Teacher in a Strange Land

Happy, Happy. Joy, Joy.

I wish I had a dollar for every time a parent told me their fondest wish was that their child be happy. As in: "I'm not worried about Jason's grades--I just want him to have friends and be happy." Or: "I'm not going to insist that Mandy practice her flute. If it doesn't make her happy, she can just quit." 

I sometimes wonder about the pursuit of happiness as iconic American goal. I'm quite sure that Jefferson had something more noble and laudable in mind than deciding whether he should jot down a bit of transformative political philosophy--or perhaps take a nap, whichever seemed more fulfilling at the moment.

It's a good week for thinking about what makes us happy--and how we, the village, can raise our collective children to pursue the kind of happiness that matters, while simultaneously being aware of and grateful for their many blessings.

In TIME magazine this week, Nancy Gibbs muses on the confounding information that Americans scored higher on the ongoing Gallup "well-being index" this summer than they did last summer. Although happiness plummeted in the months after the economic meltdown, our national sense of well-being began to increase in the spring, and has remained relatively high since, even though the news--pretty much all the news--has been downright awful. 

Gibbs suggests that Americans have adjusted their expectations, and that's a healthy thing:

While optimism is the all-American anesthetic, at some point Expectation Inflation was bound to take its toll. I'm struck by how many people tell pollsters that the voluntary downshifting and downsizing of the past year have come as a kind of relief. Maybe we've lowered our standards. But we already knew that money can buy only comfort, not contentment; happiness correlates much more closely with our causes and connections than with our net worth.

How does this square with current education oratory and thinking, wherein "low expectations" are now equated with soft bigotry? It's clear that our generational train of progress-through-education--the laborer's son becomes a merchant, the merchant's son a professional, with each subsequent generation achieving more--is creaking to an end. We are outstripping our natural resources and have tilted our economy into crippling debt. The gap between rich and poor is growing; I'm guessing the people who expressed relief about downshifting were moving from the top tier into the middle. 

We can expect all we want, but the reality is that we seem to be heading into a period where the Real Housewives of Atlanta might become appalling symbols of tacky excess, rather than an amusing glimpse into the style and habits of people lucky enough to pursue their personal pleasures. Are we re-defining happiness as much more than recognition, entertainment and stuff?

Speaking of expectations, how can we blithely critique teachers for not using "high expectations" as a handy tool to leverage student learning, when we're ambivalent about providing those same kids with adequate health care? Don't we want all children to reach for more than credentials and possessions--should we expect them to become productive in ways other than generating wealth?

Maybe we need to re-examine our current goal focus on college degrees, and how many more dollars they're likely to yield over a  lifetime of work, and start looking at non-material aspirations and rewards, for our own children and for the nation. Here are the three core outcomes I want for my own children, as a result of their formal and informal education:

• Important work. Work that leads to making something better, whether it's particularly lucrative or not. Work that is variable, challenging and absorbing.

•  Civic engagement. Involvement in groups, relationships with people who have similar goals, volunteering, participating in relevant ways in the life of their community.

• Intellectual curiosity. A life-long interest in a broad range of issues and disciplines, and willingness to read, travel, discuss, ponder, and consider alternative points of view. 

Of course, I want my children to be free from hunger and fear (and the fact that I take such basic needs for granted probably speaks to the privileges I enjoy as an American citizen). Continuous happiness, however, seems like a pretty lightweight and empty goal.  Gratitude is a better place to begin.

Thanks for reading Teacher in a Strange Land.  Happy Thanksgiving.

Image: TheABU@ Flicker Creative Commons

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

Fast Track, Slow Ride, Grow Up

At the last high school graduation I attended as faculty member, I sat on the stage, robed and hooded, with the rest of the teachers who served as honor guard for the class. Normally, commencement was held in the football stadium, but a downpour forced us into the auditorium where all graduates and attendees were up close and personal, not to mention damp and uncomfortable.

From my vantage point, I could reach out and touch graduates as they crossed the stage--and see right up the gowns of the young men sitting, splay-legged, in the front row. In spite of the class advisors' admonitions--and, probably, their mothers'--many of the boys were wearing shorts and flip-flops and didn't appear to be duly impressed with the ceremonial aspects of the occasion. I was surprised at how many of them were bearded, or sporting cool-dude facial hair; physically, these were full-grown men.

I started thinking about my district's four-option school entry program: students could enter school via "developmental" kindergarten and/or regular kindergarten, and those who "needed a little more time" could do a year in junior first grade, before moving on to regular first grade. Parents tailored two- or three-year combination plans to get their kids to second grade, and the large majority of those taking three years were boys. Because of the desire to give their sons a leg up, back then, many of the young men sitting in front of me were a hormonal nineteen years old. They'd been driving for four years, and could easily have been carrying an M-16 in Iraq. In an earlier century, they would have struck out on their own long before, as farmers, wayfarers or fathers.

Today, of course, the conventional wisdom is that their economic goose is cooked unless they seek further education. This week's cover story in Newsweek--"Why College Should Take Only Three Years" (by Lamar Alexander), and a follow-up roundtable with higher ed luminaries discussing "What is College For, Anyway?" don't manage to make an airtight case for the three-year plan. But both pieces shed light on the big questions that we ought be asking about a college education:

• Are high school seniors poorly educated and thus unready for college--or are they merely bored with the low challenge of high school?

• What does anyone need to know and be able to do to make a success in a modern economy? Seriously. Is there a formula for job readiness in non-technical fields?

• Which comes first: a broad, internalized knowledge base, or the skills to analyze and evaluate the surfeit of information and data available to everyone?

• Does technology make it easier and faster to learn--or more challenging to develop focus?

• Is there a one-size-fits-all plan, a general agreement about how much coursework represents a bachelor's degree? And does the new standard for being well-educated now automatically include a second degree, beyond the B.A.--upping the educational ante once again?

No consensus reached. In fact, the various experts did not agree on the primary purpose of pursuing a college degree--is it building workplace skills, developing an educated citizenry in a democracy, or simply the credential needed to the lock the bearer into a higher socioeconomic stratum?

Here's an image from Robert Zemsky, education reformer and professor at the University of Pennsylvania: College is like a supermarket where we let students freely choose courses. When they get to the cash register, we tell them they don't have the right things in their shopping carts, so they must continue shopping, for five or more less-than-fruitful years. Might it be an intellectually productive thing, this academic mucking about? Or is it a nationally embarrassing inefficiency, a waste of time and money?

I'm not sure. At some point, young people need to grow up, spend time working, traveling, living independently, making their own choices. Going to college or trade school should be motivated by a desire to learn something, however, be it plumbing or Shakespearean sonnets. And--you can't put off adulthood and real life forever.

Image: Uhuru1701, Flickr Creative Commons

Used Teabags and Other Fertilizer

On the day after Labor Day, the Tea Party Express rolled into town, more than an hour after their scheduled, synchronized and programmed arrival time, to hold a totally spontaneous, grass-roots rally on the front lawn of my church. Although several of my friends called and asked me to make an

appearance, I'd already made a considered decision not to attend for two reasons: #1, I was afraid that whoever does the people-counting for unrehearsed, impromptu media-ready events like this would somehow include me in the numbers of Tea Party supporters, unless I carried a sign saying "I believe health care is a human right" (a decidedly dangerous move). Other items I might display--a button saying "Who are these morons?" or my bible, which I keep handy in the choir room at said church--could inadvertently cause the counters to think I was associated with the Tea Partiers. Reason #2 was even more compelling: it was raining like crazy.

I should mention that my church just happens to be in the center of town, situated on a lovely historic millpond, not surprising since it was built in 1881 when water was key to transport, power and civilization. People built communities around millponds, joining together to help and support each other, in good times and bad, sickness and health. A former governor and numerous state and local dignitaries lie quietly in the adjoining cemetery behind a wrought iron fence (which fell down, when the totally spontaneous protestors climbed on it, something we don't let the Sunday School kids do because it would be disrespectful). The Spontaneous Tea Party Express was simply looking for a scenic and central location--and nothing could be more white-picket-fence and photo-op perfect than my little church.

Since the bus full of paid organizers was late, the volunteer locals who turned up had to wait for marching orders before beginning their completely spontaneous demonstration. They stood around keeping their birther billboards and guns (unloaded, one hopes) dry. Bored, they proceeded to decorate the front lawn of the church with Obama-as-monkey and Obama-as-Joker signs. As their constitutional scholarship was apparently limited, the church secretary had to remind them of the legal prohibition from putting overtly political signs within ten feet of church property. You know, separation of church and state, one of those annoying and evidently now outmoded concepts.

Later, the Youth Group came to church for their regularly scheduled American Friends Service Committee peace training after school, and were witness to a lot of wet, free-floating hatred. What bothered them most was adults putting vile signage in their tomato garden, the in-town patch that represents the larger, hands-on church project to feed the local hungry and homeless, which has yielded about a ton of fresh produce in 2009.  The bus finally came, and disgorged Teabaggish Headliner Joe the Unlicensed Plumber; Joe gets $10,000 per speech, these days, which means he doesn't have to worry about health insurance any more. Or plumbing, for that matter.

The youth group kids are still trying to process it all, including Joe the P's remarks about Hanoi Jane, which were inscrutable to them. I'm trying to process it, too, in terms of Thoreau, civil disobedience, and just whose country has been taken away, and from whom. I am always for civil liberties--freedom to write, speak, worship, love and grow vegetables. I did plenty of marching and sign-carrying in the 1960s myself, and I'm not sure how much good it did. Trying to equate the bombing of Cambodia with a political initiative to provide health care for all Americans feels a little schizophrenic, however.

Perhaps Buffalo Springfield's semi-immortal words are right. Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.

 

There's something happening here--What it is ain't exactly clear.

There's a man with a gun over there, telling me I got to beware.

There's battle lines being drawn. Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.

What a field-day for the heat--a thousand people in the street,

Singing songs and carrying signs. Mostly say, hooray for our side.

Image: ND_estuary, Flickr Creative Commons

Scoring Political Points: Hillary and Me

In the Internet dark ages—1993—I was invited (coerced, actually) to do a “flyaround” media tour with then-Governor of Michigan, John Engler, to promote a school funding initiative.  It was kind of fun, in a surreal way. We started at dawn in Detroit with a few grumpy reporters, and then flew to a half-dozen cities doing pre-arranged media events with various conscripted audiences serving as backdrop. Two of our stops were at middle schools, where TV cameras captured the governor’s remarks to school assemblies.

Being thoroughly familiar with gymnasiums full of bored 13-year olds, these performances were no big deal to me, but the governor was more than a little anxious about his prepared remarks and how they would go over with preadolescents. I reassured him that any school would prepare students for a gubernatorial visit by threatening kids with serious consequences for any untoward outbursts. He could expect respectful, quiet behavior, but couldn’t count on anything like comprehension, let alone enthusiasm, from the kids.

You may be wondering how I was selected as the governor’s sidekick for this experience. It was done scientifically, in fact: the media consultant for the campaign (Republican stalwart Mike Murphy) held a focus group session, to determine whom Michiganders trusted most on issues of education. Their #1 pick was the State Teacher of the Year. Since the governor’s trust numbers were significantly lower, and I was currently serving as MI Teacher of the Year, I was drafted. The third member of the media team was the president of the Michigan Education Association, a distinguished-looking African American gentleman who was not on speaking terms with the governor. The three of us were an appealing public relations mix, evidently, a diversity dream team—but the atmosphere on that four-seater plane was pretty frosty.

I also shot a few TV commercials endorsing the proposal, in a borrowed classroom, which had been tarted up with fake blackboard writing, Palmer-method penmanship borders and—naturally—an apple or two.  I didn’t mind doing any of this—I strongly supported the funding proposal, which represented a shift away from property taxes that left enormous funding gaps between the wealthy suburban districts and the generational poverty of tiny community schools in the northern woods.  But I was repeatedly struck by the calculated manipulation of symbols and people to make political points.

I was supposed to be on tour as decorative moral support, but when the gov’s dry, wonky remarks fell embarrassingly flat with middle schoolers in Saginaw, he turned and asked me--surprise!--to say a few words to the students. When I made them laugh with a comment about how their teachers were strategically placed next to known outlaws, I was suddenly part of the official program. Somewhere between Grand Rapids and Traverse City, the governor decided I looked like Hillary Clinton (a definite stretch, but oh well), and started joking about how even Hillary thought the proposal was a great idea. That inanity and accompanying photo made several local newspapers.

Did the governor have the right to shamelessly use seventh graders as scenery--or make a pitch in a public school, even if that school would benefit greatly from a funding shift? I would say yes. Just as much as Barack Obama had the right to urge kids to take responsibility for their learning, Ronald Reagan had the right to disguise his tax policies as a history lesson, and George W. Bush had the right to read "My Pet Goat" in a photo op arranged by his own personal governor, after a night of Republican fund-raising in Florida. The purpose of schools is not to shield students from politics and media; it's to educate them about those things.

Here's how it works: media is about attention, and politics is about influence.  Neither is about considered and noble principles or genuine communal good. Want to distract attention from an important national speech where someone is constructing a thoughtful policy argument before your eyes? You aren’t going to get it with debate or dialogue. So just go ahead and call the guy a liar—better yet, bawl it out on national TV, knowing that the incident will go viral on YouTube, the notoriety lasting much longer than any pro forma apology you may offer later. Attention guaranteed.  Influence? Remains to be seen.

Too bad that South Carolina Congressman Joe "You lie!" Wilson didn’t hear the principal’s admonitions about appropriate behavior in an assembly. Too bad there wasn’t a teacher sitting next to him, reminding him that the president was an honored guest. When we demand respectful behavior from students but public officials demonstrate appalling rudeness, how can we expect students to take the policy process seriously?

Springtime for Hitler

 A  few weeks ago, in a fit of pique, I posted a message at the  Celestial Teacher's Lounge (a.k.a. the Teacher Leaders Network Forum) describing a particularly vociferous and opinionated group of education bloggers and commenters as "____ Nazis." As in--the Soup Nazi, so entertainingly depicted on Seinfeld.

My peace-loving friend and uber-blogger Ken Bernstein gently chided me for careless use of a pretty hard-core epithet, pointing out that such name-calling is not an invitation to thoughtful dialogue. It took me about five chastised-but-bristling minutes to admit that he was right: He who uses the most vile and inflammatory language is not the most influential. Loudest, perhaps--but not the most truthful or accurate.

And since that exchange, the nation has had the opportunity to hear a whole lot of illogical, incoherent blah-blah about Hitler and health care--hunh?--and witness Shepard Fairey's iconic poster of Obama adorned with a toothbrush mustache.

Ha ha. Not.

But is this...wrong? Does it mean that Jon Stewart should never do pointed satire on Hitler-mustache stickers (available for images of all the people you currently dislike)? Was Barney Frank out of bounds, when he compared a discussing the health care bill with the town-hall "Nazi policy" protester to talking with his dining room table? As a person who includes The Producers (the 1968 original, of course) among her favorite movies, should I be embarrassed by my  reaction every time I see Springtime for Hitler: uncontrollable giggles? Is it possible to let satire and post-modern irony dull us to the fact that some things are always immoral?

Is it ever OK to pull out what Jon Meacham calls the Hitler card? And is it also worth considering that one person's evil incarnate is another person's private hero?

A few years ago, my 8th graders went on a kick where everything and everyone they didn't care for at the moment became "gay." He's so gay, her shirt is gay, everyone who plays in the band is gay, the principal is really, really gay. And so on. One day, I called out some hapless kid who used the word in class, leading to one of those moments when the room goes breathlessly silent and everyone's focused on the exchange:

Me: Please don't use the word gay as a pejorative--a nasty label. Not in this classroom.

Kid: Unh. Everyone else says it (defensively).

Me: (silence, meeting his eyes--letting the inanity of that remark hang there)

Kid: Well, they do.

Me: And how do you feel when kids say that being in the band is gay--using that word to mean that you and the other 65 people here in this room are uncool nerds?

Kid: I don't care (even more defensive).

Me: I can only speak for myself, but I care very much about that. And I see this room as a safe space for everyone who wants to take band. If we start calling each other names, we won't care as much about each other. The class won't be as much fun, and the music will suffer.

Kid: But what if someone really is gay?

Me: Then that person needs to know that they're definitely welcome in the band room.

At lunch, one of my colleagues said "I hear you had the gay talk in second hour today. I'm sick of hearing the word, too--good for you. I hope you don't get any phone calls." I didn't--but I wasn't worried about it. I doubted if any parent could muster much of an argument.

Ken is right. We attach monstrous labels to people with whom we disagree at our own peril, running the risk of weakening our resolve to see and resist evil--and muddying distinctions between right and wrong. Those of us who work with children, whose filters for irony, sarcasm and paradox are not fully developed, should be especially careful.

I visited Dachau concentration camp in 1977, the day before I flew home from a summer spent backpacking in Europe. It was a drizzly, gray day and I had the place nearly to myself--so perhaps that's why it was possible to stand in the empty yard and hear, plain as day, faint but chilling echoes of the shouting and the screams. The word that came to mind, in that terrible place, was sacrifice. A word whose roots mean: to make sacred.

Image: David Farrington, Flickr Creative Commons

Late addition: Just read Leonard Pitts' very powerful piece in the Detroit Free Press, on this very subject. Well worth a read.

What Matters Most

This is a tough one. A blog that must be written with infinite care. People I love are involved, and the subject is painful to think about. The overarching essential question: What are our real purposes in educating children in America--what are we preparing them for?

Applying that question to my personal circumstances at the moment, however, it comes out like this: Are we increasingly focused on the wrong goals in our schools? Have we stopped paying attention to the qualities and competencies that really matter in shaping healthy adults, in favor of empty credentials, data targets and media spin?

Last week, my son's good buddy, Erik, died of catastrophic injuries sustained in a car crash. Erik was more than Alex's confidante, cruising companion and photography partner. He was a long-time Friday night basement dweller, chez Flanagan--part of a tight-knit group of "car guys," who survived and thrived in high school by creating their own society (and making my basement smell like Teenage Boy for approximately five years). When Alex was in 10th grade, he spent $50 of his own money to buy a huge, ugly sectional sofa at a garage sale, which the guys creatively re-arranged into a kind of subterranean bunkhouse for six. I gave up making them pancakes and smoky links on Saturday mornings somewhere around the time they got driver's licenses, also the point at which they began sleeping past noon. These boys are like brothers to each other and sons to me; many of them were also my students in middle school.

Erik played the trombone in my middle school band. His wonderful parents (and often, his grandparents) attended concerts, traveled with the band on field trips and supported Erik in all his academic and extra-curricular goals.  Erik was affable, genuine, kind and responsible--he took care of our dogs when we went on vacation. The accident occurred the day before Erik's 22nd birthday. He was living at home. He was tight with his older sister, traveled with his family, and hunted and fished with his dad. He took photography classes at community college. He also held a variety of jobs since high school.

Erik never failed to first say hello to us, Flanagan's parental units, when he was over. Last summer, he stopped en route to the basement for a little chat while I was working at the computer. He told me he was currently employed spreading asphalt, part of a construction crew. "That sounds hot and boring," I said. He stood up and struck an Abercrombie pose--thumbs in the  belt loops, jaw extended. "But haven't you noticed how buff I'm getting?" he said, and broke into a grin. A job was a job--and I had to admit that he was lookin' good, all right.

The worst part of losing Erik is what he will not become: a great husband, a terrific dad, a good neighbor, a productive and reliable career-employee. All of the best parts of Erik's adult character were already established; he just needed more time. It was painful to see the sad and stricken faces of his friends, home from their current lives at school and work, shockingly adult in their dark suits. What lessons can they take away from this loss? Quoting Jackson Browne: Nothing survives, but the way we live our lives.  And as my Lutheran pastor friend says--grief is the price we pay for loving someone.

It's a cliché to ask what you would do today, if you knew you had only 24 hours to live--but that thought ran through my head constantly over the past week. If you knew your child's life would be rudely cut short just as he approached adulthood, what would your priorities be? Would it be pursuing the traditional school model of success--grade points, honors night, stress over the right competitive numbers to leverage his place in the next academic institution or workplace? Or would it be spending more time with friends, sharing family events and stories, working and playing, enjoying and exploring life's possibilities?

When we work with children, we have no idea how they will turn out--a truth that ought to be both obvious and humbling, but is routinely ignored by educators. We don't know who will be rich, who will be malicious, who will have great power and influence--or who will unexpectedly be lost to bad fortune. All we can do is try to stay focused on what matters most. Tonight, I am thinking that a joyful life, no matter how short, is a life well-lived. The rest is unimportant, in the long run.

Image: Alex (l.) & Erik (r.)

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

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.