Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor. And Free Beer!!

by Robert Pondiscio
August 21st, 2012

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Posted in Curriculum, Opinion, Teaching | 8 Comments »

“It strikes me as funny that we call our political organizations ‘parties,” writes Ann Beeson. “Elections and political parties are the antithesis of fun. It’s no wonder that many young people avoid them.”

A lecturer at the University of Texas and former national associate legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Beeson observes in a New York Times op-ed that young people “are some of the most active and committed people I know” yet stay away from the polls in droves.  “Three causes are worth exploring,” she writes.

“First of all, many young people just don’t see the connection between voting and their commitment to improve their communities, advocate for a cause, or change the world. Secondly, there are very real grounds for political cynicism. And finally, let’s face it, civic engagement can be a snore.”

Civic engagement, Beeson writes, lacks “the fun factor.”  It conjures up “images of neighborhood meetings that plod along in rooms with stained carpets, cheap paneling and fluorescent lighting.”

Bummer, dude.

Sure, Beeson want young people “scared straight into voting” by emphasizing the price of their inaction.  But most of all, she says, “it should be terrific fun to vote and to stay involved after election day.”

“What if the average civic gathering – whether it’s a political rally, grassroots group, school task force, or city council – involved cook-offs, improv or gaming? What if we devised clever ways to scale up what’s working, instead of whining for a living? What if we banned Robert’s Rules of Order and actually got to know one another?”

We’ve heard this before in education.  If we want kids to care, we have to make it fun and engaging.  And while I agree with the impulse, there’s something to be said—both in education and in civic engagement—for also acknowledging the idea that we owe a debt to ourselves and history to stir ourselves from the couch and embrace mature responsibility.

“Has the nation become so self-indulgent that we are no longer motivated to act for the greater good or are the issues just less significant and less motivating than in the past?” a friend asked me this morning after reading Beeson’s piece.  It’s a good question.   I don’t have the answer, but I’m reasonably sure that a better grasp of our nation’s history wouldn’t hurt.  If we don’t understand and value the price that has been paid over generations to found, protect, and ensure the viability of our democracy, we can hardly be surprised if our children take its continuance as a given.

Cook-offs, improv and gaming?   The Freedom Riders were not lured onto luxury coaches with DVD players and giddy shouts of “road trip!”  The Greatest Generation won WWII and faced down communism.  D-Day was not, I suspect, positioned as a great way to meet French girls. Unless I’m very much mistaken, the Declaration of Independence did not include the Founders’ pledge to each other of “our Lives, our Fortunes, our sacred Honor…and free beer!”

I’m being churlish, I know.  Forgive me.  But if making voting and civic engagement “fun” is what it takes to stir young people to take act in their own self-interest, perhaps we will be no poorer if we let grownups decide things.

Black and White and Red All Over

by Guest Blogger
August 13th, 2012

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Posted in Education Practice, Teaching | 15 Comments »

by Jessica Lahey

I can be very, very stubborn. I am sure my parents, husband, sister, sons, friends, in-laws…pretty much anyone who knows me well can attest to this. When something or someone I love is criticized, my first instinct is to suit up for battle, stare the enemy down until he or she bends to my will while I bash them into submission with my keyboard.

So when my beloved red ink, the ink of choice for teachers everywhere, was implicated as a weapon of teacher cruelty and cause of students’ suffering, I dug in my heels.

So much so that when one of my former students was given her first full-time post as a teacher this year, I searched and searched for the perfect fountain pen, and then, to complete the gift, provided a couple of bottles of lovely red ink.

She sent a lovely thank you note – in red ink, of course – because she has to use all of that ink somewhere. It won’t, she reported, be used at school, because teachers at her new school are not allowed to correct student work in red ink.

I had no idea. Despite my love of researching and reading all things educational, I’d somehow managed to miss this entire controversy.

I looked around, and asked some teacher tweeps and Facebook friends about the situation, and yes, it’s a thing. Apparently, the red ink controversy rears its head every decade or so.  My first reaction was to mock the entire “controversy.” I know, I know -hello haters, I see your ire rising – but many of the early comments I got back from teachers and psychologists egged me on.

From a middle school teacher: “Gosh, heaven forbid we express any sort of disapproval!!”

From an adolescent psychologist: “That is nuts. How much should we coddle kids?”

From a writer and teacher: “Why…. because it hurts kids’ feeeeeelings? Pardon me while I barf.”

From an education writer: “Oh. God. No. I remember sitting through a PD about this and how dispiriting it supposedly was for students to get papers back marked up with red ink. We read a piece about a group of teachers receiving training in this, which concluded with the newly enlightened and chastened teachers dropping their red pens in the trash as they marched out the door. Gag me.”

From a professor: “… boy can I tell which students have never seen red ink before. They also happen to be the same ones who have a nervous breakdown or have their parents call me when they get anything less than an A. One of them actually told me, ‘I don’t like it that you give edits in red ink. It makes me feel like I’m not perfect.’

And again, from that same professor: Two years ago, one of my students told me he preferred red-ink edits. He said it made him pay attention, and it made him see those edits as corrections and learning moments rather than just notes that he might’ve perceived as optional or not important.

As you can see, the overwhelming reaction to the complaints about red ink was a strangled, gagging sound.

But then, a teaching miracle occurred. One of my former students offered up evidence. Actual, real, live evidence. This is sheer heaven for for me, particularly because this former student has become a teacher himself. It turns out that NPR, among other news outfits, covered the red ink controversy a while back. Guy Raz interviewed Abraham Rutchcick on All Things Considered about an article Rutchick published on the subject in the European Journal of Social Psychology.

I listened to the NPR piece, then located the original article. According to Rutchick’s article, “The Pen is Mightier Than the Word: Object Priming of Evaluative Standards:”

Because red pens are closely associated with error-marking and poor performance, the use of red pens when correcting student work can activate these concepts. People using red pens to complete a word-stem task completed more words related to errors and poor performance than did people using black pens (Study 1), suggesting relatively greater accessibility of these concepts. Moreover, people using red pens to correct essays marked more errors (Study 2) and awarded lower grades (Study 3) than people using blue pens. Thus, despite teachers’ efforts to free themselves from extraneous influences when grading, the very act of picking up a red pen can bias their evaluations.

I was torn. I love my red ink. I have a large bottle of it at school, all sorts of red pens in felt-tip, rollerball, ball-point, and some fancy artists’ felt tips I bought for a small fortune in an art supply store in Paris a couple of years ago. I save those for extra-special editing.

I can’t imagine parting with my lovely collection just because a few students might be a little irked by the color. Besides, I have this lovely letter from a former student, decorated with comments I’d written on her papers over the year I taught her, and it just makes me so happy when I look at it. She saved those papers, valued those comments, and used them to become a better writer. How bad could red ink really be?

To seal the deal, I offer up the concluding questions from the NPR interview:

RAZ: Professor Rutchick, you are a psychology professor at Cal State Northridge, right?
Prof. RUTCHICK: I am.
RAZ: And when you grade papers, what color pen do you use?
Prof. RUTCHICK: I use a red pen, actually. It’s – I have to override somehow my urge to be nice and kind.

See! Even the author of the study that reveals the catastrophic psychic harm red ink can do to students is keeping his red pens!

Just when I was determined to hold on to that red pen until someone pried it out of my cold, dead, fingers, a discussion heated up on my Facebook page:

From an editor at a major publishing house: As an editor I was always taught to use pencil, not pen, because authors might balk at the permanence of pen (as if the edits were a mandate and not a suggestion). Now I use Track Changes! I do know of one editor who objected to using red (pen or pencil) for its even more dictatorial connotations–he didn’t want an author flashing back to some horrible childhood experience. Also, I remember a teacher once writing “awkward” in the margin of a junior high writing assignment, and it took me years to get over!

And from my always-logical mother-in-law, Kate, a writer and former law professor: I had no trouble requesting “accommodations” from my students, but only when it made sense. Pissing people off over the color of ink I used just didn’t seem worth it, either personally or pedagogically. [...] The red-ink phobia wasn’t my imagination; I regularly heard students complain about teachers who “bled all over their papers.” I’d rather have a student focus on the content of my comments than on the color of my ink.

There it was: “I’d rather have a student focus on the content of my comments than on the color of my ink.”

I may be stubborn, but I am also a sucker for a reasoned, evidence-based argument. And, as I have been engaged in my own “Classroom Happiness Project” thanks to Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project and Happiness at Home, I had to recognize the possibility that I might be making my own students uncomfortable rather than sacrifice my precious red ink. Gretchen writes about how important it is to “acknowledge the reality of people’s feelings” in her book The Happiness Project, so I am.

This year, I will be correcting my students’ papers in…drumroll…forest green. It’s my favorite color, and if there’s any possibility that my comments will be more readily heard in green rather than red, I’m willing to retire the red ink.

So if anyone out there needs to dye some clothes or whip up a batch of fake blood for Halloween, I happen to know where you can get about a half-gallon of quality red ink, cheap.

Jessica Potts Lahey is a teacher of English, Latin, and composition at Crossroads Academy, an independent Core Knowledge K-8 school in Lyme, New Hampshire. Jessica’s blog on middle school education, Coming of Age in the Middle, where this piece also appears, can be found at http://jessicalahey.com.

When Barbie Drops Algebra

by Robert Pondiscio
July 30th, 2012

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Posted in Curriculum, Education News, Education Practice, Teaching | 20 Comments »

Andrew Hacker’s provocative weekend op-ed in the New York Times (“Is Algebra Necessary?”) wondered why schools insist on subjecting students to the “ordeal” of algebra.  “There are many defenses of algebra and the virtue of learning it,” Hacker wrote.  “But the more I examine them, the clearer it seems that they are largely or wholly wrong.”  Making algebra mandatory, along with other more advanced math subjects leads to failure and dropping out, which “prevents us from discovering and developing young talent,” he argues.

“The toll mathematics takes begins early. To our nation’s shame, one in four ninth graders fail to finish high school. In South Carolina, 34 percent fell away in 2008-9, according to national data released last year; for Nevada, it was 45 percent. Most of the educators I’ve talked with cite algebra as the major academic reason.  Shirley Bagwell, a longtime Tennessee teacher, warns that ‘to expect all students to master algebra will cause more students to drop out.’”

Well, sure.  But expecting competence in any reasonably advanced subject–biology, physics, or English composition–will likely have the same effect.  What Hacker is arguing might well be termed Barbie Syndrome: years ago, a talking Barbie doll uttered the infamous phrase, “Math class is tough!”  Mattel pulled the doll off shelves, but Barbie might have received a sympathetic pat on the back from Hacker, who proposes a different math curriculum that mirrors the quantitative reasoning most of us will need on the job:

“Instead of investing so much of our academic energy in a subject that blocks further attainment for much of our population, I propose that we start thinking about alternatives. Thus mathematics teachers at every level could create exciting courses in what I call ‘citizen statistics.’ This would not be a backdoor version of algebra, as in the Advanced Placement syllabus. Nor would it focus on equations used by scholars when they write for one another. Instead, it would familiarize students with the kinds of numbers that describe and delineate our personal and public lives.  It could, for example, teach students how the Consumer Price Index is computed, what is included and how each item in the index is weighted — and include discussion about which items should be included and what weights they should be given.”

“There’s a strong argument to be made that math is taught poorly in many schools, with little attention paid to how most people are likely to use numbers in the real world,” Dana Goldstein points out.  But Goldstein correctly perceives that any argument about who should learn what is ultimately about tracking.  “A great teacher can often spark interest in a subject a student thought she would never enjoy. One reason to have more rigorous academic standards is to leave open the possibility of that magic happening more often for more young people, and to make sure unfair streotypes about who is ‘academic’ don’t prevent kids from discovering unexpected passions,” she writes.

Dan Willingham points out that Hacker is simply wrong in several assumptions. “The inability to cope with math is not the main reason that students drop out of high school, he writes.  “Yes, a low grade in math predicts dropping out, but no more so than a low grade in English. Furthermore, behavioral factors like motivation, self-regulation, social control as well as a feeling of connectedness and engagement at school are as important as GPA to dropout [rates]” he notes.  Willingham also dismisses Hacker’s argument that too much of what students learn in math class doesn’t apply in the real world.

“The difficulty students have in applying math to everyday problems they encounter is not particular to math. Transfer is hard. New learning tends to cling to the examples used to explain the concept. That’s as true of literary forms, scientific method, and techniques of historical analysis as it is of mathematical formulas.  The problem is that if you try to meet this challenge by teaching the specific skills that people need, you had better be confident that you’re going to cover all those skills. Because if you teach students the significance of the Consumer Price Index they are not going to know how to teach themselves the significance of projected inflation rates on their investment in CDs. Their practical knowledge will be specific to what you teach them, and won’t transfer.”

Willingham says Hacker’s op-ed also “overlooks the need for practice, even for the everyday math he wants students to know.”

“There are not many people who are satisfied with the mathematical competence of the average US student. We need to do better. Promising ideas include devoting more time to mathematics in early grades, more exposure to premathematical concepts in preschool, and perhaps specialized math instructors beginning in earlier grades.”

Hacker’s suggestions “sound like surrender,” Willingham concludes, and I agree.  It’s hard not to detect a whiff of defeatism–a shrug, a wave, and the weary suggestion that, “Hey, not everyone can be good in math.  It’s OK” in Hacker’s putatively sensible piece.  But let’s try a more vigorous focus on math–with computational mastery and conceptual understanding given co-equal status–before we throw up our hands and suggest that Barbie drop algebra and switch to “citizen statistics” in 8th grade.

Update: “I think it is dumbing down math — so far down that it will close the door on many careers,” writes Joanne Jacobs.  “But it’s better to teach some math than stick unprepared, unmotivated students in dumbed-down classes labeled ‘algebra’ and ‘geometry.’”

Update x+2: Sherman Dorn weighs in.

4th Grade Core Knowledge Curriculum Key to Citizenship

by Robert Pondiscio
July 3rd, 2012

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Posted in Core Knowledge, Curriculum, Teaching | 16 Comments »

Nearly three out of four of the 100 potential civics and history questions on the U.S. Citizenship Test are covered in the Core Knowledge Sequence.  In 4th grade.

That remarkable statistic comes courtesy of Lisa Malaquin-Prey, a Kindergarten teacher at Brevard Academy, a Core Knowledge school in Brevard, North Carolina.  Malaquin-Prey discussed her journey to citizenship last weekend at a Washington, DC conference hosted by Team CFA, a network of charter schools in North Carolina, Indiana and Arizona—all of which teach the Core Knowledge curriculum.  A New Zealander by birth, and Australian by upbringing, Malaquin-Prey has lived in the U.S. since 1997.

New Citizen Lisa Malaquin-Prey

While working as a camp counselor years ago, Malaquin-Prey described how she used to “stand respectfully” when the Pledge of Allegiance was recited.  “I heard those words every day for 9 weeks, but they didn’t hold a lot of meaning for me,” she recalled.  She followed the same routine for years in her classroom, explaining to her students that she didn’t recite the Pledge with them because she was not a citizen.  But at the same conference a year ago, Malaquin-Prey found herself unexpectedly brought to tears by an old video of the comedian Red Skelton explaining the meaning of the Pledge of Allegiance, and resolved to become an American citizen.

“I’m listening to it, and all of a sudden.  I get it.  I’m hearing the Pledge of Allegiance in a new way and I’m getting it.  While watching it, I was shocked at how I reacted to it.  I remember feeling flushed and tears came to my eyes.  I remember looking around at the other people at my table, and no one is reacting the way I do, and I was embarrassed.  And then everyone stands to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.  And I stand, and while everyone around me is saying it, I’m thinking ‘I want this.  I want to be a part of this.  I want to earn the right to say this!’

It took Malaquin-Prey six months to complete the naturalization process, which includes demonstrating proficiency in speaking, reading and writing in English, and answering questions that show your knowledge and understanding of the United States in three areas: American Government (principles of American Democracy, system of government, and rights and responsibilities); American History (the colonial period and independence, the 1800’s and recent American history); and Integrated Civics (geography, symbols and holidays.)  On the day of the test, you are asked up to 10 questions from a list of 100 possible questions.  You need to correctly answer six of the ten to pass.

While describing the process, Malaquin-Prey asked the audience to “raise your hand if you teach 4th grade.”

“When you look at the content of the Citizenship Study Guide, 74 out of the possible 100 questions could be answered using the 4th Grade Core Knowledge Social Studies Curriculum, specifically the domain units on Making a Constitutional Government and American Revolution.  When you look at the content of the Citizenship Test, what the American Government feels a citizen should know and understand mirrors the Social Studies objectives of the Core Knowledge Curriculum.”

The Core Knowledge curriculum, she concluded, is “filled with opportunities for students to understand the principles of American democracy and the rights and responsibilities of U.S Citizenship.”

“Beginning in Kindergarten, students are learning about former Presidents and American Symbols and the meaning of Democracy.  In 2nd grade, students explore the Constitution and answer the question, “What is government?”  In 4th grade, students delve into the ideas behind the Declaration of Independence and examine every part of the constitution and the levels and functions of government.”

Malaquin-Prey passed her exam with ease and took the Oath of Allegiance in Charlotte, North Carolina, in January.  “My proudest moments that day were, raising my hand and taking that Oath, collecting my citizenship certificate, and above all, being asked to lead the Pledge for the first time for more than 100 new American Citizens,” she recalls.

Study Guide for Citizenship Test

For the record, here are the six questions asked of one of our newest fellow citizens:

  1. Who is the current Chief Justice of the United States?
  2. Name one war fought in the 1900’s.
  3. The House of Representatives has how many voting members?
  4. Who is the “Father of our Country”?
  5. We elect a U.S. Representative for how many years?
  6. In what month do we vote for President?

Is Teaching an Art or a Science?

by Robert Pondiscio
May 30th, 2012

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Posted in Education News, Teaching | 33 Comments »

That’s the question Dan Willingham poses in a new video.  As you likely know, Willingham is a University of Virginia cognitive scientist whose work focuses almost exclusively teaching and learning.  The video is worth watching, but – spoiler alert! – his conclusion is that teaching is neither art nor science, but “somewhere in between.”  He draws a parallel to being an architect, who understands enough about physics and materials science to design a building that won’t fall down.  But like an architect, a teacher “then also uses creativity and ingenuity to go beyond any strictures that science can offer, to create something wholly original, functional, and enduring.”

<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=wJrqM7Rx_FY&amp;feature">http://youtube.com/watch?v=wJrqM7Rx_FY&amp;feature</a>

What is most interesting, and should spark the most informed and intense viewing of the video, is Willingham’s take on how science should inform teaching.

“I think what we know about how kids learn, and develop, interact and so on, can suggest boundary conditions. I mean by that things that, if you ignore them, will likely lead to trouble. For example, if you think that someone will acquire a skill without practice, that’s probably not going to work.  Providing practice for skills is a boundary condition. Another example, most kids benefit a lot from explicit instruction in letter-sound correspondences when they are learning to read, so providing that instruction is another boundary condition. Notice this doesn’t tell you how to implement practice, or how to implement teaching letter-sound correspondences—it just says that those things have to happen. I call these ‘must have’ principles.”

But in addition to the “must haves” there are a series of “could dos.”  In Willingham’s architecture analogy, there are ways to put a window in the middle of a brick wall that protect the integrity of the wall so it’s structurally sound.  But there is no rule saying you must have a window in a particular location, or have one at all.  This allows for a broad range of teaching approaches and activities, all of which could be good, useful or even elegant.  Just like architecture.

“The ‘must haves’ and the ‘could dos’ do not tell you what the house is going to look like.  The ‘must haves’ are boundary conditions, within which there is a HUGE amount of room for variation, and the ‘could dos’ are tools that you can use to help you get there, but you don’t have to use them if you don’t want to, as long as you respect the ‘must haves.’

Willingham is offering up his usual dose of fact-based common sense, but I’m tempted to suggest there might be little agreement on “boundary conditions” for teachers.   The preponderance of evidence may indeed come down on the side of phonics, as he suggests, but that hasn’t entirely settled the issue.  Whole language still has its adherents and repackagers.  Discredited ideas like learning styles remain hardy perennials.   The larger problem, to put it bluntly, is that education  pays insufficient evidence to science.

Boundary conditions in architecture or civil engineering are inherently self-policing.  Violate them and things fall down.  I’m having a difficult time thinking of a set of universally agreed upon “boundary conditions” for teaching.  But this creates an enormous opportunity for the cognitive scientists like Willingham to frame the discussion and offer evidence-based guidance on those “must haves.”  And an enormous obligation on the part of ed schools and programs that train teachers to pay attention.

It will take a whole lot of science to move the field past its self-image as an art, its neglect of science–and the tyranny of its philosophers.

Know Thyself and Nothing Too Much

by Guest Blogger
May 25th, 2012

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Posted in Teaching | 8 Comments »

by Jessica Lahey

Today’s cultural literacy item: Hubris.

I will allow the main characters from Rick Riordan’s novel, The Sea of Monsters, to define today’s vocabulary word of the day:

Annabeth: My fatal flaw. That’s what the Sirens showed me. My fatal flaw is hubris.
Percy: The brown stuff they spread on veggie sandwiches?
Annabeth: No, Seaweed Brain. That’s HUMMUS. hubris is worse.
Percy: what could be worse than hummus?
Annabeth: Hubris means deadly pride, Percy. Thinking you can do things better than anyone else…     Even the gods.

Used in a sentence: As graduation draws near, the current eighth grade class has begun to display excessive hubris in their dealings with teachers and classmates.

Fortunately, we are reading King Lear, the perfect example of a man undone by hubris. His story is a convenient conversation starter when my eighth graders get a little too big for their britches. My students may not end up on a storm-swept heath, naked, in the company of a fool and a beggar, but the lessons of Lear’s hubris are relevant and valuable.

But first, the etymology.

Hubris comes from the Greek hybris, or “wanton violence, insolence, outrage,” specifically as that insolence is directed toward the gods. Mortals who are presumptuous enough to strive for godlike status have hubris, or are hubristic. I asked the students to come up with as many examples of hubris in literature, and they came up with:  Achilles, Odysseus, Voldemort, Arachne, Niobe, Phaeton, Icarus, Dr. Frankenstein (and by extension, Provis, or Magwich), Lear, Macbeth…the list on my white board went on and on.

I teach in a K-8 school with fairly rigid rules, a dress code, and high expectations for student character and conduct. The core virtues of fortitude, temperance, justice and prudence are part of daily discussion in most classes.

Despite this rigorous education in character, it is the nature of teenagers to test. When they are ready to move onward and upward – to high school, to college, to whatever is next – they push authority figures away and and feel around for the boundaries of their new territory. It’s only natural; challenging authority is a part of their process of individuation. I have my own teenager at home and I see it happening in our household. My friend, author Ann Cannon, once told me that out of her eight boys, her most dependent child had the most traumatic process of pulling away from her. If I accept her way of thinking about this process – and I do, she’s a wise and experienced mom – the deeper the attachment, the more pushing away my son will have to do in order to become his own man.

The teacher-student relationship isn’t that different from the parent-child relationship, and I have found that the more they trust me, the more likely they are to involve me in their testing. It used to bother me, but under the “it takes a village” hypothesis, I’m happy to help out.

I’m no child psychologist, but I think students test their teachers because they know they are safe with the teachers who care about them. They push us away because they know we will still be here when they return to their senses.

And when all is said and done at the end of our journey through middle school, I receive the most heartfelt graduation hugs from the students who have had to learn the most difficult lessons. The boy I had to suspend for cheating, the girl I helped through a family meeting about her self-injurious behavior, the boy who refused to speak to me for two weeks because I called him on his excess of hubris. These are the kids who test my mettle as a teacher.

And the ones I will miss the most after graduation.

Jessica Potts Lahey is a teacher of English, Latin, and composition at Crossroads Academy, an independent Core Knowledge K-8 school in Lyme, New Hampshire. Jessica’s blog on middle school education, Coming of Age in the Middle, where this piece also appears, can be found at http://jessicalahey.com.


Hot! Popular! Swears Like a Longshoreman!

by Robert Pondiscio
May 23rd, 2012

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Posted in Education News, Literacy, Teaching | 9 Comments »

If you’ve read more than a handful of young adult (YA) novels, you’re probably well past the point of being dismayed by the thematic darkness and swear words.  A new study by Brigham Young University professor Sarah Coyne finds that on average, teen novels contain 38 instances of profanity between the covers or almost seven instances of profanity per hour spent reading.

But the number of curse words is less interesting than who’s got the potty mouth.  The characters who swear the most tend to be rich, attractive and popular, Coyne found  “From a social learning standpoint, this is really important because adolescents are more likely to imitate media characters portrayed in positive, desirable ways,” Coyne tells Science Daily.  Scholastic blogger Morgan Baden puts it simply:  “all the cool kids are doing it.”

This is not the first time the content of YA fiction has come under the microscope.  Recall the Wall Street Journal a year ago published a piece which eviscerated the genre, noting that “kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are now just part of the run of things in novels directed, broadly speaking, at children from the ages of 12 to 18.”  The medical journal Pediatrics published another bit of research by Coyne six months ago that found a link between profanity in media and teen aggression, Science Daily notes.

Scholastic’s Baden defends the blue language in YA books “where the characters are so vivid, and so well-written, that I couldn’t imagine them speaking any other way than the way the author chose them to speak.”  The readers of YA novels, she points out are “in the process of forming their identities, and sometimes that includes testing out ways of speaking and exploring just how much impact their voices can have.”

“F— it,” says the website Jezebel, which its signature insouciance.  “Let’s just be happy that kids are reading at all and not get our panties all twisted up about the fact that the books they’re choosing to consume accurately reflect how their friends actually talk.”

Easy to say, but woe unto the teacher who fields the angry call from a parent that starts, “My daughter says she chose this book from YOUR classroom library…”   Realistic fiction? Literary quality? Yeah, good luck with that.

Should there be warning labels on YA novels?  Shrink wrap them and put them on the highest shelf? “Unlike almost every other type of media, there are no content warnings or any indication if there is extremely high levels of profanity in adolescent novels,” Coyne says. “Parents should talk with their children about the books they are reading.”

Coyne’s study appears in the journal Mass Communication and Society.

Between the Idea and the Reality

by Guest Blogger
May 8th, 2012

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Posted in Education Practice, No category, Teaching | 16 Comments »

by Jessica Lahey

Twice a year, we formally assess students’ writing. I hand out a prompt and grading rubric about one week before the date of the assessment in order to give the students time to organize their thoughts in advance of the prompt. They then have two class periods to write their essay. It allows us to create a portfolio of writing samples from about second grade on, and the assignment also gives them some practice writing timed essays in class. Usually, the prompts are expository, based on the literature we have been reading in class – the mid-year assessment was about Great Expectations in the seventh grade and A Tale of Two Cities in the eighth – but in the spring, when the flowers are blooming, birds are singing, and attention spans are short, I opt for a more creative topic.

This was the prompt I handed out last week:

Crossroads Academy’s core virtues curriculum is a central part of your education. Just as your education in math, literature and science informs your academic development, your education in the four core virtues informs your moral and social development. For your essay, please choose one of the virtues – justice, temperance, fortitude, or prudence – and write about a moment, experience, or event in your life when you relied on your education in the core virtues to guide you.

I love grading these essays. The students take it very seriously, and I am fascinated by their perspective on the core virtues, character education class, and the way students rely on the virtues to guide their actions.

The essays were sublime this year, and I loved reading all of them.   But this one…this one stuck with me. I was impressed with the writing, but I was also deeply disturbed by my part in her ordeal and the lessons that she and her classmates may have taken  away from the experience she describes. The author, Tea Levy, and her parents, have given me permission to share her words. Tea hopes that her words will help educators understand what end-of-year awards assemblies feel like from her seat in the bleachers.

The Problem With Awards
In seventh grade during one of the last weeks of school, everyone headed down to Bancroft to attend the “culminating final assembly.” At the assembly, awards were given out to the students who had earned them during the year. I watched as nearly all of my classmates walked down to the podium to receive awards, but when the awards ceremony was finally over, my name had not been called. One of the teachers asked everyone who had gotten an award to come to the front of the room to take a group picture. When all of the award-winners had left the bleachers, three of my classmates and I were the only ones left sitting. The experience was devastatingly humiliating for me, but through my anger, I learned the importance of perseverance and optimism.

When my name was not called during the assembly, it made me feel inferior, as if my hard work had not been recognized, and my efforts wasted. I had done the very best I could on the National Mythology Exam, studied hard for the Grand Councours, and prided myself on my Latin poem, but after that morning the significance of all that seemed greatly diminished.

Suddenly I was angry. Angry with my teachers for creating what seemed to me at the time to be an exclusive and competitive atmosphere, but also angry with myself. I couldn’t understand why I was unable to be good enough to win or why everyone else seemed to be so much better than me. Optimism helped me cope with my anger. I had to remind myself that if I wanted to redeem myself, I would have to maintain a positive attitude. I reminded myself that the only way to have my efforts recognized in the future would be to remain as unfazed from this incident as possible and not limit myself based on my experiences.

The optimism I used to overcome this obstacle was linked closely to perseverance. My self-proclaimed failure gave me a new motivation to succeed that would push me through to the end of middle school. I wanted to prevail against the odds and become the perfect student. I quickly realized how unreasonable this goal was, but my desire to have my efforts acknowledged never faltered. I worked harder and concentrated harder and my work paid off. The first trimester of 8th grade I received my first straight A report card. This achievement made me feel as though my perseverance had been noticed, and I was elated.

Although I still look back on that morning with dissatisfaction, the experience taught me many things. First of all, I acknowledged the fact that they couldn’t give prizes to everyone without making the whole thing seem like a joke. But more importantly, I realized how much I wanted my efforts to be rewarded and that I have the power to ensure that they are.

Jessica Potts Lahey is a teacher of English, Latin, and composition at Crossroads Academy, an independent Core Knowledge K-8 school in Lyme, New Hampshire. Jessica’s blog on middle school education, Coming of Age in the Middle, where this piece also appears, can be found at http://jessicalahey.com.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

by Robert Pondiscio
May 7th, 2012

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Posted in Education Practice, Parents, Teaching | 102 Comments »

“As a policy wonk, I push for high academic expectations for all students,” writes Scott Joftus in Education Next. “As a father, however, I find that what matters most to me is that my daughters are happy in school.”

“Over more than 20 years in the field of education—including two with Teach For America—I have helped promote state standards, the Common Core, the hiring of teachers with strong content knowledge, longer class periods for math and reading, and extra support for struggling students, to name a few. I have recently discovered, however, that what I believe as an education policy wonk is not always what I believe as a father.”

Joftus’s wonk side believes “student learning flourishes in classrooms that include students with a wide range of abilities and backgrounds.”  However, as a Dad, he admits to getting angry when a troubled kindergartener disrupts his daughter’s class and forces the “talented, but inexperienced” teacher to spend more than half of her time trying to keep this boy on task.

“I feel for children like him; my company works with schools and districts to improve outcomes for these kids. But I was angry. The other children were clearly uncomfortable. His disruptions reduced learning time for my daughter, and seemed to steal some of her innocence and excitement about school.”

Commenters on the Ed Next blog offer both praise and criticism for Joftus.  “Teachers have been fighting policy wonks who have been destroying the happy learning environment for decades,” writes one.  “But you don’t listen, it is only when it becomes personal that you reconsider your opinions and admit the possibility that teachers have been right all along.”  “Had you guys listened twenty years ago, and respected our wisdom on safe and orderly schools, this educational civil war would not have had to happen,” observes veteran teacher and ed blogger John Thompson.

Rocketship schools CEO John Danner admits to similar cognitive dissonance when sending his kids to school.  “However, I would challenge you as your kids grow to think more about how those skills jibe with rigor,” he writes. “Rigor is actually a form of compassion. A teacher who expects a lot of their students prevents them from feeling the frustration your children feel now, but much later in their school career.  The real problem you are seeing is that your child’s teacher has high expectations but doesn’t understand how to differentiate.

Loftus’ tale serves to illustrate how regrettably wide the gulf can be between policy ideals and classroom realities.  The policies Loftus has worked to support–standards, improved teacher quality, enhanced learning time for strugglers, et al. –  are laudable, but risk melting into insignificance in the face of teachers overwhelmed with a critical mass of disruptive children in her room.  I don’t have any data on this, but I suspect that far fewer parents than wonks tend to lay the problem of learning time lost to disruption at the feet of teachers.  It is easy to say, as Danner does “differentiate.”  It is difficult, and always will be, to expect every teacher in every classroom to have the training, expertise and experience to handle every challenge offered up by 25 free agents in their classrooms every day.

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

Love a Book? Don’t Tell Your Kids!

by Robert Pondiscio
May 3rd, 2012

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Posted in Parents, Teaching | 8 Comments »

When you were a kid, did you ever read a book that changed your life?  Well, don’t tell your kids if you want it to have the same effect on them. “Remember how a parental recommendation was the kiss of death when you were a kid?” asks legendary children’s author Judy Blume. “That hasn’t changed — no matter how well-deserved the kudos are.”

Blume made the comment at the recent LA Times Festival of Books.  I’m mightily inclined to agree.  One of my teaching pet peeves has always been the tendency to wax rhapsodic over books and make our kids feel that they are somehow missing out–if not outright defective–if they aren’t as enraptured by a well-loved book as we are.  In a world in which kids can immerse themselves in “Call of Duty” and “Halo,” telling them “reading is magical” like telling them they should love spinach.  Don’t tell them. Show them.  Class readalouds of a compelling book have probably done more to spread the notion that reading is enjoyable than any earnest talk about the power of books to take us on journeys in our minds.

Other bits of advice on engaging readers from Blume, per the Huffington Post.

“As great as you think those nostalgic old book covers are, get your kids the new editions. The covers will draw them in. They want the new stuff.”

“Before you give your child the beloved book, leave it lying around the house, preferably on your nightstand. Then, when your daughter asks about the book, tell her that you picked it up for her, but now you’re not sure she’s old enough for it.”

“Try not to be judgmental of what your child is reading and don’t censor their book selection.”

Blume “hates it when books list what age reader the book is for.” She remembers pulling an illustrated copy of Lysistrata off the shelves when she was about 12, notes HuffPo. “She was very curious about the adult world and books gave her a look into that world.”

In an unrelated post, Dan Willingham notes that teachers are avid readers who “love books not only for the purpose of reading them, but as physical objects.”  He links to a section of Reddit called BookPorn.  Amazing pictures.  Enjoy.  But don’t tell the kids.

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