On the Shoulders of Giants

Road to A Paperless Classroom

I wrote my last post on the ways in which the faculty at my school has gone paperless, and I'm left with the striking question of what is keeping us from going paperless with students?  I go about my work day with a laptop.  Most of the adults I know go about their work day with a computer and could not live without one. 

I have heard of 1:1 classrooms, where students each have a laptop that they take to and from school.  I did some research and it seems that some schools doing this have required families to buy a particular type of laptop for their child for school.  I can imagine that many students at my school could do this, but a significant minority of students could not and may not have internet access at home either.  I also read that there is a notable cost benefit to going paperless.  I remember my principal talking to us about how many copies were made last year, how much money was spent on it, and the number sounded ridiculous.  How much more expensive would laptops for students be?  I also wonder if we could get some large companies that provide internet services to sponsor certain families with free internet access, as part of their community contributions. 

My mind's been trying to imagine what a paperless classroom would look like and how it would run.  I found a great post on the blog, teachone2one.com, called The Changes, that explains some of the major ways the laptops have changed practice and learning in the classroom.  One example that struck me was the use of "chatting" in the classroom.  This teacher had students screening a documentary on Darfur, while discussing in real time in a chat room without stopping the film.  I've been on many Elluminate sessions where the chat box has been as productive and engaging as the spoken dialogue.

I also found this post, 5 Tips for Classroom Management Within 1:1 Environments, which more than anything, allowed me to imagine what it would really be like, warts and all, in a 1:1 classroom. Fascinating. 

I've often given students the assignment to write about what school would be like if every student had a Kindle.  It always seemed like an unrealistic dream, though.  But after seeing so many teachers share how they are doing it successfully now (see Teach Paperless), I'm certain that laptops or ipads or Kindles are what the future holds for schools.  We just have to get there! 

 

[Image credit: bornischool.org]

 

 

Paperless

Though the work of a teacher is never ending, there are several things my school does with technology that make my day run more efficiently, thereby saving time.  Maybe I'm just not good with paper, but organizing the paper flow of a teacher's "office" has always been difficult for me and often sent me in circles looking for something.  Check out these paperless options.

1. Laptops.  Instead of a teacher's lounge with desktops, like many schools have, or a few desktops in the classroom, each teacher is loaned a laptop for the year.  The school is new, so the laptops are new Macbook Pros, and they are fast and reliable. (Each year the school brings on new staff, so the cost in any given year of this isn't so far from the cost of maintaining and updating a computer lab at the school.)  

2.  Gmail accounts.  Every faculty member and every student at the school has an email with their first initial and last name on the school's google server.  This makes it easy to email anyone without hunting for their email.

3. Google Docs.  Every meeting agenda is sent out ahead of time as a Google doc.  One person at the meeting takes notes on the Google Doc.  Action steps are easily accessible, and the doc can be updated at a subsequent meeting without anyone hunting for their notes.  I used to have a HUGE binder full of notes and handouts from meetings. Now I just have my laptop!  This means that I cannot forget where I put notes or handouts.  It also means that everyone has the notes, not just the facilitator. 

4. Google Calendar. If I want to meet with someone, I check their schedule in Google Calendar and invite them to a meeting, or vice versa, instead of hunting through confusing schedule documents that are often not accessible to me anyway.  And if I want to sign out the laptop cart for my classes?  Each laptop cart has it's own calendar.  I just check to see that it's not already "busy" and invite it to my classroom!  This much quicker and more reliable than walking to a central location in the school and check through the one existing copy of a paper calendar in a binder.

5. Teacher Pages.  As part of our school's google server sites, each teacher has a page for his or her classes.  We update the homework and provide other helpful information for our classes.  Not every student has internet access at home, but the majority do, so this is an easy way to help students and parents stay on top of the work. The google site has limited capabilities, but is extremely easy to work on as opposed to some other school sites I've tried to use, such as echalk.  

6. Gradespeed.  I've been using an online Gradebook for a while.  For anyone not using one, it takes about 15 minutes to figure out how to use and it is a huge timesaver.  If your school doesn't subscribe to one, there are sites you can use yourself that cost less than $50 a year.  But what I like even more about how my school uses Gradespeed is that we take attendance on it.  I have my laptop open on my desk.  After the first five minutes of class I enter attendance.  That means if a student comes late to my 4th period class, I enter it into Gradespeed, and the school can easily access data about which students are chronically late to class and at what points during the day.  Detention is assigned to students who are late a certain number of times in a week.  I also can't count the times that I filled out (or forgot to fill out) the old paper attendance sheet and then couldn't find it when the attendance person came to collect it--that could easily become a lengthy disruption to a lesson (again maybe I'm just not good with paper).  Gradepeed and other online grade books can be set to send automatic email messages to parents about lateness or missing homework.  I've never used those features, but would be interested in trying at some point.

7. Google Spreadsheets for Parent Phone Log. Instead of every teacher having his or her own way of logging parent contact, there is a form that becomes data in a spreadsheet that I fill out when I make parent phone calls.  I just enter the name of the student, my name, whom I contacted, the reason, the result of the conversation, and press submit.  Somehow, typing that information seems much easier than filling out a graphic organizer by hand or finding the students' note card and recording notes on the conversation.  I'm actually faster at typing now than hand writing...

8. SchoolNet.  This program allows multiple choice tests to be scanned and graded electronically.  It does take some time upfront to load a test into it, but it eliminates the grading of anything that can be done in the multiple choice format (you can do short answer or essays, but have to grade them yourself, then enter a score for that question on a bubble sheet).  I think I will need to address this more fully in another post.  Of course, I don't give that many multiple choice tests. But, for example, practice state tests can be given and graded immediately.  You can link each test question to a state standard, and get data about how students scores in relation to specific standards.  Finally, using that feature, I'm working on a way to grade student writing on a rubric I've created, then creating a "test" where each category of the rubric is a "test question" tied to a standard.  Then I can plug in students' rubric scores for each test question and have data about how students perform on different areas of their writing.  That will help me track their growth as writers throughout the year.  This is still a work in progress for me as a timesaver, but the capabilities of SchooNet open up a lot of opportunities--and why take time to do something a computer can do faster?

One of the only things that remain in paper form is student work. What would it be like if every student had a laptop and internet access at home?  I know some schools and districts around the country are doing this.  That will have to wait for another post.

 

[image credit: faqs.org]

NYC To Publish Teacher Records of Student Test Scores--What's the Purpose?

Just wanted to write some quick thoughts about the recent political decision to publish teacher records of student test scores in the newspaper.  In addition to the questions I have about the validity and usefulness of this data, I really find it strange that the city is so keen on publishing teacher records of student test scores without first showing these records to teachers themselves.  A commenter, "John," in this Gotham Schools post first brought the point to my attention.  

How is it helpful for the public to see that information?  How is it helpful for teachers and students to have this made public?  It looks like sensationalism to me, made even worse by the fact that teachers themselves do not know how they are rated.  Supposing testing data were in fact helpful in determining teacher effectiveness (and that has not been proven)--as a motivator, wouldn't it make sense to show teachers their current ratings and tell us that, say, in one or two years, the data will be made public?  

As it stands, the city seems to be playing a game of gotcha with public school teachers, instead of working to help teachers improve their practices so that students learn more.  

This reminds me of the impulse teachers sometimes have to "punish" students with pop quizzes, when they suspect the students haven't learned the material, just to prove a point.  We have probably all tried it at some point, so I'm not saying categorically that a teacher who does this is "bad."  However, the problem with this practice is that it doesn't help students learn more.  It may motivate one or two students to try harder the next day.  But it also creates a climate of fear and punishment--learn because you fear what will happen if you don't.  That is not what learning is really about, and many students (even high performing ones) will actually shut down under such conditions--especially if you publicize their grades to the entire school on said quiz.  (Remember the teacher in L.A. who committed suicide, rest in peace.)

Publishing teacher test results without bringing teachers into a conversation about what, when and why this change will take place, is like a punitive, high stakes pop quiz. The city should know better.  

[image credit: penn-olson.com]

 

 

On Reading, Memory and the New Generation

I've been thinking lately about how much memory is involved in the process of reading, especially in reading story.   I've been discussing this with the students in my reading tutorials.  They noticed that we must remember what came before in the story, in order to understand the meaning of what's happening now, and what will come next.  They added, the end of the story usually makes sense only if you remember the beginning and what happened along the way.  Students also noticed that they had to remember more basic things like the meanings of words, recognize sight words, and memorizing the alphabet, in order to read.  

This paper, Memory and Reading, by psychologist Heli Numminen provides a very helpful look at the uses of memory in reading. Like my students noticed, the paper explains how working memory is essential for reading on a number of levels, and, more importantly, that there are reading comprehension difficulties that are caused by issues with working memory.  For example, "in ADHD the contents of the working memory are constantly inflicted with extra impulses. Reading comprehension is difficult because there is so much competing information in the working memory during a reading event."  In particular, longer sentence constructions and more complex words require more working memory--one has to remember what idea came before within a single sentence to make sense of what comes next.

I'm thinking about this at the same time that I'm noticing how many things I used to have to remember that I don't anymore, due to technology.  I used to have at least 30 phone numbers memorized at any given time.  Some in short term memory, others, which I still know be heart (my parents homes and a the homes of my oldest best friends from way back), in long term memory.  Today, I know very few phone numbers by heart.  I don't know the number of the school where I work, most of my friends' numbers, and the cell phones of my family members, because they're all in my cell.  I don;t have to memorize addresses or directions. I have all of that in my iphone whenever I need it. I don't even print out directions anymore. 

There are so many things I don't have to remember, because they're readily available on the internet, through my phone or computer, that I wonder how it's affecting my memory use in general... and what about my students' memory use?  

I asked students what they have to memorize these days.  They did list a few things: video game codes, school schedules, email passwords.  Maybe it's the same amount, just different stuff...but I doubt it.  I don't think most people today have to memorize as many things as we did.  

At the same time that I don't have to spend time concentrating on memorizing information, I am more free to multitask.  I may be holding a lot more at one time in my working memory than I used to, being constantly wired.  The use of working memory, according to Numminen, is extremely important in reading.  

How do the changes in the way we are using memory affect the new generation with their reading process?  If we can identify these changes, how can we address these shifting needs in our teaching?

[image credit: animetric.blogspot.com]

 

 

Differentiated Professional Pathways: The Argument I Would Have Made at NBC's Teacher Town Hall

After witnessing in person NBC's Teacher Town Hall session and then watching the panels of "experts" that met over the next few days, I believe there is an important argument that was mostly missing from the entire event.  It is an argument that my colleagues and I who co-wrote the upcoming book, Teaching 2030 (Teachers College Press, due out by the end of this year), identify as one of the four *emerging realities* for our vision of the future of teaching.  We call it Differentiated Professional Pathways.

At the heart of the teacher quality and teacher retention problem in this country is an idea stated by my fellow TS2030 writer, Killian Betlach, who said (I'm paraphrasing here), "We expect far too much from teachers in their first year, and later on, we expect much too little."  Several teachers who spoke in Education Nation made strong points about the need for stronger support of new teachers. That support, especially combined with a reduced teaching load in the first 2 years, could make a huge dent in the teacher retention and teacher quality problems on the front end of a teacher's career.  But our problem is arguably greater in retaining strong teachers past their 4th through 7th years.  

I have personally watched dozens of the best teachers in the buildings where I've worked leave teaching. They don't leave because they don't love teaching; they just don't see a future in fulfilling the same responsibilities with the same schedule, at pretty much the same pay for the rest of their careers.  Most often, they become professors or principals. A few go to law school. Often times this is not out of a true passion for such positions, but out of a need for career advancement, greater autonomy, salary and status.  I've watched students have to say good-bye to too many of their best teachers.  Something is definitely not right with that.  For more discussion of this issue, TLN'er Steve Owen's recent Teacher Magazine article, "Keeping Great Teachers in the Classroom," provides a great discussion of Katy Farber's timely book, Why Great Teachers Quit: And How We Might Stop the Exodus.

As we lay out in Teaching 2030, we need to restructure our profession to allow for varied opportunities for career advancement for effective, experienced teachers--that don't all involve leaving the classroom. There have been some attempts to begin this process, such as the Lead Teacher program started in New York City by the UFT and the DOE.  The Lead teacher program allowed a principal to appoint one teacher with at least ten years of experience to teach half time and mentor new teachers half time, for $10,000 above their regular salary.  From what I saw and heard, that worked to varying degrees depending on the way the principal assigned the lead teacher's schedule and skill set of the lead teacher. (Being a mentor of new teachers is not the same skill set as teaching children.)  The Lead Teacher program is a great idea, and from this job posting, it seems to have developed since I first heard of it 4 years ago, but it is only a beginning.  It seems that precious little attention has been paid to developing and improving programs like this lately.  

Hybrid roles can and should involve classroom teaching and leadership at a variety of levels.  Mentoring new teachers or leading a grade team or department at the school-level are only some of the possibilities.  Online mentoring with teachers in remote locations, consulting on everything from curriculum and technology integration to larger scale reforms at the district, state or federal level could also be done, (like some of the federal DOE teacher ambassadors are doing).  At any rate, we need to explore all of these options and see how they might help make use of the skills of strong teachers to improve the quality of education in our nations public schools.  If we do not offer opportunities for career advancement to classroom teachers, we will continue to lose them and their skills as they pursue other careers.

[Image credit: illustrationsource.com]

NBC Teacher Town Hall: Teachers As Spectacle

Notes From My Iphone

I'm here at NBC Studios in Rockefeller Plaza for the Teacher Town Hall. I'm standing because they ran out of seats by the time I arrived, even though all participants must be on a guest list. Some teachers brought their children, it looks like. Ah... Now I'm seated. Next to a section of "reserved" seating. I wonder who those seats are reserved for?

This is an unusual amount of bright lights for most public school teachers with no theater background. There is some snazzy house dance music playing on surround sound system. Imagine if the school day began like this, as we all entered the school building.

A voice comes on asking us to silence our electronic equipment and refrain from flash photography. Music turns off. Applause. Peg Thomas (?) introduces a sweepstakes for one lucky teacher to travel overseas for one year with 19 students for cultural immersion in Europe. www.peopletopeople.com/teacher to register. This is the "People to People Ambassador" program.

Music comes back on. Sounds like Nina Simone this time--one of her more energetic songs.

One of the reserved seats is filled by a Brooklyn teacher who is also his union chapter leader. he says he was interviewed several times for a seat on one of the panels, but ultimately didn't get it.

Now Brian Williams is introduced. "I can tell that you are educators," he says. "Because when the music turned off, you all immediately went silent." Laughter from he crowd.

5 minutes before we go on. Brian Williams explains, "This is really going to run like a town hall... I'll be scanning the audience for ideas and agitation..."

Williams says he comes to this as a college dropout himself. He was fortunate to choose a profession in which at the time he could advance without college. He also names and celebrates the teachers who helped him through his primary and secondary schooling... But, he says, "I'm really kind of an an education don't."

Raheema Ellis, NBC education correspondent, is introduced, and will be taking Twitter comments from teachers across the country. Williams introduces his wife, but I can't see her. Is she a teacher?

"We have very little formatting for this thing," he says. "We want to see how it goes." Brian Williams is good at hosting. He's charismatic and relaxed as we spend 5 minutes waiting.

The teacher next to me flew in from Fresno California and next to her is a teacher from Oregon. They will be on one of the half hour panel sessions, but have not been prepped on what topics they will be speaking about. The teacher next to me is nervous, she says, but knows that everyone here is a teacher, which feels "friendly" to her. Her students back in Cali asked her to please flip her hair (which is nicely blow dried) on television.

The show started...and I stopped taking notes.

Notes from Afterward

Although many strong points were made by teachers from around the country, the conversation was all over the place, with no cohesive message from teachers to the American public about what we need. As it turns out, teachers were not entirely friendly with one another either. They were ready to duke it out over divisive issues like tenure--not that we shouldn't debate that and other controversial issues, but our debut on national television didn't seem like the best place for it.

Brian Williams' first comments to panelists emphasized the "raw passion" of the teachers who presented. I was glad when one teacher spoke up and mentioned that passion alone doesn't get any teacher very far--in fact, we all witnessed that in the opening sequence film clips depicting the passionate first year teacher who is hit hard with the challenges of teaching without a substantial skill set and experience.

Williams then threw out questions that were all over the map--teacher recruitment, Waiting For Superman, teacher evaluation, why we teach, etc. As teachers took turns responding, he hyped up the crowd with comments like, "It's just a beehive in here folks...it's like a cauldron in here...it's getting heated in here...I just have to take this man's comments--he's jumping out of his seat, out of his skin, he's doing aerobics over there just to get his comment heard!"

A panelist, who was a teacher and coach from the Bronx, sitting in the same row as me, shared that when he was being prepped for the panel backstage, the NBC folks encouraged him and the other panelists to be as controversial as possible, because it makes good tv. According to him, they said that several times. Agitation, indeed...teachers as spectacle for the American public.

I do think it was a milestone that teachers from around the country spoke in a national arena about our profession and I'm glad NBC had the imagination to create the opportunity. We should speak much more to the public about the work we do. But it looks to me like we really weren't prepared for it. We are not a monolithic group, teachers. There are many differing viewpoints among us. However, I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of teachers agree that our work is tremendously important, that we don't have everything we need to do our best work, and that changes are necessary. We need to chose something to get behind so we can put forth a more coherent message for the public and then expect to have some influence.

For an interesting analysis of what the public must think of teachers, based on the media's portrayal, see Dan Brown's latest post at Get In the Fracas: If I Wasn't a Teacher, Here's What I'd Probably Think About Fixing Education.