Creating a Great Storyboard

The 8 Steps To Creating A Great Storyboard

I really enjoy storyboarding on paper.  This goes for planning individual lessons, units, and whole courses. 

I'm thinking that I'll employ this as I evolve a new curriculum at my new school.

 

Brent'hood

A friend of mine at work went to a country club in Beverly Hills yesterday to hear the McCain speech. He's a funny guy -- when he got there he asked, "Is this the Obama rally?"

Anyway, a woman asked him where he lived. He replied Playa del Rey. She said she was from Brentwood. "I like to call it Brent'hood. Is it all right to say that to you? It's because it's all white people."

My friend, who happens to be black, took it in stride. Go McCain!

Typo vigilantes banned from national parks

Two self-appoint typo correctors got arrested in Grand Canyon National Park after they changed mistakes on a 60 year old sign.

You can read their story here: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/22/sign.vandals.ap/index.html

The two guys sound really arrogant. I mean, they apparently are from Massachusetts which they describe as being "full of colleges," which I guess makes it OK for them to change every mistake they encounter.

I mean, I don't like typos either, but it's not for me to change everyone's grammar. It just sounds really pretentious. You can listen to one of the guys spout off here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87937893

Summer school is an alternate reality

In school we have to write comments a couple of times a year on each of our students. Generally they're about a paragraph long detailing positive and negative comments about the students' progress and attitude in class.

There are some unwritten rules about comments: don't start negative; always end on a positive note. I don't always follow it, but generally I try to find something positive to say about everyone. What's the saying? Gilding the lily? But if I think the kid isn't pulling his or her weight I can say so.

In my summer school program there are significant restrictions on what you can say. There's a handbook of ways to criticize students, but you're significantly limited. Here's an example of what I've done:

"Although we had clearly established rules for behavior in class, Junior viewed them as obstacles to be overcome rather than directives to be followed."

That's pretty harsh for a summer school comment. Actually they're officially called "evaluations" (evals) which is something of a falsehood because they're really commendations, not evaluations. Here are some things I couldn't put in evals:

--The kid who ran around the room bothering other kids
--The kid who talked so much about himself that he couldn't finish his work on time
--The kid who took an hour to write three sentences and then was too embarassed to hand it in

I basically had to write things in code. I was questioned about calling a student "gregarious."

"We weren't sure if that was the right word. You know it can be taken as a positive or a negative. Are you sure that's what you meant?"

I know that's what it means. I picked it for a reason.

"Are you sure that's what you want to say?"

Yes.

In another case I wrote that a kid's map "demonstrated an alternative view of reality." That's code for it looking like a mess.

After the program was over I received an email from a parent asking about her kid's behavior in class. That meant I had a choice of actions -- I could take up her invitation and tell her that her kid was a shit bird, but that would mean she might challenge me on why the "evaluation" didn't say anything negative. Then I would have to explain that the evaluation was only positive because that's what I was told to do and that it really didn't reflect my true opinion of her son.

I thought that would get me into too much hot water. I suspect that her kid will be applying to my school in a few years. So I just deleted her message. Ignorance is bliss in this case.

The mermaid

This year the summer school program I worked for had "water day." It's supposed to be full of fun and frolic -- all with a water theme. In truth, I think it was water balloon tosses and sponge relays.

In any case, one of my students was apparently a big fan of water. On three separate occasions I found her trying to hide plastic ziploc bags full of water. I also caught her filling Tic Tac containers with water. She made fish faces at her classmates who complained, "Why are you so weird?"

I actually knew I was in for trouble on orientation day. She ran up to me and had a million questions. Her little sister, on the other hand, ran up to my white board and busily started scrawling away with my markers. I have a real pet peeve about kids writing on my board, mostly because they don't cap pens, but I bit my tongue this time. I figured eventually the parents would intervene, but they didn't.

Fast forward to water day. During nutrition break I found my student who was absolutely drenched. She wasn't just a little wet. She wasn't slightly moist. She was wet to the core, hair dripping, and giggling hysterically. I took her to the office and then she was in a panic.

"Please don't tell my parents."

Why are you so wet?

"It's water day."

At the end of the day.

"But it's water day."

How did you get this wet?

"In the bathroom."

Holy crap...the girl's clothes were totally wet. The counselor called home and Mom came to give her dry clothes. I ran into her in the parking lot.

"She is totally grounded," Mom said, obviously annoyed that she had to come to campus.

"I've never heard of anything so stupid," she continued. "What was she thinking?"

Who grounds an eight year old? And from what activity would you be depriving her?

I told Mom that her daughter was a little water obsessed, but that the girl was just confused about what water day actually entailed. I told her that she should lighten up and not punish her daugher. I don't think she liked hearing that from me since she stomped off in a huff.

After that we gave the girl a new nickname: The Mermaid.

Mummies, Myth, and Magic

Mummies, Myth, and Magic is the title for a book I used during my summer school class. This year I decided to bring Egypt back after a one-year hiatus.

Three years ago I got really tired of hearing the kids try to out-pharaoh each other. I had two kids that sad in the back reading Harry Potter books because they thought that I wasn't teaching them anything that they didn't already know.

This year I decided to bring Egypt back though, mostly because I like teaching it. It's my basic rule of thumb -- I try to teach mostly things that I like. You've got a 50/50 shot with things that I find boring, like say, the Green Revolution of rural India.

During my lesson about mummification I get to be pretty gory. I told the kids that most of the internal organs were taken out through a small incision in the abdomen. At one point I thought that I heard a faint grown, but I kept going.

The I got to the best part -- you know, the removal of the brain. I just had started explaining how the priests pushed a metal hook up through the back of the nose into the cranial cavity when I saw a kid doubled over. I, of course, thought he was a drama queen pretending to be grossed out, so I kept going.

I told the class about taking the hook and scrambling up the brain. My class was giggling with delight. Even if they already knew what was going to happen to the guy's brain they were loving it. I had the kids right where I wanted them -- I was on fire.

Then there was a thud. I looked around and there was the drama queen, flat on his back. Actually, he wasn't flat on his back, he was sprawled over his neighbor's backpack. The other kids said, "Get up. Quit faking it."

Except he didn't get up. He was out cold, eyes rolling up into the skull, faint groaning emerging from his mouth. When he came to he told the nurse, "The teacher was talking about something really gross." Apparently the kid almost fainted at the Science Museum when someone was talking about dissecting a cow eyeball. Not actually doing it -- mind you -- TALKING about doing it.

It's a good thing I didn't get to finish my lesson. I was going to tell the class that poor people in ancient Egypt couldn't afford good embalming, so their internal organs were removed through the butt hole.

I'll save that one for later.

A little bit of "knowledge" goes a long way

I have been thinking about how people take a very small amount of knowledge about a topic and then magnify it until so that they somehow become “expert” in the topic.

I’ve spoken with a friend of mine about this at length over the past two years I think. We’ve laughed about people who read the Yahoo headlines and then spout off like they’ve spent years studying about, say, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico (that’s one of the Yahoo headlines right now).

About two weeks ago This American Life discussed this topic. I thought it was hilarious because it was so true. Then on Sunday our new summer school session started. My new students and their parents came to the class to meet me and my new program assistant. One of the parents started talking to me about ancient Greece.

“You’re doing Greece, of course.”

No, actually we’re not. I am doing Rome instead. I’ve substituted Egypt in for Greece this year.

“Well, I suppose you will be doing Akhenaten.”

I might do Akhenaten. It depends on whether or not I get pressed for time.

“Ah well, he’s Middle Kingdom. You probably do the Old Kingdom.”

Actually he’s New Kingdom.

“The end of the New Kingdom?”

No, the beginning of the New Kingdom. He’s from the 18th Dynasty.

“Well, I would have thought that you’d want to do him. He was monotheistic after all.”

This is the point when I knew that this woman was taking her small blob of knowledge and using it to paint a vast canvas of crap. I could have taken several different paths at this point:

1) Told her that as an Africanist, I actually know Egypt pretty well and that I have a good idea of what to include and what not to include.

2) Tell her that monotheism isn’t the end result of history, so thinking that it was some kind of novel development was erroneous.

3) Explain that Afro-Asiatic culture was traditionally monotheistic, and that polytheism developed over time as the Egyptian state coalesced and absorbed smaller states.

4) Explain that Akhenaten’s “monotheism” was really a political ploy, not really a religious revolution.

Instead, I did none of the above. I bit my tongue, smiled, and said “Thank you for coming.”