On the Shoulders of Giants

Time To Spread Our Wings

I just read this moving post at Daily Kos from a veteran teacher: "I Don't Want to Be a Teacher Anymore." I am sitting here stunned, visualizing, suddenly and involuntarily, the image of a cocoon, and the immense struggle that it must take a caterpillar to break out of that thing and become a butterfly. I know it's a hackneyed symbol, but it is a real life phenomenon.  

Somehow it seems that it's time for teachers to find a way to leave behind the dark cloud that controls our so much of our profession, and move into a new phase. In the new phase we become the vibrant professionals we truly should be. Like butterflies, we are admired, studied, and protected, but maintain our mobility and life force, as we do our most important work of pollinating the flowers.  

March begins butterfly season in most of the country. I don't know how, but it's time to break out and fly.

[howdididoit.com}

Tubes: Experiential Poetry Lesson

Madeleine Ray, my mentor from Bank Street College, has been teaching teachers how to create rich, student-centered experiences in classrooms for many years. Many of my best curriculum pieces and teaching practices come from her teachings.  She is indeed, one of the giants, on whose shoulders I stand when I work with students. 

This is an activity she designed around teaching poetry to kids is derived from the important idea that poetry is an oral art and that it is meant to be heard more than read.  She advocates for spending plenty of time reading poetry aloud and listening to it before involving students in analyzing or writing poetry.  They have to experience it and live in it first, and if they do that fully, she says, they will spontaneously, at their own point of readiness, begin to write their own poems.  I have found this to be 100% true in my own practice. 

Nancy Toes Tangel, a wonderful teacher of 8th grade English in Newark, NJ, was filmed here doing the tubes activity with her class.  Notice that she, like me and many other of Madeleine's students, teach with a meeting area in middle school, and use it often for reflecting on the events of the class each day (ash shown at the end of the video). Also notice that they begin with a packet of poems, from which students select poems to read aloud with each other to hear and begin to experience, but not, at this point, to discuss.  

 

 

Nancy, Madeleine, and a few other collaborating teachers and I will be giving a workshop at Bank Street on Saturday, March 5th about using dramatic play in the classroom to teach elements of story and writer's process.  If you're in the NY area and interested in innovative ways to teach English Language Arts, please join us! Stay tuned for more information.

[image and video credit: Kelsey Toes Tangel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDDn2sXCVVw]

What Education Should Be Learning From Business

I just had a great customer service experience taking my 2007 MacBookPro to the Apple Store.  The store was clean and beautifully designed.  A "MacGenius" guy, with long hair pulled back, huge circular earrings that stretched his earlobes around their shape, and the obligatory blue "MacGenius" shirt, quickly and professionally diagnosed the problem.  Practically without blinking, through a series of tests and some easy paperwork, he hooked me up with the service I needed.  He exuded a "this-is-a-good-job" vibe without saying a thing about it.  His co-workers all looked equally busy, calm, and both professional and diverse in their self-expressive appearances at the same time.  As a customer, you feel a mix of excitement at the products being displayed and the interactive set-up, and ease at how aesthetically pleasing and organized the place is and how well you are treated at every turn.

I was reminded of something teacher-blogger David Ginsburg of Coach G's Teaching Tips (great Edweek blog on teaching practice) talked about at a dinner before the EWA conference, The Promises and Pitfalls of Improving the Teaching Profession.  He shared that he came to teaching after a career in business, and much of what he learned in business helped him to be successful in teaching.  Though many people are attempting to apply business concepts to education, they apparently aren't applying many of the most relevant findings from the field of business research. 

In particular, he shared that in the business community it is known that when companies focus on keeping their employees happy, with the resources and conditions they need to do their job well, sales go up.  Consider the lack of professional working the conditions the field of teaching and the reliance on test scores as the single bottom line, and you have an immediate flaw, from a business perspective.  

I think about the success of Apple, where a computer sales guy, or a guy who processes for technical service, seems to genuinely like and respect his job.  Compare this with the repairs department at CompUSA...(anyone ever tried that?)  I think about the success of Google, where employees get 15% of their schedules for unstructured time to pursue their own pet projects.  And that's where little developments like Google Earth and Gmail come from--no coincedence.  

So, creativity and respect for employees can make a business money?  Working conditions that encourage creativity are worth something? Hm...

Why can't education policy makers realize that teachers will reach these levels of success and productivity once we, too, are treated like professionals?  Give teachers the training we need, professional working conditions, professional compensation, time for reflection and creativity, and a little professional trust, and watch what happens.  The positive consequences in terms of recruiting, developing, and retaining great teachers will be never-ending, and student learning will increase in ways unimaginable in the current system. 

 

[image credit: apple.com-- yes, I'm giving them free promotion, but it's promotion they seem to have earned through quality products and service from what I can tell.  I don't include Itunes in this assessment, however.]

Student Thoughts on Accountability for Teachers

"Ms. Sacks, where are you going tomorrow?" a student in my small group tutorial asked.  I had told them earlier that day I would be out at a conference tomorrow.  (See this post for more information.)

"I'm going to be at a conference for education writers about teacher effectiveness," I said, realizing how garbled that probably sounded to my students.  I went on to explain that there were many big arguments going on about how school systems can tell if teachers are doing a good job.  

I now had all ten of my students' total attention. They looked pensive or confused, trying to wrap their minds around the idea.  It was still pretty abstract for them. 

"Do you know one way that many people in education are deciding if a teacher is good or not?"

"How?!" they asked, excited to know.

"By how their students do on state tests," I said.  

Immediately, the entire group of students let out groans, actually surprising me by their unified negative reaction.  

"Oh, man, really?!" one student asked, wrinkling up his face in disgust.

"Why would they do that?" another student asked, incredulously.

I was, at this point, a little puzzled by the strong reaction.  "Well, I said, can you explain why you don't agree with this?"  I started taking notes on my laptop.  

One boy answered, "Because if a kid doesn't have a good score on the test, you can't really blame the teacher."

"Yeah," another boy added, "Like if a kid doesn't care, it's not the teacher's fault."  They were turning on all their seventh-grade-passion-for-fairness, and evidently none of their seventh grade tendency to place responsibility on others.

"If you get a low score on the test, and then you have to be in a lower group, you feel left out, so you really don't want to do the work," another boy said.  He was commenting on the way that tests are used to rank and sort students and the effects this has on student motivation. 

"Teachers can't do much about kids' effort.  The teacher could be teaching you a lot of stuff, and you are learning, but on the test you just decide not to do 100%.  I know people who just guess on multiple choice tests. That wouldn’t be the teacher's fault."

"But doesn't a good teacher motivate students to do well?" I asked.

"Yes, but that's only a little part of it.  Kids aren't always putting full attention on the teacher. When a teacher does good, some kids still just don't want to pay attention. There are other things, distractions..."  

They were really drilling this point, and puzzling me in the process.  I believe a teacher is a huge influence on student motivation.  I'd even wielded my influence recently with students as they took a practice standardized reading test, encouraging them to beat the test and show what they know. The results were very good.  But my students were passionate about their argument.  What were they trying to tell me?

One of the messages I took from their comments is that in students' minds, testing is about a lot more than the teacher.  (And students are correct in thinking this way).  Students have been acquainted with standardized tests since early elementary school. They already have a relationship with these blunt instruments of assessment.  Their motivation is colored by past experiences, as well as the boring, often inane, nature of the tests in relation to their vibrant development and struggles as individuals and thinkers.

Students are also keenly aware that that the standardized test is not the same animal as a teacher-made classroom test--one that directly connects to their current learning experience--and they don't treat it as such. That is why, I believe, they were fairly shocked and disappointed that their teachers would be judged based on their performance on these tests, that are alien in a way their teachers are not.

[This reminds me of a conversation with another class about testing itself.  One student commented that the test often seems to have little to do with the class itself or things they care about.  Another student suggested, "Teachers should be able to input their curriculum to, like, a central system.  Then the system could create a test based on the curriculum the individual teacher says the class is learning." With a little tweaking, this idea could be an interesting direction!]

"So," I asked, "if not by test scores, how should people judge whether a teacher is doing a good job or not?"  Hands shot up.

"They could determine who's a good teacher if they come up to the school and maybe listen to your lesson plan or--" one student started.

"They should send people to the school and view them teaching to see if they're doing the job they got hired to do, if they're doing the job like they should be," another added.

"But they should, like, surprise-come, because the teacher might just be good on one day if they know they're coming," the first student qualified.    

"Yeah." 

Finally, I asked, "And what makes a good teacher?  What should they look for?" 

"Elements of fun," one student, who'd been quiet thus far, contributed.

"Yeah.  Humorous, and a little bit strict."  Nods of agreement.

"They understand your problems.  They don't just assume you don't wanna do your best if you don't do well."

Hm... here was an admission that a good teacher believes he or she can help students do well, doesn't judge students superficially or give up on them, does not see student achievement or effort as out of his or her locus of control.  

BUT--this admission came from the student in the context of evaluating teachers through classroom visits, that is, based on the daily practice of learning that happens inside the classroom. An assessment of a teacher based on this practice contrasts dramatically with an abstract test created by outsiders, which students understand is for the purposes of ranking them, and now their teachers too.

I'm not arguing that there is no value to standardized tests and that students should never encounter them. I am pointing out that they are often used in a way that is not productive. 

"Good teachers--they are nice and strict and funny."

"They have patience."

In my school, though students don't explicitly know this, they do have a voice in assessing the quality of their teachers through annual anonymous student surveys.  Test scores and other student achievement data gathered by the teacher also play a critical role, as do classroom observations and debriefs, parent surveys and peer surveys. Teachers play a role in our own evaluation, by setting goals for our professional development, against which we are assessed at key points throughout the year.  

Grading itself is very tricky, and any system has its flaws.  (Teachers know this.) But if we need to have a system for grading teachers, then this seems like a pretty fair way.  The important thing is that every one of these pieces of feedback from all of the key stakeholders (360 degrees, it's called) is valuable and should have weight.  When we rely on one source of information exclusively, the picture we get is just that limited, and the side effects of blowing one voice out of proportion are damaging to everyone involved.  Talk to students for five minutes about this, and quickly get schooled. 

For another take on testing as chief accountability measure, check out this short animated video on Dan Brown's blog, or this searing analysis of what shared accountability really means by Renee Moore, or Bill Ferriter's post about holding administrators accountable for creating conditions for teachers to be innovative and successful. 

[image credit: secure5.softcomca.com]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Story Idea For Education Journalists

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of being at a conference on hosted by the Education Writer's Association and the Carnegie Foundation here in NYC.  It brought together an interesting group of education reporters, teacher bloggers, and education "experts" (=policy people & researchers) to discuss the topic of teacher effectiveness.  The event was quite unique and engaging, though I would have liked to see teachers featured on panels as "education experts" as well.  

At the end of the day we broke into small groups and talked more directly with the reporters about ideas for stories.  Here one I'd like to suggest:

Does innovative teaching lead to better test scores?  

On the one hand, everyone from principals to President Obama is saying that it's bad to "teach to the test."  On the other hand, when it comes time to look at data and evaluate students, teachers and schools, test scores are the measure.  

Many people, including Judy Zimny of ASCD who was a great panel presenter yesterday, have asserted that innovative teaching that excites students around content leads naturally to higher test scores.

In other words, there is no need to teach to the test.  Is that true?  It is a question I've been trying to answer myself.  I see some evidence that it is true, and some evidence it might not be universally true.  What are the factors at play here?

Let's hear from innovative teachers who see big gains in their students' test scores but do not seem to "teach to the test".  What populations do they work with?  What type of schools do they work in?  What do they focus their curriculum on, and to what do they attribute the success of their students on the test?  Are there things these teachers think are important to teach, but leave out, because they aren't tested skills or content?  Where do "soft" skills like collaboration, self-reflection, creativity, and empathy figure into their classrooms and curriculum?  

Let's also hear from teachers who refuse to teach to the test and who may not see huge gains on test scores, but who have been deemed excellent, innovative teachers by other measures, such as National Board Certification, feedback by their colleagues, school leaders, students and parents.  What is their rationale for the choices they make regarding curriculum and teaching style?  What growth do they see in their students, and why don't they think it's being measured accurately or at all or by the standardized test?  I have read blog posts from Bill Ferriter, an expert teacher for sure, who incorporates digital media into his classroom in extraordinary ways and who teaches his students to be global citizens--he has at times mentioned that his students' test scores are lower than those of the other teachers on his hall, because he focuses so much energy on skills he believes are of extreme importance, but do not get tested.  

Finally, I'd like to hear from teachers who do teach to the test, and who would not describe themselves as particularly innovative--both the ones who see their students make gains on the test and those who try and do everything they're told to do, but don't.  How do they conceptualize what they are doing?  How do conditions at their schools factor into their decisions and outcomes?  What does success on the test mean to their students and them? 

Also, what do parents want for their kids?  How do they feel about their child's educational experience in relation to their perception about whether their child is being taught to the test or not?  

 

[image credit: news.xinhuanet.com]

 

The Universe Is Made of Stories...

"The universe is made of stories not of atoms." ~Muriel Rukeyser, American poet

A well timed open-ended discussion on a relevant topic can take a class far.  We had just finished our second whole novel study of the year of When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.  Students were beginning to get good at interpreting the elements of the story and identifying the author's craft decisions--both the ones that they liked and the ones they felt were weak.  They had great fun trying their hands at rewriting fictional scenes, adding characters, killing characters, spinoffs and sequels to the novels we'd read.  

I knew students were learning a ton about the work that writers do, the power of words, and the power of their own thinking, and I knew they were enjoying it. But I wondered if my students were aware of what they were learning about and why we were bothering with it!  

I decided to devote some time to an open-ended discussion about stories.  I started with the quote from Muriel Rukeyser above.  We discussed what she meant by the quote and the ways in which it could be true.  It lead to some interesting conversation about where stories come from and their role in our lives. 

Here are some notes I took on the board as we talked.  A lot is missing of course, but some of the main things students touched on are here:

 And another one, from another class...

My co-teacher (learning specialist for my CTT & SETTS push-in classes), came up with a great reading for homework about what reading fiction does to your brain.  It was a good day.  It confirmed for me the value of taking time, on occasion, to just talk about the things we might consider obvious, but are actually much more than meets the eye.  I'm hoping to take time more regularly for these types of discussions to help students develop metacognition around the work we do.