Archive for the 'Teaching' Category

Getting Engaged

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 2, 2009 in Teaching. 10 Comments

Claus Von Zastrow, calm and steady as always, looks at “the dark side of student engagement” at Public School Insights.  Like “high expectations” it’s one of those standard education homilies that deserves a closer look.  For starters, the question of whether or not a teacher is effectively engaging students tends to drown out important discussions about school discipline.  “We should also be careful not to confuse engagement with mere entertainment,” he observes.   ”Like all work, school work does not always offer instant rewards. The ability to delay gratification is an important life skill. There is way more to motivation than engagement.”

Claus cites a recent Teacher Magazine interview with Rafe Esquith, who gets to the heart of the matter:

I think the absolute key is that learning, the education of a child, is a long process, and we are now in the middle of a fast food society. We want instant everything. We even have books now like Algebra Made Easy and Shakespeare Made Easy. But I want teachers and parents to remember that it’s not easy! To be good at anything—anything!—takes thousands and thousands of hours of patient study.

This is of a piece with our ongoing debate over choice vs. challenge in literature class and the readers workshop model, which I believe swings the pendulum too far in the direction of engagement over discernment.    Lincoln didn’t say it, so I will:  You can engage some of the children all of the time, and all of the children some of the time, but you can not engage all of the children all of the time.

At least not without making education impossibly thin and superficial.

The Danger of “High Expectations”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 2, 2009 in Teacher Training and Teaching. 0 Comments

High expectations?  Not so fast, says teacher Gary Rubenstein, who points out that the standard advice to have high expectations for their students is “one of the most dangerously misinterpreted pieces of advice given to new teachers.”

The reason the advice ‘have high expectations’ is dangerous is that new teachers, in trying to follow this advice, commit one of the worst mistakes a teacher can, teaching over their heads.  The advice should be ‘Have realistically high expectations.’ This would force the new teacher to consider that there is such a thing as too high of expectations, and to try to learn what sorts of things are realistic.

Set the bar too high and students won’t rise to your high expectations.  “They lose confidence in themselves and, more importantly, they lose confidence in the ability of their teacher,” notes Rubenstein, whose blog is filled with great advice for new teachers. “Once they decide that their teacher is not competent enough to make ‘appropriate level’ lessons, they stop listening, start talking, and make it impossible to teach.”

“Replace the Children!”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 1, 2009 in Educational Policy and Teaching. 12 Comments

Oh no he didn’t!

Raging against Arne Duncan’s call to turnaround the nation’s lowest-performing schools, the chairman of the Atlanta Metro Association of Classroom Educators, John Trotter, fumed “He wants to replace everyone … except the ones who matter, the children.”   The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s ed columnist Maureen Downey quotes Trotter saying the children in failing schools are the main problem.

“They are unmotivated and lazy. Yes, there are many incompetent and idiotic and mean administrators who need to go. There are even some bad teachers, but these are really rare. The problem starts with the students. What is Duncan going to do with some so-called students who act like miscreants each day?”

This is the kind thing you hear in the teacher’s lounge when someone’s having a bad day, but seldom outside, and almost never in public.  Teachers have all the reason in the world to be upset by simplistic “no excuses” posturing, and complaints about ”putting the interests of adults first.”  But if accurate, this is the kind of intemperate diatribe that makes it all too easy for those who would paint teachers as sandbaggers and excuse makers to point and say, “See! I told you so.” 

Not smart.  Not helpful.

Update:  Eduwonk says, “See! I told you so.”   Joanne Jacobs uses Trotter’s vitriol as a way into an Edweek essay by Richard Kahlenberg, who argues “it’s impossible to change a bad school without changing the mix of students.”

Reader’s Workshop Mashup

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 31, 2009 in Education News and Teaching. 20 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

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 30, 2009 in Education News and Teaching. 10 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

Published by Diana Senechal on August 30, 2009 in Education News and Teaching. 23 Comments

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

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 30, 2009 in Educational Policy and 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?”

 

Rafe Esquith, Excuse Maker

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 28, 2009 in Teaching. 9 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

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 27, 2009 in Assessment and Testing, Educational Policy, Teaching and accountability. 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?

Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 19, 2009 in Education Leadership, Educational Policy and Teaching. 4 Comments

Love this idea.

Administrators in Florida’s Broward school district will be required to work as substitute teachers this year. “A similar project is in the works in Miami-Dade, where Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has proposed creating an “Everybody Teaches” Academy to bring district administrators into classrooms of struggling schools at least six times a year,” the Miami Herald reports. 

The Broward plan was the brainchild of Kathie Herrera, a 2nd grade teacher. “It’s very good for the teachers,” she said. “It does make them feel like the higher-ups — the ones promoting the curriculum, deciding on the standards that we should be teaching — actually get a feel for what goes on in the classroom.”

Any chance of launching a similar initiative for ed policy folks?

(H/T: Gotham Schools)