Education Nation

NBC has promised a week long focus on Education.  Everyone will be there except the teachers.  Join us for a real Teacher Town Hall by joining the Teachers Letters to Obama Round table on Tuesday, September 28 to Stop Griping and Start Organizing.  We are about to be overrun by the media circus which is ignoring facts and going with the current narrative to dismiss teachers and put corporate group-think in control.

Crafting Reform without the Experts

Wish I had more time to write.  But if I did, I'd just do pretty badly what Alfie Kohn has already done quite clearly.  Check it out.
If you don't want to be left out of the discussions, be sure to sign on to the Teacher Town Hall at NBCs Education Nation.  Currently, this media event is catering to the large money stakeholders and have largely left teachers out of the reform discussion.

Teaching in America - under assault

Occasionally, because I live in a community that continues to support public schools with public funds and other outward signs that education is still central to building our community (like renovating schools and building new ones), I think that perhaps I over-inflate what I see as an attack on public education in this country.
And then I am brought to my senses by others in the field who are witnessing very real, and very alarming changes in the tradition of public schools.
We all need to pay attention.
They will be coming for us next, particularly if (when?) the Race to the Top goals are realized.
Last week I participated a Round Table sponsored by the Teachers' Letters to Obama facebook group.  Guests for the night were three teachers:  A history teacher from a reconstituted school in Los Angeles, a blogger who came in to teaching to "save" a failed school from "lazy" teachers and received an unexpected education instead, and a classroom teacher in a high performing (by current standards) KIPP school.
Today are just a few facts learned from the Los Angeles high school:
The reconstituted school was required to fire 50% of its teachers in order to get funding.  The teachers were summarily fired. Who was hired?  Currently there are 30 substitutes working in this high school and many of the other teachers are Teach for America--twenty-something newbies who promise only two years to the profession - if they make it that long.
But the teachers were lazy and deserved firing, right?  Our guest, Chuck Olynyk, described his working conditions.  One class of 49 AP students and four books.  Few working computers.  4900 students in one building built for no more than 2000.  Rotating schedules to accommodate all the children.
And with all of that, the teachers had recently organized smaller schools so they could mentor students, forming relationships they hoped would pay off in increased student achievement.
And it was working.
Now the school is reopened, with fresh paint on the walls, and perhaps more computers which actually work.  Only the teaching force has been decimated and those who are teaching are largely non-credentialed.
This cannot be good for the students.   But this is the promise made by RttP as the preferred turnaround model for challenged inner city schools.
Seems to me that the best method for improving the school would have been to support the students and teachers already in the building with the new paint, computers, and lower class loads.
But new, young, un-credentialed teachers are much easier to control if you want to make sweeping changes without resistance.
Is this the true goal of current reform?

Best summer read

Sheridan Blau's The Literature Workshop has been sitting on my shelf for several years.  Two weeks ago I toted it along on a driving vacation.
This was definitely not a beach book.

Anyone who considers teaching as a profession for lightweights will be disabused of that after a read through Blau's carefully crafted and supported pedagogy for lifting students' reading, writing, and thinking skills to the next level.  (I became intimate with three new terms: hermeneutic, fallibilism, and desiderate: all of which I now understand thanks to Blau's careful elaboration.)
The book is built around a series of workshops Blau regularly conducts with students, teachers, and pre-service teachers.  I recognized one I participated in at a recent NCTE convention.
Though teachers can follow the instructions and recreate the workshops in their own classes, as I hope to do, the real benefit is in the argument supporting the methods.
Central to Blau's thesis is the idea that traditional literature classes consisting of lectures on important works merely offer students an opportunity to take notes on another person's read of a text.  This sends the double message that some texts are impenetrable to average readers and that the student must rely on more accomplished readers for interpretation.  Blau's goal is to engage learners in the work of struggling with and interpreting text independently, hence his workshops that lay bare many of the skills that accomplished readers must access in order to make sense of difficult text and form fresh and cogent readings of their own.  Though texts are important to the workshops, the real subject is the reader himself.
The National Council of Teachers of English awarded Blau the Richard A. Meade Award for Outsanding Research in English Education for this 2003 publication.  And with good reason.
Each activity is well-researched and presented with such logical clarity that it would be difficult to escape the idea that time spent on close reads of intellectual thought (rather than texts) is a worthwhile use of classroom time.  However, there is no area of English practice where he will not threaten the traditionalists.  His research paper, for example, employs other students in the class and their papers and discussions as the cited sources in lieu of established critics of literature.  In my opinion, a brilliant solution to the wooden papers where students attempt to incorporate the voices of academicians and that also supports his philosophy that students are not incapable of developing their own interpretations.
Most refreshing are Blau's admissions of personal weak readings or classroom blunders.  And in a nod to the inspired work of effective teachers, Blau argues for sticking with a practice that seems to work -- as he did with his own habit of encouraging the 'pointing' to text that resonates -- until the underlying reason for its success in student achievement is revealed, rather than awaiting a theory to then develop into practice.
I'm sorry I waited so long to read this (though I could only take in one chapter at a sitting, so rich was the  train of thought).
I plan to experiment with several workshops as I continue my quest for a classroom that's an engaging place of authentic inquiry.

Agrarian calendar

School begins next week for teachers. Well, for me, anyway.

I've had a nice break. Two long out-of-town vacations and time for a four-week, intensive workshop with teachers.

Lots of time off.

Yesterday it felt like it was way too much time off, especially when I ran into a student and asked him what he was reading.

"Nothin'. I don't read."

The agrarian calendar has outlived its usefulness. It seems that the world is runs at 3 times the speed of my youth, with accelerated, instantaneous, 24-hour communication.

We can't afford to leave our kids unchallenged, unsupervised, uneducated for two-and-a-half months. Everybody else is getting their hooks into them: television, twitter, Facebook, and hours of dulling sleep on the couch.

Even the manager at a part-time job is having more influence than we are.

Time for some real reform:

A year round calendar.

Hayward gets life back, teachers get unemployment line

Is it just me or does today's news just look like more of the same wide divisions between the haves and the have-nots? It was announced today that BP executive Tony Hayward will be asked to step down for the gaffs in handling the oil spill in the Gulf. I will be waiting to see what his severance package looks like.

My guess is it will just provide Hayward with more free time and plenty of resources to enjoy the yacht races for which he has already revealed a fondness. Top screw-ups often leave with all the stock dividends and hefty cash buyouts in place.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Michelle Rhee fires 241 teachers while putting an additional 735 on notice to improve their practice. The fired teachers do not have a golden parachute, of that I am sure.

OK, what's the problem? Poor performers should be fired whether they are Tony Hayward or classroom teachers, right?

Right.

But for the past 30 years, teachers have been at the bottom of a top-heavy system that has often scripted what should be taught and when, has either provided professional development or not, given teachers latitude to select class loads (Oh? Not.), provided support for strugglers in the form of mentors and time to collaborate (oh, wait a minute, not.), asked teachers how to resolve problems in the classroom - wait, not. Teachers have been able to demand textbooks, classroom supplies, heated buildings.

Wait.

Not. Not. Not.

Are teachers professionals with control over their workplace or their own development as professionals? Not. Most survive on what business-types would consider entry-level salaries that cap, after thirty years, at the bottom rung of what executives would expect in the early stages of a high powered career.

But maybe Tony Hayward and the teachers have something in common.

He said he was never a part of the decision making process either.

For sure, though, he will not be standing in an unemployment line facing financial ruin.

Not. Not. Not.

TFA - Missionary work in Public Schools

A debate is now on going about Teach for America in the New York Times. Stroll on by and see how this is shaping up.

Two programs are currently in widespread use that encourage people to join the teaching profession. Both seem noble and worthwhile on the surface but send worrisome messages when looked at in 3-D and surround sound.

They are Career Switcher programs and Teach for America.

First off, I want to admit that both of these programs have resulted in teachers who are quite excellent in the classroom. That's my disclaimer. I know some of these people and they are wonderful.

The problem, however, lies in the underlying message of TFA and Career Switcher program: Teachers are Born and not Made. And that is where I find fault with the general principle of the two working programs--AND with the way our traditionally prepared teachers are thrust into the intense work of working with children.

First, both programs let adults take command of a classroom after a brief preparation program in the summertime. Secondly, the new recruit has a full time load that they must then balance with further course work in evenings and weekends. This is essentially two full time jobs.

Finally, many of new teachers flame and burnout in short order. If not in the middle of the first year (and I've seen that happen memorably in recent years) then more often by the end of the second year.

Here's my problem: It implies that it is OK to experiment this way with children's lives. Ultimately, it's the students who will suffer if a year of instruction is lost due to a poorly performing teacher or the disruption caused by teacher turnover.

The two programs have been offered as a panacea to teacher shortages.

It is the wrong fix to reforming teaching.

The exact opposite view of teaching needs to be assumed by those who want to see real reform in public education. Current fixes imply that teaching is so approachable that "anyone can do it." Or that there are only so many good teachers out there, and we just need to throw enough of them at the wall and see how many stick.

If we want a stable, effective teaching force then we need to do the heavy lifting of supporting and building that workforce. This would mean strong mentoring programs in schools that provide any novice teacher - adequate access to master teachers and resources during their working days. It means a basic restructuring of how our schools work. It means ensuring that a year of a child's life is not left to chance.

We know that a year with one bad teacher can set a child back two years. Do we care about that or not?

We also know that the worst performing schools have the highest number of transient teachers. The programs described here do nothing to help stabilize the teachers in the community. In fact, TFA doesn't even expect more than two years from its recruits.

When we put our children, all of our children, front and center then we will begin to do what is right for them and not for the comfort of the adults.