Time has an interesting article on five ways to reform teaching.

It wisely avoids the ugliness going on in Wisconsin right now, much of which, or so I believe, has little to do with teaching itself.

Here is are the five areas that Time argues need to be seriously discussed and revised.

#1. Restrictions on evaluation.
Provisions in teachers contracts limit who can do evaluations, how often, and even specify how much notice a teacher must be given prior to being observed. In most professional workplaces, by contrast, evaluation is ongoing and both formal and informal. It's the same way in many high-performing schools where evaluation is a regular and continuous part of the improving process. Classroom "visits are not just more numerous but dramatically so" in the best schools says Tim Daly, President of The New Teacher Project, a non-profit that recruits teachers and analyzes education policy. In those schools, instead of "zero one or two [visits] it's 30-40 per year," according to Daly.

I agree that evaluations are vital.  But I'm also amazed at how for much of my career here (up until two years ago), once I reached tenured status, I was hardly evaluated.  In fact, when our new principal approached me with the observation checklist, he pointed to my name and the year 2006 and asked if this was a joke.

I assured him that it wasn't.

This is not simply the union's fault.  Principals and administration need to make a serious effort to not only evaluate their teachers but also give them serious feedback.  Our new principal and I sat down for nearly 45 minutes and had a great talk about how I can improve.

That's vital.

Nearly every other time in the past, I sat down with admin but it was just a cursory effort.  It had all of the feeling of "let's get this eval out of the way so we don't have to do it again for six years."

That's not effectiveness.

Oddly enough, this year I've been observed more times than ever before.  Gene Stuekel observes me twice a year for the MN History Grant I'm in.  I had a college student observe me for part of a college class.  I was observed twice by a recent college graduate who is going to be teaching high school English.  Our principal has stopped in - usually unannouced - often.  In fact, I had him and our superintendent in class last week to witness some of my College Comp II students' multi-media presentations.  I have had other teachers come in to discuss articles pertinent to my classes as well.

As far as I'm concerned, observations and evaluations are vital.  But I can't argue that once you get your tenure, they rarely happen in a majority of our schools.

As far as getting notice ahead of time, I find that a foolish argument.  If a teacher is doing poorly, you hardly need an evaluation to find that out.  Pull five kids in and ask them their opinions and then ask them to bring in their home work assignments from that class.  There's some good proof right there.  Stand outside their classroom and listen to the learning that is taking place.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out when great teaching is happening and when it isn't.

Fixing that - and have administration with the guts to tackle it head on - is another matter entirely.  And that can't just be blamed on unions and contracts.

#2. Last in, first out.
With layoffs looming policies that require "last in, first out" are hotly debated around the country. These rules, which can be found in both state law and union teachers' contracts, require that teachers be laid-off according to seniority only, without attention to classroom effectiveness. In other words, when layoffs happen newer teachers - who in some cases still have several years of experience - are let go first even if they're more effective than the veteran displacing them. These policies would make sense if veterans were always better than newer teachers but abundant research shows clearly that longevity alone is not a great predictor of effectiveness. Last month civil rights groups won a landmark court decision in Los Angeles changing how layoffs and seniority rulers work there but just this week an arbitrator in Hartford Connecticut - a city lauded by national leaders including Arne Duncan as a model for labor-management collaboration - ruled in favor of using "last in, first out" there. Bottom line: In any organization that is serious about effectiveness quality-blind layoffs are nothing short of insane. 

To some extent, this is foolish.  I agree.  The most effective should be retained.  Without a doubt.  But there is something to be said for seniority.  But if you don't have effective evaluations, then I guess you are left with the "last in, first out" scenerios.

But I will go on record and say that there is a lot of talk about new teachers being the most effective.  Or at least that's how it appears (thanks to Rhee and Vallas).  I highly doubt this.  Sure, new teachers often have great momentum and work ethic, but they lack vital experience.

I was a hundredth of the teacher I am now when I first started teaching.  I get more accomplished in two months now than I did all year when I was a rookie.

Now that's not true of all young teachers certainly.  But it's true of many.  Just think back to anything you do in your life.  When are you most effective? The trial effort or the hundredth time you've done it?

I'm not saying there aren't teachers just pantoming their way through classes either waiting for their retirements.  But, come on, that's true of every industry or company in America.

Another issue to seriously think about before we annoint the rookies as the cream of the crop, look at how many young teachers have coaching commitments dumped on them.  I don't care what anyone says, if you coach, you are not as effective of a teacher as you would be if you didn't coach.  How could you possibly be given all the extra responsibilities that you have?

I've seen opponents of veteran teachers (namely Vallas in New Orleans) argue that teachers should only teach for five years and then get out.  That's just ridiculous.  In fact, many do just that because they are beaten down by the system.

Vallas argues (well, maybe implies is a better verb) that if you marry and have kids, you are - like a coach - subject to responsibilities and commitments that take away from your duties as a teacher.

I don't buy that.  If I'm a head coach of a winter or spring sport, how much time am I going to miss getting out of school to travel to away games?  Add those days up.  Then add up how much actual school time you might miss (other than maternity leave) for having a baby or a family.

And think of this issue in reverse.  How many school districts will bring in a master teacher at the top of the salary scale when they could bring in two rookie teachers for the same price?  This very issue was raised in my home town when we were going to bring in the best high school math teacher we have ever had.  A school board member remarked, "You know for his salary, we could hire two first year math teachers."  That's true.  But odds are those math teachers would not be as good as the veteran math teacher that school did hire.

#3.
Forced transfers and "bumping."
Every organization recognizes seniority in different ways. But frequently in education seniority confers a set of powerful rights when it comes to transferring to new schools. In practice this means veterans can bump teachers with less seniority when jobs open up or that principals are limited in who they can choose from when filling positions. In other words teachers can force their way in to a school. When The New Teacher Project analyzed this practice, they found that the policy contributed to newer teachers leaving teaching. But parents don't need a wonky report to get the basic problem here: Shouldn't individual schools get to decide who teaches in them? 

Yes.  Schools should get to decide who teaches in them.  But this very thing happened here.  We had a math teacher who was going to get cut.  Luckily, one of our colleagues decided to save his job and move on to an open position at the middle school.  The middle school was lucky enough to get one of the best math teachers (and one of the most motivated and passionate teachers I know) come work for them.  So this 'bumping' is not always a nightmare scenario.

#4. Tenure and due process rules.
Earlier this month an arbitrator in Washington, D.C. gave 75 teachers - including chronically absent and demonstrably low-performing ones - their jobs back over a technical due process issue. Reformers groaned but union leaders applauded. Long considered a "third rail" of education policy tenure is now under attack in a number of states where various rules are found as part of both state law and in collective bargaining agreements. It's hard to find someone who doesn't think teachers, and other workers, should have due process before losing their job. What actually constitutes "due process" is a more contentious issue but even teachers union leaders agree that in many cases the rules are out of hand.  

Oh boy. There is no doubt tenure is under attack, and for good reason.  I am not a fan of tenure, but - as a colleague put it this fall - what would happen if a school district wants to save money and lets an excellent veteran teacher at the top of the salary scale go in order to hire two new teachers (who could prove to be excellent teachers in their first years . . . or they could be quite terrible too).  I would like to think the school board would be loyal to an excellent teacher, but I don't put much faith in that.

Here is a post on tenure that I wrote previously that delves into this issue more. 

#5. Inflexible Salary Schedules.

Today teachers are overwhelmingly paid based on two factors, length of service and degrees. Salaries are based on master schedules with columns for degrees and rows for years of service so a teacher moves across lanes and up the steps as their career progresses. Most professions pay more for experience but there is little evidence that most additional degrees improve teaching. More problematic is what's missing: differentiation based on how challenging teaching assignments are, hard-to-fill subjects like math, science, special education or foreign languages, and how effective teachers are in the classroom. The rules of economics don't stop at the schoolhouse door and school superintendents privately complain about having to pay physical education teachers and physics teachers the same amount even though it's easier to find coaches than physicists. Hard to find a better example of something that works great for the adults in the system but not so well for the kids schools are supposed to serve.

I agree with the last sentence.  But what is the solution?  Pay for performance?  There is more than enough data to prove that pay for performance doesn't work.  There is enough evidence too to support the fact that most teachers don't have an advanced degree in the subjects they teach (the implication is that the teacher just got a quick MA to get to the top of the salary scale, but that is not always the case).  There might also be some interesting data to examine whether or not having your MA in your content area really makes you a better teacher.  I mean college professors have advanced degrees, and how many professors did you have in college that you would rate as 'good'?

I don't think you can fault teachers for wanting to get to the top of their salary scales by getting an MA.  What other professionals wouldn't want to do the same?  

Here is a link to my thoughts on this. 

Fixing education is not a simple task.  But here is my two cents worth.

First, hire the best and the brightest.  But, my opponents will counter with what if the best and brightest don't even go in to teaching because of the poor pay.  I counter with, if you go into teaching for the pay, I don't want you teaching my kids.  Teaching is a calling and a mission.  You can't put a price tag on that.  But let's start treating the profession like it's a calling and a mission instead of treating like it has been for years - "anyone can teach" (thus the move toward non-certified teachers).  

Part of this first issue is athletics.  How many teachers are not hired because they can't coach a sport or two?  School districts have to get serious about what they want: competitive athletic programs or strong academic programs.  Sure these don't have to mutually exclusive in larger areas where you might be able to get a couple coaches from the community, but in small town America that just isn't the reality.  Thus we hire teachers who can coach.  Sometimes maybe they aren't the best for the job, but they fill two slots instead of just one.  And then we dump all the responsibility on them.  New teachers usually teach the classes the veterans don't want.  So they are burned there.  Then they have coaching eating into their work time.  So they are burned there.

This cycle should end if we really want to fix education.  But do we?

Second, get administrators who are not, as Michelle Rhee found out when she took over the school district in Washington, D.C., "conflict adverse."  It's easier to pass a bad teacher a long just like it's easier to pass a poor performing student a long, but at what cost? A long with getting administrators who are willing to hold teachers accountable, let's find a better way to evaluate teachers.

Third, improve professional development for teachers.  As it stands most professional development is a joke.  If you teach, you know this is true.  Sit in an auditorium and listen to some hired gun fire you up for two hours and then you leave and go back to your class and do what you did before.  This is the teacher equivalent of a multiple choice test.  You get some great info, but it oozes out your ear the minute you walk out the door.

Have teachers teach teachers.  Encourage team teaching.  Allow teachers to visit with professors and other community members to build programs and connections.  Encourage teachers to implement technology and experiment.  Put an end to high stakes testing that force all kids to learn basic skills.  Instead, allow kids to find their passions early on in school.  Then design a middle and high school experience that is designed to the individual kid to allow delve into their passions.  When you love what you do, it suddenly stops feeling like school or work.  Why do you think so many kids poor so much time in to video games and computers or even work outside of school?  Tap in to that and bring it in to our classes.

Now, that doesn't sound too hard does it? 

.

Friedman is Right, Yet Again

End our addiction to oil, now!

Friedman hits the nail on the head again.

No one is rooting harder for the democracy movements in the Arab world to succeed than I am. But even if things go well, this will be a long and rocky road. The smart thing for us to do right now is to impose a $1-a-gallon gasoline tax, to be phased in at 5 cents a month beginning in 2012, with all the money going to pay down the deficit. Legislating a higher energy price today that takes effect in the future, notes the Princeton economist Alan Blinder, would trigger a shift in buying and investment well before the tax kicks in. With one little gasoline tax, we can make ourselves more economically and strategically secure, help sell more Chevy Volts and free ourselves to openly push for democratic values in the Middle East without worrying anymore that it will harm our oil interests. Yes, it will mean higher gas prices, but prices are going up anyway, folks. Let’s capture some it for ourselves. 

Good Old Alfie

Alfie Kohn is one of my heroes in education.  Though he is more liberal in his education beliefs than I, he still does a great job questioning the status quo, especially when it comes to grades and high stakes testing.

I came across this link to one of his best articles, "Confusing Harder With Better."

In his essay,  Kohn questions our insistence upon more rigor and higher standards.  Is this good?  What do these things really mean?  Are we just pouring on the work just to say we have higher standards?  How about making our students work smarter and not harder?

Here are some of my favorite passages -

"The intellectual life is being squeezed out of classrooms, schools are being turned into giant test-prep centers, and many students - as well as some of our finest educators - are being forced out."

How much attention is truly paid to the intellectual life of students?  How often do we look at them as co-learners or - gasp - learners from which we could learn something?

"When you watch students slogging through textbooks, memorizing lists, being lectured at, and working on isolated skills, you begin to realize that nothing bears a greater responsibility for undermining educational excellence than the continued dominance of traditional instruction."

How much time do we have our students do these things? 

"In short, maximum difficulty isn't the same as optimal difficulty."

I think this is all about having students work smarter and not just harder.  A great example of this was my first theme for College Comp 2.  I gave students the choice of doing a multi-media project (an iMovie or slideshow or blog) or writing a traditional essay.  Those who did the paper, did just fine, but they didn't really push themselves.  However, those who chose to create blogs or iMovies, absolutely poured themselves into the work.  And they learned far more than I ever could have hoped.  I'm not called to do away with essays, but a balance of different types of work is not a bad thing. 

"We have to look at the whole method of instruction, the underlying theory of learning, rather than just quibbling about how hard the assignment is or how much the students must strain."

The theory of learning?  When did we ever study that in depth in college?  I had two excellent methods classes, but - for the most part- my education classes (measurement and evaluation, human relations, discipline . . .) were ridiculously inadequate to what I encountered on my first day of real teaching.  Why for a person who spends so much time getting students to learn, did I have to basically teach myself about it?

"If kids are going to be forced to learn facts without context, and skills without meaning, it's certainly handy to have an ideology that values difficulty for its own sake."

This passage reminds me of the great quote from Linda Darling-Hammond: "If we taught babies to talk as most skills are taught in school, they would memorize lists of sounds in a predetermined order and practice them alone in a closet."



"Beyond the issue of how many of us could meet these standards is an equally provocative question: How many of us need to know this stuff -- not just on the basis of job requirements but as a reflection of what it means to be well-educated? Do these facts and skills reflect what we honor, what matters to us about schooling and human life?  Often, the standards being rammed into our children's classrooms are not merely unreasonable but irrelevant.  It is the kinds of things students are being forced to learn, and the approach to learning itself, that don't ring true.  The tests that result -- for students and sometimes for teachers -- are not just ridiculously difficult but simply ridiculous."

I love the idea (and this was proven by two of my College Comp 2 students in their great video, "Are You Smarter than a Millennial?") that how many adults could pass the standards we impose on children.  I'm not opposed to having younger generations learn new skills, but we always seem to have a sense of talking down to kids when we focus on what they don't know.  But do we ever examine what we don't know?

If a student - or better yet - a group of students would learn from planning, raising funds for, designing, and then building a memorial to Iraqi war veterans in their local community. To top it off, students could advertise and design a celebration to unveil the memorial.   This could incorporate a myriad of disciplines - math, business, history, sociology, science, English, advertising, music, tech writing . . .  heck, it might involve every single discipline offered in the school!


Now, students could do that - and think of all that they'd learn - or students could read a chapter in their books about the Iraqi war and then take a test.  Or they could study other skills in isolated classes.  But how much more effective would it be if they could put all of that knowledge and all of those skills into actual practice.  Talk about hands-on and real world skills!

But you can't pass a high stakes test that way and keep your school off AYP that way.

It's a damn shame.

Impact on Education

Here is a list of the top 12 Presidents to impact education.  It's worth a read.

Steven Johnson

Author of Everything Bad is Good for You.

Now this is a great example of Juxtaposition

Talk about two polar opposites - evolution and religion.

But this article, "Why Evolution Should be Taught in Church," is a most interesting read. If creationism can be taught in school, what would happen if evolution were to be taught in church?

Now, regardless of how you feel about the issues involved, you can't deny that that is a most interesting question!

One of my favorite passages comes from his segment arguing why one should attend church - But I would like to suggest that, ultimately, people go to church because of mystery. This is not mystery in the sense of Whodunit?, or “What makes a rainbow so pretty?”; instead, this is the very mystery of existence itself; it is the bare fact of us showing up, without even having been asked, on this loneliest of planets in this strangest of universes. All people who attend church—conservative, liberal, whatever—do so, at least in part, because of mystery. They may never use that word, but there it is nonetheless.

Another favorite section is this -

It is under this second understanding of the church that its teaching of evolution makes a lot of sense.

My earliest experiences that could be called “religious” were delivered to me by the hands of science. When I was in third or fourth grade my dad showed me a geologic timeline in a Time-Life book on natural history. My eyes followed its epochs, periods, eras, and eons down the page until they converged on the dark Hadean eon, marking Earth’s very assembly 4.5 billion years ago.

I was stupefied. With its boxes and numbers and colors and fine print the timeline seemed to me a thing of great elegance. The words—Ordovician, Silurian, Jurassic, Eocene—were themselves rare discoveries, whatever they signified. Yet standing at the edge of that precipice was, for me, secretly scary. It was profoundly disorienting. It made me feel utterly empty, like I was an absolute nothing. Like I was a ghost.

But it also made me feel giddy, joyful, and free. I could not take my eyes from it. Night after night, I took the Time-Life book to bed with me and I read it until I could read no more.

This quiet but transformative introduction to deep time started me off on a terrific three-year-long obsession with dinosaurs and evolution and geology and astronomy. Other encounters with nature had similar effects on me: They made me feel empty, terrified, and utterly happy and free; and I wound up being a physicist and astronomer. And the irony is, it was science and the natural world—and not the church—that introduced me to mystery. Or, to be more direct, it was science and the natural world—and not the church—that introduced me to God.

For his experience is a little like this one that my grandmother exposed me to.  Truth be told, this little exercise that my grandmother conducted for me taught me to believe in God more than any talk with my father (though they were wonderful) or lesson in CCD or sermon in church.

“Okay,” Granny said from the other side of her cramped one bedroom apartment at Fairview Manor.  “Just tape the end of the paper to my back door.”

I pressed my thumb to the green metal door at the back of her kitchen.  The slice of Scotch tape held firm - two feet below the peep and just a little to the left of the imposing deadbolt lock.

“Now come to the front door,” Granny called from the living room.
 
I followed the roll of old white calculator tape as it snaked its way out of the kitchen, over the dining room table where it nearly snagged in the fake bowl of plastic fruit in the middle, around the green leather recliner, and finally past the TV. 
 
Granny stood at her front door.  She had spent the past few minutes drawing and writing on the roll of paper before propping the pencil behind an ear.  She held the dwindling roll of paper in one hand and a single strip of tape in the other.  Then - wincing just a bit from her arthritis - she gripped the paper with her swollen hands and with a sharp yank from her bulging knuckle, she tore the paper free from the roll, which she then tucked into her front pocket.  Then she applied the Scotch tape, adhering the other end to the front door.
 
“Now this will help us view earth’s history in perspective.  The piece you stuck to the back door is the beginning of the earth.  The piece I stuck to the front door is present day,” she instructed.
 
I turned and looked at the tape as it stretched back over the TV, by the recliner, past the fake bowl of fruit, and around the corner into the kitchen where it disappeared.
 
“Now let’s walk back and check the marks,” she said. 
 
Looking closer at the tape, I realized, sure enough, there were pencil marks several feet apart on the paper. 
 
“These, my dear,” Granny said in the tone that meant she was teaching me something important, “are all the eras in earth’s history.” 
 
She stopped at the dinning room table, where the first era in earth’s history ended. Granny pulled out a chair.  She bent down to my perspective and said, “Look at the beginning of the things.”
 
I did.
 
“As you can see,” Granny said from beside me, “the longest period in earth’s history, the Precambrian period, lasts all the way from the back door to the dining table here.  That was the period the earth was cooling and preparing for life.   Imagine each foot of tape is - oh - a thousand million years.”
 
“But most of the tape is taken up by it!”
 

 
I couldn’t believe my eyes.  So much white tape where there was no life on earth at all!  It certainly put my measly five years on it in perspective.
 
Granny noticed my awe.  She gave it a few seconds to sink in.  Then she spoke in my ear.  “That is why I think God created life on earth.”
 
I turned to look at her.
 
She put her thin, but firm arm around me and said simply, “It must have been so terribly lonely.”
 
That made sense to me.
 
“Now, come with me,” she said close to my ear and moved from the table.  We inched our way along the tape, leaving that stretch of 10 or 12 feet of empty time behind us.
 
 “Things began to change,” she said as I looked at the strange words scrawled onto the tape.  “More complex forms of life began to flourish.  The Precambrian era ended and the Paleozoic began.  At this point it is believed that all of the continents were joined into one large landmass.  It was at this point that the dinosaurs – your favorites – began to arise.”
 
We then ventured a little farther, stopping in front of the TV.  “Here is your favorite period.”
 
From all the hours Granny spent reading me articles from the National Geographics and buying me a small horde of plastic dinosaurs, I knew she was right.  I looked on top of the TV and saw that she had placed my favorites - T-Rex and Stegosaurus - on top next to the word “Jurassic.” 
 
“See how long this period lasted?”
 
I nodded as I saw the more recent eras blocked off into shorter periods that only measured a few inches.  Things were getting interesting now.
 
“During the Cretaceous period, the dinosaurs began to die out.”
 
I followed the tape over the TV and the bookshelf, where several dinosaurs were tipped over.  I nodded as I realized I was witnessing the downfall of the dinosaurs.
 
“But it seems like the dinosaurs lived so long ago,” I said, eyeing the tape as it was quickly running out, for the front door was just a few inches away.  “We’re almost at the end!”
 
Granny cracked a broad smile.
 
“Okay, stand here at the front door,” she said steering me toward it.  “This marks the most current era in earth’s history where the earth cooled because of the Ice Age and homo sapiens came into the picture.”
 
“But you don’t have anything written down for them . . . I mean us!”
 
“Just wait,” she said.  “From our place in the present, look back at all of earth’s history.”
 
I followed the tape from the front door over the bookshelf and to the TV.  So much for the dinosaurs. 
 
Then I watched as it wound toward the dining room table.  The Paleozoic era.
 
Finally, I saw how the majority of the tape belonged to the blank – and mostly lifeless -- Precambrian era.  Indeed, how lonely it must have been for all those years.
 
“So where are we?”  I asked, turning back to the front door and peering at the tape.
 
Granny gave me her I-am-glad-you-asked-me-that smile and snatched the pencil out from behind her ear.
 
“We my dear,” she said with the pencil poised, ”are right here.”
 
With a flick of her wrist, she snapped the thinnest of lines across the very edge of the tape.  It was so slight that I had to look close to even see it.
 
“That’s it?”
 
 “Yep.  There’s not even enough room to write homo sapiens.”
 
I stared at the line.
 
“So whenever we like to think we humans are so high and mighty,” she said grinning and propping the pencil back behind her ear, “just remember our little lesson here.”

 

Texas Revisited

Here is one review of Texas' new history standards (by a conservative institute - no less!).

Complex historical issues are obscured with blatant politicizing throughout the document. Biblical influences on America’s founding are exaggerated, if not invented. The complicated but undeniable history of separation between church and state is flatly dismissed. From the earliest grades, students are pressed to uncritically celebrate the “free enterprise system and its benefits.” “Minimal government intrusion” is hailed as key to the early nineteenth-century commercial boom—ignoring the critical role of the state and federal governments in internal improvements and economic expansion. Native peoples are missing until brief references to nineteenth-century events. Slavery, too, is largely missing. Sectionalism and states’ rights are listed before slavery as causes of the Civil War, while the issue of slavery in the territories—the actual trigger for the sectional crisis—is never mentioned at all. During and after Reconstruction, there is no mention of the Black Codes, the Ku Klux Klan, or sharecropping; the term “Jim Crow” never appears. Incredibly, racial segregation is only mentioned in a passing reference to the 1948 integration of the armed forces.

They just left out much of what I remember (and found interesting) about history!  But apparently I grew up reading liberal history texts that gave way too much ink to those darn minorities and all the other whiners and victims throughout our history.

Again, as stupid as it is to push an agenda in history texts, it is almost impossible.  One of my favorite history professors really helped me to clarify the concept of history when he said, "We don't study history itself; instead we study people's interpretations of history."

Texas has certainly given us their version of history. 

But that is one of the great things about history - there are so many different interpretations and views!  Even our local history here tells us that.  If you were a Native American, you likely had a different a different view of history than that of the settlers who encroached on your land.  If you were a new immigrant, you likely had a different view of history than that of the settlers.  If you were a woman, you likely had a different view of history than that of your husband and his friends.  

It seems logical to me to strive to study as many perspectives as possible, as opposed to focusing just on any specific one.

If I taught history in Texas, the first thing I'd have my kids looking for would be the biases written in to the text and the important events left out!  That type of assignment can fit either conservative or liberal views.  Plus, it gets kids to think critically about what they are being told. 

The danger with all history, though, is that we all want to remember our pasts as we want to remember them, not necessarily as they really happened.  But we can't afford to teach our children just the history that we want them to know.  

So what happens when the report comes out?  Does it lead to debate or discussion and revision?

Of course not!  This is America.  It simply leads the supporters of the curriculum change to undermine the report.  Here is what the Liberty Institute had to say


This attack comes from a group funded in part by the liberal Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, but I must admit I am still embarrassed for them in their inaccuracies, even with their clear bias,” said Kelly Shackelford, president/CEO for Liberty Institute. “Texans are not impressed by some education elitist ‘think tank’, with left-wing funding and an agenda, launching bombs from Washington, D.C., aimed at Texas. This attack was baseless, inaccurate, biased, and ineffectual.

Is it me, or does that blurb fail to solve anything?  It simply dismisses the report!  The first half seems to try to undermine the report by attacking those who funded it.  The latter half an us vs. them rant.  But you have to love the rhetoric, don't you.

The report is labeled an 'attack' that features 'inaccuracies' and 'clear bias.'  That's really too rich, isn't it?  Given what the textbooks are leaving out?


Furthermore, the writer assumes that all Texans side with her (that trick is the oldest one in the rhetoric book!) by claiming that "Texans are not impressed"  and of course the writer makes it seem like the good old country bumpkin', Bible thumping Texans are under attack ("launching bombs") by those nefarious "left-wing" evil-doers.  

This is not surprising at all given the polarizing times in which we live.  God forbid, there be any gray in the world!  But I think it would be a great PhD topic to study the war and terrorism rhetoric used by politicians (both sides of the political spectrum).  When did we all become so volatile? 

I wonder what this guy and his wonderful book, Lies My Teacher Told Me would have to say about all of this? 

At odds, really?

WASHINGTON – Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top scientist's video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn't degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor.

That report is at odds with a recent report by the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012.

Really? A large company is at odds with a report that challenges their findings? Amazing.

Big government scares me. But big business frightens me even more.

What I love about the BP post spill clean up spots on the radio is that you listen to them and their rhetoric is so perfect - "We are looking for oil. We have thousands of workers ready to clean it up when we find it . . ." all of that makes it appear to the casual listener that the oil is totally gone.

What spill? What ramifications for the environment and local economies?

The microbes ate it all up naturally.

Everything is Stupider in Texas

First, they alter the history taught in their high school textbooks. Now they seek to allow weapons on college campuses.

Brilliant!

I mean, this man is their leader?

At

At least he makes Venture seem sane!

One of the Highlights of the Year

What a compliment!

More of that darned Edutainment

How cool is this?



One of my College Comp II students shared this video from the blog she created for class. It's quite awesome!

The Science Guy has a great line . . . "If you can get it to the dinner table, you've won." I like that. If a teacher can get something they said or did in class to become the subject of dinner conversation, then you've won. Not that much of what I teach gets to the dinner table conversation of my students (presuming that they even sit down to eat dinner anymore), but it's a noble goal.

Camouflage?

Hopefully, this will be the only camouflage outfit Cash ever gets.  My two biggest fears are that he grows up to be a hockey player and a hunter!

As Boring As We Want to Be

"The systems are analog and the students are digital" -- Congressman George Miller.



Consider this my mission statement for the 2011 school year.

I have heard it so often for so long now that it's become the mantra of my students: school is boring; it isn't relevant; we do what we have to in order to get our "A" and then we let the 'knowledge' ooze out our ears as we walk out the door after we fill in the bubble test . . .

At the same time, I hear colleagues lament how entitled these students are, how they can't relate to what we have to offer them, how just won't work.

They want us to entertain them; we want to educate them.

But are 'entertainement' and 'education' mutually exclusive?

A colleague often voices his derision over the newly coined term, "edutainment."  He makes some great points - what will happen when they get out in the real world and their employers aren't willing to entertain them?  What will happen when they get to college and have to survive a freshmen chemistry class of 600 and all their professor does is lecture and give a mid-term and final?  What will happen when they tire of the newest form of edutainment (ooh, great . . . We have to watch another YouTube video!  Or ooh, great . . . We have to sit through another PowerPoint!  Or, ooh, great . . . We have to use the internet yet again!).

These are valid concerns, but I don't buy them.

Why not?  Because even after 13 years of teaching, I'm still a student, and I don't tire for a second of having knowledge packaged in appealing or convenient ways.

Don't believe me?  Just look around some time when we have an in service and the presenter is lecturing.  You text me and tell me how many people (including yourself) you see tuning out and whipping out their phones, reading the paper, grading papers, or drawing up plays.

And when we have a presenter that incorporates technology and is engaging and personifies the best of what we call 'edutainment,' you won't even be able to text me how many people you see tuning out . . . because odds are you will be just as engaged and motivated to learn as the rest of the crowd.

Yet, we rarely adopt those best practices.  Instead we say "wow that was really something, but it wouldn't work for me . . ." and we head back to our classrooms to (often) do what we have always done, which I believe if you delve in deep enough to exercises and assignments and projects is probably not that different than what we had to do when we were students decades ago.

So much for progress.

And we wonder why students are bored, tired, or just plain fed up with school. Or in the best case scenarios, students sit quietly when needed, answer questions when needed, and do well on the tests when needed.  This is what Denise Pope Clark calls Doing School.  And it passes for education far too often in our schools.


I don't see why we would settle for this --

or this



When we could strive to be this instead --



or this




Just today as my College Comp II class discuss the introduction and first chapter of Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You, students talked about how they wished school was more engaging, like video games or athletics or CAP. . . well, just about anything done outside of school.

Johnson makes a great point in his book: "If you create a system where rewards are both clearly defined and achieved by exploring an environment, you'll find human brains drawn to those systems, even if they're made up of virtual characters and simulated sidewalks.  It's not the subject matter of these games that attracts . . . It's the reward system that draws those players in, and keeps their famously short attention spans locked on the screen" (38).

Why can't we structure our curriculum in that same way?

Students say they love gaming and athletics because they get several things - instant feedback, a chance to create, the opportunity to immerse themselves in an environment where they are forced to make numerous decisions, a feeling of belonging to a community, a willingness to work insanely hard to attain a goal (Johnson claims that the dirty little secret about gaming is how much time you have NOT having fun), the ability to learn as they literally play or do that which they are learning about.

How often does this happen in school?  When are students able to get instant feedback (cell phones do allow for this somewhat . . . if you take advantage of them)?  When do students get a chance to create something original (I have to admit that I think we do a good job here.  I see kids working on iMovie or Keynote projects all the time)?  When are students forced to make decisions (as opposed being told what to think.  Or being beaten down over the years of schooling so that they are conditioned to just sit and wait for the teacher to tell them what to think)?  When do you ever see students willing to work hard to attain a goal?  And, finally, when are students able to teach themselves or each other?

Of course, much of what I'm talking about here are the higher order thinking skills of Bloom's Taxonomy.  A quick Google search revealed this image.

Bloom's Taxonomy


Now how often do schools allow students to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate?  How often do they get to make impactful decisions and create meaningful projects?

While I looked over the image, I saw what amounted to a slap to the face of secondary education.  Just look at the lower right corner where they basic skills of knowledge and comprehension reside.  You'll see on the right hand side that these areas are covered by high schools.  Is that all we're capable of?  That's an insult.

But when we are often as boring as we want to be, we bring it on ourselves.

I'm not saying school has to be one big video game.  I don't want that for a second.  I do, though, want some serious attention paid to how and why we teach.  One benefit of the (genuine) learning that occurs outside of school via gaming or sports or whatever students find personally fulfilling (restoring cars, working on motors, building and remodeling, writing code or hacking into computer data bases) is that it is typically faithful to Vygotsky's zone of proximal development.

Here is a diagram of what learning according to Vygotsky's theory should look like.

Video games brilliantly incorporate this into their development.  And it is one reason they are so addicting - people are learning and thinking.  It's just that we might not value the knowledge that is being gained.  Fine.  I too doubt what knowledge a person gains from such games as Grand Theft Auto or Dead Space.  But I think educators could learn a great deal from the fact that kids are devoting hours and hours to learn and think, even if it's a different way of learning and thinking than we are used to valuing.

Ask yourself this - what would a graph of thinking in our courses look like?  Hopefully, not a flat-line.  But when asked how often students are truly engaged, the results suggest that we are running a morgue.


Here is what a former class had to say about being engaged during the school day.

Here is what they elaborated on regarding the question.

Here is what those students had to say about being bored in school.

And here is what they elaborated on being bored.

Now, I'll concede that I'm all for variety in teaching. We all don't have to be techies or the "sage of the stage" or even the new "guide on the side."  We all have heard it before: students learn in a myriad of ways. Howard Gardner was right - we have multiple intelligences (linguistic, mathematical, musical, kinesthetic, spatial, and interpersonal). The problem arises that schools have historically catered to the 'biggies,' namely linguistic and mathematical, which tend to historically lead to lecture and rote memorization.

(And to find out what type of intelligences you possess, click here).

After all, how did you spend the bulk of your time in class when you were a student?

I bet it didn't take long to answer that question. Let me venture a guess, taking notes and listening to lectures? Right?

I hope I'm wrong. Or at least partially wrong.

For the record, I spent a lot of time taking notes on grammar and memorizing vocabulary. (Now, teaching grammar is almost a total waste the way it is (or has been) traditionally taught and I learned far more about vocabulary by reading extensively and either looking up the words I didn't understand or asking my mother than I ever did by taking weekly vocab tests).

Time came out with an interesting article some years ago (How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century) in which they argue that if old Rip Van Winkle were to wake up in our modern world, there would simply be two things he'd surely recognize: churches and schools, for neither have hardly changed over the years.

What hasn't changed in our culture? If you haven't noticed, the students most certainly have. After all, when I started teaching at Lincoln 13 years ago, I had to crack down on students using the bathroom pass all the time in order to use the one public phone in the whole school.  Now, that phone is rarely used.  If I have 20 kids in a class, I most likely have 20 different phones in the class.

I just can't teach the same way I did 13 years ago.  I suppose I could, but my students would be missing out.  They are vastly different than the students 13 years ago.  So why teach them the same way?

These students demand so much more.  Suddenly, my students went from consumers of knowledge, to what many call prosumers of knowledge.  Just look at how much students are able to create and decide outside of school: design and update webpages, blogs, and Facebook pages.  Compile vast amounts of music and videos on their mp3 players, creating playlists with ease.  They can upload video (via youtube) or their writing (Scribd) or their slideshows (slideshare) to the web in minutes.  They can conduct meaningful research for free (zoomerang). Thirteen years ago, I was the main audience for what most of my students did.  That is not even close to the case anymore when a student can upload a video to youtube and have hundreds of people view it from all over the world.  Or they could upload the grandfather they wrote for my class to Scribd and expose it to the world.

For all we know about multiple intelligences, how often do we seek to engage (more about that later) our students via these different ways of learning?

I bet it's rare. Again, I hope I'm wrong.


But in case I'm not, I say "Bring on the Learning Revolution"





And here are some more ways of engaging (rather than enraging) students.

Marc Prensky, Keynote

View more presentations from HandheldLearning.

Engagement as Information Prosumers

Education as Information Prosumers





Our students live in a digital age.  Something as simple as a blog - like this one - can allow them to incorporate such a broad range of areas (hypertext, writing, video, music or iTunes, slideshows, and gaming) and can illustrate how easily a teacher can use these various mediums to engage their students.  If a geezer like me can do it, just imagine what our kids could do when we turn them loose.

To Kill a Mockingbird book cover t-shirt

To Kill a Mockingbird book cover t-shirt

This might be the coolest thing I've seen ever!

Now, if I could just get my classes a series of "Young Goodman Brown" t-shirts.

Take this Bauerlein

Here is an excellent response to Mark Bauerlein's The Dumbest Generation, which my College Comp II class is finishing reading.

Dumbest Gen

Stupid is . . .

as stupid does.

Isn't that how it goes?

I seriously hope Mississippi gets it right, and tells the racist pr*&^% who are proposing a license plate to honor an early leader of the KKK to take their redneck proposal and shove it . . . along with all their confederate flags!

Thank God the Queen (of education 'reform') is dead

So much for Michelle Rhee and her high stakes testing to judge student and teacher performance.

Just had this little piece sent to me. Apparently, Rhee's claims about working so hard to get her elementary school students' scores to 'drastically improve' are quite unfounded.

Not that she didn't work hard. Rather, that the tests results weren't nearly as good as she said they were. Here is a great excerpt from the story -

Rhee told me that her information about huge gains in her students' scores came from her principal at the time. She had no data to back it up, but went with the best information she had, her memory, when asked how her students did. Until Brandenburg dug deep, nobody had the real data.

I just think it's so ironic how she raked her principals over the coals for not having cold hard facts or proof about effective teaching and student achievement. And yet, she never hesitated to boast about her gains and supposed 'effectiveness.' And where is the proof?

Perhaps, she would fire her principal? Or herself (if she still taught).

But she need not worry, the people 'fired' her - they grew tired of Adrian Fenty, who put her in power, and voted him out of office.

Nice move.

Night Owl

Though our little Cash was up most of last night - Kristie took the final grueling three hours or so while I caught some sleep - how can you get frustrated with such a cutie!

What a week

This is the third week of the new semester, and we're rolling right a long. My College Comp II class finished Mark Bauerlein's book, The Dumbest Generation (or about as much of the book as any one person can stand). They are crafting either a 6-8 page research based response or designing a multi-media project in response to Bauerlein's beliefs about millennials. Next up will be reading the antithesis of Bauerlein's book, namely Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You. Can't wait to see what they think of that.

My College Comp I class has their first essay in the books (a descriptive essay) and have been studying school of literary theory and applying them to stories. We just read Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," and we had a great discussion of it yesterday. Next up for them will be selecting their novels for their research paper and then writing some narrative essays.

Last, but certainly not least, my Lit & Lang 11 class (all 30 students) just finished Act I of "The Crucible." We are connecting it to the theme of "The American Dream/The American Nightmare." Today they will finish Act II. After "The Crucible," I think we'll watch either The Island or The Village. That includes writing a comparison essay, which I'm sure they'll love. Then most likely we'll launch into the Age of Reason vs. the Romantics. So far that class has been one of the biggest surprises of the year.

Test

Everything is a Remix

For my College Comp II students - who my be reading my blog - this is exactly what I'm talking about for our multi-media project for theme #1.

Look at how this multi-media video (video, music, writing, graphics, effects), yet it also tackles a very complex subject, how many types of art are linked together. Furthermore, it raises a very important question, is anything original? Plus, look at all the different genres and types of knowledge this pieces connects. Just think of all the work that must have gone in to compiling this (and I mean searching and analyzing content - to say nothing of putting this multi-media project together).

Not bad for a video that is just over five minutes in length.

Everything is a Remix from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Why can't schools structure assignments like this? Rather than read the assigned story and answer the questions at the end? (And, I'm guilty as anyone of doing that). But I'm trying to change.

How much more would we learn in school if we were charged to complete some form of multi-media project like this vimeo example as opposed to taking four tests and writing a paper?

Here is the sequal to "Everything is a Remix."

Everything is a Remix Part 2 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

So Much for Moore's Law

Moore's law states that microchip producers can double the amount of components on a computer chip every two years.

Android's law has now replaced Moore's Law. Android's Law is simply that smartphones will continue to accelerate at a breakneck pace that was unimaginable when the smartphones first hit the market five years ago.

Simply put, smartphones (Androids, Blackberries, iPhones) are almost obsolete once they hit the market.

Why can't energy innovation or green technology work this way?

Myth of the Innovation Nation

Indeed, the greatest threat to the U.S. economy may not be those costly, financially rickety entitlement programs most politicians are afraid of touching. Rather it may be a different kind of entitlement altogether, the sense of entitlement many Americans have to a position of global economic leadership that is vouchsafed to no nation and indeed, is regularly passed on from one era's great nation(s) to a new set of leaders in the next.

That is the conclusion to an excellent article that focuses on how we falsely think America is so innovative. Yes, we have vast potential for innovation and discovery. We foster creativity (for the most part) in schools and universities. And we have that great history of American ingenuity.

But the author makes a fantastic point - how many of the world's greatest inventions or innovations were actually created, designed, and perfected in the U.S. alone? Very few! I think this speaks to our great 'melting pot' history.

What would have happened, for example, had we turned Einstein away when he fled his homeland?

Maybe we should strive for more cooperation and collaboration rather than an us vs. them attitude.

But given how either side of the political forum can hardly compromise on anything (health care, energy innovation, and immigration to just name a few issues), how can we expect the rest of the country to do so?

It doesn't seem to me to do much good to blame upcoming generations (right, Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation) either. It seems to me that the best way to become this innovation nation is, as the author of the article suggests, to simply rise up and meet the upcoming challenges, which means handling a return to rigor in our schools while adopting technological tools to help students achieve.

What I've been up to