Garnering Knowledge for Teaching

Today’s brief entry comes from an odd place.  I happened upon this article about a parent protesting the use of BCE and CE instead of BC and AD for time measurements.  These are commonly used time measurements in many areas of science now and they are appearing more frequently in textbooks.  The article touches on a controversy that I see rides the line between the separation of church and state.  This topic itself must be decided on a local level and I will not weigh in on it.

However…read through the article and then look at the first comment.  Come back and see me…

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/columnists.nsf/keepthefaith/story/69A5B307BBB343478625766E000870B9?OpenDocument

Particularly the comment…

“For those who pay taxes and work in the real world, remember this: Those who can – do; those who can’t – teach. The schools should be teaching students the skills to survive in the private sector and leave the PC crap for those who choose to waste their time and money on social science degrees in college.”

I do understand that the author of this comment has a theocratic bone to pick with the system.  But I have watched with horror over the last year as this country has turned vicious and nasty over theocratic differences.

My concern with statements like that above is that the writer is denigrating teachers on mass as a population of people who cannot do anything, so they teach.  It makes the attempt of placing teachers in a lower social strata than the “hard working” people of the “real world”.  This has the effect of placing the writer in a higher social strata and thus allowing him the right to control the actions of those below him.  Since he works hard, and teachers do not, he should have more of a say in what happens in the classrooms.  Especially since he believes that the teachers are in the process of “indoctrinating” his children.

My first thought after reading this was…do people still believe that teachers do not work hard?  Did they not read my last entry?

My great sadness is that this perception of teachers not as hard working professionals but that of glorified babysitters persists in the age of Highly Qualified Teachers and National Board Certification.  I am even sadder at the thought that this misperception would engender anger and agression towards these hard working professionals.

To those who feel their rights are being violated by the government, please do not take this anger out on your child’s teacher.  She/he is a dedicated person teaching what the school district has asked her/him to teach.  These teachers go home and work hard every night on lesson plans and tracking charts.  They often have families and children of their own to raise.  They are not the enemy.  They are the hope for your child’s future and need your support.

Also, because of the new standards for teachers, most teachers will have at the minimum a BA and many now have their Masters’.  The young students I have seen come into my classrooms have been dedicated, passionate individuals with the desire to lead young minds to discovery and growth.  They enter the workforce as highly trained professionals who spend at least 2 years in a specifically designed teacher education program.  Depending on the grade level they will teach, pre-service teachers study a range of methods for teaching math, language arts, science, and/or social studies.

When was the last time you had to explain long division with fractions to someone who did not understand it?  Do you know what to do when a student is consistently having trouble including the first sound of unknown words when decoding a new sentence?  What should first graders know and understand about electricity?

Teachers can answer those questions and many more. They balance pedagogy (how to teach) and content knowledge (what to teach) with the individual strengths and needs of their students in a particular classroom for every moment of every day in school.  They present their lesson plans in detail to school administrators for scrutiny and create personal professional growth plans to maintain certification.  Teachers are amazing, multitasking, caring people who do good 25-30 kids at a time on an annual basis.  Can those who “Do” claim such a contribution to society?

Props to teachers who can and DO teach.

My thoughts for this new blog post marking my return are inspired by this story run about a month ago.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/child-left-overhaul-sights-obama-administration/Story?id=8663957&page=1

This isn’t the only story that has caught my eye in the last few weeks.  This story discusses research showing how “failing” districts using Supplemental Service funds do not appear to improve after utilizing those supplemental service and this lovely evaluation from the CATO Institute is a cautionary tale about using NAEP scores to determine the success or failure of a particular reform in the last thirty years.  It beautifully demonstrates how reformers from multiple perspectives can utilize the same national scores to support their particular reform.

Over the last 6 years I have watched the NCLB train with a mixture of curiosity and horror.  From my time as a teacher, I know that student assessment is vital to appropriate pedagogical planning.  How do you know what your students need unless you evaluate where they are developmentally and within the curriculum?  How do you know that your instruction is effective unless you find some way of discovering whether your students “got it?”  My curiosity of NCLB lies in this assessment question and in how effective it is to place centralized goals, regulations, and measurements upon a largely decentralized system.  My horror lies in the thought that the centralized regulations are designed so that by 2013, nearly every school in the country will be failing.  No matter how much progress they have made, the final goals are so unreachable, that no victories will be visible, except for a rare few schools.

So why is the current administration considering keeping NCLB?  Schools have made progress during the last few years and much good has come of the reform.  Some students from groups historically ignored by school systems, are receiving new attention from administrators and teachers.  My research has noted a change in school administrators’ thinking towards placing students with disabilities into general education classrooms.  In short, there is a move to provide real curriculum to all students and that cannot be understated or lost in the move to change what the old administration left behind.  Most policy analysts will tell you, it takes years, or decades to fully comprehend the effects of a full-scale policy implementation such as NCLB.  School administrators are just now fully internalizing the regulations of IDEA, a thirty-plus year old policy, it will take time for the good intentions of NCLB to show demonstrable and sustainable gains.

That being said, NCLB can be negotiated without being decimated.  The bathwater can be changed without the baby going out the window.  That first negotiation should concern the unreasonable AYP goals and deadlines.  Every school system has a unique set of challenges, and as long as those challenges are being addressed responsibly, that system should not be punished.  It is impossible to raise scores when districts cannot afford to fully fund a math or reading curriculum (ie: buying some books and none of the supplementary materials).  Assessment is tricky and states are spending millions of dollars to test and score and report.  Where else could that money go?  How can we hold teachers and schools and STUDENTS responsible without ripping away a month from the school year to “measure” how much students have learned?

Also, there needs to be some type of direct funding unit that feeds to school buildings and classrooms.  Politicians say they have spent record amounts on public education and the money seems to make no difference.  If that is true, I see no evidence of it when I walk through the buildings of my local city school district.  I see distress, crumbling infrastructures, recycling of everything, and much doing without.  Meanwhile, many districts with huge budget deficits, seem to boast the highest spending on superintendent salaries.  One would think that a person with a conscience would decline an obscene six figure salary while teachers and assistants are losing jobs. I am not so naive to believe that cutting administrative salaries would solve the education funding issue.  I am, however, confused as to why the money never seems to make it into the classroom, especially for large, poor districts.

Change can be good.  But, change for the sake of changing in a decade that has been nothing but change may not be the best answer.  There are many things wrong with NCLB, but there are some things that have gone right.  The Department of Education needs to ascertain what is working and make sure those pieces are preserved.  Perhaps we could model the changes for what is going wrong, after the things that are going right.  Maybe states have some ideas about how that could happen.  Have we, as a nation, taken time to listen to the people implementing this policy on the ground level?  I imagine that they would have pertinent suggestions as to how the ideas of NCLB could work and be useful to everyone, including students.

I try not to worry.  But with the current economic conditions and the further destruction of public education funding, I wonder how much can American public education take before completely falling down?  What happens if all children (going to public schools) are left behind?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/health/03rewa.html

Need to be dissertating, but I couldn’t resist a short commentary on this one.  I’ve often discussed the benefits and drawbacks of using rewards in the classroom.  I am one of those who believes that some type of reward system can be a useful tool in maintaining a positive classroom culture.  I have also seen this type of system go haywire and lose its effectiveness.  My students will tell you I think the reward should reflect the activity done to achieve the reward.  It must be a meaningful reward or it will simply be another “thing” in the child’s life.

Here are a few thoughts about some of the reward systems discussed in the article:

• Several of the rewards discussed were monetary and had to do with AP tests.  I’m not sure this is where the debate should reside.  Just getting cash for a good test seems shady to me and could encourage misappropriation.  I also feel that paying teachers for their students’ good scores, although an admirable thought, opens doors that might not be conducive to true learning.  A more reasonable approach could involve students scoring high on AP and standardized test scores would earn funding for a public college.  That would be a more appropriate reward and would maintain the focus on further learning.  Kids take the test to be able to go to college, not to get paid.
• It seems to me that paying for achievement is a frightening road to run.  Only the best and brightest would get paid and that already happens. If we want to use the work analogy, then kids should get paid for showing up.  That’s what most people get paid to do…show up and do a job for a specified period of time.  Only in upper levels are people paid more for productivity or for achieving a goal.  The general work force gets paid for their time.  Period.  So, yeah, kids go to school.  That’s their job.  But there are other ways to help them see that besides paying them.  That’s why kids strive to eventually become adults, to finally earn their own money and be independent.  Isn’t that the real goal of education?  To produce independent, productive, adult citizens of this United States?
• There is a real question here of how can we make academic achievement more palatable to our students?  How can we help them understand the intrinsic rewards we are always blathering on about?  What does that really mean?  Have we structured our educational system to reward all thinkers and inspire children to WANT to do more?  We are just now moving away from a system that waits for children to fail before they receive some kind of special attention.  We are still burdened with a punitive system of accountability that only offers normalcy for those who achieve high standards and spends time and energy on punishments for those who do not.
• Do we really want to employ a business model that rewards the top 2% of the corporation with unimaginable wealth and rewards workers on the bottom level by allowing them to keep their jobs? Our culture has already seen the devastating effects of a materialistic society gone wild.  Money can’t be the answer.  There just isn’t enough of it to go around.  But what about freedom?  What about earning responsibility?  Who would work for the opportunity to determine what your next project would be instead of having it handed to you?  What if rewards were appropriated based on individual goal achievement instead of being at the top of the class?  Those who feel progress=victory will not like an arrangement of such equanimity.  But, what if our children are ready to see the playing field leveled out just a bit?  To see the system tip away from what you can get and towards what you can do would make too much sense.

In my classroom, I often had rewards available such as additional reading time, or computer time (which involved an educational exercise of some sort), or some free time (a truly valuable commodity in an elementary classroom). To me, rewards were a celebration of a goal completed or a recognition that a student has been making good choices.  I used little slips of paper and verbal praise to constantly reward my students and let them know I noticed when they worked and tried.  The little rectangles of paper had some celebration of the student and a place for her/his name.  They placed the papers in a box in the back of the classroom and on Friday we drew names.  Those who got their names drawn were able to choose from the rewards I mentioned above.  Sometimes I included tangibles such as pencils, books or other educational supplies.   Sometimes I would award a student with free time or reading time outright for a particular achievement.  My students understood that everyone was on their own footing.  I did not expect Sue to achieve exactly the same way that Jan did, but I did expect her to improve from where she was.  They were learning self-management skills and how to reward themselves for their own achievements and how to delay gratification for that reward.  These are all necessary adult skills to be independent.

I have to agree that we can’t set up a system where our students expect reward for all of their achievements.  Unless you are already in the upper 5% of the population, that will most likely not happen in the real world after school.  We can, however, set up a system that mirrors what we would like our society to be.  One that rewards hard work with choice and freedom and those rewards in turn allow a person to achieve for their own purposes. “Crazy talk” one might say.

My big question is, how can we do that in a society that produces “Marry a Millionaire”, “My Super Sweet 16″, and “Real Housewives of Orange County”?  We revel in excess.  We wallow in it and flaunt it as a society and make it seem as if this represents a large number of our citizens.  But in reality, 97% of us do not live those lives and have NO CHANCE of ever living those lives.  How can we make our culture more reflective of its people and less reflective of its elite?   When will we draw our young students’ eyes away from the bling they see and desire, to something more achievable, sustainable, and tangible to them?

To no surprise my thoughts are inspired by the NYT Education Desk.  I am a big supporter of the news they get out about education.

I was busy last week and missed this in the Times.  Some days I just can’t get around to reading the online paper.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/health/24well.html

Essentially, in last month’s Pediatrics journal, a study demonstrated that young students studied (ages 8 and 9) who had 15 minutes of recess during the school day, showed better behavioral control than those who did not.

I don’t want to be rude here, but duh.

I’ve been touting the wonders of recess for years to my teacher education students.  They hear my mantra of “kids need a little bit of unstructured time to their day.”  PE does NOT substitute for recess because it is still a structured activity that requires students to follow an instructor.  Recess, on the other hand, is a free form activity that allows all students to act as they wish (in accordance to the general rules of the playground of course.)  It is the one moment of the day when kids can truly choose their own actions without the guidance of an adult.  It is their moment to be themselves, and breathe, and exist as free boys and girls.  They can talk as much and to whomever they choose, they can run, or walk, or just stand if they like.

I found that my public school students (who were always students with IEPs) had a sense of renewal after we took a little time outside.  It was a chance to run and sometimes scream when the inside voice was just not expressive enough.  After a few moments of swinging and sliding and simply being themselves, they were more open to returning to the work at hand.  Honestly, we don’t ask many adults to work under the pressure or circumstances in which we ask children.  Although they need the stimulation, they also need some processing time.  I’ve always believed recess provided that.

The study in Pediatrics finally gives me evidence that my belief is a valid educational concern.  Although I don’t feel that everything we do must be backed by a scientific study, it always helps to have one available in case one is required to support a position.

I feel sad when my students come to me and say their students do not get recess time or much of any undirected time.  How do children learn to manage their own time and create their own meanings when they do not get opportunities to do so?  We have been pushed into the belief that accountability only means test scores and intensive core subjects time.  However, how are we accountable to the student who can do well when fed this information, but has no concept of how to engage with it on his own?  Kids need time! They need time to process, file away information, create new schemas for new information, and then organize all of that information in time for the next batch to be served up.  It is a lot for a growing brain and although we are built for such activities, we also need to give that growing brain a fighting chance to hang on to the information recently stored.  Sleep does most of this work but It seems little breaks through the day help.  I know they help me.

Time needed to absorb and time to comprehend are not things that come easily in a classroom focused on the big test coming up. I am hoping the new administration is able to make the NCLB laws more sensible and meaningful, so that practice can reflect that.  But in the meanwhile, just give the kids some recess will ya?

I just read a NYT article describing a private high school that utilizes a new (well, new to me)  theraputic system that seems to offer some fascinating options for educating students who have a diagnosis within the Autism Spectrum Disorder(ASD). The method is an interesting combination of Montessori and Dewey and I can see how it would fit the needs of many students with ASD.

But also, just thinking about the methodology used in this article made me think about the students with milder forms of ASD who are in elementary classrooms now.  No, we can’t necessarily encourage their insistence that they spend the day engaged in an obsession, but how can you take that obsession (or focus of the day) and make it work for you as a teacher?  I remember using those interests of my students with ASD as rewards for doing what I wanted them to do.  It worked because they were willing to work to get time to make a choice about what THEY wanted.

I realized though, that a lot of times, just giving my kids a choice, gave them the motivation they needed to do the task at hand.  I always wanted to try and build on the strengths of my students and that often meant giving them an opportunity to explore their interests (obsessions, foci, whatever it is).  Allowing them to push out against the world a bit and figure things out on their own.  It’s with time away from the classroom that I can see the power of a philosophy of choice.

But seriously, how does one extend that beyond a classroom of 10 students?  How do we apply it on a mass scale?

The sadness of the modern public classroom is that there is no room for catering to the curiosity of the child.  No room in the 2hr scripted literacy period for a child to even voice a preference, much less explore one.  It’s all about the teacher and the book and the test.  But, my teacher friends, I believe that at some point, this too shall pass and some rational form of education will take its place.

Here’s an interesting example of what I see as a rational option in educating students who really need a new way of accessing success in school.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/magazine/19Autism-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

Now that we have seen the debates, it’s time to examine the education policies.  I’m fascinated that education, which once seemed like a top priority issue, has taken a backseat to many other issues.

It is understandable that the economy has taken center stage.  All policies will be affected by the coming economic fallout. But we also need to understand where our future leader intends to take the education system and more specifically, NCLB.

If you are undecided, here are the links.  If you have made up your mind, do you know what your canidate advocates?  Here is your chance to find out.

Obama/Biden campaign

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/

McCain/Palin campaign

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/issues/19ce50b5-daa8-4795-b92d-92bd0d985bca.htm

I may make this a regular feature. Some interesting offerings this week. Some news sites require you to sign up (like the New York Times) but are non-invasive.

Local news:

Lansing School Board reacts to district restructuring plan.

A beautifully written editorial from a local teacher

Other news

New teaching style in Oregon helps English Language Learners

Are teachers ready for 21st Century Learning? Teacher Magazine…requires brief registration

California State Appellate Court says home-schooling must be done by a credentialed teacher.

Who’s hiring teachers at $125,000/yr? NewYork Times requires a registration

An interesting catch from Allison L. about a teacher fighting illiteracy-directly.

Cash rewards for good grades?