Early Childhood Development in Real Time

I was a stay-at-home mom for twelve years and still consider myself lucky to have had the time for this important work, especially when so many must work full-time and raise children simultaneously in order to afford a house, food, etc.  Raising children is hard work.  The need for consistency is what wears most parents out since children are always testing the fence line.

I still consider my time away from teaching as an intensive course in Early Childhood Development.  It lasted twenty-four-hours-a-day for twelve years.  As a teacher, I found my own children's development fascinating--particularly language acquisition.

Now I have the chance to observe the next generation of children up close and personal: my three (soon to be four) grandchildren.  Here is what I am learning in real time.

Most Important Lesson of All: standardization in education seems like a really stupid idea after spending any amount of time around kids.  They show up in the world with totally different sets of priorities and motivations.  Our one-size-fits-all education system seems hopelessly out of date.

For instance, grandson number one is highly physical.  He literally throws himself at the world, leaping off of steps, climbing anything that is handy, shouting "Bam! Bam!"--his chosen expletive when he is either frustrated or successful. At two he can independently use all of the playground equipment he can reach, including hanging upside down from monkey bars. He runs and kicks a ball.  He manipulates objects, builds and destroys in nanoseconds, and goes full tilt until he collapses from exhaustion.  After all of that dashing around, it is possilble to convince him to sit in a lap and listen to a story.  Thanks to his mother who has made reading a daily end-of-day routine, this boy will probably excel at both sports and school.  But I'm thinking the long days in a desk are not going to be easy for him.

Granddaughter number one is thoughtful, orderly and reticent.  She does not warm to strangers and even takes many minutes to acclimate to familiar places, including her grandparents' house where she spent the first six months of her life.  She loves books and often removes herself from a room crowded with adults to read quietly (in the way that a three-year old reads: turning pages and reciting what she remembers).  She has spent many long periods pulling blankets and towels out of our cedar chest and arranging them in neat squares on the floor.  Similarly she likes grouping objects, putting small objects inside of bags and other containers and carrying them around.  All of these activities seem to please her in some way. When she found one of my ubiquitous journals and a marker, she began to make a "list" (deftly picking up the marker with her left hand and writing right to left) with a line for every person named (mommy, daddy, Marnie, Pee-Paw). When she ran out of names, she thought for a moment and then began to name things she likes (popcorn).  She'll certainly be a reader, but does the strong interest in patterns show a mind for math?

As I watch the two of them and their obviously varied strengths and tendencies I can't help wondering: how do you design a school that capitalizes on their separate potentials?  How can we use student autonomy and natural curiosity to catapult learning to where it matches the growth in knowledge and technology we face in the coming decades?

Interestingly, both grandchildren love the ipad we have stocked with books and games.  (They fight over it.)  Both seem to enjoy the mastery they have over choosing activities and switching back and forth between games, puzzles and stories.  Manipulating virtual objects with a finger is highly engaging, as most adults can probably testify.

Both of them like to bake, decorate, and "eat" a cake (in CakeDoodle) and paint in Art Set.  The grandson prefers Thomas the Train Engine for his story, puzzle, and matching game fix.  Granddaughter tends toward the Disney book where she can dress up a variety of Princesses.  They both think the game of tossing tires with "Mater" from Car Story is the funniest thing they've ever seen.  I fail to grasp the joke, but they think its a hoot.  Maybe it's the sound effects.

Watching children this way makes me think that teachers should be developing skills and knowledge in order to set the next, appropriate learning tool or activity in front of a child.  In this view of education, teachers would be adept "kid watchers" who are extremely knowledgeable about a variety of teaching strategies that all aim for the same objective, or leapfrog over objectives, to match the student's current need.  It has been said elsewhere: we need an Independent Education Plan for everybody.

I'm betting that my two, bright grandchildren will show up in kindergarten already reading- or close to it - given their rich upbringing.  In the current system, that might mean three long years before something new and exciting is introduced.

We need to work on this.

Fake Writing

This week Jay Matthews of the Washington Post drew attention to the problem of teaching writing in our public schools.

It's awful.  That's the consensus.

His argument was sparked by a commentary earlier in the week by Paula Stacy in Education Week where she bemoans the lifeless writing products which pass for good thinking when students arrive in colleges and universities.

She's right, you know.  In the main, writing instruction, when it is addressed at all, is horrible.

If you ever had to evaluate a raft of these so-called papers, you too would bemoan the state of writing in the United States.  The papers are wooden, lifeless, replete with errors, and simplistic in their thinking.

In short, they follow the process steps outlined in various formulas (like the dreaded five-paragraph essay).  Teaching formulaic writing is similar to teaching dance by pasting the silhouette of footprints on a dance floor and asking the dancer to follow the prescribed steps in some semblance of a rhythm.

And we all know what that looks like: rhythmically-challenged white guy trying to boogie.

Having read my fair share of five-paragraph essays, it's clear an instructor barely has to read in order to make an assessment since the path the student is taking is telegraphed in the thesis statement.  No surprises.  No turns of thought.  Just scan down the page and see if paragraph one matches their first point, with some evidence; paragraph two should follow suit, and so forth, until arriving at a conclusion that restates the thesis (again, dear idiot reader, in case the point isn't clear yet through mindless repetition).

Poor Montaigne.  How he must roll over in his grave.  His "essai"--meaning attempt at understanding, often without a neat conclusion, sometimes even with more questions than answers--has come to this: all problems solved in three easy steps.

Writing has long been a neglected art in all of formal education.  Why?  There are a number of reasons, but first and foremost is the lack of attention and time spent understanding the craft of writing or using writing the way it is intended--as a tool for further learning.

The inattention to writing has been perpetuated for generations.

Poor writing instructors teach the next generation what they were taught and those hapless students grow up to teach the next class and so forth.  And now districts can buy all the easy answers in a box, hand them out to teachers, ask them to spend an hour or two on writing twice a semester and feel smug in having resolved the writing problem.  (Starting to see the danger in the "three solutions to every problem" thinking we've structured for ourselves?)

Teachers, like most of the adult population, are insecure in their own writing (having either hated it, been chastised for poor spelling, commas, what have you, or convinced that writers spring fully formed from the mind of Zeus and cannot be shaped by instruction.)

There is one group that has championed good instruction in writing for more than 30 years: The National Writing Project. This, one of the true academic communities in existence today--modeling learning through inquiry even beyond the level of most academic communities in our universities--brings teachers together to share best practice in both teaching and using writing.

In its often-heralded capstone professional learning program -- the Intensive Summer Institute-- the National Writing Project insists that teachers write, for themselves but also for their students.  When the teachers return to their schools after the institute, they are often the oddball down the hall who is doing something weird with their kids--and getting results.

Teacher Consultants trained through the Writing Project write with and in front of their students modeling the messy, recursive process of composing a thought into the clearest expression possible.  From invention to publishable quality piece, writing project teachers show their students where an idea comes from, how it is developed, how an audience shapes a message, how writing helps clarify thinking, and that anyone can be a writer--one who makes meaning from experience.  Most TCs look for real-world writing opportunities for students, journal regularly, give students latitude in choosing topics, and infuse writing into every subject area.

The problem with writing in our schools is that it is treated as a separate discipline, when it should be a part of every subject.  The irony in today's current instruction is that we assume that a child can sit down and produce a piece of writing that reflects their thinking without having been provided ample opportunity to first think independently.

Writing should inform every subject with students writing to themselves first. Even a kindergartner can ask "What do I already know about the changing seasons?"  Students can collect their own data: What did I see on the way to school today that helps me understand how the earth rotates around the sun?  What questions do I have about how the world works?  What are my strengths?  How do I know when I'm competent?  What have I done that I am proud of?  How did I do that?

These are real questions of inquiry that students can wrestle with in their own language and are a necessary step in learning any subject. Writing is a separate form of thinking wherein the writer comes to know his or her own mind.  It is a necessary step in understanding and retaining experience.  It is a record of where the mind has been.  Oddly, after composing a true inquiry, the writer, rather than the reader, is the one who knows the subject best.

And, when used in this context, writing ISN'T about correctness.  It is about thinking.

Our kids write poorly because they are asked to write what they do not know.  And adults who have survived this method of formulaic composition do the same--and then act accordingly--finding repetitive, simplistic answers to weighty and complex problems.  We cannot afford to perpetuate three-answer-group-think in a world with increasingly complex, global problems.

By the way--The National Writing Project-- probably the most under leveraged tool for improving instruction in our nation's school, repeatedly held up as the gold standard for professional development, and among the cheapest (the budget for the entire nation was only 22 million) was cut from the Department of Education budget last year.

Oh, well.  That leaves 22 million more for multiple-choice testing.

At least those tests give you four choices instead of three.

Taking it slow

I have learned that the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot.  Henry David Thoreau

 I walk to school.  Not every day, but most.  I drive only when an appointment after school means being somewhere at a distance in a big hurry.  Rain, snow, mud, they do not dissuade. 

Thirty-five years ago, when I began to jog for exercise, I learned to appreciate changing weather.  Forging ahead is only a matter of dress.  Prepare for the weather, and you will not be at odds.  The job I secretly covet is mail carrier—those foot soldiers who realize a daily hike in every condition.

Lately, I have walked to school, then home, then back to school in the evening for musical rehearsals, then home again in the dark.

Be jealous. 

I walk more than half a mile, in the dark, through a friendly neighborhood where I know who lives in most houses. 

And now it is fall, the best of seasons.  In the dark walk home, the wind rustles dried leaves, the last of crickets and locusts still sing, the scent of fresh mown lawns transports me to every Saturday of a long ago childhood, dogs bark, and an occasional walker appears in the gloom.

Traffic is a far off hum somewhere down below this hillock in the Shenandoah Valley.  There are stars beyond the streetlights and, these days, some wood smoke in the chill.

When I first transferred to this neighborhood school, the world simultaneously contracted and expanded.

After a month of walking I realized that I had not even ventured to the other side of town. On a short errand I felt awkward at the wheel of my abandoned sedan.  And yet, in that month I had not felt confined. Instead I had discovered another world in the six blocks surrounding my home.

An unremarkable tree on the corner emerged from the fog one morning, every needle bearing a drop of dew.  Remarkable.  Once I helped a box turtle climb the curb.  Earlier I was halted by a humongous caterpillar the size of my palm.  This stranger had an other worldly quality and awakened a childish sense of awe.

The clouds are never the same.  Sometimes they are swollen and leaden with rain, another day just a yellow smear across a hazy sky, then pushed out completely by the greedy azure, or simple jagged lines of crystals scratched halfway to the clear blue.

I just have to remember to look up and not at my feet.  This morning, when I remembered to lift my eyes, I was startled by a glowing guava, all pinks and golds and purple, stretching across the eastern Blue Ridge.

Sometimes, when I get to school, the beauty of the literature I have taught and read my whole life resonates in the memory of a recent twelve-minute stroll.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.                                               Ralph Waldo Emerson

NCLB bill leaves committee

Tom Harkin recently proposed a bill to rewrite the ESEA legislation, publicly known as No Child Left Behind.  This week it came out of committee with significant compromises.

Thank goodness.

The original bill, in my opinion, was an effort by Harkin to legitimize the power grab by the education arm of the Obama administration.

(Here's where things get confusing for me.  I am a staunch Democrat but find myself agreeing with Republicans on this go round. Even Rand Paul's speech to the committee had me nodding my head.  But Paul is a "less government is good government" kind of guy.)

In reaction to Congress's inability to take action on anything in the past two years, Duncan unilaterally agreed to release states from their accountability to AYP--and the unreachable goal of 100% pass rates by 2014--in return for state agreements that would hold teachers accountable for student scores.

In my opinion, that was a power grab--skipping over Congress and creating law independently.

Harkin's bill essentially reinforced Duncan's proposal:  States could waive AYP if they instituted a huge, bulky plan to track and measure teacher effectiveness--even though the tools proposed to measure teacher effectiveness are basically unproven or non-existent.

Harkin also mandated the same sanctions Duncan proposes for the bottom 5% of low-performing schools  (Won't there always be a bottom 5%?  Just sayin') which means closing, restructuring, or turning poor performing schools into charters.  Another set of strategies that have little statistical support for improving schools.

The good news about the bill is that the "teacher effectiveness" portion has been stripped.  Which means students will not be subjected to more testing just to see if their teachers are doing their jobs.  From the New York Times:

But Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who had long criticized Congress for failing to rewrite the law, on Friday criticized the Harkin-Enzi bill, saying it compromises too much, particularly on teacher evaluations and student-achievement goals. “There are huge — significant problems with the current draft,” he said. “Though there are some things in this that I consider positive, others are quite concerning.”

Rand Paul argues that the Department of Education needs to be scaled back and that states and localities need to resume local control.  He advocates involving educators in the reform.

Stay tuned.  The revisions to NCLB may not see the light of day yet.

Show me the money...

This week the New York Times published a story that Pearson's Non-Profit organization is running afoul of the Internal Revenue Service by providing junkets to top state education officials who Pearson also--coincidentally--works closely with in business relationships.

Though the state officials emphasize that the trips are educational--talking to other educators in countries such as Rio de Janerio, London, Singapore, Helsinki--they also spend time conversing with Pearson executives in the profit-making arm of the business.

Tax officials indicate that this is the same relationship that sunk convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Regardless of the implications, we have a bit of a peek into the industry.  The NYT reports:

Illinois is paying Pearson $138 million to administer the state’s standardized testing program; Virginia is paying $110 million and Kentucky $57 million. All three of their commissioners have attended the conferences.

Wow.  That's a lot of samolies.  I always said that education pays big.  Just not for teachers.

Here is another snippet from the article:

Pearson is eager to sell practically any product a state or local school district would want to buy, including prepackaged curriculums, textbooks and programs to turn around low-performing schools.

What a gig.

First you write the test, then you provide the textbook that is aligned with the test.  Then you train the teachers to teach the textbook that aligns with the tests, then you sell the software that tracks the test scores and 'grades' the teachers, then you.....

I've taught in public schools for 23 years.  I make, after all that time and experience, (masters degree, national board certification) $55,000.

Guess what I'm trained to do:  Create assessments, create learning experiences aligned with my assessments (and these are often teachable moments pulled right from current events or other timely events that resonate with the adolescents sitting right in front of me.  Much more timely and engaging, often, than what is provided in a textbook) score the assessments, evaluate the students, and report learning to parents.

But why trust me when you can get a trip to Helsinki and some glitzy software?

I find it endlessly ironic that a testing company would send educators to Helsinki (Finland, don't you know) where the education system tests their students infrequently and has spent their resources training, and then trusting, their teachers.

The last textbook review I was part of was a circus of bells and whistles.  The textbook companies came to our meetings and practically fell over each other trying to up the ante on what they would 'give' us if we chose their textbooks.  Remember now, that I teach English and most of what we need is reading material.  And much of that reading material has been in the public domain for quite some time.

For teachers, the big prize--offered finally after weeks of a hard sell-- was a free flash drive thrown on the pile of online and blackline ancillary materials (most of which sit on a shelf and which, I was told when I worked in advertising, is just smoke to get the buyer to think they are getting something extra).

Jokingly, I told the department chair that we should hold out for a free cruise for the whole department.

I don't think I was that far off.

Can we agree, yet, that money is a big problem here?

Teacher Effectiveness Measures - What's the problem?

Below are the remarks I was privileged to share before a full room on the VCU campus in Richmond on Saturday, October 1. The topic was "Merit Pay and Teacher Evaluation."  

The panel discussion was hosted by the Richmond Teachers for Social Justice, South Atlantic Philosophy of Education Society, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Education, and the Student Virginia Education Association. 

   I have been a teacher since 1978, and have been in the classroom since the beginning of No Child Left Behind.  Even prior to that, when the Standards of Learning first went into effect in Virginia, I commented to my colleagues that we already knew who was behind and did not need a measuring tool for that.  But removing our ability to evaluate our own students through outside testing was the first step in a campaign to de-professionalize every teacher in America and a clear signal that we would no longer be trusted to perform our jobs.
  What we need, and have needed for the past thirty or more years, are the tools, resources, professional training, and time to educate all children to high levels of performance.  Recently, the lion’s share of resources have been spent in “raising test scores” and not in improving effective practice.  And for that reason, I consider the past decade a complete stagnation, and in some places a reversal, of what teaching professionals consider best practice.
   I would like to state clearly that I am opposed to any merit pay system that is attached to student achievement connected to testing.  There are a number of reasons for my opposition, but the primary one is that it will fundamentally distort the relationship between the teacher and student in potentially damaging ways.
   We should not tie an adult’s livelihood to the performance of vulnerable children.  This immediately shifts our view of our work.  Suddenly children become potential commodities to be exploited or weak performers to be avoided.  This is fundamentally dangerous.  Those who need us most will be least served.
   As the stakes connected to testing have been increasingly raised over the years of NCLB there has been a steady increase in cheating scandals.  We can be assured that these scandals will find their way into individual classrooms and have a profound effect on student learning if teacher performance is measured against these narrow tools.
   The current plan in Virginia, to tie teacher evaluation to student growth causes me a great deal of concern.  To begin with, I do not understand what tools will be used to measure this growth and how they will be untangled from all the factors that affect student achievement.
   To my knowledge there is no reliable tool available for measuring a teacher’s effectiveness within a school year.  The psychometricians have repeatedly argued that Value Added Measures are extremely unreliable.  In addition, the experts clearly state that current criterion referenced tests were never designed to measure teacher effectiveness and is a misuse of their purpose.  In their own words these tools are “highly unstable” and correlate well only to the students in the classroom and not to the work of the teacher in the classroom.  And yet, federal, and now state, policy is being formulated around what amounts to a huge experiment in defining our work.
   One thing that is clear from the Race to the Top plan, which holds all teachers accountable and uses standardized tests as a large percentage of that measuring tool, is that taxpayer dollars will be diverted from the classroom to create and monitor the testing.  This is certain to build more of the downward pressure on teachers that has already proven to have a limited effect on student achievement . It will create a top-heavy bureaucracy that adds nothing to the quality of instruction and student learning.   It is, however, certain to benefit the test makers and the huge testing industry that has thrived during the last decade and has even continued to show rocketing profits in spite of the current economic downturn.
   It has already begun.  In my small district a testing program was purchased over the summer to begin tracking student reading levels, potentially as a measure of teacher effectiveness. Again, a tool never designed for this purpose.  If we are to track “teacher effectiveness” in every subject and grade, there will need to be more tools, some of which are yet to be brought into existence. Imagine what a juggernaut of testing all of our students, even the youngest will face.  Concurrently, our district has had a reduction in force, no salary increases, and cuts to professional development over the past four years.
   Over the past ten years, a the domain of a classroom teacher—evaluating student achievement—has  been “outsourced” to testing companies that produce measurements that are removed in both time and distance from the classroom and are limited in their effectiveness to improve instruction.  Testing programs have systematically stripped teachers of our decision-making abilities while simultaneously holding us accountable for the less-than stellar results. Teachers are frustrated with the decisions made at a distance that ultimately underserve student needs in the classroom.
   Teachers should not be the subjects of experiments in effective teaching.  Teachers must be partners in the study of effective practice.  Studies of effective practice should ultimately result in improved practice, not managerial, personnel decision-making. Is the real goal of the measurement process to pressure school administrators into removing some teachers?  If so, are they also not being trusted to do their jobs?
   We should be celebrating and sharing teacher knowledge, not creating an adversarial relationship with our students and our colleagues as this program promises to do.  Studying our own work, sharing best practice, and developing local, formative assessments will benefit every child and restore teachers to their role as coach, guide and evaluator.
   The current argument to measure teaching effectiveness is, in my opinion, a distraction from what needs to be done to reform our public schools that will create and maintain a robust teaching force ready to prepare our young people for an uncertain but rapidly changing future.

Other panelists were: Kitty Boitnott, President, Virginia Education Association; Tichi Pinkney Eppes of the Greater Richmond Education Reform Alliance; Stephanie Hooks of Richmond Public Schools; Martin Reardon, VCU Education Professor; and Gabriel Reich, VCU Education Professor. 

Trusting Kids to Assume Responsibility for Learning

What happens when you give students the opportunity to choose a direction for their own reading and writing?

Amazing things, apparently.

My students are currently involved in their own reading during Reading Workshop in Academic English 11 (most would call this General English).  The class of 26 students is a mix of abilities.  Though there are many who are performing at the post high school level some are as low as a fourth grade reading level. 

All have chosen books that might surprise those who feel students will not set a high bar for their own performance.

Here is a selection of books that are currently being read and written about in English 11:

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

The Hunger Games series.  (This has been extremely popular in the past two years.  One student, and English language learner, has zoomed through all three in just three weeks of reading and has just begun a fourth book.)

The Inferno by Dante

A non-fiction book on the Civil War.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

And numerous young adult romances and coming of age tales.

In general, when given the latitude and a purpose for reading (our stated goal is growing dendrites—i.e. getting smarter—building  vocabulary, focusing on text for longer and longer periods of time, and developing a love of reading) students choose books that are both challenging and generally right on target for their ability level.

Students converse about their books in weekly letters to me and the co-teacher in the room.  We ask them to discuss their books by noticing what the author is doing.  In the weekly letter they tell us:

• What is the setting?  How does this limit the characters in their actions or behaviors?
• Does your author use any of the following?  Provide an example from the book of:         
• imagery
• flashbacks
• figurative language
• How does the author capture and keep your interest from the beginning?
• How would you rate this book?
• How did your prediction compare to the ending of the book?
• Would you recommend the book to others?  Who would like to read this and why?

In just 20 minutes of class time daily, students are able to read a minimum of four books a semester in addition to the titles we learn together.  Their selections, listed above, indicate that most students know what they want to learn. 

Sometimes we need to get out of their way, and let them go for it.