Reader’s Workshop Mashup

by Robert Pondiscio
August 31st, 2009

Posted in Education News, Teaching | 28 Comments »

The New York Times discovery of the strange new creature called “Reading Workshop” has caused a full-on blog mashup.  To assign books or let students choose?  That is the question.  “The issue is whether that should augment or replace some defined curriculum,” says Eduwonk, who is ”pretty firmly in the augment camp.”  Joanne Jacobs opts for the sensible center.   But you can’t spell “contrary” without C-A-R-E-Y, and the Quick and the Ed’s main man jumps into the fray, unable to resist taking a swipe at his personal pinata, Diane Ravitch, who had the chutzpah to ask in the Times piece, “What child is going to choose Moby Dick?” 

“None, I imagine,” says Carey.  “And good!”  (Thwap!  Thwap!)

I responded in TQATE’s comments, but I’ll spare you the trip: 

People in education don’t like to make these choices. Fine. But choice works both ways. If you refuse to say what’s worth knowing, you inevitably choose “nothing’s worth knowing.” Huckleberry Finn? “Kids can live without it.” Shakespeare? “They’ll get that in college.” Langston Hughes? James Baldwin? Maya Angelou? No single work is indispensible, but it’s like pulling a loose thread from a sweater. Keep pulling things out, and eventually all that’s left is “Read whatever you want!” It’s a formula for illiteracy.

We also forget — everyone does — that there are valid technical reasons for common knowledge. The point is not to enshrine a canon, but to understand that language proficiency requires being familiar with a broad range of knowledge in science, history, the arts and other areas that speakers and writers assume readers and listeners already know. Poor readers suddenly look like good readers when they’re reading about familiar subjects. It stands to reason that we should be doing everything we can to make them familiar with more subjects, and shared knowledge, including well-known works of literature and literary allusions (so yes, I’d agree that while it may not be important for eveyone to read Moby-Dick, being familiar is important. Sometimes a little knowledge is just fine).

Lastly, there’s the question of how valuable the 30 different books for 30 different kids approach really is. I was trained in Readers Workshop and had to use it in my classroom. It wasn’t effective, or satisfying. It becomes almost impossible to have deep, rich conversations about books. You can’t possibly be familiar with every book every kid is reading, so you’re encouraged to ask questions that are not terribly deep or interesting: Can you describe the setting? Which character are you most like? Are there any questions you wish you could ask the author? It’s a kind of cookie-cutter, paint-by-numbers way to teach literature. If today’s mini-lesson is “Good readers pay attention to what characters say and do” (yes, we actually teach that to 5th graders) it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about War and Peace or Captain Underpants. At one level, that’s true. At another, it’s just plain silly.

You can easily say “not every child participates in those rich, whole-class discussions.” But not every child is engrossed in reading in the reader’s workshop either. A lot of them are just going through the motions.

 

Read what real, live English teachers have to say about it at The English Companion Ning (the consensus is we need both choice and challenge.)  This debate will get a little national air tomorrow morning at the Fox News Channel.  Your humble blogger will guest.

Science Workshop: Building a Lifelong Love of a “Boring” Subject

by Robert Pondiscio
August 30th, 2009

Posted in Education News, Teaching | 11 Comments »

The Future of Science: ‘Science Workshop’ Approach Lets Students Learn What They Want
The New York Times
By Motoko Rich
August 30, 2009

JONESBORO, Ga. — For years Lorrie McNeill loved teaching chemistry.  She taught her students the periodic table of elements, the ubiquitous classroom staple that many Americans regard as a scientific rite of passage.

But last fall, for the first time in 15 years, Ms. McNeill, 42, removed the periodic table from her classroom.  Gone, too, were assigned lab partners–and even the laboratory tables themselves, bunsen burners and all. Instead she turned over all the decisions about what science to learn to the students in her seventh- and eighth-grade science classes at Jonesboro Middle School in this south Atlanta suburb.

Among their choices: building model volcanoes, setting off smoke bombs, making sundials from modeling clay and popsicle sticks, and creating “geysers” by dropping Mentos candies into 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke. 

The approach Ms. McNeill uses, in which students choose their own science projects, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their observations, is part of a movement to revolutionize the way science is taught in America’s schools. While there is no clear consensus among science teachers, variations on the approach, known as science workshop, are catching on.

In the method familiar to generations of students, an entire class conducts a scientific experiment together to learn about matter and energy and the interactions between them. That tradition, proponents say, gives students experience with disciplined scientific inquiry by posing questions and testing hypotheses.  Defenders of the practice believe it also prepares students for more advanced study of science in college.

But fans of the science workshop say that assigning experiments and reading from textbooks–and learning the chemical symbols for elements on the periodic table–leaves many children bored or uninterested in science. Leaving students free to experiment, play, break things and get their hands dirty, they say, can help to build a lifelong love of science.

“I feel like almost every kid in my classroom is engaged and actually interacting with science,” said Ms. McNeill after conferencing on the classroom rug with a student and wondering in a technique called a “think aloud” if Diet Coke dripping from her classroom ceiling might form a stalactite.  “Whereas when I do chemical compounds or the parts of the atom, I know that I have some kids that just don’t get into it.”

Glorifying Indifference to Literature

by Guest Blogger
August 30th, 2009

Tags: , ,
Posted in Education News, Teaching | 23 Comments »

by Diana Senechal

The New York Times story on the “reading workshop” method glorifies indifference toward literature. Its hero is a teacher who saw the light: who used to love to teach To Kill a Mockingbird but by the end of the story was sending her class sets of that and other books to the storage room. No more would she tell her students what to read. Not after attending that seminar led by Nancie Atwell.

And an interesting little fact: the teacher disliked the literature she read in school as a child. No wonder she gave up the teaching of it so willingly.

This so-called movement is led by people who don’t love literature enough to defend it, and who don’t care about history enough to find out that their revolution is nothing revolutionary. It glorifies a certain indifference.

The movement writes off the literature itself. It writes off the teachers who teach it well and inspire their students to love it. It writes off the possibility that literature will affect students’ entire lives and stay in their minds, in ways that teen novels cannot do. Proponents say, “Look, the kids are reading; this is working!” They do not stop to think that reading 20 pages a day is not the same as grappling with literature. The chicken coop is not a palace. (Oops–no one teaches Dostoevsky anymore.)

I taught Sophocles’ Antigone (among many other works of literature) to my eighth grade ESL students. We had heated debates in class. Students wrote thoughtful essays. I thought, “How much more they will understand when they read it in high school!” Then I realized they probably wouldn’t read it in high school. They would probably never have it assigned to them again.

A former Core Knowledge teacher in New York City, Diana Senechal is currently writing a book in New Haven, Connecticut.

Success Has a Thousand Parents

by Robert Pondiscio
August 30th, 2009

Posted in Educational Policy, Teaching | 1 Comment »

Where much of the debate on merit pay tacitly focuses on where to lay blame for poor performance, a letter to the Boston Globe, points out the difficulty of giving credit–and cash–where it’s due.  Describing a  class discussion of Wallace Stevens’s “Anecdote of a Jar,” Pittsfield, Massachusetts literature teacher William Irvin writes, “I mentally thank Dr. Weaver and Ms. Getzen for the sound preparation each has given these students in literature, writing, and expression over the last two years.”

Then I remember that Mrs. Romeo-Leger and Mrs. LaRoche taught them perspective and composition in their photography and art classes. Mr. Cade helped them develop facility with rhythm and accent in his music classes. And I can’t forget Mr. Toland, who sharpened their analytic skills in chemistry. The French teacher, Ms. Dupuis, explained the partitive genitive, an example of which occurs in line 11 of the poem. Nor can I omit the two docents at the Museum of Modern Art who provided my students with a lively discussion of multiple perspectives.

Irvn notes his students have performed exceptionally on the MCAS and SAT measures, ”high enough to warrant merit pay. But who should receive the check?”

 

New York Times Discovers Reader’s Workshop

by Robert Pondiscio
August 29th, 2009

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Education News | 2 Comments »

When America’s paper of record discovers a “trend” that is literally decades old and presents it as cutting edge, it makes you wonder about the articles in the paper you don’t know anything about.  But there’s the New York Times, and a series on “The Future of Reading,” gazing in wide-eyed wonder at the spectacle of classroom teachers letting students choose their own books to read!

The approach Ms. McNeill uses, in which students choose their own books, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading, is part of a movement to revolutionize the way literature is taught in America’s schools. While there is no clear consensus among English teachers, variations on the approach, known as reading workshop, are catching on.

No one seems to have mentioned to the Times that this is more or less standard practice, for good or for ill, and has been for a decade or more.  Here’s a dead giveaway: search “reading workshop” on Google and you get 241,000 hits.

May I suggest to the editors of the Times that they assign an investigative team to a few other ideas that are “catching on.”  I understand there’s a new sport that involves driving cars very quickly that a lot of people seem interested in called “NASCAR” or some such.   And although I haven’t seen it myself (I don’t own a TV, you see), I also keep hearing about this something called “reality TV” that’s apparently becoming quite popular.   You can even read about it on your computer over something called the Internets, or some such.   Have you heard of it?

Update:  “Progressive schools let kids pick their own books in the 1920s and 1930s. Now it is supposed to be a major innovation. Ha!” tweets Diane Ravitch, who is quoted in the piece.  The paper “applauds the death of any version of a common culture.”  Just desserts of the NY Times,” she adds.  “By encouraging the death of reading, they doom the NY Times.”

Must Be a Slow News Day

by Robert Pondiscio
August 28th, 2009

Posted in Core Knowledge, Interview | 3 Comments »

Why else would ednews.org interview this guy?

Rafe Esquith, Excuse Maker

by Robert Pondiscio
August 28th, 2009

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Teaching | 12 Comments »

Experience, not talent is what makes a great teacher, says the man widely acclaimed to be the nation’s best classroom teacher.  In an interview in Teacher Magazine Rafe Esquith says, “I speak all over the country, and I meet so many great young teachers, and I’m trying to show them that I’m a truly ordinary guy, but because I stuck with it and persevered, I got good at it. Not because of talent, but because of experience!  I’m really trying to encourage a lot of young teachers to try and stick with it and get through those tough times because there are better times ahead if they can do so.”

Asked if every child can be as successful as the kids in his legendary Room 56 at Hobart Elementary School in Los Angeles, Esquith is unequivocal:

I don’t. I think there are some students where the odds are so far against them because of their family situation and other social issues. But here’s what I do know: There are hundreds of thousands of students in our school district who could be like the students of Room 56, who are absolutely capable, but they’re not being given the opportunity. I do think that the goal should be that we’re going to give every child the opportunity to be the best they can be. Right now, we’re not doing that. And as I always tell the kids, ‘It’s not my job to save your soul, but it’s my job to give you an opportunity to save your own soul.’ I can’t make a kid smarter or better, but I can give them the opportunity to become that and show them how to do that. That’s my job, and that’s a parent’s job creating opportunities.”

Obviously, this is not a page ripped from the no-excuses, teacher-must-overcome-all-obstacles hymnal.  It echoes a bracing moment in the superb 2007 PBS documentary The Hobart Shakespeareans, where Esquith is seen lecturing at a Teach For America conference in Houston.    “I want to let you know that some children should be left behind.  I know, you read your magazine articles, ‘every child is a golden drop of sunshine.’  It’s a lie.  All children must be given an equal opportunity, and our children do not get an equal opportunity.  But once given that equal opportunity, the children have to produce,” he concludes.  Later, offstage, speaking to a handful of young TFA corp members, he goes one step further.  “Anybody who sits in there and goes, ‘I get to all the kids?’ It’s bullshit.  They don’t.’”

Esquith may not be invited to future TFA conferences after his comments in Teacher Magazine.  “The concept for getting some of our very bright students into the classroom is a good one. But to give these folks five weeks of training and throw them into tough classroom situations is questionable to me,” he says. “I’ve had hundreds of TFA people in my classroom, and they’re wonderful. But I don’t think the concept is going to work because nobody is a great teacher after two years.”

Esquith, who has a new book coming out this fall, also admits to being “panicked” about the current state of American education:

I think if we continue along the path that we’re going, our greatest days are behind us. But, I still believe we can turn it around. That’s why I’m still in the classroom, and I’m gonna do my best. But as long as we embrace “testing is everything,” and as long as we keep shrinking art programs and physical education programs, we’re not in a good place. Those are the things that inspire kids to do great things, so I hope we keep enlarging them, not shrinking them.

When a teacher of Esquith’s stature and experience says we’re headed down the wrong path, it’s time to sit up and take notice.

Observations on Observations

by Robert Pondiscio
August 27th, 2009

Tags: , , ,
Posted in accountability, Assessment and Testing, Educational Policy, Teaching | 32 Comments »

If you’re a teacher, would you rather be judged by a 200-page list of indicators of highly skilled teaching, or by a principal who shares your philosophy of teaching and learning, supports your approach and pretty much leaves you alone–but has the power to fire you at will? 

This question occurred to me after reading a long and excellent post by John Merrow over at Learning Matters on teacher observations. He concludes that the observation process is “changing for the better in some places, but that, unfortunately, it’s still mostly useless.”

In the old days, teachers closed their doors and did their thing, for better or for worse. As long as things were quiet, administrators [rarely] bothered to open the door to see what was going on, and teachers never watched each other at work. That’s changing, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. In some schools today, teachers are actually expected to watch their peers teach, after which they share their analysis. In other schools, however, principals armed with lists sit in the back of the class checking off ‘behaviors’ and later give the teacher a ‘scorecard’ with her ‘batting average.’

“Whether these observations are diagnostic in nature and therefore designed to help teachers improve or a ‘gotcha’ game is the essential question,” Merrow perceptively observes.  Teacher observations, like test scores, will undoubtedly loom ever larger as the issue of teacher quality bubbles to the top of the nation’s education agenda.  Like test scores, there’s a lot to learn from observations.  And like test scores, we’re equally likely to learn the wrong lessons.

Of all the “best practices” that have migrated to education from the business world, the one that didn’t make the trip is the idea that good managers hire excellent people, empower them with real decision-making authority, then get out of their way.  The closest thing to that in education is “close your door and do your thing,” as Merrow puts it.  That goes against the grain in the Age of Accountability, but it is undeniable that for many excellent and experienced teachers and their students, it works perfectly.   And while that approach is endangered, it has not disappeared.  Nor should it.  The point of any accountability system should be to help bad schools and teachers look and act like good schools and teachers, not the opposite.  Our schools still have plenty of brilliant iconoclasts who do things their own way to great effect. 

For such  teachers nothing could be worse than “observation by checklist,” where the adminstration wants to see what it wants to see: aim and standard on the board?  Check.  Students sitting in groups?  Check.  Updated work on the bulletin board?  Check. A “print rich” environment in “kid-friendly language?” Check.   Ask why these items are important and you’ll invariably hear that it’s what the principal’s supervisor expects to see.  What they are indicative of is lost.  The consummate irony is this kind of evaluation seems rigorous, but it is more likely — much more likely — to create a civil service mentality than to foster excellence.  It’s another variation of the Cargo Cult Education phenomenon.   Teachers and administrators spend all their energy manufacturing the visible markers of learning, often not knowing (and after a while no longer caring) what the “indicators” indicate. 

Indeed, this is the thing the every teacher knows, that every armchair expert does not: it is simple (but time-consuming) to create an environment that gives all the appearances of being a high-functioning classroom and still be a lousy teacher.  Among the very first survival skills a new teacher learns, either through the advice of a kindly colleague or through a series of administrative reprimands, is the art of the dog and pony show.   In some schools, it’s the quid pro quo that earns you the right to close your door and practice your craft.  In more punitive environments, it’s the tail that wags the dog.   But the aim of observation-by-checklist is not great teaching, it’s plausible deniability–and it’s the enemy of accountability, for both teachers and administrators.  Miss Jones’ classroom demonstrates a high degree of student engagement and all of the indicators of high quality teaching, but her students are still not making progress.  Why? Miss Jones’ energy is misdirected.  She’s learning to play the game, not become a great teacher.  After a few years, she gets tired of it and quits.  Mediocrity wins again. 

The bottom line is that great teaching is like Potter Stewart’s definition of hard-core pornography.  It’s hard to define but you know it when you see it.  Unfortunately, that’s never going to cut it in our data-mad, accountability-obsessed age. 

So which would you rather?  Find a school and work with a principal who shares your philosophy and approach, trusts you and supports you, but has the power to fire you at will?  Or a school where your duties are codified to the letter, where you know what’s on the checklist and spend all of your time ‘working to rule‘ and playing “gotcha.”  Where are you going to be happiest and most productive?

Am I the only one who thinks this is what the teacher quality debate is really all about?

Kudos to P.S. 124

by Robert Pondiscio
August 26th, 2009

Tags: , ,
Posted in Core Knowledge School, Education News | 1 Comment »

New York City’s P.S. 124, an Official Core Knowledge School, is profiled in the Christian Science Monitor as an example of how to build sustainable success with low-SES  students–even on a tight budget.

Ten years ago, the school won a three-year, $784,000 state grant to carry out a plan for comprehensive reform. Rather than looking for money to reduce class size or try the latest fad, as is tempting for schools that feel chronically underfunded, two successive principals committed to a curriculum approach called Core Knowledge, one they hoped would unify teachers and students in high expectations for learning. The school is still reaping the benefits of their decisions today.

When the grant ran out, the paper notes, the school “consistently set aside a portion of its Title I money–federal support for low-income students–to keep Core Knowledge going. ‘Staying true to one program and giving it time to take root is the key,’ principal Valarie Lewis says. ‘Too many schools … have tried to get quick fixes and they’ve brought in too many programs; they’ve spent too much money.’”

National recognition for PS 124  is nothing new.  The school was a 2007 winner of Ed Trust’s coveted ”Dispelling the Myth” award for exceptional success in educating low-income students and students of color to high academic levels. 

Kudos to Lewis and her staff for sustaining their success. 

SAT Down and Cried Today

by Robert Pondiscio
August 26th, 2009

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Assessment and Testing, Education News | 3 Comments »

The Class of 2009, who were in 5th grade when No Child Left Behind became the law of the land, and were not yet born when A Nation at Risk ushered in the era of education reform, have posted SAT scores that summon to mind a flatlined EKG.  Math unchanged at 515.  Writing down a point to 493.  Critical reading, down a point to 494.  The results are of a piece with last week’s ACT scores, which showed only one of four high school graduates are prepared to do C level college work in English, math, reading and science.

“Completing a core curriculum remains strongly related to SAT scores,” the College Board notes in a news release.  ”Students in the class of 2009 who took core curricula scored an average of 46 points higher on the critical reading section, 44 points higher on the mathematics section, and 45 points higher on the writing section than those who did not.”

“The College Board, as always, hung a smiley face on it, but the latest SAT results are a real bummer,” writes Checker Finn at Fordham’s Flypaper blog.  Looking at years of stagnant NAEP results, last week’s dispiriting ACT scores and flat high school graduation rates, Finn says “please sing out if you’ve spotted any good news regarding the readiness of American adolescents to face successfully the challenges of higher education, the workforce, adulthood and citizenship. I can’t find it.”

Let me add a few verses to Checker’s refrain:  Please sing out if you see elementary schools creating a path to college readiness by favoring a rich, robust curriculum over of the deadening pabulum of test prep and ineffective reading strategies.  Please sing out too, if you can explain how changing the operative definition of well educated to “reads on or near grade level” has done anything other than cement in place this march of mediocrity.  

There’s no guarantee that a patient buildup of knowledge and language proficiency that pays dividends over time will show up in a single year’s standardized testing snapshot, so please explain too how any school or teacher can afford  to take the necessary long view, when we have essentially declared that a little bit of success every year is more important–and measurable–than great success over time. 

Please sing out if you see something–anything–that is going to change this dispiriting trend in the foreseeable future.  I can’t find it.

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