Levi Folly, Education Week - Several years ago, a popular department head opened a meeting by asking small groups of us to share what was "happening in our firehouse."... For some of us at the table that day, the meeting was over before it began. "I don't work or live in a firehouse," one colleague said, "so you guys can talk if you like." Another colleague lashed out during a subsequent meeting over the use of similar language. "Why do we have to talk like that?" he asked the meeting's leader. "Why don't we just say what we mean?"...
Here is a list of terms and phrases I hear education professionals use frequently during meetings and conversations: "unpack the standards," "have a conversation around," "powerful conversation," "learner-centered teaching classrooms," "two-dimensional curriculum," "deeper dive," "performance-based assessment," "authentic performance assessment," "rich conversation," "21st-century skills," "by name and by need," "competency-based learning and personalized learning," "messy learning," and "building capacity."
I am sure those using these phrases have the best intentions and want to communicate important information. I am equally sure they would be more effective if they used different language. Are students learners or teachers in "learner-centered teaching" classrooms? What is a "powerful conversation"? Is it different from a "rich conversation"? Does "have a conversation around" mean to discuss? Recently, a friend told me he'd spent "all morning helping teachers unpack standards so they understood what students should know and be able to do." I wanted to ask whether or not the suitcase had wheels. To quote the colleague whom I mentioned earlier, "Why don't we just say what we mean?"
Teaching and learning are complex processes, and I see no reason to overwhelm parents, students, or each other with an array of terms because we want to sound impressive, or because someone has written a book and we want to appear current. In fact, we are deluding ourselves if we believe practitioners internalize this language. Why would they? Experience has or will teach them that unless we change, these terms and phrases will be replaced with equally vague and fleeting ones.
Levi Folly coordinates the academic and enrichment summer-learning
programs in the Fairfax County, Va., public schools. He taught middle
school and high school English for more than 20 years in central and
northern Virginia.
2 comments:
A lot of jargonish terms are metaphors that would be difficult to displace. To talk about "unpacking" a complex subject should create a mental image of bringing things into view that were previously hidden by their container.
For example, we talk about the "climate disaster", but that is a packaging, an abstraction. "Unpacking" it brings into view greenhousing, ocean acidification, loss of cropland, methane release, et very lengthy cetera. And each of those terms is also an abstraction, a packaging, that can be further "unpacked".
Not every bit of jargon is unworthy.
This is so timely. You should add to this, “wheelhouse” and “optics”; both popular, current, and no one knows what they mean. We look at what passes for news on television, especially when anyone in government is talking, and they’ve all got the lingua franca nailed down. There are reasons they speak like this...they have a limited vocabulary of their own so they mimic what their fellow travelers say and they just need a little luv! Put these sickos on toilet tissue and they’ll get astounding amounts of attention and we’ll feel better in the “end.”
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