Good teaching follows and leads the student

Came across this quote today in a book written by a British educator. It is by the formidable gentleman to the right, Edward Thring, Headmaster of Uppingham School.

There are probably few, except the reformers who insist on curriculum mapping and common formative assessment, who would disagree.

The teacher makes the taught do the work and occupies himself in showing them how to do it and taking care that they do it.  His work is to direct, suggest, question, enspirit; he adapts himself in every possible way to the individual minds, never resting until he had made them master of the skill required and seen them become capable of working on their own account.  Teaching takes any shape whatsoever, is fragmentary changing as the difficulties of the pupils minds change and disregards all precise plan, provided that a close, laborious and exact exercise of mind is the result.  The teacher makes the pupils work and stands and falls by what they do.

Thring, circa 1821-1887.

Feeding the Data Machine

In 1978 when I began teaching, I was handed a plan book, grade book, curriculum map, test book, and a schedule.

Off to work I went, writing things down, assessing kids all by myself, and reporting grades.  (To be honest, I can't remember how we did this!  Were high school report cards hand written?)

Today, all teachers must be conversant with a wide variety of software: grading software (that keeps parents continually updated), a student-accessible website (that must be continually updated), and a large variety of behind the scenes software responsible for collecting data (that ultimately must be kept 'fed' by the classroom teacher).  All of these duties take more time than the old-fashioned method.  (But if its in a computer then it must be true!)

Every school year, each program must be updated with the current rosters.  This year we are adding individual online student accounts to access the textbook - as I'm sure is occurring all over the nation as textbooks gain an online presence.

This takes considerable time and often results in a mad scramble at the beginning of the year as kids are put into the system, taken out, moved around, and on and on.  Yesterday, (Sunday of Labor Day) I spent five hours in service to some of these tools.  I will spend more time updating the course website later today.  (Computers: So convenient you can continue to work from home!)

Sometimes things go awry.  We are not a Fortune 500 corporation with legions of data crunchers and IT specialists.  In public schooling it is every district for itself when it comes to meeting the data-driven demands in terms of salaries and techy tools.  Each year these tools take up more and more of the budget pie.

But the data machine must be fed, and it is getting worse rather than better.  The reformist love affair with numbers means that nothing is real unless it is quantifiable with a number.

The classroom teacher provides all the raw data.

And so, just like the day I realized I was working for the machines in my life -- car, household appliances--rather than the other way around, I find myself increasingly chained to a computer. (Thoreau: We do not ride on the railroad.  It rides upon us.)

And it's not helping.

Recently, in an effort to get our struggling students some additional help as soon as possible, rather than waiting on the official data, we asked teachers to look at their previous year's rosters, highlight the names of kids who could benefit from some enriching activities, and send the lists on.

It took about ten minutes.

That's what can happen when you rely on professional judgement.

Still waiting on the "data."

Sometimes it feels like we're spinning our wheels.

Shift the culture for lasting change

Those who follow this blog already know of my great respect for the model that is the National Writing Project. The work done through this network of educators has been frequently referred to as professional development that works in that it affects a lasting change in teacher practice over time.

This summer, in a short presentation on working with professionals across a generational divide (four generations, the largest cross-generational grouping, now work side by side) I was exposed to the simple graphic below as an explanation for why certain generational groups approach their work differently.

It immediately resonated as a model for the failure of most of the professional development in schools to affect a lasting change.

It also offers a strong argument for why the Intensive Summer Institute, and the ensuing network of teaching professionals, has proven to impact student learning.

The chart maintains that experiences affect our beliefs.  Those beliefs influence our actions which ultimately determines results.

Most professional development only acts on the top two tiers.  "Do intervention a, b, or c and you will get prescribed results."  The intervention does not 'take' because nothing has been experienced which will change beliefs. Without ongoing support for new strategies, the teacher does not have enough experience to change beliefs and falls back on old assumptions.  When the first initiative fails, a new approach is introduced.

The experience of most teachers has built the belief that "this too shall pass." We need only wait out the current reform as another one will surely replace it.

Conversely, the teachers of the Invitational Summer Institute are immersed in experiences which affect their beliefs about practice. They apply theory to practice, experience heightened engagement from learning from each other, examine student work across time and curriculum, and, most importantly in understanding how writing happens, write with an eye toward publication for a valued audience.  Over the period of a month or more, teacher create a collaborative, respectful learning environment of sharing practice, theory, and the writing life.

It is these combined experiences that teachers most often describe as 'transformational.'  The combined experience of the Institute leads teachers to the belief that their work is worthy of study, reflection, and revision--and that they can take charge of these habits of mind.

If we are to believe the model pictured in the graphic, the culture of the teaching profession must change.   Changing the experience of teachers from one of subservience to empowerment will result in classroom teachers who can enact substantive and lasting reform on a classroom by classroom basis.

UVA tumult highlights reform divide

The following editorial was published in the local paper The Winchester Star on Monday, June 24.  The downside to print: none of the hyperlinks can be included.

     While the paroxysms at UVA still have the public’s attention for the next five minutes, let’s use this as a window of opportunity to clarify the education debate argued over the past decade and already resulting in a fundamental shift in our here-to-fore national treasure: a free and public education for every child. 

      Rector Dragas has accused President Sullivan of not moving fast enough or enacting bold moves mirroring those of a top CEO like herself. Though the charges against Sullivan have been vague, the allusion to operating a public institution as a business hints at the larger argument.

      Whether the public is aware or not, a concerted effort is in process to impose Milton Friedman style, free-market forces on the education of the nation’s youth.  Though the general public seems to buy the argument that competition will foster excellence, competition in education will result in nothing less than the destruction of public schools and a further division in our populace we can ill afford.   Those with money and power will, of course, be able to afford and locate the best.  And those without?  Picture Dicken’s London.

      The push toward privatization has already affected instruction in the state of Virginia and diverted taxpayer monies from the classroom to private industry.  Pearson, the testing giant that continues to tally record profits even in an economic downturn, holds a $110 million contract with the state for administering the SOLs. These are tests teachers may neither see nor question on terms of validity but which determine many high stakes decisions. While public employees are held to “high standards,” online, private contractors are held to none. 

      The largest for-profit online provider in Virginia, K-12 Online, reported third quarter earnings of $178 million (all taxpayer dollars), all without any supporting research on the effectiveness of online instruction.  Meanwhile teachers have lost positions, had salaries frozen and seen increases in class sizes.  Governor McDonnell recently signed into law a new graduation requirement that all students must have one online course, yet another unfunded mandate thrust on localities—again without research. (It is notable that moving toward online instruction has been cited in Sullivan’s dismissal.)

       No sports enthusiast would agree to the unleveled playing field in this contest.

       Currently, the College Board – another testing entity—has used its resources to set up a visual: 857 empty desks on the National Mall representing the number of dropouts every hour.  Though this is unquestionably a national shame, the real irony is that the drop out rate has soared in the face of the current testing mania which has drained resources, narrowed curriculum, and turned classrooms into test-prep, data-collection boredom.  In contrast, high achieving nations test minimally and use results to drive improvements in instruction and teacher training.  We use tests to erode real teaching and vilify public employees—and then recommend more testing.

       What is at stake is this: a shift of public monies into the hands of private entrepreneurs who are currently rewriting rules in their favor.  Across the nation this has taken a variety of forms, (charters, vouchers) most untested but always at the expense of children.

       As the faculty of UVA seems to be currently arguing, education is not a business.  At its fundamental level, education is an act of sharing. The collective knowledge of one generation is passed on to the next.  When competition enters the arena, knowledge becomes the property of the elite, to be bought and sold at the discretion of a limited few.  Losing a free, public education cannot be tolerated.  Starving the public system while bludgeoning it with rules appears to be the plan.

     Thomas Jefferson, founder and spirit of UVA, said it best: "The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations."

     Our cherished--and most frequently exported--model of public-education-for-all is halfway there.  

Homeschooling

For the first summer in years the Northern Virginia Writing Project's Summer Institute in the Valley is not meeting.  Sad face.

Though it is a long commitment for teachers, the month-long experience is usually described as invigorating.  It has been for me.  Each year teachers lead each other through successful classroom lessons and ultimately learn to lead each other.  We share, read, discuss, write, and share again.  The synergy is amazing.

I'm going to miss it this summer.  Though I direct the work of the teachers, each year the influx of ideas restores my energy and engagement in the classroom work throughout the school year.  The relationships formed between committed teachers is uplifting.  This experience, often cited as the among the best offered in professional development, has proven repeatedly that facilitating discussions among professional teachers is where the real reform in education resides.

But I don't have to miss out on the conversations and insights of my colleagues.  Part of my plan for the summer is to continue learning, from home.

If you haven't taken advantage of the multiplicity of resources that have exploded for teachers who want to learn from and with each other, then you are missing out on opportunities to "steal" from the best.

Here's a list of resources that I'll be accessing on long summer afternoons to refresh my teaching next year and stay connected with teaching professionals.  Some have a minimal cost.  Others are free for the taking.  All are Language Arts related.  If you have great resources you access regularly in your subject area, please share in the comments below.

Low tech:  A pile of books have accumulated.  Two I hope to tackle are Doing Literary Criticism by Tim Gillespie (been eyeing that one since December) and The Digital Writing Workshop by Troy Hicks (still working on getting more kids digitally literate.)  Already read, with new Virginia SOLs and Common Core Standards in mind: Teaching Argument Writing, Grades 6-12 by George Hillocks.

If you are into learning from books, both Heineman and Stenhouse (links above) are consistent producers of teacher written and tested professional books. Most are written with busy educators in mind (clean, approachable text), frequently include student stories, and almost always have extremely useful appendices.

For the digital natives Stenhouse is reviving its summer Blogstitute.  Starting on June 25 teachers can log in and start learning from some of their well known authors.  All free.

One of my low tech go-to sources is the Advanced Placement list serve.  Though this dinosaur in the current connectivity world of blogs, twitters, and social networking is about to be upgraded (one course at a time) the daily deluge of emails from AP teachers all across the nation is invaluable.  Of course you'll need a method of organizing this flood.  I learned my organization method from monitoring two other early list serves, both of which connect teachers from all over the nation: The Journalism Education Association and the Teacher Leaders Network.

If you really want to get cutting edge, set up a twitter account and start reading and following the feeds on your mobile phone.  Here's a guide to getting going: Twitter Handbook for Teachers.  And if that's not enough to blow your mind, go back to paper and read Sheryl Nussbaum Beach's new book The Connected Educator: Learning and Leading in the Digital Age.  The text takes you one step at a time further into the world of online learning, teaching, and sharing.

Finally, here is the future of PD:  Web 2.0 Discussion Boards.  The best example of a connected community of learners is Jim Burke's English Companion.   If there are other subject-area discussion boards out there, chime in.  This is clearly the way professional discussions are headed.  In the interactive forum, teachers ask questions, find answers, share blogs, learn in book discussion groups-often with authors as part of the group, and even post handouts and other materials.

For those who want to follow policy or education related issues (or anything else of that matter) I highly recommend Zite.  This app acts as an aggregator of the web and - on an iPad - has a clean magazine feel.  You simply select your own sections and the app delivers the latest to your phone or iPad--a quick and easy way to keep track of your favorites.  By indicating whether or not you liked the source, the aggregator adjusts to reflect your interests.  Blogs, news articles, online magazines are all included.  A good way to find out what is happening in cyberspace.

Still, in spite of all the free online forums there is nothing I've found to replace the immediacy and intellectual stimulation of teachers working together around classroom issues in a face-to-face setting.  But in the meantime I'll continue to learn from the best without letting geography get in the way.

Now, if I could only get recertification points for all this new knowledge....

Year Round School, please?

I've been on summer break for six days and already feel like a new person.

After clearing the clutter from a year's worth of classroom activity, I started in on my home.  And my health.  In six days I've resumed a daily habit of exercise and zoomed through closets in every room and the basement removing the clutter from nine months of running in and out, all things household having been tabled because teaching means a twelve-hour day, plus weekends.

In between running and cleaning I've read three novels and a professional book.

It's refreshing.  I feel great.

And yet, I still face ten more weeks of unstructured time before returning to kids and the classroom.

It's too long.

A school year is intense.  Even more so as kids and teachers face the current climate of testing.  For the classroom teacher, testing has meant the added stress of consulting data and making sure every child receives services to improve scores. It is high pressure work.  Sometimes if a task takes 30 seconds  to complete that can be too long.  The next expectation/need/focus of attention is already flying full throttle at classroom teachers.

For kids, it means cramming in multiple college-level courses or sitting for days on end and bubbling in answers on high-stakes tests.  (And then re-testing, remediating, re-testing).

So a break is welcome.  Unfortunately, eleven weeks is a ridiculously long break for both kids and teachers.

We all know about summer loss.  But what are we doing to learning and health when we cram a year's worth of instruction, sports, music programs, field trips, and make-or-break testing into nine months?

For the top students the intensity of the year can mean sacrificing health for grades as a recent New York Times article revealed students resorting to snorting amphetamines to garner the stamina to keep up with schoolwork--all at the cost of a developing brain and good health.

For struggling students, the long summer break is a wasteland.  With working parents (or parent) most low income students are confined to their block, their television, and a poor diet.  None conducive to learning.  The loss to learning over the extended summer break has long been documented.

I'm not a fan of a longer school day.  More cognitive work piled on top of more cognitive work does not mean that kids will advance.  In fact, our brains need some down time in order to make sense of what has been happening in our minds.  Only when we rest after learning is our experience processed by the brain.  We need rest in order to move learning into long term memory. (Here's an argument against teaching courses in a semester block.  Ninety-minute blocks everyday allow little to no time for processing.)

Some of these things we've known for years.  Others are just becoming apparent through continued brain study.  I'd love to give our Education system an 'A' for applying our new knowledge about how we learn to the school calendar.

Year round schooling could accommodate shorter breaks (two-three weeks) interspersed throughout the year.  Imagine students and teachers alike feeling, at regular intervals, as I do now. Rested and restored.  It might also improve the health of educators and reduce other costs.

Believe me, the tourism industry would adjust.

What's your take?  How long is your school break?  And wouldn't everyone benefit from rest?

Nailing the coffin lid shut

Our district is still in our pre-school week, and for the first time in my professional career we have received an unusual message from our superiors: Please Speak Up.  Specifically about all the good that public educators do for the community.

Historically teachers are reluctant to speak publicly about education issues, especially local issues.  We fear retribution and are also, and rightly so, requested to avoid revealing a political stance since we have a huge influence on shaping minds.

Though the suggestion is a welcome one to me, a trained journalist with a near religious adherence to the right to free speech, it is indicative of just how much of a threat we face in the public education system.

The fact is that we are in the last battle of a long war on a basic pillar of a functioning democracy: our public schooling system.  The foot soldiers are being rallied.

It may be too late.

We should have been marshaled about ten years ago.  Anyone who read the NCLB law could see it as a cleverly disguised method to discredit every school in the country. (For the uninitiated, the goal has always been a 100% pass rate by every student on every test by 2014.  This was never possible.)

Even Senator Edward Kennedy, a long time champion of the disenfranchised, was duped into supporting the law, more evidence for how clever the opposition has been at disguising their true motives.  They have known the ultimate goal from the beginning and have maintained a straight public face while chuckling to themselves in private.

Screaming headlines of "FAILED SCHOOLS" have rolled across every town and community throughout this August.  Couple that with the campaign to silence and discredit teachers that began in earnest in 2010 with the release of Waiting for Superman, that was accelerated by Oprah Winfrey and the media,  and has continued apace with loud arguments against tenure, and the field has been effectively cleared.

Teachers must begin every conversation now by justifying their work, their integrity, their adherence to excellence, an explanation of why we need to retain experienced teachers, how we use our time during the school year, why a summer off is defensible, how many hours are spent grading and receiving additional education, and on and on.

It's a pretty long conversation to have in the check out line.

If you think the fight has been fair, think again.  Using a fair measuring stick has never been the agenda. (See NCLB law for support.)

The goal of providing an excellent education is a canard.  

The real goal has been the privatization of public education.

Another goal is the re-segregation of schools, if not on racial lines then certainly on lines of privilege.

A third goal is to de-professionalize teaching.  When private agencies take over they will not want to have to pay a living wage.  It's more profitable to hire a revolving door of young "teachers" at $10.00 an hour to turn on the computer or recite the scripted lesson plans.  (I ache when young--and naive--teachers defend the loss of due-process by saying something simplistic like "If you do your job well, you should never have to worry about being fired."  Ah, so young and trusting.  You don't have to be fired if you are worked to death, or harassed to death.  You'll just leave and retreat to a job with less stress--like air-traffic controller.)

That will be "teaching" for the masses.

Those who can afford an education that develops critical thinking, creativity, lifelong learning can buy it for their progeny.

Welcome to a return of the feudal system with the new liege lords and serfs in corporate fiefdoms.

Is it too late?  Ask the Florida (Flori-DUH) teacher qutoed below who is now being evaluated by a system that garnerd Race to the Top dollars from our current administration:

50% of ALL high school teachers' ratings will be based on 9th/10th grade FCAT math/reading scores. So even if you teach science to 12th graders, 50% of your rating for "merit pay" a rating that gets published online to the public will be based on something you DON'T EVEN TEACH. And of course, basing pay on these kinds of tests is absurd to begin with.

Even a child can tell you that's not fair.

The camel is entirely inside the tent if our own Secretary of Education thinks this is a worthy way to encourage the best and the brightest to pursue a career in teaching.

But, then again, that's not the point.  And it never was.

The de-formers do not play fair and have consistently written the laws to their own advantage.

Can you hear the hammering?  There is only one nail left to go in.

Better push back, and hard.

Matt Damon: A+

Videos are surfacing from the SOS March of interviews with Matt Damon as he awaited his opportunity to speak at the rally held July 30 on the ellipse in humid, 100 degree weather.

Damon is impressive.  Apparently he has been paying close attention to the issue, no doubt in part because his mother is a successful professor of Early Childhood Education.  Regardless, he calls the current reform "punitive" and carrying an "intrinsic paternalism."

In any case, Damon is articulate, informed, concerned, and sometimes angry about what he is witnessing.  He makes it clear that he feels the children are being cheated and won't be prepared to be the problem-solvers and critical thinkers we will need to solve the next generation's problems.

Another video, created by Reason tv, has been making the rounds because of Damon's smack-down of the reporter who posted an SOS March video of a montage of guerilla-warfare interviews with a variety of participants.  In all of the interviews, the 'reporter's' bias was evident in the questioning.  Reason tv is apparently a libertarian outlet created by Drew Carey, the comedian.  I will not reproduce that video here.  It has been seen in multiple venues but drew the ire of Lawrence O'Donnell on his show Tuesday night.

In addition to understanding the issues with 'pay-for-performance' and high-stakes testing, Damon is aware that the participants in the march included the leading thinkers in education.  He argues that they should be included in reform plans and that even he, a successful businessman, has no expertise or right to create education policy.  (In another clip from this interview, not included here, Damon says that he should be paying more in taxes and neither he, nor anyone he knows, created jobs with the tax break they received.)

Thank you Matt Damon for using your star-power to help educators gain a voice in the current debate.  And thank you too, for 'getting it' and taking the risk to stand with those who stand for those who cannot speak: the children of America's tomorrow.