new blog!

in preparation for a different new thing that's happening tomorrow (hope hope), we're moving "School|Life" over to a new home.

if you're used to this blog already, you can keep coming here for more news about our family.  but we've built a cool new blog for the project all by itself: schoolife.com.

visit! join! comment! (thank you!)

and happy holidays to everyone!

ps. schoolife.com !!!!!!

mic'd up! (schoolife 5)

when i first thought about our project, i though about video and pictures and images of our students and teachers. i thought about personal and public moments that could show our subjects crossing and passing. that could show their excitement or anger or sadness in the bodies and faces.

i feel like radio is a little harder that way. for example, you can't show characters or connections in the same way. believe it or not, you can see silence more easily than you can hear it. you can hear direct
silence: one person asks a question and there is no answer. but how can you hear a distant student tuning out? how do you hear the long spaces of silence in our full day?

our sound (and how we develop our sound) is the thing. we've been trying to research and test different
equipment that will give us a strong, quality sound that reflects our authentic environment and is consistent across subjects and situations.

to help test our sound, i've recorded my own life the past few days.  i'm definitely down for the project.  still, you notice how things are different.   how the sound is different on microphones and speakers than it is in our ears.  how you're different, too.

you're much more aware of what you say, at times.  for sure, you forget a lot, and most conversations are mostly natural.  but you can see, still, that you make subtle choices in language that are different.

i have to be more aware, i guess.  in ways, i think that's good.  it reminds me to be better than i am. it's like a student teacher in that way.  because i know that i have to lead another teacher, i try to sharpen my ideas and my lessons.  i make all of my choices, but i know that the presence of a student teacher helps me make better choices.

although, it also reminds me that it's artificial.  i mean, it's not a completely authentic account of what every day is like.

of course, there is no everyday either, right?

radio writing process (schoolife #4)

as we're developing the show, we'll try to keep you updated on our process.  check back frequently to see what we're up to.  we're hoping we can gain a small following as we're going along.

we always talk with our students about process, and we thought it might be helpful to make our process transparent.  we'll open our ideas to you, and we hope that you'll open your ideas to us!

here are some things that we're thinking about as we're thinking about the content and structure of the show:

1)  what does our editing look like?

in my dreams, i'd love to produce the complete tape .  min, though, thinks that might be tiresome for listeners.  still, as much as possible, i'd like to edit as lightly as possible.  i know that we're going to have to make choices, though, so i'll just try to be honest and upfront as we're making our choices.

2) we want to show longer narrative moments.

we feel like reality television shows are so heavily edited that they really become scripted.  the shows pursue singular storylines and encourage out-sized conflict and drama.  our goal is to develop complicated, dynamic, and subtle characters and stories like novels, with longer essential moments that play out over time.

3)  we want our subjects to have voice.

our goal is to show the real lives of students, teachers, and families.  we have decided that there will be no third person narration.  the subjects' voices will drive the complete story.  as much as possible, we will mic subjects and locations directly.  we will try to avoid intensive productions on location because supplemental crew and equipment will always alter and interrupt natural interaction.

4)  everything is context.

we cannot possibly, truly show the full lives of students and teachers.  the series will show one presentation of infinite possible presentations of several subjects within hundreds of other subjects.  we cannot claim any concrete conclusion about education or education reform.  our goal is to simply broaden our conversation about education.  we hope to make some students and some teachers more real for listeners.

5)  who will our subjects be?

we want to find an urban public school with a diverse population.  we hope to work in a school that includes students from different class, ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds.  we do not want to set up a specific policy angle, so we want to avoid schools that may speak to the extremes: charter schools, title I schools, or specialized schools.

in our current vision, we hope to find 2-3 students and 1 teacher.  ideally, the subjects will be communicative but different.  (of course, these ideas - about the school and about the students - already start to bias the production.)

6)  how will we fund and manage production?

we can produce the show at different levels of cost.  each higher expense will increase production value, but how much money is it realistic for us to raise?  we think we've got a pretty cool idea. . . but who else will value it?  and for how much?

we're thinking about a few different ideas for now:

• angel investors (maybe you?)
• agency or broadcast sponsorship (arts organization, public radio, others)
• independent funding (kickstarter)
• independent funding (credit cards)

our treatment (schoolife #3)

Schoolife

Schools often fail our students and families.  There are too many communities without strong, stable public schools, and there are too many classrooms that do not challenge, engage, and support our children and young adults.  We agree that outstanding teachers help prepare students to learn and grow.  We agree that prepared students learn core ideas and skills that lead to consistent achievement.  And we agree that excellent schools help promote innovative instruction and advanced student learning.

However, education reform is significantly more complicated and complex.  There is a wide range of variables that impact student readiness, teacher instruction, and school culture.  Different ideas and different pathways attract and engage students in different ways.  Yes, what happens in the classroom matters.  A lot.  But what happens outside the classroom can sometimes matter even more.

Schoolife documents the intersecting lives of teachers, students, and families inside and outside of school.  We will profile 1-2 6^th-8^th grade teachers and 3-5 6^th-8^th grade students over one school year.  The series will present the full life of students and teachers, including documentary footage, personal interviews, and background research.  We will produce the show in 30-minute long weekly episodes that show natural curves in our subjects’ lives.

Schoolife will track the influence of personal, professional, and social relationships on our subjects.  Each episode will advance developing storylines, including romantic interests, family dynamics, and classroom learning.  Families, students, and teachers live in very different ways.  How do our personal experiences and relationships influence our public lives in school?  And how do our schools influence how we live and learn outside of class?

Schoolife broadens and deepens our conversation on education reform, student learning, and school achievement.  We will show failure and success; hope and struggle; engagement and distraction.  Our goal is not to identify best practice or scalable reform.  Our goal is not to demonize or lionize any specific individual or idea.  Our only goal is to show a more full, more detailed, and more complex reality.  To show a more complete picture of student lives, student learning, and teacher instruction.  To show that our schools, like our lives, are full of challenge, conflict, and meaning.

the idea, so far (schoolife #2)

it's been fairly easy, so far, to work through our ideas.

my first idea was to make a documentary film to speak back to "waiting for superman".  the movie was powerful!  but i don't think it told enough of the story. it's not that the facts are wrong. . . it's just that there weren't enough facts.

when i thought about it, though, it seemed like i wouldn't be able to tell the full story of one school year in one documentary.  it would require too much simplification.  we'd be forced to shape a specific storyline. . . so i thought it might be more powerful if we filmed weekly episodes.  i talked with one of my friends, and he explained that the cost to film weekly episodes of whole lives would be astronomical.  it would be too much.  "the idea was great," he said, "but it might not be possible."

so i explained the idea to min.  he said, "you know what?  that's perfect! you could do it for radio."  ("i don't know if you know," he said, "but that's what i did.  i was in music.  i went to school for it.")

i know!  nobody listens to radio, anymore.  i told my students, and i think they thought it sounded like the most boring idea ever.  but when i thought about it, it just made sense.  it feels like a perfect match.  i remembered listening to ghetto life 101 by david isay.  it would be perfect!  plus, it would be much easier to produce, to get started at all, and a bunch easier to get permissions.

for now, we're thinking through how to do episodes over the year.  there are forty weeks in a school year and 180 days.  there's a bunch of different options:

1)  we do the full monty!
2)  we echo morgan spurlock: 30 days
3)  we echo ghetto life 101: 10 days
4)  we follow a full unit: 6-10 weeks

the key thing is: how much time do we need to record in order to get across the idea?  what time frame is able to show enough character complexity and also be realistically possible to record and produce?  if you're here, what do you think?

schoolife (#1)

i'm starting to work on a radio documentary with minkyu kim.  our idea is to document the real lives of teachers and students.  too often, we speak about education in ways that don't reflect real people: real teachers, real students, and real families.  too often, we have policy discussions that disembody our real beliefs, concerns, and hopes.

i don't know how the process is going to go exactly, but i'm going to try and chronicle our process on the blog.  i know that i'd enjoy following the process from the ground up, so we'll see how it goes! (who knows? maybe i can use it in my teaching, too?)

our basic idea is to follow 1-2 middle school teacher and 3-5 middle school students for a full school year.  we'll have lavalier mics on the students and teachers, and we'll have a field recorder to pick up sound inside the classrooms.

our goal is to show more full context.  it won't be possible to show entire days, but we want to avoid cutting up moments and lives too far.  we want to find full, larger moments that can tell a story more like a novel.  that develop characters in longer moments over time.