Teacher in a Strange Land

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 way 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.