The Tempered Radical

Looking past the Cheetos . . .

An interesting email landed in my inbox last week from one of my all-time favorite students, a boy that we’ll call Jack that I taught a few years back. 

  by  Muffet 

What caught my eye came at the end of Jack’s email, when he wrote:

Oh yeah, and on my last report card I got 5 As, 1 B, and for comments I got

• classroom conduct average
• classroom conduct is below average
• classroom conduct is average
• classroom conduct is excellent. Jack is a pleasure to teach
• classroom conduct is above average
• classroom conduct is average. Good work habits. Creative.

I don't get it, I behave the same in all the classes!?!

Now, I didn’t say it to Jack, but I know EXACTLY why his conduct grades are all over the board:  Because he is the PROTOTYPICAL middle school boy!

What does that mean, exactly?

It means that he’s a constant ball of energy, tapping his pencil, blurting out answers, standing, sitting, squirming, moving, shouting, and running all over the room.  And if you let him stop by during lunch, he’ll burp the entire alphabet, stuff fourteen Cheetos up his nose, and chug milk like a frat boy on a weekend bender. 

It’s certainly a sight to see!

If you patiently sift through the movement, though, it’s hard NOT to fall in love with “Jack the Student.”  He is an inquisitive kid who is ALWAYS focused on what’s going on in class.  Everything that he blurted out in my room was brilliant, directly connected to the broad themes that we were studying in class and challenging the thinking of everyone in the room—including me.

He buries himself in books, writes touching short stories, engages audiences as a budding star in school plays, actively leads as a member of his school’s student council, and turns in amazing work—when it hasn’t been swallowed by his binder!

He likes a good political debate, ready to challenge you on universal health care or on the risks and rewards of standing up to power.  He’s deeply religious and can explain his personal beliefs better than most of the adults that I know.  Give him the chance to compete and you’ll see him work harder than anyone in your class.

The problem is that there are far too many teachers in schools today who are unwilling to look past the Cheetos.  For them, kids like Jack are walking disruptions to be dismissed and disciplined.  What’s worse, schools only get more frustrating for active boys as they get older.

They spend more and more time sitting in one place listening quietly to teachers who are lecturing for hours on end, sending the subtle message that knowledge is held by those who are in charge.  They either conform—pushing their energy and creativity to the side and beginning to believe that there is something ‘wrong’ with them—or they push back and end up labeled as troublemakers.

Is it any surprise, then, that boys make up almost 60% of the high school dropouts in our country, even though they make up only 50% of the student population?  Or that boys are suspended and expelled from school more often than girls?

Or that boys are placed in special education programs more often than girls?  Or that boys are diagnosed with emotional disturbances more often than girls?

In the end, I’m starting to think that schools are rigged against kids like Jack.

And that breaks my heart. 

An Open Letter to North Carolina Legislators. . .

Like many states, North Carolina’s legislature is wrapped in one of the toughest budget sessions of the past 50 years. 

Along with raising taxes and cutting services in almost every department, the men and women who represent us have been pushed into the position where even education----something that North Carolina has a long history of protecting---is going to suffer.

While I firmly believe that our government---like the families that it represents---should live within its means and understand that difficult decisions are par for the course in this legislative session, I’m heartbroken because our decision-makers are seriously considering capping the number of teachers who can pursue certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in North Carolina in an attempt to cut future costs in a state where teachers earn a 12% salary stipend for every year that they are certified.

Here’s my attempt to lend perspective to their decision:

July 21, 2009

Dear Legislators,

I'm writing to you today to encourage you to advocate against the current conversations in the legislature around capping the number of teachers that can pursue certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in our state. 

As both a teacher and a taxpayer, I'm passionate about this topic primarily because almost 12 full years ago, I can remember sitting in the office of my  principal breaking bad news to him.  I'd decided to leave teaching to pursue a career that paid a competitive wage compared to the professions chosen by my peers. 

During our conversation, my principal told me about a new program that was being funded and supported by the state of North Carolina called National Board Certification.  "With a bit of hard work," he said, "You can raise your salary by 12%." 

Given that teaching is all that I ever really wanted to do, I decided to give certification a whirl---and while the process was challenging, it was also incredibly rewarding because it offered a real opportunity to reflect on my practice and to be measured against the most rigorous standards of excellence in our profession.

After certifying as one of the first 20 teachers in Wake County, one of the first 100 teachers in North Carolina and one of the first 1,000 teachers in the nation, I found that my salary was incredibly competitive for ten months of work----and I've stayed in the classroom ever since, renewing my certificate in 2007. 

That makes me a North Carolina education policy success story, doesn’t it? 

As a teacher, I hope that you'll continue to support National Board Certification---without capping the number of candidates that can apply for the process in our state---as a teacher retention tool.  There is no doubt that I would not continue to serve in North Carolina's classrooms had the fee support and salary stipend for Board Certification not been available to me. 

As a taxpayer, I hope that you'll continue to support National Board Certification because it is a responsible way to increase salaries in a state where the average teacher makes almost $5,000 less than the national average.  Unlike across the board increases for every teacher, National Board Certification ensures that our state's investments in increasing teacher salaries are targeted and earned.   

This is, in my opinion, the best of both worlds---and it mirrors your commitment to fiscal responsibility.

Please contact me directly if you have any questions,

Bill Ferriter
Sixth Grade Science and Social Studies
Salem Middle School
6150 Old Jenks Road
Apex, North Carolina 27513
Middle Childhood Generalist since 1997

Leadership Day 2009: Why Digital Change Efforts Fail. . .

(I'm a bit behind, but I wanted to get in on Scott McLeod's Leadership Day 2009.  It's one of the most important digital events of every year.)

Flipping through a paper copy of the eSchool News this morning left me more than a bit bummed.  Slapped across the front page is an article detailing the struggles of Philadelphia's Microsoft supported, tech-heavy School of the Future (SOF). 

  by  JenReeves 

Designed as a model for what education should look like in a knowledge-driven world, Philly's SOF turned away from textbooks, provided every student with a laptop computer, developed an online portal for organizing class content and activities, developed a new teacher hiring process, provided campus wide wireless access, and built a curriculum based on Microsoft's six Is:  Introspection, investigation, inclusion, innovation, implementation and in a slightly ridiculous decision, introspection again.

Unfortunately, Philly's SOF hasn't had the broad impact---on student learning, on instructional practices, or on school reform---that school leaders and Microsoft staffers were counting on.  As Jan Biros, an associate vice president for instructional technology support at Drexel University and former member of the SOF Curriculum Planning Committee, wrote:

"We naively thought, I guess, that by providing a beautiful building and great resources, these things would automatically yield change.  They didn't."

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?  Schools turn to education's version of the Hail Mary pass all-too-often in today's day and age, filling classrooms with thousands and thousands of dollars of new digital tools and services, yet they continue to struggle to make any real change in the outcome that matters most:

Student achievement. 

What is most worrisome is the implications that the failure of Philly's SOF---a heavily funded program with the public backing of Microsoft and several area universities---carry for the rest of us.  "If THEY couldn't successfully shift to digitally-driven learning experiences," the thinking goes, "what hope do WE have?!"

The answer is that there IS hope for schools trying to fundamentally change the way that they do business in a rapidly changing world.  

Technology Facilitates Connections. . .

There's an interesting conversation going on over at Will Richardson's blog about "the larger lessons" that we expect students to master and the role that technology should play in well-designed learning experiences. 

 

(Download CollaborativeDialogue)

One comment that caught my attention was left by digital learning superstar Marc Prensky, who makes a distinction between nouns and verbs when making instructional choices.  He writes:

“Verbs” are the skills you, I, Ravich, and everyone else thinks people should know, and learn as students. They include the skills you mention above: to collaborate, to solve problems, to think critically, to be creative, plus many others: e.g. to persuade, to present logically...These verbs or skills, as Ravich points out, don’t change very much over time.

“Nouns,” on the other hand, are the tools (aka technologies) people use to practice and do these skills. Nouns have always changed over time, e.g. memorizing to writing, papyrus to paper, quills to fountain pens, handwriting to keyboarding.

Today nouns are changing extremely rapidly: Powerpoint to Flash, email to IM, Myspace to Facebook to Twitter, encyclopedias to Wikipedia, local disks to cloud, reading to watching short video, laptops to smartphones, etc...

In teaching, our focus needs to be on the verbs, which don’t change very much, and NOT on the nouns (i.e. the technologies) which change rapidly and which are only a means. For teachers to fixate on any particular noun as the “best” way (be it books or blogs, for example) is not good for our students, as new and better nouns will shortly emerge and will continue to emerge over the course of their lifetimes.

Our teaching should instead focus on the verbs (i.e. skills) students need to master, making it clear to the students (and to the teachers) that there are many tools learners can use to practice and apply them.

Prensky's right when he argues that fixating on individual tools is a dangerous trap that schools fall into. 

Pushing Back on Organizing PLCs. . .

Scott McLeod—who writes extensively about school leadership over at Dangerously Irrelevant, a must-read blog for anyone involved in education—stopped by my recent post about organizing professional learning teams in a PLC and pushed against my thinking a bit.

He wrote:

Bill, I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. The point of a "learning team" of teachers should be to benefit students first, not the teachers themselves. Yes, I want teachers to benefit, but I want students to benefit more.

So... if you accept this premise, then I think you have to go with a PLC made up of role-alike teachers who together can create common assessments, track student learning outcomes, and adjust their instruction accordingly (particularly for the benefit of struggling learners).

In many ways, Scott’s ideas about learning teams aren’t far from my own.  I agree that role-alike groups are the best starting point for teachers and schools new to teaming primarily because they are the most efficient forum for accomplishing the kinds of tasks—creating common assessments, tracking learning outcomes, adjusting instruction—that can make a difference for kids.

But my argument is that role-alike groups aren’t the only organizational strategy that allows for this kind of work to be done.

Organizing Learning Teams in a PLC

A few weeks back, I sat down with a friend named Gretta who is the principal of an area school working to strengthen their professional learning community.  Her first question is one that I’m asked all the time. 

“Bill,” she said, “how should we organize our learning teams?  Is it best to have teachers on the same grade level working together?  Teachers in the same content area?  What about vertical teams?”

The answer to Gretta’s question is that there is no one “right way” to organize the learning teams in a building!

  by  zigazou76 

Indeed, any group of teachers who are working together to deepen their collective knowledge of what works in schools can be called a “professional learning team.” 

And while many principals and teachers find that the most productive learning teams pair colleagues working together in the same grade level and content area—allowing teachers to easily develop and deliver common assessments and to talk about shared instructional practices—I’d argue that rigid commitments to any one organizational strategy can inadvertently hurt the professional learning that takes place in your building.

What does that mean for principals?

When organizing the collaborative groups in your school, remember that some of the best learning teams are short-lived, focused on a specific area of study, and self-selected! 

Why Test Scores are ALMOST Useless to Me

If you've been following the conversation on the Radical recently (see here and here), you'll know that we've been collectively wrestling with the place that the magic bubbles (read: standardized test scores) should have in assessing student understandings. 

One question that I haven't had a chance to answer yet was posed by regular reader K. Borden.  She wrote:

If that rising sixth grader were entering your class, would you want only her former teachers’ observations or would you want those test results as well? Which would serve you best in providing her an opportunity to be an enthusiastic, confident and competent learner?

Good question, K, and one that has had me thinking over the past few weeks as our school's end of grade test scores have come back from Scantron Central. 

Here's my response:  When talking about my initial attempts to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the students entering my classroom, test scores are almost completely useless to me.  I have little confidence in them as a measure of an individual child's abilities and---given the choice---would take observations by both parents and teachers in every circumstance.

That's not a very tempered response, is it?! 

But it's a response built from the understanding that test scores for individual children can change dramatically from one administration to the next with no apparent explanation.  I first learned this lesson while watching the testing results of a boy----let's call him Jamison----that I tutored several years ago.