I gave myself two voices?)

Several observations can be made of my impression of Mt. Ranier and its missing cap. That this impression was the construct of images in the context of an experience, this impression was stored as memory for a very long time, this impression held information which has been proven accurate, and that this impression can be recalled and used in similar situations. Impression here is as a vessel containing a combination of images constructed in an wxperience. Conversely, impressions are the timber from which we are able to frame other works, like stories, poems, songs. Careful manipulation of one’s held impressions can create impressions in others.

6.

Impression in Writing

An amazing quality of impression is how we can reassemble our impressions, as text, and communicate in a way which is both personal, and universal. Personal in as much as the writer is stringing his/she impressions according to personal dictates, and create a written piece which carries meaning in transaction with a reader. Impressions are universal in as much as their subjects are universal.

In Impressions of Hyrak , I intended to explore the impressions I still carried of a ‘culture vulture’ I ran with in University.

Edgework is the strategy of living so that you are
only visible in the peripheral vision.
Hyrak would live in a glance, in a shadow between trees
He could be subtle as a warm patch of air
hanging in a bus stop on a morning so cold
that your teeth froze shut like a garage door.
He kept invisible with pills and Dawson’s Scotch;
aged a full week, in genuine Styrofoam kegs.
Mayo
Musquwa Tales
2002

This stanza is a construct of three impressions I still carry about Hyrak; he lives on the outside looking in, it was often difficult to tell if he was around because he did travel a great deal, and that he nearly killed himself with pills and alcohol. Which all make sense when I tell you that Hyrak was a free lance photojournalist. Even more interesting is that I have collected and reorganized my impressions; I was able to dove tail my stored impressions into a new impression, which you have just experienced, and, no doubt, have formed and impression of.

(Aside: Comprehension check here. Impressions are the construct of experience, Impressions can store information, Impressions can be recalled and pressed into service, and Impressions can be reworked into new Impressions and shared. Impressions are really cool.)

On the subject of Impressionism Ezra Pound wrote that the impression is,”that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.” (Pound, 1918)

7.

Impressions in a Card Trick

The instrument I used to collect data on the Card Trick was really more a question of timing than content. The graphic below is graphic centering  on where impressions are made.

My intention was to send my audience through an experience twice, and from a different point of view. My hope was that I would be able to detect some change in impression of the Card Trick as a result of changing the experience in which the impression was made.

(Aside: Now I need to tie my new understanding of Impression into the Data.)

The data collected as part of this activity does, to greater or lesser degrees, show a change in impression . Turning back to the Data presented on page 3. The A column is the responses from the end of the audience experience, while column B is the responses from the end of the performer experience.  Reading vertically down each column the similarities become evident. In the A column the respondents express surprise and delight at the trick. Associated responses are there as well, such as how did you do that, and I want to know that. Reading down column B shows a change in impression. In the B column there is pride at mastering the card trick, demurring the performance componet, and  the loss of wonder in the Card Trick because we now know the trick.
8.

Implications for Education

Impressions seem to be a phenomenon which occurs during, or shortly after an experience. Imprsssions have the ability to form naturally, store information, are formed in a context, are recallable to use in present situations, and are maluable. Since there is a link between experience and impression the lived experience should be a valuable teaching tool, provided the care and attention are taken when planning the experience.

As to assessment, there are always  questions about the varsity of testing, what portfolios really mean, or even if there is any validity in a form of assessment which does not generate data which can only be manipulated statistically.  This mindset limits assessment to a product at the end, which may only be a fraction of the learning which is also happening in the teacher’s classroom milieu.

Given that impression, as a function, seems to be a part of memory, recall, and dandy storage vessel for information, a better instrument needs to be developed to collect data. In the Card Trick I only asked for an impression which was a complete statement. I am of the opinion that a more structured instrument, along with some training on how to use the instrument, would have collected more valuable information from students’ impressions.

Parting Shots

Reading over my first attempt at phenomenoloical writing I can see where I took one misstep. Prior to the actual writing is the step of explication. In this really critical step all the uses of the concept are considered. This is done for two reasons; first to eliminate any use of associated language which might taint the writing, and  second to keep the inquiry focused. In this piece I started off looking for the bits that make up an impression. After the writing I found that what I really learned about is how impression functions as a learning strategy. That said, what I did learn about the function of impression in the lived experience of a lesson will change how I write my next lesson plan.

9.

Bibliography

1. Piaget, J., Wadsworth, B.J., (ed), (2004) Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive and Affective Development, (5th Edition.). Boston: Pearson

2. Heidigger, M., The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. (1982). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

3. The Free Dictionary, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/impression on July 22nd , 2008.

4. Kitson, D.K. http://www,enotalone.com/artide/13473.html on July 22nd, 2008.

5. Pound, E., A Retrospect, (1919), Paris: the paris review.

If I define teaching as being, as well as doing, then what I do is a function of who I am. It would then follow that my philosophy of teaching would be a grammar for why I do what I do. By way of grouping I see this grammar as having three practical domains; theoretical, functional, and behavioral. It is a commingling of these three domains which explains how I behave within the classroom environment.

In the Theoretical Domain I see myself behaving as an Existential Constructivist. All that I am is a result of my experiences, and my experiences are Liberal Arts in a milieu where Existential curriculum was common. I have found it wise to question absolutes, even if I later agree. I have traveled, so I see different world views. I am an existentialist in as much as I value independent thinking, and believe that the only real answers come from inside. I am Constructivist because learning is both experiential and impressionistic, therefore knowledge is constructed in response to experience, and stored as impressions. Every story is a series of impressions.

The Functional Domain is the platform on which I create  educational experiences for the class. Planning for learning styles is like skinning a cat, there is more than one way to do it, and the only thing we can be sure of is that the cat will appreciate none of them. That said, I am very confident in the efficacy of teaching to Multiple Intelligences because it is the perfect way to celebrate the fact that we all do have something to bring to the discussion. As an English Language Arts Specialist my practice is grounded in Louise Rosenblatt’s Reader Response Theory; which holds that “ …a literary work does not exist until it is literally created in the transaction between reader and text.” , which dovetails nicely with my edict that learning is experiential.   

My third domain is Behavioral, which is difficult to name because Piaget and Skinner do not readily blend into  anything pronounceable.  I remember going to the fair in Wichita when I was a kid. There were rows of cages, containing chickens. When you dropped a coin in the slot, a light would flash in the cage, and the chicken would dash to a toy piano, peck out a tune, then dash to the feed chute to be rewarded with food.  The classroom is a Skinner Box because the environment functions as a result of what you, as the teacher, do. Which means that you control the experience, so choose what you do wisely. I have always admired Piaget because he was, quintessentially, just watching his children. Piaget provides the timber from which a teacher builds the classroom experiences. The most important part of assessment is phenomenological; you need to evaluate the students’ experience. The best place to start is by having a clear idea of how a student is capable of describing an experience in light of where they are developmentally. So, Piaget is the what, while Skinner is the how.

I was standing on the street one day

quiet as can be

A great big ugly man came up

And tied his horse to me.