Teacher in a Strange Land

Merit Badge

 

Happy Fourth.

What truths seem self-evident to educators in the year 2009?  Are all teachers created equal?  Which of their rights are still unalienable? Life, certainly--but who gets to pursue happiness or feel liberated, these days? It's hard to follow your bliss when unemployed, and studying the indicators that currently constitute effective teaching is the antithesis of liberty.

There were fireworks over Jonathon Alter's June 15 Newsweek column in which he declares that the key to fixing education is figuring out who can teach and who can't (and asserts that teachers are born, not made). This good teacher/bad teacher schism should be glaringly obvious and embedded in policy creation, he says, but is currently obscured by educrats who "remain fiercely committed to the status quo."

OK. Raise your hand if you know anyone, anywhere in the land of free, who's fiercely committed to bad public schools. Right. There are educators fiercely committed to improving dreadful schools, of course. Some parents are appropriately loyal to the public schools where their children thrive--and some are determined to preserve a status quo that lets them send their children to exclusive schools with individual attention and rich curriculum, while other people's children get 5 hours of reading and math, plus test prep. I don't think that's the status quo Jonathon Alter is referring to, however.

There will never be equality in outcomes, but we can pursue--relentlessly--equity of opportunity for all American students. Part of that pursuit will be a continuous improvement strategy for the coalition of willing, effective teachers (who are made, and refined in experience, not born).

I'm not writing to shake another finger at Alter, however. I'm here to praise an earlier column, on a "misplaced faith in the meritocracy"--an interesting (and kind of schizophrenic) contrast to his natural-teacher argument. In the June 1 Newsweek, Alter writes warmly of his father, a member of the Greatest Generation--the men and women whose social, economic and workplace values were also refined in experience, often during wartime and while they were very young. He contrasts these solid citizens with the whiz kids who represent the meritocracy in the 21st century, who are:

...shaped not by war, but by college. To win the battle for admissions, fellowships and the other totems of success, they needed not bravery or proven leadership, but test-taking skills and a specific kind of cunning that's come to be confused with "merit." Obamaworld is loaded with these exact types...policy wonks who have experienced little in life but sound unfailingly articulate and confident about their elegant economic models. 

Obama's faith in data and in his ability to reach the "right" policy answer will not be enough for success. That's because every expert opinion is the product of the biases and backgrounds of the experts. He needs some people around him who, in LBJ's words, have "run for sheriff."

Absolutely. Perhaps someone who's been successful on genuine battlefields in education ought to step in, and point out that a true meritocracy in teaching is earned in trial by fire in real schools. And that putting whiz kids, armed with test-taking skills and academic cunning, into classrooms, assuming that their high SAT scores and elegant policy solutions will save the day, is not a viable long-term strategy for cutting out the rotten spots in the status quo. Perhaps we should be pairing whiz-kids newbie teachers with the teacher equivalent of the local sheriff. Maybe we should pair them with educators whose biases and backgrounds resemble the those of the students in non-meritorious communities.

Malcolm Gladwell, who seems to be developing a new peripheral career as an education spokesperson, in his keynote to the National Educational Computing Conference, reiterated his "effort trumps talent"  idea. Ten thousand of hours of practice makes perfect. You can't short-cut the development of a teaching career. Made, not born.

Image: Drexer Shift-Drifter, Flickr Creative Commons

Talk is Cheap. But Meaningful.

I was sitting in a meeting last week, planning a major teacher leadership initiative with some smart colleagues, when I had one of those moments in which the correct word--the word I needed--got stuck in the murky recesses of my (admittedly aging) brain. I wanted to describe the process of distributing work...dispersing work...a starts-with- "d" word... in which tasks are dispensed, doled out, delivered, or disseminated to others. Duh. *&^@#! What was the word?

Kathy, sitting next to me: "Delegate?" Bingo! And then she suggested that the reason I couldn't retrieve the word immediately is because it's not part of my habitual thinking process, not a word I value or use constantly. "Language is truth, you know" she said, shooting me a Meaningful Glance.

Well. I've been brooding about this for a couple of days now, trying to recall other tip-of-tongue words that have eluded me lately. The only example I could remember was talking with my husband about burnished language used to obscure less-positive meanings-- pre-owned vehicles, red-shirted kindergartners, not-yet-proficient, that sort of thing. The word refused to pop into my mind...it starts with an "e"...  Right. Euphemism.

There are actually terms used to delineate this impaired word-retrieval phenomenon. Dysnomia--or dysnomia's more serious cousin, anomia--or (my personal favorite) lethologica. Psychologists refer to it as "Tip of the Tongue Syndrome" (TOT). And Kathy was right--it does have something to do with one's shovel-ready vocabulary versus words and ideas used infrequently. Perhaps I am not particularly good at delegating--or willing to put a good verbal face on an objectionable concept.

In education, it's hard to draw a bright line between the specific language of professional practice, sloganeering, genuine words of inspiration, and loose, habituated-in-lazy-thinking speech. I was reminded of this in a recent conversation with an amazing young teacher, working in one of the poorest schools in Alabama. While she was pursuing an undergraduate degree in education, several of her friends whose majors were in other fields were applying for highly selective "teaching fellows" programs. Some of them are teaching in at-risk schools now, and feeling underprepared and overwhelmed (a condition mitigated by the appealing prospect of a full ride in grad school).  "What makes me different?" she asked. "Aren't I 'teaching for America,' too--even though I don't get scholarship money or prestige?" A poignant question.

Language matters--especially the things we say without thinking, the concepts that embed themselves in our brains via the readily accessible words, idioms and metaphors that shape our collective judgments and beliefs.

Race to the Top.

Relentless Pursuit.

In the Trenches.

Widgets. Outliers. Core Knowledge. Bolder and Broader.

 And now we're being asked to rethink the branding and glossary of No Child Left Behind, a kind of corporate flush to rid us of the unpleasant whiff of whole cities full of left-behind children, scientifically-based curriculum kickbacks, and yearly progress that isn't even close to adequate. Most teachers I know think this is the ultimate pig-in-lipstick PR blah-blah. (Although it will be a relief when they take down the insulting, red plastic NCLB Schoolhouse thingie--which looks like someone grafted a Bob Evans on the great, gray Department of Education building.) Still, language matters. And so does change.

Retrieving the right words for the new name may be tricky. We are out of practice in using the vocabulary of empowerment and developing human capital. Building Capacity. The Audacity of Thinking We Can Do Ed Policy Better. I'm still working on my suggestion, but the word that keeps popping into my head is: Investment. Nations whose systemic education results are uniformly impressive invest continuously in people. And we should, too. No euphemisms, but lots of hard work.

I need some time to think about a new name. I'll be hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Images: NCinDC and OhioNewsHound

Warped Soul of an Old Machine: The Technology of Tracking

 

Tracking is a technology. You can't plug it in, but--like 3-ring binders, twelve grade levels, and the agrarian calendar--tracking is an educational technology. A device dreamed up for the purpose of making schooling more "efficient."  A tool.

And just as a man with a hammer sees every problem as a nail, school technologies are often considered the "obvious" solution to every dilemma we face in schools. Many of these durable cogs in the vast education machine date back to the era when poor immigrants were flooding city schools at the same time the industrial age promoted a technical approach to everyday tasks. Everything from traffic management to measuring the intelligence of army recruits could be done better through science--and many of these efficiencies were translated into educational practice as the system expanded.

We seem to have a national compulsion to sort, identify, select, test, standardize, compare and compete in our schools. Intellectual growth, unfortunately, does not automatically thrive via classification or homogeny. Human learning is neither predictable nor controllable, and doesn't happen at a consistent rate. Students respond in different ways to varying content, disciplines and instructional models--not to mention different teachers and emotional states.  Lots of bad education policy has been created by people who assume that uniformity is a great virtue. And even more bad policy has been instituted by folks who believe that the way they learn best is the way all people learn, or should learn.

And so it is with tracking, the technological solution to the non-problem of having a roomful of learners who don't know precisely the same things.

Here's my worst experience with tracking, from the early 80s, when I was teaching one section of 7th grade math. The 7th graders were divided, using reliable assessment data from 6th grade state tests, into five tracks: Honors (which was Pre-Algebra), Advanced, High/Low Basic, and Special Education. I taught Low Basic. Every 10 weeks, we gave a common assessment (from the math text) and moved kids from track to track, based on their scores-- in theory, a system that would allow us to continuously fine-tune our stratified instruction, and use the "motivation" of quarterly opportunities to move up to higher tracks. Even though students were not studying the same topics at exactly the same time, the assumption was that since we were all following a sequenced curriculum, but differentiating the pace and amount of practice, kids who mastered something in September (or 6th grade) would still know it in January. That turned out to be not true.

After the first 10 weeks, 16 of my 30 students qualified to move up--two went all the up to Honors--and I got 16 new kids who'd struck out in the higher tracks. With every 10-week shuffle, I got dispirited kids whose math egos had taken a beating, and had to convince them that they could indeed re-master ratios, probability, negative integers or whatever had stopped them in their tracks. Approximately a third of the kids got moved around every quarter. By the final quarter, I had only 6 of my original kids (one of whom confessed that he deliberately blew his quarterly move-up tests so he could stay with me).

It was hard on my Basic kids, who felt that they'd been written off, early in the game. But it was hardest on the kids who started out in Honors, then drifted downward all year, ending up in Basic. Tracking did much more than impact egos and the social system--it made a muddle of instruction. My Basic kids were constantly saying "I already learned this"--even when their tests indicated that they were clueless. In each of the four quarters, my group--scientifically selected for uniformity-- had superstars and laggards. And students continued to need different ways of learning critical content and skills.

There are a number of education critics who believe that differentiating learning in mixed-ability groups is not truly workable. I know that it is, because I've done it, for decades. You start building equity by demanding excellence from everyone, rather than trying to figure out who might not be "capable" of excellence, or how to stretch achievement data over a curve rather than pushing everyone as far and fast as possible. Everyone should get the good stuff--the most rigorous content, their teachers' confidence that high levels of learning are within reach for all. There are more insidious beliefs hidden by the practice of tracking. But let's not go there--because that would be giving the creaky obsolete technology of tracking more power and attention than it deserves.

It's an ADD, ADD, ADD, ADD World

 Just got home from a mini-vacation visiting Beautiful Daughter in Scottsdale (Arizona in the summer! It's a really dry heat!)--and a respite from All Things Internet, which is good for the soul. And the very first blog I read upon returning was the irresistible guilty pleasure of It's Not All Flowers and Sausages starring Mrs. Mimi. I adore Mrs. Mimi, because she represents truth and the American way in education--and because no other blogger makes me laugh out loud with every post, like she does. Or at least, no other bloggers make me belly-laugh intentionally, as opposed to the sarcastic snorting engendered by many Serious Policy World reads.

Mrs. Mimi's posts are generally full of cute kids, au naturale, and screwed-up power-hungry adults--just like the real world. This one was about a field trip where the big yellow bus drove past a Calvin Klein billboard--let your imagination create any smoldering male zipper-down image--and got stuck in traffic in front of a semi-naked Lady GaGa covering the side of a building.  Mrs. Mimi points out that all the interesting facts and images planted in her kiddos' minds during the field trip are now eclipsed by this sleaziness at the lowest pandering denominator. Sleaziness that's a constant in their lives, by the way, unlike trips to the museum which occur rarely. Her kids laugh and hoot at Lady GaGa, because they think that's what they're supposed to do.

Sometimes, the carefully planned lessons, carefully chosen books, and carefully spoken words at school are just not even close to enough, to counterbalance the powerful attraction of our vulgar, ADD world.

And that's a shame--because forays into the real world are often the juiciest opportunities for real learning. In spite of the possibility (OK, the certainty) that things will go wrong, getting out of Dodge has always been my favorite learning strategy. I have taken 135 8th graders into a smoky dive of a jazz club on Rush Street in Chicago (at noon, with the bartender slinging frozen pizza and pitchers of coke), to watch the house band play a blues set then offer my best drummer the opportunity to sit in on "Summertime." We played a concert for old men in wheelchairs at a Veteran's Home in St. Louis, and another on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, as jets flew overhead. We've seen symphony orchestras in seven different cities, and at least as many musicals. Preparing the kids for a field trip is much more than raising money and laying down rules for the bus--it's curriculum.

Here's an exciting field trip destination: Cleveland. Cleveland actually does rock--and it was far less expensive than New York or Washington D.C.. The centerpiece of our visit to Cleveland was a day at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, one of my favorite places on earth. It was a hard sell to get the kids to agree to Cleveland (their first choice was New Orleans), but the opportunity for unlimited time wallowing in Rock and Roll finally clinched the deal. I went on a visit, solo, a few weeks before taking the 8th graders, to scope out new exhibits and give them a recommended day plan of activities. There was a list of must-sees--Mystery Train, a short film on the roots of rhythm and blues, and the exhibit on Motown. And there was also a traveling exhibit on sex and drugs in the rock culture, featuring lots of nasty language, bare skin and the occasional corpse.

While I may have let my personal children see the exhibit, with some prior information and lecturing from Mom, I knew it was not my prerogative to let other parents' 8th graders see the presentation. So I told the students that it was there, it was inappropriate, and they could see everything else. Then I posted rotating parent sentries at the theatre door. A few kids approached and were checked by the chaperons, but most didn't even try. There were plenty of other things to see and do. It was a fabulous day.

Before leaving Cleveland the next day, we visited the zoo, an activity we added at the last minute to give kids a chance to release some energy before the long bus ride home. Cleveland has a world-class zoo, with an amazing Rain Forest. It was in the Rain Forest, at the orangutan exhibit, that I came around the corner and found half my students watching two orangutans very publicly expressing their desire to make more orangutans. One of the chaperoning dads--a minister--turned to me and said, "And here we were worried about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame."

And so it goes.

My Small (Minded) Town

I'm not ashamed to tell you that I was a dyed-in-the-wool band geek. My geekdom lasted far beyond high school (where our uniforms had little red satin capes), into college and through my entire teaching career, a panorama of tall fuzzy hats, pants with stripes down the sides, and white bucks that required the kind of polish they make for baby shoes. I have marched in at least 200 parades. I also know what it feels like to have a piccolo adhere to your lower lip, via frozen saliva.

And--I have a certain animosity toward people who ridicule student musicians, or underestimate the efforts of school bands to provide music for community occasions. Kids who join the band and stay with it over several years just love to play. They like the rush of making music with their friends--and as they grow older, they become part of a time-honored cycle of performances and commitments that student musicians fulfill for school and community: football games, pep assemblies, the nursing home at Christmas, Honors Night, commencement. There are special band traditions--the hot cadence a talented drummer wrote back in '88, or gathering outside the band room to play a tearful Alma Mater before graduation. These are meaningful and healthy activities for kids, a way to share their talents with the wider world, to be responsible, to be part of something good.

So I was surprised to see a nasty letter to editor in the local daily, criticizing the high school band in the  small town next to mine for wearing their summer uniforms (shorts and band T-shirts) on Memorial Day (which was warm and sunny this year).

Several hundred people were in attendance to watch our show of respect for the fallen men and women of our armed forces. This was also a time to give respect to those who have served and are currently serving our nation. My discernment [sic] is the fact that our high school band did not show the respect deserved of these men and women. Marching down the center of Main Street in tennis shoes, little orange shorts and white T-shirts just doesn't do it.

Naturally, this was followed by the usual range of low-information comments on the slug-like nature of kids today, and why bands don't swing their instruments and high-step any more. (Answer: marching styles go in and out of fashion. The question is the equivalent of asking why cars no longer sport those attractive fins.) Some people defended the band, and thanked them for showing up-- for 60 years in a row--and playing in the Memorial Day parade. All in all, however--it was discouraging.

My bands played the local Fantasy of Lights parade when the temperature was in the single digits, and Homecoming in a freezing sideways rain, but summer parades are often the toughest. I was always happy, waking up on Memorial Day, to see cloudy, 50-degree weather, because I knew heat stroke was not going to be a problem. Wool uniforms are hot and heavy, and plastic hats trap heat. Students are reluctant to drink  sufficient water, because they can't drop out of a mile-long parade to use the porta-john. Wearing lightweight clothing was an eminently practical choice--a decision that had nothing to do with respect.

On Memorial Day, high school trumpeters across this county got up at dawn to meet members of the VFW and play Taps in dozens of little country cemeteries . Band parents transported trailer loads of marching gear, flags, chairs and stands to parks and parking lots, and teachers conducted the Navy Hymn and America the Beautiful once again. And in the midst of their final exams, graduation, prom and regional sports events, high school band geeks showed up--once again, on a day when their classmates were sleeping in--to march down Main Street in honor of those who sacrificed to make such a small town parade possible. Showing up, rain or shine, year after year. That's respect.

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons/dbking

Baby, One More Time

Read the recent statistics on the uptick in births to unmarried women? Nearly 40% of all births in America last year were to women without husbands, mostly women in their 20s and 30s.  Women who don't see getting married as a necessary first step to starting a family. This article in the Washington Post takes a cautiously balanced tone, suggesting that while reducing crippling repression and shame is positive, children consistently do best with two parents. American attitudes now look increasingly like European standpoints and behaviors: half of all French babies are born to unwed mothers. It's 55% in Sweden, and 66% in Iceland.

So--do I think children should have two parents who are formally committed to each other? Yes, as a general rule, although the gender of those parents makes no difference. Two parents are more efficient because parenting is time- and labor- intensive and emotionally exhausting. You can fly a plane with a single pilot, but nobody reading this would choose to fly cross-country without a co-pilot. Because anything can happen, and two is better than one.

I have taught many extraordinary, well-adjusted children raised with loving care by a single parent. And I have seen children with two stable, married parents crash and burn--and any number of "had-to" marriages disintegrate, leaving bitterness and debt. Numbers and social rectitude matter less than other things. Still, the idea that marriage has become optional is troubling. I don't care what happens between consenting  adults, but I do worry about building sturdy families and giving kids a secure foundation, both economically and intellectually. The trend will likely have a major impact on school policies and student success.

And I wonder: What has happened in America during the last five years to make the numbers of births to single women rise an astonishing 26%? My first guess would be that this is driven by fading economic opportunity and hopes (a big percentage of those babies are born to working-class women and those in poverty)--and the still-growing gap between the haves and have-nots here in the United States. These are not reckless teenagers having babies so someone will love them; they're old enough to know what a tough road they've chosen.

Over a Joanne Jacobs' blog, there was a whole lotta blaming goin' on. A quick, edited summary:

• This all started in the irresponsible, feel-good, low-morals sixties.

• Birth control failures are really subconscious decisions to have a baby.

• Charles Murray has this analyzed: it's all about race and class.

• Teachers don't refer to students' "parents" any more, so kids think it's OK.

• Feminism has made women think they should act like men: promiscuous.

• Girls believe they need the $40,000 weddings they see on TV.

• The white underclass can't control their impulsiveness or delay gratification.

• Bring back shame! That's what we need.

•  This is the visible outcome of no-fault divorce--men now feel zero responsibility.

• Why buy the milk when the cow is free? (I think that's about living together vs. marriage, but perhaps someone has a dairy issue--or transposed words to amusing effect?)

• Bring back stigma--both the stigma of unwed motherhood, and the stigma of divorce.

• Tax codes and legislation should encourage shotgun marriage.

• This is the end result of welfare. Cut 'em off!

• It's different when the mother is an employed professional who can support a baby.

• Schools that offer programming for unwed mothers encourage girls to get pregnant.

• If we could genetically re-engineer marijuana to provide birth control, we'd be all set.

• These people have no discipline. None.

• Women can't detach their emotions from the sex act, even if their lesbian professors tell them they can.

•  In the late 60s, guys were lucky to get a kiss at the end of a date. Sex was saved until the couple was engaged and had met the parents.

I'm curious about that last one. In 1969, I was a freshman at a college set, literally, in the middle of a cornfield in a conservative Midwestern town. Guys at my school must have been, umm, exceptionally lucky.

Perhaps this is one of those things that will seem archaic in time, like women in the workforce--a major societal shift. It's worth asking questions and tracking the data, however. Something's going on. And I don't think it will be halted by cranky rhetoric.

Paradigm Drift

For the past six months, looking at the big picture in education policy has felt a bit like this photograph, shared by Stories from School blogger Travis Wittwer. Wittwer and his family are avid bikers (socially-conscious bikers, not Hells-Angels bikers), and his son Soren is a frequent passenger in a Bakfiets (a Dutch-made bike adapted for kids and cargo). Soren's handmade version of his Bakfiets is beyond charming. I stuck the shot on my desktop, and every time I looked at it, I thought--this is what we do with schools. Every time things look shaky in education policy, we just add more masking tape (and rhetoric) and keep smiling.

But...

Is it just me--or is there a subtle shift in the education policy wind? Nothing like a sea change, yet--more like ripples on the surface, a tiny drift in course.

Item: Jay Mathews opens a column with the following: If the No Child Left Behind law, focused on raising test scores, proves to be a dead end, what do we do next? Why do those of us who care about schools keep bickering over the current system, rather than expand the debate to realistic alternatives?

Item: Linda Darling-Hammond writes: Why don't people demand an excellent teacher in every classroom? We have behaved for a very long time as if that is not something to be expected, in contrast to high-achieving nations that have put in place an infrastructure for producing high-quality teaching. She then goes on to outline precisely how America could, in fact, create that infrastructure. Here's the best part--the article appeared in the very heartlandish Des Moines Register.

Item: Alexander Russo asks: What current beliefs about schools and education do you think will no longer dominate, say, a generation from now?  Education mandatory for 12 years? Student learning organized by chronological age? Government grants only for higher education? Schools organized and funded by obscure geographic entities (districts)? (It's well worth following this link back to Reddit to see which current beliefs web-riders think will be embarrassingly outdated in a generation.)

Item: Today, in the Washington Post, Marc Tucker, Ray Marshall and William Brock propose a National World Class Schools Act, ten interdependent and aligned proposals that, taken together, form a coherent, systemic school reform package that might actually do what NCLB was supposed to: seriously address the achievement gap, and use economic incentives in smart, non-punitive ways to cultivate educational improvement for every child in America.

I. Set higher standards for licensing teachers. Recruit purposefully from only the top tier of college graduates. Raise teachers' pay significantly, and use financial bonuses to build teacher capacity in hard-to-staff schools.

II. Get the brightest students to pursue teaching. Treat teachers like professionals, not blue-collar workers. Put teachers in charge of their schools.

III. Reward schools that exceed expectations, with a bonus representing 10% of their budget. The faculty decides how to spend the money. Forget paying individual teachers for increased test scores, as the measurements are suspect, and team spirit is more important in building a good school.

IV. Take over every school or district that cannot meet the following standard: three-quarters of the schools in the district are able to get 90 % of their students college-ready. Void all employee contracts in these schools.

V.  Fix the way we measure student performance. Dump current statewide assessments, and replace them with examinations based on rigorous course content. Using cheap, multiple-choice, computer-scored tests does not lead to applied knowledge, imagination or innovation.

VI.  Let parents choose which public schools their children attend. Information on student and school performance should be easily accessible to parents, students and teachers.

VII. Help every school whose students are not successful. Most struggling schools don't know what to do to improve. The federal government can provide proven training and assistance.

VIII. Limit differences in state-provided per-pupil funding to 5 percent, between schools (with the exception of expenditures for students with disabilities).

IX. Offer a selection of social and health services to low-income children, coordinated with school facilities and programs.

X. Begin dropout prevention early, with high-quality early-childhood education for all 4-year-olds and all low-income 3-year-olds.

I opened the "World Class Schools" piece this morning prepared for more of the same blah-blah dominating the edusphere lately: the seduction of data analysis, the appeal of paternalism, the necessity of accountability and sanctions, the laziness of teachers--and let's standardize everything in sight.

But no. I recognized--again--the stirring of hope (an audacious feeling). Maybe we can solve these problems in a generation. Maybe the paradigm is shifting--or lifting.

The last word really should go to Brock, Marshall & Tucker:

We have the most unequal distribution of income of any industrialized nation. If the problems posed by students' poverty are not dealt with, it may be nearly impossible for schools to educate the students to world-class standards.

Amen. And thanks, Soren, for the wonderful pictures!

Remembering: A Seniority Moment

It's natural for me to think of my dad on Memorial Day. He was a proud veteran of World War II, a tail gunner in the Army Air Corps, serving in the Pacific theatre for the duration of the war.  He enlisted early in 1942, at age 20, inspiring his younger brother, my Uncle Don, to lie about his age so he could get into combat, too. My dad made it home but Don did not--he was killed in action, in the first Marine landing on Iwo Jima, February 1945. He was nineteen years old.

I don't think my dad ever got over the terrible loss of his brother; the war was a powerful influence on his character and thinking. Most of the life lessons I learned from my dad sprang from perceptions born of his wartime experience: Have confidence--you're as good as anyone else. We live in the best country in the world. Tattoos are OK only if they're memorial crosses. Freedom is worth any cost. Buy American. And--the Palmer House (where he and his unit did their radio training) is the best hotel in Chicago.

When my dad came home, in 1945, he was diagnosed with "battle fatigue."  The discharging physician recommended a job that involved physical labor, independent work without constant supervision, and friendly colleagues. My dad got a job delivering bread. He became a Teamster, and was a loyal union member until he died, in 1980, of brain cancer. Another lesson from my father:  The union keeps us strong, and watches out for the little guy. When I joined the teachers' union, in 1975, nobody was more pleased than my dad.

According to my father, there are people with money and control, and there are people whose assets are loyalty and community. He did not go into battle, or survive having his plane shot down, for the benefit of the rich and powerful. He fought for the rights of ordinary Joes to make a good living for their families, to live in a country where their contributions were honored. The union was there to protect justice for the working man.

I thought about my dad when I read "Is Seniority Best Practice?" in the Stories from School blog. The blogger, Kim, shares her dismay over losing so many fine new teachers with budget cuts in WA, and asks "...with all of the pressure being put on teachers to meet professional standards through reflection and best practices, shouldn’t the teachers who are doing that have some advantage?"

I know what my dad would have said:  Seniority protects loyal workers, when their bosses can replace them with someone cheaper. And in a brutal economy, it's often difficult to determine whether employers are valuing quality practice or merely seeking the lowest price.

Still--in a profession critical to building human capacity, shouldn't exemplary practice be rewarded above all else? In teaching, there must be a balance between excellence and mere longevity. We owe that to our children, as much as we owe fair employment practices to workers.

John Adams  said: I was a warrior so my son could be a farmer--so his son could be a poet.  I would hate to think that my dad got up every morning at 4:00 a.m., lugging heavy bread racks when he was 58 years old, so that I could turn my back on fairness. But don't the blessings of liberty include the right to an affordable, high-quality education for everyone--the 21st century ticket to opportunity? Isn't that also a right worthy of sacrifice?

My father was also right about the Palmer House: it's magnificent.

Imagine There's No...Imagination

Two weeks ago, I spent a Saturday traveling to the century-old District Library in Jackson, Michigan, one of more than 2500 beautiful public libraries--on three continents--funded by industrial magnate and innovative philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. The draw was a workshop on using research in writing, plus a luncheon keynote featuring one of my favorite authors, Diana Gabaldon. Gabaldon took questions after the workshop and the keynote--and both times, someone in the audience asked her who Jamie (a character running through most of her novels) looks like. As in--which living person, preferably a star, served as model for your hero?

Both times, Gabaldon gently demurred, saying that while she had an image of Jamie, readers should create their own vision. This was not an answer that pleased the audience; there was the sense that they wanted a name--or better yet, a color photo. And at my table, a Gabaldon reader confessed that she starts all books by turning to the last pages--to see (her words) "who died and who got together." Only with that concrete information could she start reading.

There's plenty of evidence that students in this media-saturated world are losing their capacity for rich imagination.  One of my favorite instructional strategies in teaching middle school music is structured role play. Assigning students a character to inhabit-- rock star, entertainment lawyer, singing monk-- is a powerful way to force them to "think different." There's always a subgroup of students who resist, claiming they don't know what to do or say-- "Can't you just write it down, so I can read it?" Explaining divergent thinking--or the endless possibilities for changing one's narrative-- isn't always helpful. They're looking for the right answer.

Turning kids on to different kinds of music--every music teacher's #1 goal--is an exercise in developing the imagination, particularly for band and orchestra teachers who can't use lyrics as a means of illumination.  I remember one stunning moment back in the 80s, rehearsing a sensitive passage with my 8th grade band.  A young man raised his hand and said it might be easier to play the piece if we knew what it was about. I replied that people didn't ask Beethoven what his fifth symphony was about, but he persisted, saying "You know, like on MTV, where you can see what songs are about?"

That comment sent me on an enduring quest to embed the ideas of imagination and inspiration (literally, "drawing breath") into my classroom pedagogy. Musicians use a range of non-visual and non-literary tools to represent emotion, story, purpose and occasion. Part of musical imagination is craftsmanship--having the knowledge and skills to create. But another part is the willingness to be playful, to recombine familiar elements into something new, to take a risk or wait on inspiration. My students had some rudimentary knowledge and skills. What they didn't have was permission to honor or evaluate their own interpretations and images.

As much as I would like to pin my worries about diminished imagination in children on MTV and a thousand other always-on media sources, I can't. Media, whether brilliant or boring, is only the product.  Imagination is a process. A process fed and honed by comprehension and competence--but also the ability to delay gratification, to fool around with ideas. The women at the library who wanted to see the definitive picture of their fictional hero, or know how the story turns out before reading, were lacking the capacity to suspend fulfillment and tinker with possibility. They wanted the answer.

Einstein is famous for  declaring that imagination is more important than knowledge. Here's the rest of that quote: "For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

Imagination is a real thing. It belongs in every vision or proposal for what our children should learn, preparing for their 21st century lives.

Sun Devils in Disguise

Am I the only one who thinks the story about Barack Obama not getting an honorary degree, after giving the commencement speech at Arizona State University, was a big, blown-up bunch of nothing? An event with no real impact, a lightweight feature piece best used to fill space on a slow news day? Obama himself seemed unperturbed, and wittily incorporated the dustup  in his speech (he seems to be adept at that: see Notre Dame Commencement). He delivered a stirring graduation address, full of admiration for the students who were breaking ground in their families by getting a college degree--and pushed graduates to think about leadership and success in non-material terms.

Why do I care about this? Because I was a tuition donor to ASU, from 2003 until 2007 (note: four years), when my daughter graduated. I have seen Arizona State up close, and know some things about the campus, the students and the mission of the university. If you asked my daughter why she went to Arizona State, she'd tell you it was because of their unique Justice Studies program, but I'd be remiss in not mentioning that none of the other schools she applied to had a Palm Walk or year-round flip-flop mojo. ASU does have a well-deserved reputation as a party school (parents know these things). The Daily Show dished up the funniest take on this--I'm pretty sure that the pool scene was shot at my daughter's apartment complex.

I care because I am a fan of big, comprehensive public universities. I see them as the higher-ed manifestation of the American mixing bowl ideal--places of rich diversity where children of the wealthy mix with children of immigrants, where serious scholars go to class with injudicious 18-year olds on their own for the first time. Arizona State has a generous admissions policy, a huge, fast-growing student body (more than 60,000) and a commitment to increasing minority enrollment--nearly a third of this year's freshmen were minorities.

As a long-time secondary teacher, I taught many intellectually capable but unfocused high school students who had zero future plans or goals, despite the best efforts of their parents and schools.  Big state universities serve an important function, offering an elastic opportunity for students who don't enroll as motivated scholars. Yes, some of them drop out. But others find their academic rhythm or their passion.

If we believe that a four-year college degree is an essential component of the American dream, we need places like Arizona State, which blend open opportunity with an array of showcase programs.  I was surprised to see edbloggers attempt to tie Obama's choosing ASU for his first commencement speech to low NAEP scores in Arizona (!?)--or use the story as a vehicle to make the cheap-shot observation that not every school can compete with Princeton or Stanford.

One other thing I care about: graduation speeches. One of the highlights of my professional career was being invited to deliver the commencement address to graduates of the School of Education at Michigan State University, another large public university. I took the task seriously, and read lots of famous graduation speeches. I finally decided to speak on the need for educators to become story-tellers, to help their students make meaning of what they learned. 

These narratives of meaning may change over time. I used the example of the commencement address at my own undergraduate exercises. It was delivered by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Jr, shortly after the United States pulled troops out of Viet Nam, in 1973. Zumwalt spoke with great passion about selfless service--and especially of his son, just a few years older than the graduates, who fought bravely in Viet Nam, doing his patriotic duty rather than protesting or seeking shelter from the draft. The admiral's son, Elmo Zumwalt III, later died of multiple cancers that his father was convinced were caused by exposure to Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant used by American troops in Viet Nam. Perspectives shift as the world does. And that's as it should be.

I congratulate the Class of 2009 at Arizona State, and wish them the gift of remembering both the speaker and the speech that marked their graduation.  Do you remember who spoke at your college commencement?