On the Shoulders of Giants

Digital Divide is a Pain in My Classroom

I'm hitting a point where the digital divide is becoming painfully awkward for me in my teaching. In this case, I'm talking about students who have or don't have reliable internet access at home, and I'm also talking about the difference between what we can do with technology in school vs. out of school because of Department of Education blocks on networking sites and electronic equipment.

This year, for the first time, I teach a CTT class, and get to collaborate with a wonderful special education teacher, so that my students with IEP's get the extra help they need. For a few years, in March I've had students read The Ear, the Eye and the Arm as a whole class as part of an in depth study of the journey motif in literature (I blog about this here.)  It is a 300 page adventure story set in the future, but is much heavier on detail, description and back-story, and slightly less formulaic than other fantasy books some of my students have read, such as Harry Potter.  I expected it to be a challenge for my students, and at this point in the year, most of them are hungry for it. Nonetheless, my CTT and I were worried about a few of our struggling students and wanted to come up with way to support them without removing them from the whole experience.  It's easy for us to help students read in groups during class time, but the book is simply too long to read only in class--we'd be reading it until June.

We wanted to create a way for certain students to listen to the story as they read at home.  We found an audio recording on cassette available for order, but we realized our students today hardly even know what a cassette is--much less own tape players at home! When it comes to listening to music, our students are pretty much fluent in the use of mp3s, Youtube and MySpace.

We decided to record ourselves reading the chapters using GarageBand, and make the tracks available to students on the internet.  My CTT partner created a networking site for our class using Multiply.com. It is similar to Myspace, but with much less traffic and inappropriate content; also the age limit is 12 years old.  We figured for the students without internet access, we could burn the tracks onto cds.

We signed out the LCD projector and a laptop at school ready to demonstrate the site, only to realize, duh, the site is not accessible through school internet!  For the next day, we took still shots of the site at home and showed them to students the next day, and passed out detailed instructions for them to sign up and access the site.  

The kids were very excited about this, but only some of them have been able to access the site at home. Some have internet access, but needed help going through the steps of signing up, which of course, I can't help them with at school.  I have helped some students by phone.  For those that have entered the site, it has been great.  They are creating their own profiles and commenting on each others and on the reading!  Every comment is visible to me, so I can keep tabs on these interactions.  It creates another level of interaction for the class and it is based on academic work.  For some reason, it feels like a relief to me, and the kids are looking at us teachers differently--with some kind of added interest or respect! 

The problem is that so many students can't participate. That part of it seems unfair.  As it turns out, many students don't even own CD players, just mp3 players.  The craziest catch 22 yet is that...drumroll...students are not allowed to bring mp3 players into school!  They get taken from them by school safety officers when they go through scanning.  I do appreciate that students can't have their cellphones buzzing or headphones on during my class, and I also appreciate that students cannot go on Myspace when using school computers.  But it seems like we are cutting off too many valuable learning resources in order to keep kids "on task."  

And when will we get to the point where all students have internet at home?  Lately I've spoken to parents about this particular reading assignment.  When I mention the audio option online, they sound like they've already heard about it from their kids... They sigh, "No we don't have internet right now," almost ashamed.  

So right now, all this means is that children in my class with no internet at home need to do their reading homework the old-fashioned way.  No big deal for most.  But as we move forward, this divide is going to become more and more painful.  I'd like to see the government step in and make internet free for parents who send their children to public schools, and provide a laptop--or an easy, affordable pathway to getting one--for all public school students.  Once this is the case, schools need to get with the times and create safe and attractive networking programs for teachers and classes to use.  

[image credit: http://eppsnet.com/2004/10/into-the-digital-abyss]

we need merit pay, take 2

I wrote about this once before in the NY Daily News, but it's time for a second take. We need performance pay for teachers. Not to scare away the "bad ones."  To keep the good ones.

It's March and almost time for teachers to begin making plans for next year.  I know of many gifted, committed teachers in their 3rd, 4th, or 5th years who are getting ready to say goodbye to the classroom. It is truly painful, because our students need them, and instead will have to make due with a new crop of brand new, shellshocked first years.  

A friend of mine who is currently a dean at a middle school, after six years of teaching, mentioned that he's probably going to pursue an administration degree. Not because he deeply desires to be a principal, but because he's "thirty-something years old and can't keep making 60,000 a year."  (I know in the USA $60,000 ain't bad for a teacher, but remember we're talking about NYC, land of ridiculously expensive everything.)  When I heard this, I felt a familiar disappointment.  I've heard it before and may be on my way to becoming jaded and complacent about all the leavers.  Not that he wouldn't be good at administrating, but teaching and administrating are two different things, with different skills sets and different kinds of impact on students.  Truthfully, I have no idea whether he'd be good at it, and am relatively uninterested.

But then he caught my attention.  "But if there was merit pay," he said, "I'd be back in a flash."

"Really?" I said, with a surprised smile.

"Absolutely. Because if there's one thing I can do well, it's teach. I'd teach my whole life if I could." 

Wow, I thought. There it is. This is the kind of teacher our children, especially in high poverty schools, desperately need.  I'm fairly certain that for many of my students, the kind of education they receive in middle school can mean life or death later on.  Not that any kid is doomed after middle school, but middle school teachers create a context for the very beginning of our students' transition into adulthood. Adults have to deal with "the system" that governs much of their lives, and they must make choices for themselves and take responsibility within the system. For middle school students, school is that system and teachers are their guides. It's tremendously complicated work and matters more than many of us care to think about sometimes.  

My students cannot afford to lose the people closest to them at their schools--their strong teachers, the ones who prepare lessons and teach, and assess, and see that they learn, and STILL have energy leftover to get to know them, and partner with their parents, and actually change their schools to meet all of their students' needs better.  

No, my students can't afford to lose these teachers, simply because the system won't pay for them to be teachers anymore.  And no, the job I've just described is not something a first year teacher can do well, even the most gifted first year teacher working her heart out.  (I was a pretty good first year teacher, I might add.  But at year five, I'm still learning to do all of the parts of my job effectively.)

I was happy to hear Obama talk about paying teachers for their expertise, and that he's promised to work with teachers on the merit pay plan.  But I doubt I'll be letting out a sigh of relief any time soon.  The details of the policy will matter a lot in whether or not we keep the experienced teachers our students need, but are slated to lose each year, like clockwork. Already, I'm hearing more talk about recruitment than retention, investing in charter school "pockets of excellence," rather than confidently transforming the system our government is responsible for running... I hope President Obama and Secretary Duncan start talking to teachers, and soon.  

[image credit: jenkintownparents.org/ revolvingdoor.jpg]

What do teacher pass rates tell us?

It was data review time again this week at my school--probably the country's most popular PD activity of today.  My AP handed me a print out that included each teacher in our grades 6-12 school and the percentage of students he or she passed for the first semester.  What I saw was, for me, shocking. Teachers had wildly disparate pass rates for their classes.  Some teachers passed 100% of their students or very close to it.  Other teachers passed 50-60% of their students for the semester.  These rates did not seem to correlate in any coherent way to other things I knew about these teachers, such as number of years of experience, level of commitment to student learning, or general skill level as a teacher.  But looking at the data it was also clear that the disparities indicated more about the perspectives of teachers than they did about students.  And once again my discomfort with grading reared its bumbling head.

I realize I have surprisingly little knowledge of most of my colleagues' grading practices.  I know we all have some sort of grading schema, with categories, each weighted a certain percentage, all adding up to 100%.  Some teachers weight homework heavily, others don't.  Some teachers weight tests heavily, others don't.  Some teachers enter a zero for a missed homework, others enter a 55%, and still others leave the assignment out of the student's average altogether as if it never existed.  I know for my class, reading is a non-negotiable, so I set up my grading schema such that it's impossible to pass the class without doing a substantial amount of reading.  So a failing grade often indicates a student didn't complete a certain minimum amount of reading.  But the same is likely not true in another class, even of the same subject.  

The more I think about, the less certain I am of what "pass" actually means.  I spoke to two of my close colleagues, both of whom attended NYC public schools themselves.  These are two teachers I respect very much and whose students work hard and clearly learn a lot in their classes.  

The first teacher has a near 100% pass rate for all of her classes.  She said she calculates her grades based on a grading schema on our online grading system.  But then, she compares the number grade to what she thinks about the student.  She looks for evidence of what the student learned and knows how to do.  Whenever possible, she passes the student, even if the numbers don't add up.  When I asked her why, she explained that middle school grades are used to determine what high school a student gets into in NYC.  She would hate to doom a student's future based on choices they make in seventh grade, a time where adolescents are growing in so many ways and are often not aware of the impact of their behavior.  Mistakes made in seventh grade--that often have nothing to do with academic ability and everything to do with social-emotional development, which most middle schools currently give little attention and support--should not keep a student out of a competitive high school, she reasons.  Having taught seventh grade before, (and having been one myself) I do understand her point.  

The second teacher has one of the lowest rates I saw, around 60%.  She says she sets a high standard for her students, and doesn't budge on her expectations.  She works hard to modify her instruction based on the needs of the students, but expects all students to work hard consistently--she herself worked hard to achieve at a high level in NYC public schools despite many obstacles.  If her students meet her standards, they will be prepared for any high school, whereas if she lowers her standards, she is certain many students won't be able to succeed in competitive high schools.  If students fail her class, they are learning a hard lesson sooner rather than later, she reasons.  This too, makes sense to me.

Earlier in the year the administration asked each grade team to make a goal for the school year for our student pass rates.  As an 8th grade teacher, the pass or fail line becomes especially significant, because it determines who participates in the graduation ceremony and activities, and who is sent to summer school or retained for a second year of eighth grade. My grade team came up with a goal of a 90% (on-time) pass rate this year.  The number was somewhat arbitrary, but we chose it because we thought we could beat our rate from last year, which was around 80%, through better communication with students, parents, and increased interventions.

But the real can of worms we need to open up--if pass rates is going to be a key data point for our school--is how we understand and assess passing and failing, and how this definition fits into the mission of our school.  I don't have the answer, but we should start by opening up dialogue on the topic.  

Do any of your schools have a strong consensus on this issue?  If so, I would love to hear how you arrived at it.  I am concerned that, once again, we come up against the limitations of ascribing one number to stand for a student's learning over a period of time.  Narrative evaluations, least in middle school, might do a better job of capturing the complexity of any one student.

[image credit: http://blogs.courierpostonline.com/eagles/files/2008/11/pass_fail1.jpg]