Teacher in a Strange Land

Online Grading: Treat--or Trick?

My estimable teacher-blogger colleague, Ms. Bluebird, is sputtering about  the parent-accessible online grading system in her district. She bemoans the fact that parents aren't tracking their children's assignments and grades, even though it's now become totally convenient to (as the kiddies say) creep on their progeny. Evidently, this is an issue of deep concern to lots of teachers, as Ms. B's first 13 commenters enthusiastically jump on the "parents just don't care" bandwagon.

Ms. Bluebird totally rocks--but on this issue, I disagree. When it comes to online gradebooks, I believe what's happening here is a misguided faith in the magic of technology to solve problems (even things we didn't realize were problems beforehand). If parents weren't allowed to peek into teachers' gradebooks twenty years ago, what makes us think they're interested now? And furthermore--is it even a good idea to nurture grade-stalking in parents?

Points to consider:

•  Expecting parents to track their children's grades--and do something about low grades or missing assignments--shifts responsibility for learning and monitoring the grade to parents. And guess what? It's the student's job to do that, not Mommy's.

• When parents are suddenly hawking their gradebooks, teachers feel compelled to put lots of numbers in the book, proving that they're organized and soldiering away, assigning lots of homework and giving lots of grades. My principal sent us a memo suggesting that we add at least one new grade per week, it being worrisome when parents see that several days have gone by with no grading.

• Some of those grades represent formative assessment: constructive feedback to students in the process of learning to master a concept or skill. Formative assessment is supposed to be non-punitive--information that helps a student improve. If curriculum is appropriate--in the sweet spot where it challenges, but builds on prior learning--then formative assessment will show lots of room for growth. Try explaining that to one panicked parent at a time

• Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. (Einstein said that, not me.) An online gradebook converts all assessment data to numbers. Because it's...digital. Sometimes, kids need coaching or commentary, not a comparative percentage. Sometimes, it's OK to paint a pumpkin, just to see how it turns out. You don't have to grade everything, to make it real or valuable.
  

I find my district's online grading program so inflexible as to be nearly useless. I collected lots of valid assessment data on my students that could not be represented in the gradebook program (the program routinely converted a memorized D-flat major scale into 60%). I never checked on my son's grades, either, although it would have been extremely easy to do so--and, trust me, I am a caring parent, with a deep commitment to his education. I got his report card, and I went to parent-teacher conferences. And that--really--was enough.

Image: Snelly23 @ Flickr Creative Commons

I'd Rather Have a Root Canal

Thanks to guest blogger Christine Gleason, whose story about the what passes for professional learning made the Teacher in a Strange Land laugh out loud. She even provided her own illustration.

By Christine Gleason

2009 Texas Teacher of the Year

The time is upon us where teachers across the nation gather to collectively lose brain mass--the infamous full-day in-service. I check the clock again and adjust myself in world's worst chair.  My eyes roll back in my head.  Time is not relevant in in-service land.  Break time is a non-negotiable “ten minutes because we have a lot to cover.”  Lunch is an eternity away.  I lean forward and rest my chin on my fist.  I roll my eyes. Take away the table in front of me, cluttered with coffee cups, blank paper and randomly placed markers, and my posture is in perfect tandem with Rodin’s “The Thinker.”

If Dante were writing this, the level of hell reserved for in-services would be right between the heretics and the violent (that’s level 6.5 for the Dante lovers).  Inferno would be a cafetorium. Roughly 350 teachers would be helplessly seated on uncomfortable chairs.  The schedule says we're done at 4:00, but we all know that roughly translates to eternity.   

The objective:  Teachers will become familiar with the ELL components of…zzzz.

By hour two, we have covered one slide on the PowerPoint presentation and completed an activity where we went around the room and got three different perspectives from three random teachers on the sentence starter “One obstacle ELL students face when trying to learn English is…”  Deep. 

My back is killing me (remember the sub-par chairs…) and I am sick of sitting. As I move to stand in the back of the cafeteria, I look around to see if others are feeling the same way. I see people shoving all of their markers together to make swords.  I see towers of empty coffee cups and juice boxes.

It is confirmed.  The presenter had lost the majority of the people in the room. I know this because of the plethora of side conversations (which involve laughter--and this guy isn’t funny), the body language of the people who aren’t talking and the pantomimed wrist slashing of a colleague with whom I make eye contact. 

The principal slowly walks over to me.  He's seen me surfing the net on my cell phone and reading an essay.  He asks: do I have the book the presenter gave us?  “Yes,” I say.  “I have two copies." We make a quick list of the times the high school staff had ELL training…the last being when the principal himself trained us.  “Yours was better,”  I admit.   He chuckles a little.  Of course, a monkey could give a better in-service than this guy.    

There are no modifications to the speaker’s delivery as the day progresses.  He continues talking at us. He tells us ELLs need multiple opportunities to hear information.  “Give them visual cues, rephrase stuff and have them repeat it back to you” he says.   So where are my visual cues?  The rephrasing?  Small group instruction?  Alternative activities?  Does this guy ever, ever change the tone of his voice?

I draw one of my colleague’s likenesses on an orange. I take a picture of someone who's fallen asleep.  

How can the powers that be expect a room full of educated adults with different learning styles to sit through six hours of lecture and actually walk away with something? The content of the book is amazing.  It's the delivery.

After lunch, the Assistant Superintendent reprimands us: “We expect the kids to learn when we lecture to them."  Translation: “I know this guy is boring. Don’t make marker swords.” 

I don’t expect my kids to learn in this kind of environment. Six hours of spiel is too much for any human being. The marker-sword fight and the countless juice box pyramids strategically set up to hide people texting on their phones should have given the presenter a clue. 

Teachers should be involved in what teachers want or need to learn. Clearly this is not a revolutionary idea.  If we have to spend money, why not give us the opportunity to become National Board Certified?  What about an in-service on how to set up a Professional Learning Community at our school?  Growth opportunities are absolutely imperative to the success of our teachers, especially those on cruise control.  

And why can’t the staff train the staff?  I went to Space Camp this summer and could teach a whole day on Space to the elementary school.  I’m also a Smithsonian Ambassador.  Plus, I’m engaging, relatively funny, and know how to use hands-on activities. And that’s just me! Think of all the staff members with unique skills...

I’d love to see multiple sessions going on in multiple classrooms so teachers have a choice of where they want to go all day long.  While I’m presenting how to make Water Bottle Rockets as part of the Science and Math curriculum in one room, my principal could be presenting ELL strategies in another.  We are exciting, talented, we know our kids and we are free.

In-service day is over. I've reflected on what I learned--and I’m off to have a chat with my principal.  Hope he feels like joining my PLC. 

Yo! Extremely Bad Idea!

I suppose it was inevitable. When the blurring between reality TV and, you know, actual reality has encompassed things like marriage, parenting and Hugh Hefner, it was only a matter of time until schools offered up their students--and their integrity--for fifteen minutes of fame and $3500 an episode.

Tony Danza--who wasn't even The Boss--appears to be headed for a well-publicized turn as a fake teacher on a reality show based in a public school in Philadelphia. I thought Channel One  was bad--and renting a brand-new school in my hometown as movie set for a stoner flick was abominable. This is much worse.

Philly Mayor Michael Nutter is all for it. His rationale? Students might be allowed to serve as production interns, he says-- and such a reality show will make it easier to recruit teachers.

"Teach' represents a unique opportunity to highlight many of our city's dedicated teachers and administrators, and the talented students they serve.''

Well, gosh. If the show were truly going to highlight the city's best bona fide teachers, I'd be all for it. And I'll believe that having high school students work as gofers on a TV set in their own school is a good idea when I see the rigorous national content standards for movie production. My thinking runs along the lines of Philadelphia Daily News' Ronnie Polaneczky who said the idea was:

"...a way to pimp our kids' education to an unemployed sitcom actor who wants to kick-start his stalled career on the backs of students who'll be distracted by cameras and microphones.''

This is actually something I have experience with; I can offer some first-hand insights into how this will likely play out with Tony and the kids in Philadelphia:

Some years ago, I was asked to be a featured teacher in the Annenberg Foundation's video series on teaching, The Learning Classroom. It was a project with an excellent pedigree--the series advisors were highly respected academics, and the mission was sterling: filming teachers at work, hearing how and why they make teaching decisions, integrating theory and practice. My segment was Feelings Count: Emotions and Learning.

I had several conversations with the producer before they came to film. The plan was for the crew to spend five full days in my classroom. Don't worry, she said. You won't even know we're here. I was the one who insisted on notifying parents, and getting release forms signed--a precaution the producer found ridiculous.

I also spent considerable energy devising lessons that would tap into the emotions of volatile middle schoolers to yield richer learning. My seventh grade band was working on Ashokan Farewell, a lovely tune that Ken Burns used throughout his Civil War series, most notably during the heartbreaking letter from Major Sullivan Ballou of the Union army to his wife, Sarah. One of my students--a young man--read excerpts from the letter, and I shared some thoughts about how music helps people through milestone moments in their lives. Students spoke about music played at a grandparent's funeral--or how they found joy and consolation in particular songs. It was a terrific lesson, a nice blend of rich musical content and relevant emotion.

Unfortunately, none of that lesson--or any other bits of creative, solid teaching--ended up in the final segment. At lunchtime on Day One, the producer (who turned my office into her own personal Disgusting Starbucks) had a little problem. She wanted to know when they were going to see some reality. The kids were so good. So polite. Clearly, this was not the way they behaved every day. "I feel like I'm in Mayberry," she said--and she didn't mean that in a nice way. Where, she asked, was the emotion?

I explained that it took months of hard work to build a functioning community of 65 12-year old musicians, to the point where they could express emotion in class. She didn't buy it. She needed to see some conflict--somebody crying would be ideal. On Day Two, the production crew moved from my classroom to the hallway, hoping to catch a fight or a breakup.  The producer went to the principal, asking for permission to film all the kids. At a quick after-school staff meeting, permission slips for the entire student body were distributed. I shared my apprehension with the rest of the teachers. Some of them were concerned--but others were hoping for a visit from the camera crew. "You're not the only good teacher in the building, you know," one said. "Some of us would love a chance to be on TV, too."

It was a long week. The worst moment occurred on Friday. One of my 8th graders had been out of school for several weeks, undergoing treatment for testicular cancer. He came back for a quick visit, and was surrounded by friends, trying to figure out what to say to another teenage boy who has a life-threatening illness. As I hugged him, I heard the cameras whirring. They followed him into the band room and filmed his interactions with friends attempting to be cool, and his own struggle to describe his illness without telling them where his cancer was, or what procedures he had undergone.

I would never have interrupted these painful but essential conversations--but I sure as hell did not want them exploited. I told the producer later that we had no release form, so they would have to scrap the film they were salivating over. We did not part on good terms. While I do appear in the video series, none of the things that were important to me were captured or highlighted.

One can only wonder what the producers of a reality show will find compelling. And whose education will be compromised.

Image: ianmc_p @ Flickr Creative Commons

What's for Lunch?

A friend who lives in the Southeast told me this story. I thought it was a sign of the times, and invited her to share it here in a Strange Land. She ended up deciding that she needed to be anonymous. Although she's been teaching in this school district for a couple of decades, she was nervous about identifying herself while displaying what seems to be in-district dirty laundry. Tablecloths, perhaps. Here's her tale:

A few years ago, our school board decided cut costs by contracting out food service operations to a for-profit organization. That worked okay for a while, but this year, the economy went bad and it seems that more than a few parents left the school holding an empty lunch bag. Last year the school board also approved a policy to provide a meal to any child who did not have cash, credit on their lunch account, or qualified for free and reduced lunch. Parents were supposed to be contacted and asked to cover outstanding balances.  

At the end of the year, the food service program was in the red to the tune $28,000, even after notifying parents and vigorously collecting debts. The service contract allows the vendor to recoup any losses and the company wanted its money. Now. In addition to supplying standard lunch for $2.15, they offer al la carte selections including fries for $1.35, ice cream for $1.10, and bottled water to wash it all down for another $1.35. Did parents not communicate purchasing limits to their children? Did everyone just assume someone would take care of this and let kids go on merrily stuffing themselves?

I am sure that there are some sad cases and mitigating circumstances, and to be fair, they  did serve over three million lunches this year, but that is still a large unpaid bill. In case you haven’t heard, times are hard and the school system is strapped for money—so strapped that teachers salaries have been frozen for the past two years.

So, what to do? The superintendent sent an all-staff email asking school employees if they would please make donations to cover the cost of those unpaid lunches and get food service out of the red. Basically, teachers just said no. Several teachers noted that they had already “loaned” lunch money more than once, covered the cost of a field trip, or provided school supplies out of their own pocket.

The food service wouldn't settle, so the superintendent did what most people in education do: he turned to teachers fix the problem. He’s not  bad guy, but parents, the vendor, and the school board should be accountable for the debt. Not the teachers. Teachers shouldn’t be left holding the bag.

Interesting story, eh? One of a million stories, all asking the same essential question: what do we really care about in America? What's our priority investment? I've been thinking about this story as the battle rages on over health care--me and my choices vs. providing health care equitably to everyone (a problem other first-world nations have solved). I thought about unpaid lunch money this morning, listening to a news story on how well Goldman Sachs has rebounded. As I passed the empty, foreclosed houses in my neighborhood on my evening walk--knowing that some of my neighbors abandoned their upside-down mortgages--I wondered how many of them left lunch debts behind, too.

My friend is right--did we just assume someone would take care of this?

Image: vshorty/Flickr Creative Commons

And the Livin' is Easy...

It's time for the annual round of teachers-in-summer blogs. These come in several flavors: Ambitious (with a side helping of enrichment). Justification (a.k.a. "I work harder than you know"). The traditional, obligatory Reading List for Teachers. (This one blew me away--three books involving Nazis, Charles Murray of Bell Curve fame, and...Daniel Pink? ) A Snarky Saga of the Last Days of '08-'09 (where someone almost gets punched out, speaking of tense and irritable...). Plus two new cable TV shows for your summer viewing pleasure, featuring garden-variety, nice-guy teachers. One manufactures and sells high-test meth to build a nest egg for his family (since he's dying of cancer), and the other sells his own substantially endowed body since he doesn't make enough money teaching to keep his children happy and a roof over his head.

Moral of all the stories: Teaching is an undesirable low-prestige, low-salary, high-stress job--and teachers can no longer publicly say the three best things about teaching are June, July and August.

The answer to all these trials seems clear to me. The traditional school calendar is way past its expiration date, and should be abandoned. Its flaws are well-known:  too much time off in the summer, too much review needed in the fall--not enough well-used time, crammed into too few days. The agrarian calendar represents a wildly inefficient use of resources, and the folks who support it do so for reasons that have nothing to do with education. All of the barriers to changing the calendar--busing, sports, vacations, staffing, summer camps, cheap labor for summer businesses-- can be effectively addressed. 

My personal preference would be a modular calendar, with four- to six-week curricular units, offered flexibly, year-round--through both in-building residencies and on-line. Students would be required to be "in school" a minimal number of days (say, 180) but could select additional modules to attend school 200 or 220 days a year. Short vacations would be scheduled between modules. Students could enter the system at multiple points in the year (September, January, June) and finish when all the modules were successfully completed. Nobody would "fail a grade," because a module could be re-taken if material wasn't mastered. There are dozens of ways to improve the school calendar.

I find it amazing--and get huffy and defensive--when I am reminded that a significant chunk of the general public still thinks that teachers are working only when there are students in front of them. The first step in changing that perception is not going to be strongly worded blogs, however. It will be banishing the lazy, crazy 10-week summer vacation.

A few years ago, a local reporter interviewed me for a story on what teachers do in summer. I ran through the usual agenda: planning, reading, looking at new music, cleaning the percussion cabinet, taking a class, directing the community band. They sent out a photographer for a photo. We had coffee on my deck--and he persuaded me to stretch out in our backyard hammock with my own summer professional reading. The photo (below) made the front page of the paper. 

And---I got a call from a School Board member, that evening. He was dismayed that I would agree to a photo suggesting that I was "laying around" [sic] all summer, doing nothing. The Board wished another shot had been chosen. Perhaps a glamorous pose of me cleaning out the spit-valves on the school-owned euphoniums?  I declined to give him the brief lecture on Urgent vs. Important that came to mind. But we have a long way to go before teaching is a real profession in the public's mind.

Images: Livingston County Press-Argus; k.l.macke

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

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

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?

No Excuses Mambo

"Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too, all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides--made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions... "  Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

I really hate the phrase "no excuses school." Like "the soft bigotry of low expectations" and "the reform community," it's a flash of rhetorical brilliance, a meme freighted with layers of meaning and inference. If you're not in the reform community, are you part of the status quo community? If low expectations for some children make one a bigot (with the implication that "one" is a teacher)--is the opposite true: do high expectations make a teacher tolerant and open to the idea of improvement? Can you have high expectations and zero tolerance, then? All of this makes my head throb with dark thoughts about war is peace, freedom is slavery--and ignorance is strength.

Most people don't wade around in contrary semantics, or sinister literary allusions when forming opinion on public schools. They hear "no excuses school" often enough, and it starts to sound good to them. Who'd want a school where excuses were acceptable? No excuses school, therefore, equals good school. There are hundreds of phrases people use to describe schools and learning that enter the lexicon as unassailable truths/realities: back to basics, rising tide of mediocrity, failing public schools, grade inflation, core academics, high and rigorous standards, gifted and talented, accountability, throwing money at schools, failure not an option, reading first.  And, of course, teachers from the bottom of the barrel.

Language matters. It was language that framed the fireworks over David Brooks' NYT column on "The Harlem Miracle" (speaking of loaded words).  Has Promise Academy in Harlem really eliminated the black-white gap? Have they really demonstrated that schools alone can be expected to bear accountability for gap-closing, score-raising and behavior-modifying? Or do we need a bolder, broader approach?

Still paying attention to language? Brooks:

To my mind, the results also vindicate an emerging model for low-income students. Over the past decade, dozens of charter and independent schools, like Promise Academy, have become no excuses schools. The basic theory is that middle-class kids enter adolescence with certain working models in their heads: what I can achieve; how to control impulses; how to work hard. Many kids from poorer, disorganized homes don’t have these internalized models. The schools create a disciplined, orderly and demanding counterculture to inculcate middle-class values.

Compare David Brooks' perspective to this, from Robert Pondiscio at the Core Knowledge Blog:

 I’ve been thinking about what poor metrics those of us who are concerned with education and ed reform have, and how they rarely apply to our own children. When those of us who live in communities with great schools talk about what makes those schools great, the subject of test scores never comes up. Are we guilty of setting the finish line for other people’s children where we place the starting line for our own?

What’s the opposite of a no-excuses school, then? A school where teachers allow for student deficiencies caused by appalling life situations, but push forward with determination anyway? There are plenty of those. Perhaps the opposite of a no-excuses school is one where students are treated as individuals whose beliefs and defenses are considered in the learning process. Who gets to have schools like that? Not other people’s children.

The next step in this line of thinking is “paternalism”–a chilling and arrogant word that has recently been promoted as a positive quality in school reform. We choose what we want for our own children, and we know what's best for children in poverty. Work hard, be nice. No second chances, no excuses.