Now, this may seem like I'm contradicting the opinion of the guest blogger last week. However, I'm not referring to the endless pursuit of rankings and grades.
In most of the work on social technology I've been reading, it's paired with the word "cooperation". What happened to competition? Why is it so wrong?
This concerns me because mathematics is particularly suited to competition. Some competitions are downright legendary. Solving problems in high-level math competitions can lead to thinking that shatters the hierarchy of intelligences, creating wonderful things I still don't fully understand.
I simply implore technology coordinators: please consider the possibilities competition can offer.
...
Goodness, it's been a week already? I feel like I've just nicked the surface of this territory. I'll try to continue with things I couldn't fit next week at my blog. I'd like to thank everyone for their comments; I learned much more than I ever suspected possible, and I'll be closely following this blog and others for new developments.
So far I've covered a technological and an ideological problem. This one's logistical.
Specifically, in a discipline where one question can have many answers, it's easy to set up a traditional forum discussion where every student's contribution is meaningful and a springboard for further interaction. One student's opinion does not make moot the opinion of anyone else.
With mathematics, even if the question is applied and relevant, quite often there is only one correct answer. So the traditional forum method can fail, since once one student posts the answer, there is no incentive for further discussion.
This can be solved by splitting -- having only individual answers or collaboration in small groups -- but this removes the very thing that makes social technology exciting: collective intelligence on a scale above what is possible with in-person interaction. Imagine, for instance, having a problem not just group-solved by your individual algebra class, but by every algebra class in a school.
There's ways around this, like:
1. Personalized data: Students might figure out the square area of a room in their house. So every student does their calculation on something different, and then statistical methods can be applied to the data as a whole.
2. Required estimates. In a mathematics modeling problem, students try to match real-world data with an equation. While there are "best-fit" equations this can be done by hand, so that there isn't one correct answer.
Unfortunately, neither method fully taps into the power of the group dynamic. The individual contributions don't rebound and augment each other like an open-ended discussion. So I'll ask: what are the best ways to set up a collaborative online assignment in mathematics?
The best solution I can think of is to get students to explain process. The class could essentially write its own textbook with a wiki; the assignment one week might be to finish the online explanation of graphing parabolas, and every student has to pitch in. I have yet to try something like this, so if anyone has, drop a line in the comments.
ASB Unplugged is a 1:1
laptop conference for international schools, hosted by the American School of Bombay and the Laptop Institute. These are notes
from a session I attended on technology-related change at the secondary
level…
Andrew Hoover, middle school principal
Devin Pratt, high school principal
Dianna Pratt, middle/high school tech coordinator
[the educators in this room are from more countries than you probably can
place on a map!]
Change is not linear
Expect both bursts and delays
Complacency and resistance come from…
Being busy
Maybe being risk adverse
Perceived (and actual) threats to professional identity
DyKnow software really takes advantage
of the tablet PCs’ functionality, making it worth the tablets’ extra cost
After nearly 24 hours here in Mumbai, several things already
are quite apparent to me…
The Southern states in the USA - my previous benchmark for hospitality –
have nothing on the folks that I have encountered so far in India (and I say
that as a native of the South). The people here have been uniformly gracious,
friendly, and welcoming.
The word that best describes this city might be LOTS. As in LOTS of poverty
(it’s staggering, really, to a Westerner such as myself). As in LOTS of traffic
(a bewildering mess of cars, trucks, taxis, buses, auto-rickshaws, scooters,
bicycles, and pedestrians, all darting in and out of extremely small gaps in
traffic). As in LOTS of people and LOTS and LOTS of construction and LOTS of
energy. Somehow it all combines together into a positive, tangible buzz. There
is a feel to this place – a palpable sense that this is a city that is on the
move.
Mumbai is a place of startling juxtapositions. At the foot of a gleaming
corporate office building will be a shantytown. Adjacent to an eight-block
section of decrepit, decaying apartment buildings (that, of course, are packed
with residents) will be a shiny glass-and-marble shopping mall. Next to a
filthy, tin-roofed store selling tires (that appears to be held up only by the
posters and ads affixed to its rickety wooden walls) will be a new high-end
electronics store selling HDTVs.
For all of the possibility that is here, there’s still an enormously long
way to go. Mumbai and other parts of India may be on a tremendous upswing but
there are hundreds and hundreds of millions of people who are seeing little, if
any, of the economic growth. That said, it’s a numbers game. Even if only one or
two hundred million people in a nation of over a billion join the Indian middle
class, the economic impact on the global economy will be quite substantial.
Any tech plan that starts like this (as does the American School of Bombay’s) is probably going to be pretty
succesful:
As our world becomes more technologically and globally interconnected,
it’s increasingly imperative that we all understand and plan how to facilitate
student and faculty acquisition and mastery of 21st century skills. The 21st
century isn’t a time in the future; it is now.
Have I said anything that hasn’t been said before? Probably not. But I now
can feel in my gut a sense of what this city is like. In Flight
of the Creative Class, Richard Florida notes that the
biggest danger facing the USA is not terrorism but rather that talented,
creative people will stop wanting to come to America. There are
places for those people here in Mumbai (and in South Korea, Australia,
Singapore, Ireland…). Tom
Friedman is right: we Americans are going to have to get used to sharing the
global stage.
The use of a graphing calculator is considered an integral part of the AP Calculus course, and is permissible on parts of the AP Calculus Exams. Students should use this technology on a regular basis so that they become adept at using their graphing calculators. Students should also have experience with the basic paper-and-pencil techniques of calculus and be able to apply them when technological tools are unavailable or inappropriate.
Yesterday's post was about a sticky tech issue. This one's more about ideology.
Fierce debate raged in the 1990s over whether graphing calculators should be used in mathematics education at all. Proponents thought graphing calculators opened new vistas of understanding, as students could play and experiment, and see instantly how functions are affected by different tweaks. Detractors said graphing calculators killed the ability to work things out by hand; that they're a crux, and true understanding is only obtained by pencil-and-paper repetition of the proper methods.
Arguably, the issue ended (in the United States) with the AP test adoption of the graphing calculator. What resulted was a deeper and more difficult test; not only did students still need pencil and paper methods, but they had to apply the calculator to answer higher-level questions.
(No, not every student will make it to AP classes, but I believe curriculum should be written with the assumption that some will.)
However, the issue never truly died, because there was (and still is) a hidden ideological struggle going on:
Should our primary focus in algebra be on symbolic manipulation, or is visualization and synthesis an important aspect?
In other words, are graphical methods and applications just an afterthought?
While this doesn't seem to relate directly to social technology, the interesting enhancements computers can offer don't attract the interest of a symbolic-manipulation-only teacher. Alternately, graphing calculators can be thought of as the gateway application -- take a teacher comfortable with them, and it's easy to hook them on related Internet apps. For the Internet to be truly useful, teachers need to see there is a world beyond factoring binomials.
So, if you're a technology coordinator with a resistant math department, there's one question you might ask: are there teachers who haven't taken their class set of calculators out of their boxes? If so, there might be more going on than mere tech resistance.
Don't get me wrong: there are options to put equations on a computer. Most computers have at least Equation Editor if not MathType. Scholarly papers in mathematics often use LaTeX and it's also possible to blog LaTeX equations using Wordpress. I have used these before (my Pre-Calculus students are currently working on blog posts with LaTeX equations) and they are fine in their own context.
However, I consider these typesetting solutions. What I mean is most closely analogous to the difference between a word processor and a desktop publisher. In a word processor the text can be played with, experimented with, refurbished and remodeled in a manner easier than even pencil and paper. The layout of the text, however, is secondary. With a desktop publisher the placement of text is key, or at least a distraction to a student still trying to figure out their sentences need verbs.
In the course of a normal math class, parts of equations need to be crossed out, circled, arrowed, underlined, and spaced out. When I laid out my solution to a general conic, I couldn't use just an equation editor; I had to manipulate the parts in an image editor.
To put it another way, it's difficult to think the equations directly to the computer screen; sometimes I have to work things out on paper first and then translate them visually. That's hardly conducive to a live collaboration. It's certainly still possible, but the pragmatic teacher has to ask if the loss of fluidity is worth the gain of remote interaction.
(Before you post about your brilliant online class and how everything is done on computer, keep in mind I am simply trying to explain where objections are coming from. I'm hoping it's clear at least why the hurdle for mathematics is different than for language-based curriculum. Now, if you've seen these problems and have found neat ways for getting around them, post away.)
There are ways with technology to translate writing directly to digital form; on a SMART Board or a digital writing device. Some teachers will upload their SMART Board presentation to the Internet immediately after class, including any writing that happened. If anyone has done a particular lesson with these tools, feel free to share your ideas.
The ideal would be for the word processing equivalent of an equation editor. I'm not sure how that'd work; somehow it have to include the crossing out, circling, arrows and so forth we have students do in an entirely natural manner. There wouldn't just be the ability just to write equations line by line as in a textbook, but to drop a single row and move a variable by using the inverse without any worry of typesetting. Take a look at my general conics example again; if that sort of layout could be done easily, with just natural typing, mathematics teachers would flock to your door.
Before I go on, I need to clarify something: I am addressing the use of social technology, not technology in general. (Although an aversion to technology in general is related to my graphing calculator point.) My example of a tech cynic is not a technophobe by any means. I am referring to what is supposedly the "new wave" of blogs, Twitter, wikis, and so forth. Additionally while it could be argued math teachers in the United States don't use enough of it, I am not discussing project-based curriculum. That's been around for a long time and while it can be augmented by new technology, being a technophobe (by any definition) doesn't mean shunning it either. So while a comment like (courtesy Glenn)
If the something that you're asking them to do is take a test. Well. Never mind. Sorry, didn't mean to waste your time.
might apply to some teachers, I am presuming a faculty past that point but yet fussy about all the new gadgets being thrown at them. I am trying to explain why they're fussy, and that it's not just because their teaching isn't Modern enough in an overall sense.
So, you’re making your technology pitch to the school. You’ve just been to the conference and still feel the warm buzz of The Future, and you want the teachers to embrace the blogs, the wikis, the collaboration with schools in different cities, different states, different continents.
You up your game: you set up workshops, seminars, buy new software, buy new hardware, try to convert a few followers hoping entire departments will follow.
Maybe you grab the English department and suddenly have every student in school with their own blog. Perhaps the technology people are putting student-produced videos on YouTube. You hear the foreign language folks are using Skype to call Mexico and work with a network of 5 classes.
(Ok, ok, idealism here. But these things are at least possible.)
But hit the math department –
And all I’m saying is, look, I’ve got some math to teach over here. And until I can count on two fingers the number of math teachers who are building a meaningful practice out of tech, until this stuff begins to approximate the importance of a cash register to a grocery store checker . . .
A lot of technology-coordination-types seem puzzled by this – why should math be any different from other subjects when adopting modern tech? – but it is, and there are (at least) three major reasons why.
The difficulty in working with equations on a computer
Sure, high school math teachers do statistics, and graphs, and even the occasional art project, but the meat of the content is working with equations. Even something easy to type like
Solve for x: 2+x = 3
can be a bear to demonstrate the steps on, and maybe could be done with fixed fonts and a fiddle like
2+x=3 -2 -2 x=1
but this is a post-understanding sort of kludge, and it’s not simply possible to work with things as easily as paper.
Students 3.0
The first graphing calculator was introduced in 1985, and it’s been a battle ever since.
One camp is fundamentally opposed to the notion of using graphing calculators, while the others think graphing calculators should be used at every level. This is still ongoing even though the AP Calculus tests require a graphing calculator and college expects students to arrive with the skills. (At one university I know of, they give incoming students a list of calculator tasks and say “if you don’t know how to do these, figure it out, because we’re not going to teach you.”)
Because the acceptance of graphing calculators is nearly a prerequisite for many modern math apps, arguments get stalled at the door. In other words, upgrading to wikis and the like is version 3.0, and 2.0 is still in beta.
Sometimes there really is only one right answer
With disciplines where multiple viewpoints are all equally valid, it's easy to have a collaborative discussion where every contribution is valued and important. When solving a problem with only one right answer, snarls can hit. Maybe one student dominates the discussion, or things shut down too early, or everyone is stuck in a way that requires massive teacher intervention. These issues often aren't discussed, and the edict to focus on process rather than solution gets messy in practice. (Although it's a start, and even if there's only one solution there may be multiple ways to get there.)
How this week will roll
I’m going to switch between general assessments of what’s going on and specific examples. I’m going to make a wish list for what I'd like to see in modern technology, because my sentiments match closely with the quote above.
I'm going to need your help. Some things I'm wanting really don't exist, but I'm hoping there's hidden gems out there I haven't come across yet. If nothing else, maybe a developer will take notice and fill the gaps.
My run officially starts tomorrow, but I wanted to get my standpoint up.
I'm a high school mathematics teacher, and I focus on my class. I spend most of my time thinking about curriculum, not theory. I take a pragmatic approach and always ask, primarily: does it work?
However, I'm willing to try anything once. So I'm going to break open this week and take on one of the Big Issues: why is it so hard for mathematics teachers in particular to use social technology, and what's needed to fix the problems? Mathematics teachers are often frustrated, because the generalizations about social technology don't answer the question: so what do I do with it? There's a lot of technology coordinators out there (greetings!) and I want to bridge the gap, so you understand where we're coming from.
I believe both tech optimism and tech pessimism are dangerous. Too much optimism can blind one to failure, and too much pessimism can cause something to be discarded after only a single failure (when all it needed was a retooling). I'll be aiming at the middle road, trying to balance practical reality and unrealized potential.
I'll be out of my element, but feel free to compliment or criticize or add or subtract. I'm not going to have all the answers alone, but maybe together we can work this out.
Aside from serving as one of two Assistant Principals in my high school, I am also lucky enough to supervise three departments, one of which is Special Education. I do not manage IEPs, conduct testing, or get involved in the legalities of Special Education. I merely manage the day to day happenings with the Special Education staff, work with the scheduling and budgets, and assist the Director of Special Services and Child Study Team. I wish I had time to do more.
I have worked in three school districts in the last eight years. I am embarrassed to say that the Special Education programs have all been rather disappointing. I've seen watered down curriculum where handouts and worksheets are the standard of classroom practice. I've had conversations with Special Education teachers and heard some sad educational philosophies regarding Special Education students. I've seen and heard some unethical things in the highest offices of public school districts - things that would cost people their careers.
On the flip side, I've met (and currently work with) some of the best people for Special Education students; they are supportive, encouraging, and serve as life coaches and mentors for their students. They desire to be the best teachers they can for their kids. I've also been blessed to have strong school leadership role models in my life who keep me hopeful and guide me through the rough waters of Special Education law, practices, and education.
Since this is my last post for Dr. McLeod, I thought it would be helpful and intriguing for all of us if we left an open thread (a la Beyond School's popular one). Open threads seems to me to be chock full of good advice, insight, and some remarkable stories.
So here it goes...
What practices have you seen in your experiences with Special Education? You can discuss a Special Education program that is worthy of publicity, or a teaching practice that deserves attention. If you are tempted to expose the troubles of Special Education, you may - but I would like this post to be helpful, not critical. So please, with a criticism, offer a potential solution.
It's been an honor to share with all of you. Mike Parent, Guest Blogger
Mike Parent has done a fantastic job this week of guest blogging. If you like what you've read from Mike, check out his blog, The Schoolhouse Dissident.
Jason Dyer will be my next guest
blogger in 2008. I asked Jason for a short blurb about himself. Here’s what
he sent me:
Jason Dyer started out with a degree in Fine Arts Studies, intertwining
music, media arts, and computer science. After the dot-com crash of 2000, he
picked up a mathematics degree and now teaches high school in Arizona. He still
has a soft spot for his multimedia roots and has movie posters hanging on his
classroom wall. The school mascot is the Warriors and his normal blog of
residence is The Number
Warrior.
Jason has an ambitious series of posts for us next week and I’m looking
forward to reading his thoughts on math, education, and leadership. If you’re
interested in being a
guest blogger, let me know!
Many folks are concerned that schools today are mostly about churning
out worker bees for uncaring corporations who are more than happy to chew up
employees and spit them out in favor of others, perhaps overseas, who are
cheaper. Like Mike
Parent, my guest blogger this week, they are
worried about mission statements like that of the The New Jersey High School
Redesign Steering Committee, which states that it is ‘working to build
public awareness and support for a more rigorous high school experience, one
that allows students to succeed in the workforce or in pursuing higher
education.’
I’m not one of those people. Although I, too, want my children to be happy,
creative, caring, self-directed, intellectually curious, and environmentally
aware, I also want them to be contributing members to society. And, if they
decide to challenge certain statuses quo, I want them to have the tools
to be able to do that successfully. I think that means preparing them to be
powerfully productive in the technology-suffused, globally-interconnected future
in which they’re going to live. If they can’t play, work, thrive, and influence others in that
world, they’re going to be marginalized, impotent outsiders.
So, with all due respect to Clay
Burell, I see Did You
Know? 2.0 as a conversation starter for how the world is changing
around us but, like Karl Fisch,
I don’t see it as an overt call for preparing students solely for economic
competitiveness. Nor do I think it is fair to label William
Farren’s excellent Did You Ever Wonder? video as a ‘vital
counterpoint’ to the issues in the Did You Know? video. I see no reason
why equipping students with 21st century skills is in opposition to preparing
them to be ecologically-responsible citizens. In fact, a strong argument could
be made that it is only by equipping our students with 21st century
skills that they will be in a position to solve the massive problems that we are
bestowing upon them.
Collins
and Porras note that we should be embracing the ‘genius of the and’
rather than the ‘tyranny of the or.’ I agree. I will be preparing my
children to be productive 21st century citizens and employees. I will
be preparing my children to be environmentally-aware and
economically-productive. I am hoping – and, indeed, counting on – many others
doing the same.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the submissions for my
recent contest. As you may recall, I asked readers, “What would be a good
six-word motto for your nation's schools?”
Here are my favorites. All of these were picked solely by me and all had to
do with the USA. Your list might be different!
6. This one gets at the lack of leadership during an era of turbulence. Of
course that’s one of the main themes of my work and this blog.
5. Although it’s a phrase that’s been used by others, I thought this was a
nice choice for this contest. It captures much of the essential tension between
the current system and the constructivist leanings of many edubloggers.
USA: Dewey … or don’t we? (Scott,
I know you’re jonesing for a CASTLE mug. Maybe next time!)
4. This one just made me laugh (‘cause, given its essential truth, otherwise
I’d have to cry)! All three of this contributor’s entries were pretty
clever…
USA: Standardization + medication = American education (Ahniwa)
2. The ‘faddism’ that occurs in American education is legendary. Veteran
teachers roll their eyes at the latest thing that comes along, saying “This too
shall pass.”
USA: Another solution to a previous solution (drollord)
1. With advance apologies to Larry
and Alice,
who rightfully noted a concern that most of the entries were negative, my
favorite was this one. Our schools have, indeed, been extremely positive
contributors to American society and I am a big proponent of schools and
educators. That said, like others, I still think that there is a LOT of wasted
potential and that often students succeed despite, not because of, their K-12
educational experiences. See, for example, the classroom observation studies
profiled in John Goodlad’s A
Place Called School (whole book), Mike Schmoker’s Results
Now (p. 18), or in the March 30, 2007 article
by Robert Pianta in Science.
So with due respect to all of the educators who are working extremely hard, my
personal selection for best 6–word motto is…
USA: Underwhelming kids on a daily basis (Diana) (note:
this could apply to American public policy too, not just
schools)
Pop over to your neighborhood school and visit some classrooms. Is what’s happening cognitively nutritive? That is, does it satisfy present needs and provide nourishment for the future health and development of children's thinking?
Or is it punitive, with little concern for present nourishment and future health and development?
The Genevan psychologist and researcher Hermina Sinclair said,
All of us concerned with education should view children as wearing signboards saying ‘Under Construction’. No, wait a moment. I didn’t say that strongly enough. All of us should look at people as wearing signboards saying, ‘Under Construction—Self Employed’. (See Reference 1.)
We are in the fifth year of research, work which sheds light on Sinclair’s claim, shows that present educational goals for children are often trivial, and which suggests that current methods of causing learning to take place should be re-thought.
The work shows that children at grades 1-5 are capable of stunningly complex thinking and that this goal can be achieved with no direct teaching, but rather by posing problems for the children to solve.
Elementary and middle school should be about memorization. Many of my 8th graders aren’t really capable of abstract thought at this point.
As an example, I teach my 7th graders about the reconquista and about the exploration of the Americas. Yet despite repeated prompts, none of my students in 7 years have been able to connect the two things, despite my prompts about both occuring in 1492.
Let high school and college develop meaning and interconnection.
The second excerpt is from a teacher. I feel really, really sorry for his students…
Thus far, I have posted about educational conspiracy, challenging the competitive nature of schools, and assessing assessments. What follows is a topic near and dear to everyone's career and workplace. This is a post I have been looking forward to sharing with all of you. It's a bit lighthearted, but a serious topic for school leadership.
Let me begin with a disclaimer. A tantalizing and possibly offensive word will be used throughout this post. The word is not common to the professional language of Dr. McLeod or his readers. However, since I will be using the word in the context of a theory, it should be understood that I am not trying to be edgy or shocking. I am merely using the word for purpose of clarity.
The day before Christmas break I am browsing through a book store looking for a good gift for my principal. In the management section I spot a small book with an intriguing title - The No Asshole Rule. I first think this must be some kind of gag gift. But a ten-minute perusing of the book tells me something else. The author, Robert Sutton, is a well known and respected writer. He's not joking here. He is only using the lay terminology for "difficult people", "hardened hearts", or "combative individuals". I bought The No Asshole Rule (TNAR) for my principal, and a copy for myself. Now we're both equipped to handle this obnoxious faculty member.
TNAR is a much needed common language leadership book. I know many of as are fans of many different education leadership authors (Fullan, Heifetz,Wheatley, and Gardner) . These books are chock full of ideas, principles, and theories that are sound, sensible, and applicable. But Sutton is onto something different here. His deliberate use of the word "asshole" to describe those - well, assholes - that we work with, sit through meetings with, receive directives from, and must collaborate with every day, is refreshing.
Though TNAR is written mainly for those employed in the private sector (where hiring and firing is fast and furious - unlike public education), it does have some practical applications for schools.
For instance, how many administrators, teachers, or staff members have you worked with or encountered that have indulged in Dr. Sutton's "Dirty Dozen" list of actions that assholes use?
Personal insults
Invading one's personal territory
Uninvited personal contact
Threats and intimidation, both verbal and non-verbal
Sarcastic jokes and teasing used as insult-delivery systems
Withering e-mail flames
Status slaps intended to humiliate their victims
Public shaming or status-degradation rituals
Rude interruptions
Two-faced attacks
Dirty looks
Treating people as if they are invisible.
Check out Dr. Sutton for yourself.
A few things anyone can take from this book are Sutton's suggestions on dealing with assholes you can't get rid of:
Deal with their asshole behavior immediately and make it known that you did. Don't let asshole behavior go on. Even if it hurts to confront an asshole, do it for the greater good of the organization. People are watching to see how you react to the known asshole.
Marginalize them. Make them irrelevant and their influence minimal.
Don't be confrontational with assholes, but don't be a doormat either.
His final word of advice is one that we should all take to heart. Don't hire assholes. Those of us in positions of authority to hire faculty, administrators, and staff must seriously consider candidate's personality as much as we consider their knowledge and ability. I'll remember that as we begin our annual hiring carnival this Spring and Summer.
Lastly, Sutton's book will give you some great tips on how to deal with those pesky, pernicious, parents whom we lovingly call (in the copy room) "assholes".
I was notified today of an interesting film competition for college and high
school students: Film Your
Issue (FYI). Here’s an excerpt from the press release:
Winners are selected by an illustrious VIP Jury, by the public online, and by
participating cause organizations. Prizes to eleven winning films include
internships at USA TODAY, The United Nations, P.O.V. and The Humane Society and
a $5000 college scholarship from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and
Strong American Schools, and a filmmaker VIP Pass and presentation at
SILVERDOCS: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival. Winning films or
excerpts will also be broadcast on Starz, and a selection presented at the
annual NAACP Conference. The MTV audience favorite will be featured on Think,
MTV's multi-media community focused on youth activism, and the winning filmmaker
profiled on MTV News. In addition, FYI presents two additional annual awards:
The Walter Cronkite Civic Engagement Leadership Award to an academic
institution, and The Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award, to an
individual.
FYI 2008’s VIP Jury is headed by legendary news anchors and
authors Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw, and includes MySpace Founder Tom
Anderson, MTV President Christina Norman, CNN Anchor Wolf Blitzer, NBC Anchor
Brian Williams, United Nations DPI Under-Secretary-General Kiyotaka Akasaka,
Best Buy Vice-Chairman Brad Anderson, HBO Host Bill Maher, USA TODAY Publisher
Craig Moon, USA TODAY Founder Al Neuharth, Weinstein Company Co-founder Harvey
Weinstein and others.
Sounds like an interesting showcase for students to use multimedia to express
themselves on important topics. I like the two-minute constraint too. It forces
students to pare down to their essential message…
This is not an advertisement for The Education Trust, nor is it an endorsement of all that The Education Trust stands for. This post is merely my commentary on one aspect of The Education Trust's practices - assessing standards in practice.
In 2003, I was working at a semi-urban high school near Paterson, NJ. Our school was seeing a major transition in demographics; more ELL students, Hispanic students, and first generation Muslim-Americans were enrolling. It was a regional high school, so we did not have a handle on the K-8 curriculum. Basically, what we were sent, we had to deal with. Literacy rates were suffering and our students were in need of more basic reading and math skills. In short, we were aware of the achievement gap that was present in our building; the honors courses and AP courses were completely Caucasian and the general level classes were nearly all minority. We weren't ready for this. We had no plan other than to offer the mundane BSI courses. But a crafty Assistant Principal, Jim Jencarelli (who is now the Superintendent of a NJ high school) had the novel idea of bringing in The Education Trust to help us with our achievement gap problem, curriculum redesign, and shifting of paradigms.
One of the first things The Ed Trust does when they come in to your school/district is to meet with the teachers and administration to discuss their Standards In Practice protocol. I can remember the meeting very vividly - teachers were appalled at the presenters statement that one reason an achievement gap exists is due to the pity parties that teachers have for minority students and students who have less than stable home lives. In essence, teachers and schools do no students favors when they lower the expectations based on the perceived inabilities or emotional concerns that teachers and schools have for struggling students. What the Ed Trust ultimately condones is the practice of teaching every child as if they were college preparatory material.
Standards In Practice consists of the following (you can view Ed Trust's presentation below):
Creating teams of teachers to review, analyze, and critique assignments
Having these teams honestly look at the standards (usually state standards) and see if their assignments reach the expectation, or fall short. (NOTE: you would be surprised how many tests and quizzes are comprised of recall and rote questions.)
A rubric is followed whereby the assessment is measured. If need be, the assessment must be redesigned to meet the standards.
The teams meet regularly and each team member is on the "hot seat" - no one is immune from the clinical exercise.
What I found most intriguing about Standards In Practice was not the protocol. Of course I learned a lot from the exercise (I disappointingly found that my assessments were far too "dumbed down") and gained insight into how to construct rigorous assessments, which, in turn, forced me to redesign my approach to students, lessons, and teaching. No, what intrigued me most was the philosophy of the Education Trust.
Ed Trust is committed to narrowing the great divide between minority students and others. I can't tell you angry I get when I see school leadership revel in the glory of "beating" other schools at high stakes testing. I take no pride in the following facts:
32% of White adults (ages 16-65) read at the Basic or Below Basic proficiency in Prose literacy. (2003)
67% of Black adults (ages 16-65) read at the basic or Below Basic proficiency in Prose literacy. (2003)
53% of Hispanic adults (ages 16-65) read at the basic or Below Basic proficiency in Prose literacy. (2003)
Notes: Prose literacy refers to the knowledge and skills needed to search, comprehend, and use information from continuous texts. Source: NCES Table 379.
What I have come to understand is that while we scurry to find new ways to meet AYP, get our students over the hump, and keep our schools out of the editorial pages, there is a quiet epidemic of illiteracy spreading in our urban schools. The Education Trust (while not completely perfect) is trying to address the issue through their programs and protocols. They seek to shift the paradigm of teachers and schools, not throw money at the urban schools and hope that a miracle happens.
For my part, I can say that The Education Trust shifted my paradigm. I now see the problem and a potential means of addressing the problem.
Whatever happened to that high school I worked at in 2003 where we brought in the Education Trust? The Principal and Superintendent though it was too expensive and unnecessary. Jim and I left for brighter futures and more open minds. Yet, we are both committed to bridging the achievement gap... however, I now know that the achievement gap is a symptom of nothing more than institutional racism. When any school thinks that a curriculum must be watered down in order to help the minority student, simply because that student comes from a family or neighborhood that is less desirable, then that school is acting in a nearly criminal manner.
Please examine your state's literacy rates. Is there a widening literacy deficit? Are you in a school or district that seems to have more than a fair share of minority students either classified as LD or stuck in Basic Skills? Once you have that answer, ask yourself if your school or district assesses students to the standard set forth by your state or county? How much rote and recall do you see in your classrooms?
What follows is an actual conversation between me and a dear friend who is also an administrative colleague. His name has not been changed, since he is guilty and cannot be protected like the innocent.
Setting: About four o'clock on a wintry afternoon in Vice-Principal Jim's office in NJ. The office's aged, mint green walls are adorned with motivational quotes from great NFL, NBA, and MLB coaches.
ME: "So Jim, what do you think the Superintendent is going to say about the proposed change to the school's grade scale?"
JIM: "You know what, whatever gets the kids working harder. I just think the weighting of AP and Honors courses is going to throw off the ranking system."
ME: "Good. The ranking thing should go. We're not about competition - we're about learning. If it were up to me, I'd do away with grades, scales, ranking... all that."
JIM: "You're nuts! We have to keep ranks and grades. How else do we know who is doing better or well in a subject? And we rank to see who is the best in the class. Besides, competition is good for kids. They have to compete to get into college."
ME: "So you're saying that it's okay to have a number one student? That means, Jim, that to have a number one, there must be a number two, then a three, and so on. You're saying it's okay to have kids at number 100? We shouldn't have them compete, we should have them collaborate and learn. The weak helped by the strong. Competition is for the field, not the classroom."
JIM: "That's why I'll never work for you at a school you run."
I love Jim. He's an honest man, a good father, a great mentor for lost adolescents. But he's dead wrong about competition in the schoolhouse. To make him upset and aggravated, I sometimes use facts and ideas from Alfie Kohn to combat his arguments. Jim listens, but thinks I am too rebellious for my own good.
Janet Swenson at Michigan State University points out that
“we’ll all benefit from the best education we can provide to every child on
the face of this planet. Do you care if it’s a child in Africa who finds a
cure for cancer rather than a child in your country?” she asks.
Bravo Ms. Swenson. When NCLB was proudly announced as the law of the land, schoolhouses became battlegrounds; each school district against another, each factor grouping against another, each state against another - which really only translates into each child against the other. NCLB may have "raised the bar" (whatever that means), but it also made schools places of gaming, not learning.
And now for my close-to-home moment. Try not to gag or vomit on your keyboard when you read the comments of one Dr. Larrie Reynolds, Superintendent of NJ's Pequannock Schools. Dr. Reynolds is a newly hired Superintendent from the great state of Texas (known for its educational leadership, of course). Mr. Reynolds was featured in the February 18 Bergen Record. The title of the story: "Pequannock Goes For Gold". Here are some excerpts.
The Gold Academy will be the most rigorous and selective program the
high school has to offer. It's more selective than honors classes,
which require only a teacher's recommendation.
It was designed to address concerns that some of the best students leave the district after middle school for private schools.
"That is why our high school scores are not very good, or not as good as they should be,'' Reynolds said.
Wait, there's more...
He heard that 22 eighth-graders were considering leaving the
district in the next school year. In the last four years, 64 students,
10 percent of the high school enrollment, left for private schools.
"If those 64 students were still in our high school, how would our high school have been different?'' Reynolds said.
"I
suspect we would have had better achievement results, higher SAT
scores, we'd have better results in the classrooms,'' he said. "We
would have had a better school.''
He ends his unbelievable comments with this:
"If we can celebrate and recognize and honor talent on the athletic
field, then public schools had better be willing to do the same thing
on the academic field,'' Reynolds said. "In many ways, it's more
important.''
Rumor has it that if you call Pequannock Schools, you will be greeted by the salutation "Pequannock Schools, striving to be number one...". Apparently, this is what anyone who answers a phone in Pequannock is ordered, by Dr. Reynolds, to say.
So what do we do about ranking and competition in classrooms, in schools, in districts, in states, in our country? Do we just ignore it and accept it? Apparently so. Not many states have given back the ransom cash Washington D.C. ponied up to get us to buy into NCLB. Not many schools have stopped the practice of ranking students. Monthly and weekly publications still sell out copies of the issues that rank colleges, universities, and high schools (NJ is famous for its yearly ranking magazine articles). I think we like it. We are Americans; we are supposed to thrive on competition. The problem is, I don't see where the competition is taking us. Or maybe I do - and that's what I can't tolerate.
As you embark on your journey to school today, I ask you one question. Did you eat your Wheaties?
I was recently a
guest blogger for eduwonkette. She’s pushing up against my guideline of
having a Technorati authority of less than 100, so I figure now is as good a
time as any to name her as the next recipient of the crimson
megaphone. For those of you who are unfamiliar with her, eduwonkette is the
pseudonym of an anonymous professor somewhere. I don’t know much about her other
than that she’s super fun to read because of her willingness to inject levity
and attitude into her blogging. This, of course, makes her blog one that
deserves a bigger audience (DABA). You’ll also see
that she often sparks fascinating discussions in her comment areas. If you’re
looking for a lighthearted, and yet somehow still serious, look at major policy
issues in education, eduwonkette’s a great bet.
One could hardly call me a conspiracy theorist; I don't put much stock in Area 51 theories, alternate possibilities of the JFK assassination, or any such popular underground thoughts. But I do believe that American Public Education has been usurped.
John Taylor Gatto's "Some Lessons From The Underground History of American Education" appeared in the 2002 edition of Everything You Know Is Wrong (EYNIW). The EYNIW synopsis outlines the original intent of education and the historical (widely secret) events that have shaped what we now consider education's purpose to be. Educational institutions began as places where intellectual curiosity, worldliness, and spirituality were explored, fed, and cultivated. Yes, they were bastions for the elite and public schools originally were established to counter the elitists. But something went very wrong in the 19th and 20th centuries. Gatto writes that public education had become the vehicle for social management and the premiere institution for societal construction where the commoner was to be kept common. Since Reconstruction, public education has become merely an extension of both private industry and government. Gatto utilizes the words of famed educators like Ellwood P. Cubberely, Edward Thorndike, and Benjamin Bloom and others to make his case. To maximize his point that public education was forged into a social engineering tool for the commoners, Gatto provides some startling quotes:
"Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata,careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow, the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual." ~ William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education 1889-1906
"...We shall not try to make these people [the lower and middle classes] or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for the embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple... we will organize children... and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way." Rockefeller's General Education Board, Occasional Letter Number One, 1906.
These men, their publications, and the reform movements birthed from their ideas has essentially taken education to a place that centers on creating good common citizens, productive workers, and contributors to the status quo. If you think otherwise, just read your district's - or any public school district's - mission statement. Is the phrase "productive citizen" or the word "citizen" present? These are the remnants of said philosophies.
Gatto's work (available online) resonates with me and many others who have a deep sense that something is fundamentally wrong with the aim of our public education system. Those of us who reject the idea that schools are to first and foremost produce good citizens and skilled workers are increasingly being marginalized by the "great machine" - a term I use for the seemingly unstoppable train of political movements, think tanks, boards of education, and state organizations who seek to hold schools accountable (particularly high schools) as training grounds and indoctrination camps. A close-to-home case in point:
The New Jersey High School Redesign Steering Committee is "...composed of the
leadership of New Jersey’s major education organizations, is working to
build public awareness and support for a more rigorous high school
experience, one that allows students to succeed in the workforce or in
pursuing higher education... The Steering Committee grew out of the New Jersey Education Summit on
High Schools convened in 2005 and supports the work begun at the
National Education Summit on High Schools held in Washington, DC in
February of that year. The Steering Committee
is co-chaired by New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine, Prudential
Financial Chairman and CEO Arthur F. Ryan, and Montclair State
University President Susan A. Cole and is composed of the leadership of
New Jersey’s major education organizations."
The Committee was formed a few years ago to address the perceived inadequacies of NJ high schools as preparatory institutions for the workplace. The Committee claims that though NJ high schools may be graduating over 90% of their students, have "good" SAT scores, and have a high number of students going on to post-secondary education, we are not producing good workers. They tell the public (at their numerous public meetings) that NJ businesses are facing certain outsourcing of jobs - not because of the economic realities of the "flat world" - but because our students are not skilled enough. The Committee's aim is to hold high schools to a higher industrial standard; produce better workers, produce a better middle class, produce better earners. The Committee has a plan - to institute Regents-style exit exams in math, science, and language arts and to have students partake in workplace readiness activities in high school.
As a high school administrator in NJ, this is my new professional reality. This is what my government says my new mission as an educator is to be. I should not think of creativity, of cultivating a love of learning and life for my students, of offering my students opportunities for personal and spiritual growth. I am to make good workers of them. I am to foster a stronger middle class. I am to produce producers - not inspire or lead students to self actualization... not unless the leading leads to a good job.
Public education has been hijacked. Not in this generation, but many moons ago when compulsory education was legislated. The public scorn for mandatory education was so strong, Bruce Curtis, in his book Building The Education State 1836-1871, notes that:
"Many
schools were burned to the ground and teachers run out of town by angry
mobs. When students were kept after school, parents often broke into
school to free them. At Saltfleet Township in 1859 a teacher was locked
in the schoolhouse by students who "threw mud and mire into his face
and over his clothes," according to the school records---while parents
egged them on."
As a result of generations of social engineering, it is no wonder the homeschooling movement has become so popular. Many parents have rejected the government's means to and end and the end to those means. Private schooling, too, is an alternative for the disenchanted - though, admittedly, many private schools are also guilty of the same sins of public education.
As and education leader, I face a dilemma. How do I swim in the current of the public school agenda while holding true to my deepest convictions about children, learning, and the point of learning? How do you?
I received this message recently from someone who works in a school district
department of research, evaluation, and assessment:
Do any of you know of
research on effective strategies for maximizing performance on
computer-delivered assessments? I think we have some common-sense ideas, but I
am wondering if there is anything out there that may be more substantive or
research-based.
Do any of you have
documents that discuss tips and strategies (for computer-delivered assessment)
that you share with your teachers?
Justin Medved and Dennis Harter have done fabulous jobs this week as my guest
bloggers. I appreciate their willingness to contribute to this community! My next guest will be Mike Parent. I asked Mike for a short
blurb about himself. Here’s what he sent me:
I'm married to a wonderfully supportive woman and I am the father of two boys
(our third son is due February 28), all of whom give my life purpose and
meaning.
Professionally, I'm an Assistant Principal and Supervisor for Music, World
Languages, and Special Education in a Bergen County, NJ high school. Primarily I
deal with discipline issues ranging from the mundane to the unbelievable,
however I also engross myself into curriculum issues and technology teaching to
keep my sanity. I truly enjoy my work; the students, my administrative
teammates, and my faculty are very supportive and a pleasure to share time
with.
I suppose anyone who has worked with me will call me a dreamer (sometimes in
the most derogatory sense of the word); I believe a radical and risky overhaul
of "the system" must occur if we want to keep public schooling relevant and
alive. In the most base terms, I dream of (and work toward) an equitable,
technology laden, intellectually rigorous, student-supportive, grade-free,
ranking-free, community-collaborative, team-based, and child-loving school
system. Call me crazy. I call me "Sisyphus."
Very cool! Mike will be blogging next week (a little close to that due date, Mike?!) and I am lining up some other
guests on the calendar. If you’re interested in being a
guest blogger, let me know!
Over the past week we have taken some time to reflect on our process of creating a meaningful and usable framework for embedding "21st century literacy" into our school curriculum. Part 1, 2, 3, 4 sought to guide you the reader through our thinking and seek out feedback and
friendly criticism. Blogs are such a great venue for conversations like this.
Our final post asks for advice on how to make it a reality.
Our framework was designed with the International School of Bangkok and its teachers in mind. While we feel it could apply to any educational setting we are not bound by any external curricular limitations other than that which the International Baccalaureate sets out in grades 11 and 12. Our school is heavily invested in the UBD (Understanding by Design) approach to unit/curriculum planning and as a result we have chosen to use "essential questions" to guide our framework.
To quote from an earlier post:
Looking at Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design approach to curriculum and unit design we liked how big "essential questions" and "enduring understandings" had helped us plan and design units when we were teaching math and social studies. What if this same "best practice" approach could be applied to the way technology was used and
talked about in the classroom? If this was good curricular design practice, why should technology and thinking curriculum be any different? What if that same approach was used in the way we looked at
connecting technology and learning across the curriculum? What if there were only a few manageable questions that even the most tech-resistant teacher could see value in?
Best practices regarding meaningful technology integration vary world wide. As technology is a real and relevant teaching and learning tool, we felt that our approach should leverage internationally-recognized best
practices and current research if it was to truly gain acceptance in our school. Whether you use the new NET Standards as a framework or something else, it is important that you meet your teachers where they are and stay consistent with what is accepted and established practice in your own school environments.
When we walk into school every day we are confident that kids are learning how to read, write, and do math. Our teachers are trained to teach these subjects. We trust in their professionalism and in the belief that these teachers want to prepare students for their futures.
In our embedded curriculum model, we have tried to ensure that the nature of "what teachers have to teach" seems accessible to them and just as
importantly doable - that the conversations involving technology are conversations that teachers are already having about truth, safety, communication, and collaboration.
But theory is not practice.
What are the best ways to get teachers not only on board and trained, but fundamentally believing in the importance of including this curriculum into "the way they do business"?
How do we get to a place where we have the same confidence in students learning information literacy skills as we do in the other subject areas?
If your school is on the right track and doing this, how have you made it happen?
What has been the tipping point to go from talking about it, to doing it?
This is where we want to go. We would like your input. It's time for the collective intelligence of the Web 2.0 world to kick in.
None of us is as good as all of us
.
Please chime in.
Thanks for joining us this week. In particular, thanks to Scott for lending us his audience.
Yesterday we (Justin Medved and Dennis Harter) spoke about our efforts to broaden the conversation that we had been having within our department with our wider school and the leaders within it. It became very clear to us early on that unless there was a shared understanding of concepts like "21st century literacy" and why our classrooms needed to educate for it then we would be stuck in a curricular holding pattern. There is lots of talk about the need to broaden student literacy to encompass and address the skills needed to navigate the new visual and information landscape, but what does that look like in practice and how do you write it into the K-12 curriculum in a way that is manageable and meaningful.
Our initial work led us to form five essential questions that we felt met the needs of a 21st century learner. It was our feeling that a curriculum focused on
just five questions would be much more manageable for the average teacher. These questions speak to thinking, critically evaluating, analyzing, and communicating. They value responsible behavior and knowing yourself as a learner. In a world in which it is impossible to predict what technology children will be using as adults, it is the "answers" to these five questions that will provide students the opportunity to succeed and thrive in the 21st Century. The power of these Essential Questions, lie in their applicability to all ages and to discussion more important and broad than technology standing alone.
A grade 1 teacher can and should have valuable discussions with students about being safe or recognizing truthful information. Who are the people you trust? What about them makes you believe what they say? What
makes one "source" more valuable than another? Those same questions can be asked throughout a child's schooling, but the answers begin to include more sources and more critical examination of their world. And eventually, they begin to include technology. If experimentation and data analysis is a way to know something is true, then you will have to learn how to use the technology needed to analyze that data. If being safe is valued, then learning about responsible use of social networking sites, issues of privacy, and web 2.0 technologies inevitably will be discussed at a time appropriate to students' use.
It was our feeling that the broad nature of these questions makes them accessible to teachers whose responsibility it is to embed this curriculum into their students' learning.
Teachers believe that they can teach effective communication.
They don't believe they know much about PowerPoint.
Nor should effective communication be limited to a software title anyway. The answers to these Essential Questions are higher-order thinking skills and issues of global citizenship. These are the skills we NEED students to have and the ones that will serve them well once they leave the arena of formal education.
These were our beliefs and they had come from hours of conversation and reading about the subject. If we wanted to move our ideas forward others would have to own them as well. So we assembled some key players and leadership from around the school to come together to refine our idea.
Our google collaborative document was the perfect venue to allow this to happen. It was fascinating to watch as 12 people debated and edited the same document at the same time. What a powerful tool!
Our first challenge was to answer the question "What do we want our students to learn?" Our framework provided much of this information, but it was also important to outline what we wanted our students to be once they finished at ISB. From the perspective of this framework we all agreed that the ideas could be synthesized down to three areas.
We wanted out students to be:
Effective Learners
Effective Communicators
Effective Collaborators
From this starting point and as a result of much discussion and collaboration, we all agreed that our ideas and five essential questions could be refined further down to three new questions.
How do I responsibly use information and communication to positively contribute to my world?
How do I effectively communicate?
How do I find and use information to construct meaning and solve problems?
With these questions we then proceeded to flesh out the enduring understandings that went with them. It was our feeling that these should always be evolving to address the changing face of communication, collaboration and information. The curriculum would be in constant beta. A testament to the ever expanding nature of the skills it was attempting to map.
Do you respond to PUSH or PULL? How about your students and staff?
David posted last week about the recent discussion in North Carolina regarding raising the minimum dropout age to 18 instead of 16. Apparently students are dropping out in increasing numbers, so folks want to mandate they stay in longer. Forcing students to go to school when they don’t want to? That’s a PUSH.
I was thinking of something Marco Torres said today in his keynote at TCEA. He said that it was his job to infect kids with enough curiosity today that they would want to come back tomorrow. And that if they came back tomorrow, he wanted to give them enough curiosity to come back the rest of the week. I don’t think this is about entertainment. I think it’s about inviting students to learn, about creating an environment so compelling that they want to be a part of it. It’s not that there aren’t many excellent educators making a dedicated effort. It’s that institutionally, we aren’t inviting students in.
Creating inviting learning environments and empowering students to do interesting things? That’s a PULL.
[T]he $110 is not nearly as much they could earn working after school. (It amounts to about 18 hours of work at the minimum wage in Maryland of $6.15 an hour.) But it could be enough for students to take a few days off to attend tutoring sessions.
Paying students for performance? That’s a PULL.
The National Coalition to Abolish Corporal Punishment in Schools keeps tallies on the number of states that allow corporal punishment of students that violate school rules. In Mississippi, 8% of students were subject to physical discipline in the 2002–2003 school year. Hitting students for not following the rules? That’s a PUSH.
In Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community, Alfie Kohn discusses letting students make real choices (rather than pseudo-choices like ‘you have chosen to sit by yourself at the table’) so that they can internalize, rather than externalize, moral development and self-direction. Giving students authentic voice and opportunities to participate in meaningful decision-making? That’s a PULL.
Which of these resonate best with you: the PUSH or the PULL? What are your primary approaches to facilitating change in schools? And, more importantly, what are the preferred approaches of your audience? Because, as John Maxwell reminds us, the true measure of leadership is influence (i.e., whether you have followers or not)…
One year ago:Narrowcasting (one of my favorite posts ever!)
[I was supposed to post this last Friday. This is starting to become a
troubling trend…]
My next recipient of the crimson
megaphone is Alice Mercer, a teacher in California. It has been very
interesting for me to watch Alice’s growth as a blogger over the past year or
so. She’s been going gangbusters ever since her move to her new school and her
blog, The Blog of Ms. Mercer, is
definitely one that deserves a bigger audience (DABA).
I particularly appreciate Alice’s good cheer and her dedication to serving the
needs of economically-disadvantaged children.
In our last post, we (Justin Medved and Dennis Harter) shared with you our 5 essential questions for the 21st Century Learner as well as our thinking behind how and why we felt the need to re-shape the way "technology" curriculum is embedded into classroom learning. We built our work on our new literacy wiki - as a collaborative environment for us, but also in anticipation of wanting needing to share our work with a greater audience for feedback and ultimately contribution at a later date. The wiki was the perfect environment for this. By documenting the evolution of this curricular journey in a public venue we hope to garner feedback and critical friending that will hopefully lead to a better and stronger framework.
Besides isn't this "shift" all about the power of sharing and networks?
While it's focus is on making "technology integration" more accessible to teachers and more meaningful to students, it actually attempts to articulate an approach and create a through line that run beside all other subject curricula. Finally an answer to the question "who is going to teach these skills?"........... Everyone is.
We called it Curriculum 2.0.
Once we finished the initial framework it was time to get some feedback.
Involving our Curriculum coordinators, Technology Director and our new colleague, Kim Cofino
(how lucky were we?!), the conversations that emerged were awesome. We felt it important to shop the concept around to as many different people as possible in order to get a balanced perspective. Teachers
ultimately want to know "what will this look like?" and "how will be it be supported?" and we had to have some answers ready. Through conversation, challenging questions, and true collaboration, we were able to fine tune our original 5 questions into three focused roles of technology in 21st century learning. More on this and the on the philosophy behind our structure in our next post, but until then you can ruminate on the diagram below.
In this post, we wanted to focus on the conversations that got us here.
In addition to working with key people at ISB, we presented our work at the Learning 2.0 Conference in Shanghai in mid September. The feedback was very positive. It was validating
to see that other technology coordinators were experiencing the same sort of difficulties with past IT integration scope and sequences. And it was energizing to see that our work was striking a chord. [side note: Dennis will present the work further at the EARCOS Teachers' Conference in Kuala Lumpur in March. If you are there, it'd be great to see you at the session.]
With positive vibes flowing all around, the next step was to include our school leadership. As we mentioned in an earlier post, we work closely with our school Leadership Team in a distributed leadership
model with them often looking to us for guidance - leadership in a different direction. Over the past year, we have been presenting various technology tools and ideas to the LT to give them a better sense of what to look for in classrooms and what to expect in educational change in the coming years.
Here in the edublogosphere, we often preach to the converted. In general, there is a lot of agreement on how education needs to change and technology's role in that change. We recognize the shift that is happening and the impact that will have on our students and should have on their learning. We commiserate on how administration or faculty just don't get it and celebrate together when they do.
We seldom talk about how important the process to bring them along is - that is a conversation that matters.
Our work with the LT brought this to light for us. To a large degree, they trust us. And that's a great start, but to enact major curricular change, we had to first convince them of the need. We had to describe an inevitable world that required innovators, thinkers, collaborators, and communicators. One in which knowing something was less important than creating something and in which working in a group meant talking to people around the world and being able to communicate in more than one way.
We had to create a shared understanding of what 21st century learning is and why it's important. We had to allow them to help frame the context in which this could work at ISB. With that individual, personal input, you can achieve buy-in. Then you can challenge them by asking, what are we going to do about it?
Our point: you can't skip these conversations.
As other schools or technology folks begin to use our framework to develop their own integration plans, we remind them, make sure you have the conversations. Use our work as a starting point for conversations that encourage questioning and challenge thinking. If we can't defend our rationale for a curricular model like this, then it isn't worth doing. Give stake holders a chance to process, question, and understand. (sounds like good teaching!)
Whether it comes via top leadership or from another direction, in order for school change to happen, buy-in has to come from shared understanding. And that only comes from conversations that matter.
For us, the next steps are to flesh out our framework and bring it more formally to teachers, where again, conversation will lead to shared understanding. It's what didn't happen at T.C. Williams and why all the tech in the world isn't improving student learning there.
No matter how "right" we know we are, you must get buy-in and shared understanding.
Last year, we (Justin Medved and Dennis Harter) sat
down to tackle the big question, "How does an information and
technology curriculum stay relevant and meaningful in the 21st
Century." As Technology and Learning Coordinators at the International School of Bangkok this question was important to us for three reasons.
1) 2006-7 was a WASC
accreditation year for ISB and we were charged with taking a look at
the K-12 Information Technology curriculum and creating a plan of
action to improve it.
2) The discussions and writings coming out of the edu-blogosphere last
year were rich in ideas all about "shift" , "re-thinking" and "who is
teaching these new skills?". It was hard not to feel like there was
some momentum building around a fresh educational paradigm and a shift
away from the "integration of technology" in the classroom, moving
towards "embedding" it in the way schools "do business".
3) Prior to our roles
as coordinators we had both taught in schools with elaborate technology
scope and sequence plans which we felt had little to no impact on
learning and often became outdated the moment they were written. We
also felt that the previous NET standards were too bulky and
disconnected from the average classroom teacher. We wanted to create
something that could stand the test of time and be manageable to the
average teacher.
With initiative and a
purpose driving us forward we sat down to write a rationale to guide
our approach. We came up with this:
"We
believe that technology is a tool that can help and enhance learning.
Everyday we see technology used as a tool outside of formal schooling
for communication, collaboration, understanding, and accessing
knowledge. It is our goal in developing an integrated curriculum to ensure that the way students learn with technology agrees with the way they live with technology.
Technology
is in a constant state of evolution and change. Access speeds,
hardware, software, and computer capabilities all evolve and improve on
a monthly basis. This change occurs at a rate at which it is impossible
for schools to keep up and adapt. Is it not time that we create a
curriculum model that understands and this fact and works with it
rather than tries to control it?
Too
often typical information technology curricula have focused heavily on
skills and their scope and sequence across the curriculum. The hard
reality of this approach was that they became outdated as soon as they
were printed due to changes in software, hardware and the skills that
students came equipped with.
Instead
of asking the question "What technology skills must a students have to
face the 21st century?" should we not be asking "What thinking and
literacy skills must a students have to face the 21st century?" These
skills are not tied to any particular software or technology-type, but
rather aim to provide students with the thinking skill and thus the
opportunity to succeed no matter what their futures hold."
We
felt strongly that for too long that way technology was integrated with
learning focused more on the tool and less on the curriculum/content
that it could be used to support. To compound this fact ,since
technology changes so rapidly it became almost impossible to map what
"skills" students needed to learn from year to year as new technology
arrived on the scene and old skills trickled down age groups. It
wasn't long ago that spreadsheets were the domain of high school
students in accounting classes. Now we introduce them to fifth graders
doing graphing and data analysis.
Typically teachers saw
teaching these technology hardware and software skills as "someone
else's job." IT skills to be learned in isolation. Yet schools
rightly began to insist that technology be integrated into classroom
practice.
Under
this technology skill curricular model, faced with teachers
ill-equipped and not believing that it was their job, IT integration
was doomed to failure.
We had to think bigger different ........
Looking at Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design approach
to curriculum and unit design we liked how big "essential questions"
and "enduring understandings" had helped us plan and design units when
we were teaching math and social studies. What if this same "best
practice" approach could be applied to the way technology was used and
talked about in the classroom? If this was good curricular design
practice, why should technology and thinking curriculum be any
different? What if that same approach was used in the way we looked at
connecting technology and learning across the curriculum? What if there
were only a few manageable questions that even the most tech-resistant
teacher could see value in?
Over
the school year we fleshed out these questions and ideas and came up
five essential questions that we felt addressed the core elements of a
comprehensive technology and learning curriculum - one focused on the
thinking that was needed for the 21st century learner, rather than the
technology.
My colleague and good friend, Dr. Jon Becker, has a new blog, Educational Insanity, that’s worth checking out. Here are some excerpts from a recent post on technology planning:
There have been many great sports coaches who were successful based on a “system” they installed. . . . I think educational leaders/policymakers are guilty of installing systems without regard to the personnel. . . . In other words, the “systems” have been installed and the leaders are then forced to try to fit the personnel into the system. . . . Make the system fit the team, not vice versa.
Okay, Miguel and Marion, I'm in. Here's my entry for the Passion Quilt meme. The bottom portion of this image best captures what I most passionately want children to learn in school...
tWhen Scott put out his initial request for guest bloggers on school leadership, we (Justin Medved and Dennis Harter) considered whether we fit the bill. We are not school heads or principals, but rather a different kind of leadership that is emerging in this current era of technological change and efforts in education to use this change positively.
We are Technology and Learning Coordinators at International School Bangkok. Our primary role is to lead teachers toward embedded technology use, enhancing learning opportunities in the classroom and beyond.
More and more however, we find that school leadership looks to us to guide and inform on all sorts of decision-making, ranging from curriculum to hiring practice to processes involved in running the school.
This defines a new kind of leadership in schools – one that breaks down typical hierarchical set-ups into one of collaboration and deferred expertise. One that is less top down and one that is more shared – at least in some areas. Ultimately, the buck continues to stop at the top, but input and influence seems to be growing from the "middle".
Currently, many school administrators and curricular leaders are not “up-to-date” or savvy on current ed tech thinking or even on current technology tools. They lead from an understanding of traditional schools attached to isolated IT classes with computer labs for student use. They don’t grasp the possibilities of a participatory web or realize the true potential of the "network" (social and hardware).
For the most part, this is not because they don’t want to change, but because they don’t know what’s possible. This speaks less to their skills as an administrator and more to their backgrounds as educators. It is a credit to those administrators who recognize a changing landscape and ask for guidance from those in the know.
So they come to us.
We work in this dual role, convincing administration of directions we need to move, while at the same time working for teacher buy in. Administration defers to our expertise in these matters.
Both may be considered the jobs of the administrators, yet both jobs fall on the guys with the ideas and the people skills to get it done.
Do you have a similar situation in your schools? If you are reading this as a technology-type, what is your role in this alternative leadership? How much responsibility/say do you have?
Justin and I often tackle the question,
what does it take to bring administration on board to make significant change in schools, curricular or otherwise?
This week we’d like to share with you the process that we went through from both a leadership side as well as a curricular side. We are in the process now, because we are trusted to do so, of moving ISB forward into a model of embedded technology founded on the Essential Questions of the 21st Century Learner. This curricular model has come directly from us rather than the curriculum office because we see a need for a different way to approach learning with technology.
In the coming posts, Justin and I will take you through our thinking on this curricular model with two purposes:
To get feedback from you and to push our thinking forward.
To hopefully inspire thinking at your own schools about how to best "embed" technology into classrooms so that is accessible to teachers and agrees with the way children live with technology.
This is a terrific opportunity to speak to a different audience than the readers we have already have at our own blogs (and those who have seen us present), so thanks, Scott. We are looking forward to the week.
Tomorrow's Post: "Birth of a question and a concept" - How does an information and technology curriculum stay relevant and meaningful in the 21st Century?
Stepping up to the plate next is a pair
of guest bloggers, Justin Medved and Dennis Harter. I asked them for short
blurbs about themselves. Here’s what they sent me:
Justin Medved is currently the PreK-5 technology and learning coordinator at
the International School of Bangkok. His roots began as a high school geography
and physical education teacher and he has held posts in Cairo and Toronto before
settling in Asia. He is passionate about the strategies, techniques, and
approaches used to engage learners in the 21st Century. You can read his
thoughts and ideas at MEDagogy or
NextGen Teachers.
Dennis Harter has been an international educator for 15 years, starting as a
math teacher before becoming a technology coordinator. He currently serves as
the Middle School and High School Technology and Learning Coordinator at the
International School of Bangkok. He shares his own thoughts on education,
technology, and learning at Thinking
Allowed.
I love the names of their blogs! I’m sure that Justin and Dennis (who’s a William & Mary alumnus like me and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach) will
give us a lot of food for thought this week. If you’re interested in being a
guest blogger, let me know!
At the request of her principal, Pam delivered a presentation to her staff on technology tools. At a follow-up meeting, she faced a lot of criticism from members of the Faculty Council who claimed that she ‘wasted their time.’ Rather than supporting Pam, her principal simply sat there and nodded her head as Pam absorbed the blows.
Your administrator cut you off at the knees. She essentially set you up. NOT cool. Does she do this to others or is it just you? Either way, it should be a huge warning sign that you're not going to get the kind of support you need. I suggest you either call her on it (and judge her reply very critically) and/or start looking for another building. As an educational leadership professor, I say be very, very wary of a leader who breaks trust with you like this.
I will not reduce public education to an economic institution.
It has become popular over the last few decades with the growth of the 21st
Century Initiative to talk as though school is primarily a preparation for work.
That idea is demeaning and dehumanizing.
When Thomas Jefferson envisioned universal education in America, he saw its
purpose as the equipping of leadership for the nation’s meritocracy. That idea never
really worked because the best and the brightest have generally used their
education to pursue personal goals (often in the business world) instead of in
public service. In America, they have that right. But I point out Jefferson’s
views to show that we seem to have come full circle - from education being about
producing good people who could service society to education being about a
student’s personal preparation for work.
I’ve talked elsewhere
about the purpose of school. Our school system provides a huge number of
safeguards for society - starting with ensuring that all our kids have had the
polio vaccine and been inoculated against measles by the age of four or five.
Having lived in the Third World for a few years, I don’t take that lightly.
The motto of my school is that we are a place committed to creating lifelong
learners. That’s an elementary school motto. And when I look at the
pre-K kids standing in the bus line at the end of the day, I hope that as a
faculty we’ve managed to whet their intellectual appetites that day enough to
make them want more tomorrow.
I hope that when I contribute to a math class for third graders or discuss
figurative language and poetry with fifth graders that I find a way to peak
their curiosity, to help them enjoy learning, and to equip them with the tools
they will need later in life to make learning itself an enjoyable activity.
I’m concerned with the jobs my students get - especially with the jobs my
special education students get. But I’m more concerned with the sort of people
they become. And what of the minimalist approach that looks at children and
teenagers and thinks first (or only) about their place in society’s economy? I
find it insulting to core. It makes me want to heckle public speakers and defend
the values I imbibed as a student of the liberal arts.
What place does the world of work have for Hemingway for the average
American? Is there a reason related to future employment to take kids to the Barter? What happens to Monet and Yo-Yo Ma in a school system
that thinks primarily about your future job?
I’ll leave you with this thought: Education is not the filling of a pail, but
the lighting of a fire. The words belong to William Butler
Yeats...
I don’t mean the elementary school where I work. I actually like that.
When I entered the classroom I was told that the state appreciated me having
an undergraduate degree already (B.A. in Psychology, 1983) and that it was
especially nice that I even already had an M.S. (Adult & Technical
Education, a non-certification degree designed to further my career at the
college level, 2003) . They thought that my 18-hour graduate diploma in
linguistics was interesting but told me that the Australian National University
wasn’t accredited in America, and that they couldn’t do anything with those
hours and it didn’t really matter whether the ANU had produced Nobel Laureates,
they weren’t accredited. So with 54 graduate hours already to my credit, I went
back to school. Night school. Summer school. The school of inconvenience….
I learned stuff. It was good for a time.
It was also two grand a class because I live out of state and West Virginia
won’t give me a break on tuition just for teaching their kids. In three years I
spent $30K to keep my license.
If you know what HQT stands for, you can probably guess part of where I’m
going. I’m not, technically a highly qualified teacher. With three degrees to my
credit, I had to send home a note with a third grader this year explaining to
the child’s parents that I’m not actually qualified to teach him math or reading
despite my eleven or so years of college.
One of the things that most ticked me off about going to school myself was
that there seems to be a plan in place to prevent teachers from going past the
masters degree level. I can take classes that count toward a certification (for
$2,000 a pop) or I can take classes that lead to an Ed.S. (for $2,000 a pop).
But not both.
There was a time in my life when I actually wanted to be Dr. Cruey. The
material in this
piece pretty much put me off that for good.
At some point I started asking why I had to keep going to school. I have 108
graduate hours and a GPA better than 3.8. Can’t I, like, take a test or go to a
workshop? Especially since I’m not pursuing any academic credentials?
I was pleased recently to discover that the answer is “yes.” I recently
discovered a state where, if you already have a license in something,
you can add other certifications based on a test alone. I’ve passed the test
there for a PreK-5 certification, for a middle school math certification, and
for some increased special education credentials. In March I go take the test
for reading certification.
I don’t understand why there isn’t a national program to access what an
educator knows and could be allowed to teach. If I’ve passed the Praxis test for
the Principles of Learning and Teaching, and I’ve worked in the classroom, and
I’ve had positive evaluations, and I can pass a test on middle school math, why
shouldn’t I be allowed to teach math without taking 21 graduate hours of math?
The cynics among us at the classroom level sometimes argue that it’s
because the colleges would go broke if such a system was in place.
In the face of a teacher shortage in specific essential areas, eventually
there will just have to be a better system for licensing teachers. And academic
credentials will have to be separated from professional ones.
The 21st Century Learning Initiative has more to do with applying a Constructivist approach to learning to the pedagogy of the classroom than it has to do with technology. If I had to describe the 21st Century Learning Initiative, I would phrase it something like this: It is the conceptual space where modern brain research, Constructivist learning theory, school reform, and the demands of the 21st Century workplace come together.
One of the fascinations that I have with the movement is this. On the one hand, I'm a special education teacher; special education, more than any other field of education, seems to cling to Behaviorist learning theory. On the other hand, I have a background in linguistics and a profound interest in reading education, and I know that language behavior is the place where Behaviorism is least useful in explaining or predicting learning.
Ultimately, the 21st Century Learning Initiative seems to be about promoting higher level thinking skills in the classroom and making the educational experience (particularly at the secondary level) relevant to life outside the classroom and after high school. That is where technology comes in. Technology is a tool for the 21st Century, it is a context for life in the coming decades. Students need to be able to cope with it and use it productively. But while productivity might imply familiarity with the tools, it places more emphasis on what students actually write when they use a word processor than on whether the students can use a word processer.
An example of this idea is a book I reviewed recently by Ted McCain. McCain is a technology person and an educator who writes and speaks about 21st Century Learning. I reviewed his book Teaching for Tomorrow: Teaching Content and Problem Solving Skills. To be honest, I was pretty hard on McCain. While he said things I didn't like, the truth is that chapter three of his book provides an excellent approach to teaching problem solving. And his book illustrates my point: he's a technology person who seems (in this book at least) more concerned with thinking skills than technology proficiency.
For any of you who have read McCain's book, I'll leave you with this question: Was I too hard on McCain?
The first school I taught at when I entered the classroom at a few years ago
was Big Creek High School. You may remember the movie the school featured
prominently in: October
Sky I taught home ec as a long term substitute for about two months.
It had a parenting class, a careers class in social services, a personal
adjustment class for freshmen, and cooking (which was no biggie since I like to
cook). Fortunately the sewing curriculum had been done during the first semester
or I might have bled to death…
The county is slowly getting new schools. There was a time when almost every
little bottom and hollow had a small K-8 school with a few dozen students. I now
work in one of the last of those. My school has 90 or so kids in pre-K to fifth
grade. Our middle schoolers were moved a few years ago to a larger school.
When I think about what our schools need in my county it is very hard to
prioritize the things that come to mind. Many of our buildings date back to FDR
or before. And yet replacing them with larger, more modern centralized schools
seems to tear at the fabric of local society.
Education is not high on the community agenda. Why should it be in a county
where the real unemployment rate (the percentage of working aged adults who
don’t have regular jobs) hovers at around 50%? Elementary schools serve a
community function. But many in the community don’t see much benefit to going to
school beyond high school.
I suppose I’m a hillbilly, though many of my friends and neighbors aren’t
sure I qualify. My father was in the Army and I grew up outside of Appalachia.
But on both my mother’s and my father’s sides, many of my ancestors have lived
in an area between Knoxville, Tenn., and Christiansburg, Va., since before the
Revolutionary War. A little over a decade ago, I came home - to live and work
here for the first time in my life. I teach in a county that the Appalachian
Regional Commission designates as "distressed." While my
heritage and values might make me a hillbilly, I’m the most traveled hillbilly I
know. Between my father’s military career and ten years myself with a volunteer
service organization after college, I’ve lived on four continents and in 14 time
zones. I bring a unique perspective with me to the classrooms I work in.
I stood today on a little bridge our kids cross to get to their buses,
looking down into the water that flows under it. Our kids cross the Tug Fork (of Hatfield-McCoy fame)
twice a day over that bridge. The feud was some miles downstream from us.
I wanted John Edwards to be President. It’s easy to become a populist when
you work with kids in a place where the median household income is about $19,000
a year.
Midnight has come. I suppose my point is just that life itself seems to
complicate any consideration of education in poor rural communities. People who
tell me that the times are a-changing and that we should get used to the
economic demands of the coming days and change our approach to education
accordingly engender a resentment in me at times that I don’t fully understand.
When I look at the poverty and the needs of my school’s community, I find it
difficult to clarify the issues in the same pattern that the rest of the country
seems to be pursuing. I suppose I’ll leave it at that and go to bed, committed
to an effort to be most substantive with my issues tomorrow…
When eduwonkette asked me to guest blog about data-driven decision-making in schools, I eagerly agreed. Why? Because in my work with numerous school organizations in multiple states, I have seen the power of data firsthand. When done right, data-driven education can have powerful impacts on the learning outcomes of students.
Unfortunately, most school districts still are struggling with their data-driven practice. Much of this is because they continue to think about using data from a compliance mindset rather than using data for meaningful school improvement. An uninformed model of data-driven decision-making looks something like this:
This is the NCLB model. Schools are expected to collect data once a year, slice and dice them in various ways, set some goals based on the analyses, do some things differently, and then wait another whole year to see if their efforts were successful. Somehow, this model is supposed to get schools to 100% proficiency on key learning outcomes. This is dumb. It's like trying to lose weight but only weighing yourself once a year to see if you're making progress. Compounding the problem is the fact that student learning data often are collected near the end of the year and given back to educators months later, which of course is helpful to no one.
A better model looks something like this:
The key difference in this model is an emphasis on ongoing progress monitoring and continuous, useful data flow to teachers. Under this approach, schools have good baseline data available to them, which means that the data are useful for diagnostic purposes in the classroom and thus relevant to instruction. The data also are timely, meaning that teachers rarely have to wait more than a few days to get results. In an effective data-driven school, educators also are very clear about what essential instructional outcomes they are trying to achieve (this is actually much rarer than one would suppose) and set both short- and long-term measurable instructional goals from their data.
Armed with clarity of purpose and clarity of goals, effective data-driven educators then monitor student progress during the year on those essential outcomes by checking in periodically with short, strategic formative assessments. They get together with role-alike peers on a regular basis to go over the data from those formative assessments, and they work as a team, not as isolated individuals, to formulate instructional interventions for the students who are still struggling to achieve mastery on those essential outcomes. After a short period of time, typically three to six weeks, they check in again with new assessments to see if their interventions have worked and to see which students still need help. The more this part of the model occurs during the year, the more chances teachers have to make changes for the benefit of students.
It is this middle part of the model that often is missing in school organizations. When it is in place and functioning well, schools are much more likely to achieve their short- and long-term instructional goals and students are much more likely to achieve proficiency on accountability-oriented standardized tests. Teachers in schools that have this part of the model mastered rarely, if ever, complain about assessment because the data they are getting are helpful to their classroom practice.
NCLB did us no favors. It could've stressed powerful formative assessment, which is the driving engine for student learning and growth on whatever outcomes one chooses. Instead, it went another direction and we lost an opportunity to truly understand the power of data-driven practice. There are hundreds, and probably thousands, of schools across the country that have figured out the middle part of the model despite NCLB. It is these schools that are profiled in books such as Whatever It Takes and It’s Being Done (both recommended reads) and by organizations such as The Education Trust.
When done right, data-driven decision-making is about helping educators make informed decisions to benefit students. It is about helping schools know whether what they are doing is working or not. I have seen effective data-driven practice take root and it is empowering for both teachers and students. We shouldn’t unilaterally reject the idea of data-driven education just because we hate NCLB. If we do, we lose out on the potential of informed practice.
Because education is largely a government function, there seems to be little
hope of ever disentangling politics and education.
Today I'll wear black to
school. I've worn black to school almost every Wednesday since November 3, 2004.
Why that date? On November 2nd of that year I spent 13 hours helping people cast
their ballots for President in a polling place in Virginia. I went home, had a
short but sound night of sleep, and woke the next morning to discover that
George W. Bush was still President. I wore black to work that day, and I've worn
black almost every Wednesday since - 168 out of the last 171 Wednesdays. The
exceptions? The day after Democrat Tim Kaine won the governor's race in Virginia
I wore more festive colors to work. (Since I work in West Virginia, half my
co-workers never fully understood why.) I also dressed quite colorfully on the
Wednesday after the most recent midterm election - the one where Democrats won
back Congress.
There was also a day earlier this year when we had Monday off and I just lost
track of what day of the week it was. My co-workers thought that was
funny...
I know that President Bush has his fan club. And I know that there are plenty
of people who dislike him for reasons other than education policy. But in my
mind, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is among the low points of Bush
Presidency.
I have several specific complaints about NCLB.
I don't like the way it has reduced the scope of curriculum. I think it has
de-emphasized the arts, for example, in favor of the most basic, pared down
core.
I don’t like the focus it brings on mediocrity. The goal of education under
NCLB is to move students who are barely failing on high stakes tests to the
place where they are barely passing on high stakes tests. There is no reward for
excellence. getting by is the goal.
I don’t like the unrealistic and punitive nature of the accountability
provisions. The eventual goal of NCLB is 100% grade level mastery. Every fifth
grader, for example, should function at the fifth grade level (unless they have
some profound disability). Schools that don’t comply, don’t meet this standard,
are punished. The problem is that so many of the factors related to a student’s
performance fall outside the school’s reach. Basic issues of poverty and social
fabric impact a school’s ability to achieve these goals; but the school has
little power to address them. The simple truth is that there will always be at
least one or two kids who don’t make the grade no matter what teachers do. And
eventually NCLB’s accountability provisions will result in almost every public
school being deemed a failure. It is a standard no other modern nation strives
to achieve. It is unrealistic.
I think the law is underfunded. The requirements of NCLB at onerous in terms
of both time and money.
You don’t have to be a complete cynic to think that maybe, just maybe, NCLB’s
accountability provisions are a poison pill in the law. The intention could be
to make public schools look bad – worse than they are – to justify the
privatization of education through the use of vouchers. And right there in
Bush’s 2009 budget, what do we have? Proposed funding for a voucher program.
NCLB has failed. The task now is to replace it with a law with broader
vision, a law more supportive of public education. Hopefully Congress will be
wise enough to call for far more input from the educational community than they
did in 2002.
Today was Day One in the script of the new reading program we started this
year. Not to be confused with Monday (which, obviously, it wasn’t). Unless
school is cancelled due to bad weather, next Tuesday (Feb. 11) will Day One
again in our five day reading cycle. But our county is having an instruction
support day on February 18; students stay home that day, and when they come back
on Tuesday (Feb. 19) it will be Day Five. Day One will get bumped to
Wednesday…
Such are the joys of a scripted curriculum. We used to have spelling tests on
Fridays. Now we have them on Day Five, whatever day of the week that happens to
be. It took some getting used to, but it works okay now that everyone (including
the parents) is used to it.
I’m a member of the International Reading
Association. They have a listserv that I subscribe to and, frankly, the
concept of a scripted curriculum has taken a beating there in the last year or
so. Among the complaints:
The authors of this or that curriculum can’t really know and understand my
kids (all of whom are unique, different from other kids in the world).
A scripted curriculum curtails academic freedom (a complaint usually
accompanied with a degree of emotion).
Educators in the classroom have more “real world” knowledge of what needs
to be taught and how it needs to be presented.
You get the idea…
We’ve used our new, scripted reading curriculum (I won’t mention the company)
since the start of this school year. Personally, I think it’s a step forward
from the past. It provides a degree of continuity in an environment where a
significant number of our kids are transient and move every few months to
another school in the county. It provides some level of assurance that we are
actually implementing recent research in our reading classrooms. For example, it
scripts in tasks for building background knowledge related to a story – an
essential (but sometimes overlooked) component of comprehension. It provides
shared tools for monitoring student progress. It provides a measure of quality
control.
It also, to be candid, makes it easier for an administrator to decide whether
teachers are doing their jobs. If my boss comes in tomorrow and figures out that
we’re not on Day Two there may well be weeping and gnashing of teeth. At the
very least, some profound explanation is likely to be required. Heaven help me
if that becomes a regular occurrence. If I am at least on the right day, my boss
can now easily assess whether I am teaching the script. It is not a
word-for-word script; but it is pretty explicit as to what activities take place
today, what graphic organizers get used, how much time students are to have for
this or that activity, what assessments are to be employed, etc.
So to begin to evaluate my performance, my boss can ask a simple, immediate
question: “Is he following the script?” In the past my boss had to ask, “Is what
he’s doing working?” That was a far more difficult question to answer.
Today we started a five day “week” that emphasizes the skill of generalizing
and practices the comprehension strategy of prediction. Day One always includes
a pretest on this week’s spelling words. Day One always includes a read aloud
that develops listening skills. Our question for the week has to do with how
people adapt to their physical limitations. We introduced vocabulary for the
story. We used our SmartBoard to begin a concept web that we’ll return to
throughout the week to help reinforce background knowledge. And even though
we’re trying to impart reading skills during this time, most of this week’s
content is science oriented in our daily reading block.
I understand the complaints that people have about working with a scripted
curriculum. As we climb through the grades, I think those complaints are more
valid in high school than they are in kindergarten.
After six months with our particular reading curriculum, at the moment I’m a
fan of it. We'll see how the year finishes out...
Is the term leadership a euphemism? If so, for
what?
Since about half of America is holding a primary or a caucus today, that
question seemed relevant. I’m not sure most people know what leadership
is.
I’ve been listening to what the presidential candidates are saying about
themselves and each other over the past few weeks. One of the most interesting
discussions is between John McCain and Mitt Romney over the question of which of
them is more qualified to be president. Romney, in a nutshell, says McCain lacks
some important basic skills. Romney says that his own Harvard MBA, his business
resume and his executive experience as a state governor give him the theoretical
background knowledge and the experience needed to fix our government and
economy. John McCain’s response, basically, is that he doesn’t think Romney was
that great a governor, and that he can hire someone with a Harvard MBA and some
business experience to work for him when he becomes president. McCain says that
Romney’s background makes him a manager in a country that needs
leaders. And (surprise) McCain, of course, thinks of
himself as that leader.
Whether you agree with either of them, the discussion provides some
contrasting images of just what might constitute leadership. I think that one of
our problems in education (or in America, for that matter) is that we’re not
sure what leadership is. The fact that two men who both want to be president are
having this discussion seems to indicate that even our leaders don’t know
clearly what leadership is – or at least they don’t agree on what it is.
I think one of the problems is that leadership, whatever that is, is usually
only one component of most administrative jobs. School administrators do have to
manage. They also do have to remain educators. As basic as that sounds,
I’ve met principals who didn’t think it was their job to be an educator anymore.
They didn’t think they were obligated to keep up with the research or changes in
best practices. They thought their job was to manage and that the
school had other people who were responsible for all that educational stuff.
Heck, they’d become a principal partly because they didn’t really like education
very much!
The corollary to this is simple, but also often overlooked. You don’t have to
be an administrator to be a leader. In almost every educational environment I’ve
ever been in, some of the most effective leaders weren’t administrators; they
were just committed educators whose character and values required them to lead.
I can’t articulate a definition of leadership that satisfies me. I know what
it isn’t. I know it overlaps with many things. But I’m still looking for a
crystalline definition. I worry sometimes that because the idea is difficult to
define, people will think it is a euphemism for administration and thus miss the
real nature of leadership.
I do know that I don't have to be an administrator to be a leader.
Is it possible to prevent learning disabilities? There’s a policy push to do
just that, and it was the main focus of the 2004 revisions to the Individuals
with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
My afternoon today was consumed with meetings. When I worked at the college
level we used to joke that meetings were the logical alternative to work. But
today’s meetings were less frivolous…
Normally I spend my afternoon working through some very scripted
reading interventions with small groups of students that I pull out of their
classrooms – some fifth graders, some fourth graders, and a mixed group of first
and second graders. Today those students stayed in their classrooms, and my
afternoon was instead spent in a series of IEP meetings.
If you’re not familiar with IEP meetings, let me introduce the concept. The
acronym stands for Individualized Education Program. Students who have been
determined to have an educational disability under IDEA have an IEP, a document
that describes how their school is accommodating that disability at the
moment.
The meetings were chaired by my principal and they took place in her office.
A specialist for the central office was present today. Obviously I was in the
meetings. The classroom teacher that has the child also sat in on each meeting
and contributed to the discussions that took place. And when we’re lucky, the
child’s parent comes to the meeting. At this school, we’re generally lucky in
that way; but today we didn't have parents in most of meeting - although we'd
talked to them about what was going to happen in the meetings.
Five of the six meetings today were routine, almost formalities. We had
meetings to discuss whether a particular student needed to continue seeing this
or that specialist for a particular problem. We had two meetings to discuss the
status of a child’s disability; a requirement that comes around every three
years.
One of the meetings was not particularly routine. It was a meeting to decide
whether a particular student had a disability – whether, under IDEA 2004, they
were eligible for services as a special education student. For obvious reasons
of confidentiality, I can’t say much about the child or the meeting. But I
can tell you that the process of identifying some disabilities is vague
and slippery.
Emotional disturbance (some states call them behavior disorders) are very
real. But federal law is so vague that they are almost impossible to
legally define. Children with emotional disturbances make up only a very
small portion of those who qualify to be served under IDEA. But students who
have learning disabilities make up a much larger portion of the special
education population.
Until 2004 we had a pretty clear definition of learning disabilities. It
wasn’t a very good one. We called it the discrepancy model. It was clear as a
bell – a mathematical definition of a disability. Unfortunately, it was a time
consuming definition to satisfy and it often meant allowing a child to fail a
grade as proof that they needed help. For years we did this to kids…
IDEA 2004 came up with an entirely new definition of learning disabilities.
Conceptually, it’s rather clear. A learning disability is evidenced by the
failure of a child to respond to academic interventions designed to bring his or
her achievement up to grade level. Those are my words, not a technical quote.
The difficulty now is that we are grappling with just what those interventions
should be, and what level of response is sufficient to avoid the determination
that a child does in fact have a disability. And as a result, there’s not nearly
as much certainty in the process as there once was.
If you are an idealistic optimist you will say that one of the main goals of
the new law is to use intervention to prevent a child’s problems from ever
developing into a disability. If you are a cynic you will scoff that the new
law’s goal is just as I phrased it above - to avoid the determination that a
child has a disability, even if they really do. But either way, you are begging
the question of what actually constitutes a learning disability. It's a question
I expect to keep begging for a few years.
So I go back to my original question: Is it possible to prevent learning
disabilities?
The irony of the new law is that a breakthrough in medical research that
occurred at about the time the new law was passed challenges some of its
assumptions. Somewhere between two-thirds and four-fifths of children
classified as having learning disabilities are thought to be dyslexic. And about
the time the President signed the new law on educational disabilities, a medical
researcher published findings that showed that a dyslexia gene exists. A year
later, two more genes connected to dyslexia were discussed at a meeting of the American
Society of Human Genetics.
The question of whether we can prevent learning
disabilities may now be largely a question of whether or not we can prevent a
genetic condition. And as for identifying them, a cheek swab or simple blood
test at birth may soon accomplish that.
I suspect that the policy makers will all have to rethink learning
disabilities again soon – maybe before the 2004 revisions to IDEA even get fully
implemented in most states…
I'd be willing to bet you watched at least a little football yesterday. I'd be surprised if you didn't think about politics once or twice this weekend. Probably you did other things to relax...
Me? I watched the Game. I slept late on Saturday. The weather was nice (especially for February) so I took my dog out and played with it some. I blogged a little. My wife and I went to an auction house that we visit on a semi-regular basis. I cooked a couple of meals (I enjoy cooking). I drank a little Burgundy from a brandy snifter I got at the auction a year or two ago and read some Hemingway. We watched some TV - Numb3rs on Friday night (a whole show about math, how cool is that?), Some football on Sunday night.
How's your Inner Person? I took a graduate class a couple of years ago that used a text by Marsha Speck. The book was The Principalship: Building a Learning Community. In it she looks at the different roles a principal has to play - educator, manager, leader - and concludes that those roles are all held together, more or less, by the principal's "inner person." In her own words, "The inner person is a term used to describe the personal beliefs and internal balance that the principal needs to keep..." (p. 21). She goes on to devote a chapter to the subject and, among other things, says that the Inner Person helps to keep a balance between work and life outside of school. While Speck is writing specifically about principals (something I'm not, but might be someday), my guess is that she'd agree that the concept applies to most educators, and maybe to most people.
Did I do anything related to work this weekend? Sure. I looked over my lesson plans and touched them up. I spent a little time preparing for some meetings later today. And I mailed off some paperwork that I hope will resulted in some additional certifications being added to my license.
I'm not suggesting that I don't think about my Inner Person during the week, or that work should completely disappear on Saturdays and Sundays. But the weekend gives me some extra time to think about my Inner Person. So I'll ask again: How's your Inner Person? Speck's contention is that if you neglect your Inner Person, you probably won't be a leader for long.
While you think about that question, I'll get dressed and go to work.
I know I don’t really start until tomorrow, but I thought that I’d publish
one blog post today to try and create a little context for the things I’ll
probably say this week.
I’m a teacher. I had to make myself some business cards not long ago and I
struggled with what to put on them. Teacher is really a little
non-descript, in my mind at least. I eventually settled on “Educational
Interventionist.” That’s what I do; I intervene (as part of a larger team) in
situations where students aren’t succeeding in learning. Much of the time that
means doing the things that a special education teacher does. And after all,
that’s my actual title and my position at the moment. I’m the only special
education teacher at a very small elementary school. But the changes that were
made in 2004 to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mean that
I spend part of my day “intervening” with kids that haven’t been placed in
special education yet – and maybe will never be.
While my business card might say that I’m an Educational Interventionist, the
truth is that I’m an educator in the broadest sense. I’ve taught phonemic
awareness to kindergarten kids and math to fourth graders. I’ve worked with
special education students at the middle and secondary levels. I’ve taught a few
college classes as an adjunct. I’ve taught Sunday School at a Baptist church.
I’ve taught grammar and vocabulary to ESL students in both high school and
college. And I’ve taught senior citizens how to use a mouse and find their way
around Windows.
Along the way I’ve thought about what I do. When I took the Introduction to
Leadership at Marshall University some years ago, one of the things they
emphasized was professional reflection. I bought into that, and I suppose it is
one of the reasons I write about education (or anything else); writing helps me
reflect, helps me clarify my thoughts…
I’ve thought about why my school system can’t find the teachers it needs.
I’ve thought about how we treat students with disabilities and about why Johnny
(sometimes) can’t read. I’ve thought about vouchers and charter schools, about
scripted curriculums and the role of technology in our classrooms, about high
stakes testing and about where we go from here. And who will lead us there.
This week I hope to share some of those thoughts with you, to make you think
about what the issues really are. If you think leadership is primarily about
compliance and paperwork, about audits and personnel management, you’ll probably
find me at least vaguely annoying. If you think leadership is about vision and
purpose, about service and about shaping the future for the greater good of
society, I’d like to think you’ll find what I have to say thought provoking.
Well, I have to go get ready to watch the Super Bowl...
I have been amazed at English teachers who have figured out how to get students really excited about writing by using blogs, wikis and web pages. As a musician, I am overwhelmed by the creativity of classrooms using computer-based piano labs, midi-interfaces and software to create and edit music manuscripts in minutes that used to take me days to complete. I visit our auto-tech classes and marvel at the students’ ability to perform computer-based diagnostics and read technical manuals that are well beyond high school reading levels.
I am certain many school administrators, teachers, parents and students share this inner conflict between logic and creativity. I finally figured out the answer. It’s best captured by Rick and Becky DuFour, consultants on professional learning communities, who talk about write about the genius of “and” vs. the tyranny of “or.”
As educators … we are charged with a much more important task than responding to bureaucratic requirements - the moral responsibility to prepare students to lead successful lives. People may have different opinions about what a successful life is, but it should certainly include financial independence, competent participation in community life and positive contributions to society. Schools should at least equip students with the attitudes, perspectives, skills and knowledge that will help them find and keep a job, interact with their co-workers and neighbors and understand as well as make informed decisions about issues affecting society.
The specific attitudes, skills and knowledge schools aim to cultivate should be responsive to changes in society. What was important before may be irrelevant today …
For too long K-12 schooling has lacked an emphatic and rewarding focus on the future, even though futurism should be everyone’s “second profession.” In our bold new world of ubiquitous computing, versatile electronic books, computers as wearable items, exotic virtual reality labs and Buck Rodgers-style educational aids, we are in a good position to change this.
Given the extraordinary global challenges facing all of us, school systems must do more to help young learners master the art of horizon scanning, in all of its empowering aspects.
Over the past week we have taken some time to reflect on our process of creating a meaningful and usable framework for embedding "21st century literacy" into our school curriculum. Part 
Our work with the LT brought this to light for us. To a large degree, they trust us. And that's a great start, but to enact major curricular change, we had to first convince them of the need. We had to describe an inevitable world that required innovators, thinkers, collaborators, and communicators. One in which knowing something was less important than creating something and in which working in a group meant talking to people around the world and being able to communicate in more than one way. 
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Elementary and middle school should be about memorization. Many of my 8th graders aren’t really capable of abstract thought at this point.
As an example, I teach my 7th graders about the reconquista and about the exploration of the Americas. Yet despite repeated prompts, none of my students in 7 years have been able to connect the two things, despite my prompts about both occuring in 1492.
Let high school and college develop meaning and interconnection.