ConnectEd

Teacher of the Year Mary Schlieder: Redefining Normal

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:37:32 +0000

Walden University is proud to have more than 20 state teachers of the year—including Mary Schlieder—currently working toward advanced degrees at its Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership.

Name: Mary Schlieder
Award: 2008 Nebraska Teacher of the Year
Teaches: Special education
Teaching Since: 1980
Studying at Walden: Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

Since first starting out as a teacher nearly 30 years ago, Mary Schlieder of Norris Middle School and Norris High School in Firth, Nebraska, has watched major changes take place in how people approach kids who don't necessarily fit in—kids who were segregated for decades, decreasing the chance they would ever be able to integrate into society and see themselves as “normal.”

“My title is 'Special Education teacher,' but the role has really evolved over the last 10 years,” says Schlieder, who was Nebraska's 2008 Teacher of the Year. “The boundaries are breaking down. There used to be a big stigma about being Special Ed. Now, my room isn't viewed as a Special Ed room. When anyone needs help, they come down. We all have strengths, we all have challenges, and it's a really a good thing to know yours.”

Schlieder has seen, in her own family, what happens when those who need specialized assistance don't get it. In the 1980s, she worked with a nine-year-old cousin who has Asperger’s Syndrome—a form of high-functioning autism—but at the time was undiagnosed. “He had no social skills,” she says. “He ended up living a kind of reclusive life. He's brilliant, but just didn't learn the social skills that he needed. He never reached his potential.”

Then several years ago, she met Caleb, a seventh-grader who reminded her a lot of her cousin. “I was determined to do something for Caleb that I wasn't able to do for my cousin. I just hadn't had the tools or knowledge back then,” she says. “We worked on peer education, because I realized that if you teach social skills in isolation—how to have a conversation, how to not pick your nose—then you go out into an unwelcoming environment, on the bus or in the cafeteria, you're never going to get the chance to practice.”

Recently, she's also been embracing some of the teaching techniques suggested by Dr. Ross W. Greene. One of them, negotiation, has proved particularly effective. She explains: “You listen to a child and you invite him to problem solve. He says, 'I don't want to work and the teacher is stupid.' You say, 'Well, I'm concerned that if you don't do the math, you're going to fail, and you've already told me that your high school diploma is important to you.' You identify the problem and both of your concerns, and then you invite them to help you to solve the problem and come up with a solution.”

Part of the reason Schlieder is excited about studying at Walden is the fact that she is endlessly fascinated by methods like these. But she's found that often other teachers aren't as open to dealing with “difficult” students—their empathy extends to kids with physical handicaps but not to those who, say, have uncontrollable emotional outbursts. In an effort to change people's points of view and disseminate information about behavioral challenges, Schlieder found herself giving talks around the school to other teachers who wanted to learn how to deal more effectively with children on the autism spectrum.

“I started to do workshops on it, and I was just handing out sheets and people were emailing me questions and calling,” she recalls. “Eventually the copy lady at school got crankier and crankier every time I had to do a workshop, and so I submitted the book for publishing and Autism Asperger Publishing accepted it.” Her handouts became the book With Open Arms: Creating Supportive School Communities for Kids with Social Challenges.

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COMMENTS

How can the special education program at your school benefit from more mainstreaming of its students?
Leave your response in the comments below.

How to Write Your Memoir

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:24:46 +0000

Whether to impart wisdom to others or share entertaining stories, many educators with a rich career behind them hope to put pen to paper and eventually publish a memoir recounting their years in the classroom.

In order to take palpable steps toward a book, some might want to follow what teacher Zac Chase has done. Though just in his sixth year as a teacher, Chase has been publishing consistently throughout his career.

As a teacher in Sarasota, Florida, he published a weekly column in the city’s daily paper about his experiences teaching at a local academy for under-achieving students. “Find out what is unique about your situation, and go with that,” Chase recommends for aspiring writers. “Once you figure out what you have to offer, call up the [local] paper and ask for the editor who is in charge of covering education. Make it sound like you definitely have something they need.”

An outlet is one of the most important assets a writer can have. Even if it is impossible to be published in the local paper, start a blog. “The way I have kept in practice is by blogging,” Chase says. “It trains me to write for an audience. If you are blogging, you learn how to write for other people.”

He always has something to write about, Chase adds, because he is constantly stretching his experience as a teacher. This past summer he took a trip to South Africa with the group Teachers Without Borders to build teaching capacity abroad. “I think I try to get as many opportunities out of school as possible,” he says. “I realize my classroom is a better place when I have a life outside of it.” These outside experiences add flavor to his writing, he adds.

Once the writing aspect has been honed, the question becomes how to publish it. Tony D’souza, author of the novel, Whiteman, says the publishing industry should not be viewed as daunting. “Write your book so well that they cannot say 'no' to it,” he says. “Do not for a second allow yourself to think about how difficult it is to get a book published today. You have to maintain your confidence and your belief in your writing.” The process to get to the printer, D’souza says, is a traditional one. “The nuts and bolts of getting a book published—writing a query letter, getting an agent, etc.—are pretty much set in stone, and they do not allow a lot of room for deviation. Figuring that part out is relatively easy. The hard part will always be writing the book well.”

There are simple steps to keep in mind when approaching an agent, such as finishing the manuscript before you contact the potential agent. Teachers should remember the power of networking, Chase says. He joined the Freedom Writers Foundation, which works to keep students in school through innovative teaching methods. His involvement in Freedom Writers eventually lead to being published in its recently released book, Teaching Hope. In the book, 150 teachers each published a short story about their experiences.

D’souza says no matter what, remember the purpose of your writing and keep that passion close at hand. "Put the writing first,” he says. “And believe that the rest will come.”

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COMMENTS

The only way to get published is to start writing. Publishing a blog is free and easily something you can do in your spare time. Get in the habit of blogging at least once a week.
Leave your response in the comments below.

Rebooting a Teacher's Mind

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:09:38 +0000

Novels by James Patterson were teacher Brenda Dyck’s indicator that she was suffering from classroom burnout. In the midst of a period of heavy stress, the middle school teacher would leave school as soon as possible to escape to Patterson’s fictional world, leaving behind papers to grade and a long list of professional literature she should otherwise be reading.

“I knew I was suffering burnout when intense fatigue set in and I lost the joy I previously had experienced in my teaching job,” says Dyck, author of The Rebooting of a Teacher’s Mind. “All I could think about was what I had to do and what I hadn't done (or hadn't done well). I recall feeling stressed when even the smallest extra task was added to my plate.”

It was during this time that Dyck wrote an article for Education World on teacher burnout and created a web page on the topic where she and other educators could find advice in the company of professionals who had experienced burnout. This camaraderie may be more helpful than looking to school administration for help, as shrinking budgets have management asking more and more of teachers.

“This discussion helped me—just to know that others were struggling with burnout, helped me and made me address my own challenges in this area,” says Dyck.

Instructors writing in to Dyck’s MiddleTalk listserv group have made the following suggestions on avoiding burnout:

•    Sleep
•    Exercise
•    Spend time with family
•    Choose to be around optimistic people
•    Allow forgiveness for not being perfect—both for yourself, and those around you

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COMMENTS

How has burnout affected your career? What helped you to cope?
Leave your response in the comments below.

Teaching Aborad with the Peace Corps

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:32:48 +0000

In the late 1980s, when volunteer Keri Gelenian returned from his term in the Peace Corps, he brought home with him an expansive take on education—and life. Teaching in the far-off African country as a primer course for his career prepared him for his current vocation as a professor at Humboldt State University in California.

Gelenian’s path is becoming a popular one among recent college graduates and professionals that are setting their sites on the education field. The global Peace Corps plan is an attractive one, because it encompasses more geography than Teach For America (TFA), another non-profit organization that filled 3,700 educational positions in low-income communities countrywide last year.

“The Peace Corps was an invaluable experience for me as an educator, and I think that I did a good job teaching in Kenya,” Gelenian says. “My Peace Corps experience really prepared me for everything I’ve done since.”

According to Allison Price, the director of communications for the Peace Corps, the government-run, American volunteer program has served 200,000 citizens in 139 countries since 1961. By living and working in developing countries, educators have promoted AIDS research and environmental preservation and disseminated knowledge about information technology and business development.

Of all Peace Corps volunteers, 35 percent are educators, making them the largest group in the organization, Price says. Students, teachers, parents, and community members integrate health education and ecological awareness into English, math, and science classes. Volunteers work in curriculum and materials development and conduct teacher-training sessions in conversational English, methodology, and academic subjects.

In the Peace Corps’s online resource for teachers, some of the past luminaries are highlighted: Thomas Gouttierre, the dean of international studies and programs and director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska-Omaha (who served in Afghanistan from 1965 to 1967); James Lyons Sr., Maryland secretary of higher education (an Ecuador volunteer from 1966 to 1967); and Joyce Neu, the team leader for a new United Nations standby team of mediation experts and the founding executive director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice (a teacher in Senegal, Africa, from 1972 to 1974).

Gelenian’s credentials have also burgeoned since his Peace Corps years. He became an early graduate of the Peace Corps’ Columbia University Teachers College Fellows/USA program, which placed returned volunteers in New York public schools as full-time teachers and gave them tuition breaks on master’s degrees.

“We were paid by the New York City Board of Education, and I taught at Taft High School in the Bronx and earned an M.A. in teaching English to speakers of other languages at the same time, over two years,” Gelenian says. “I was very lucky, and I couldn’t have done that had I not been in the Peace Corps.”

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COMMENTS

Is beginning a teaching career via the Peace Corps the key to becoming a well-rounded, worldly educator?
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Teacher of the Year Pamela Harman: Teacher, Mentor, Marine

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:09:00 +0000

Walden University is proud to have more than 20 state teachers of the year—including Pamela Harman—currently working toward advanced degrees at its Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership.

Name: Pamela Harman
Award: 2008 Alabama Teacher of the Year
Teaches: Earth science
Teaching Since: 1998
Studying at Walden: Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

“There's nothing better than science!” says Pamela Harman, an earth science teacher at Spain Park High School in Hoover, Alabama. “It's constantly changing, and you're constantly learning new things. You can go outside and observe it, live it, touch it, and love it. ... It's the best thing.”

A big believer in the importance of engaging various types of learners by making science something that happens outside of a textbook, Harman is always showing her students samples of rocks she's collected from around the country or high-tech weather recording devices. Often, she conveys scientific ideas using basic household objects. One of her favorite demonstrations involves simply making popcorn. “There are three main ways that heat transfers—radiation, conduction, and convection,” she says. “We take a JiffyPop maker and see how long it takes to cook. They see that conduction is nothing but popcorn touching the surface of the plate. In the air popper, they see the kernels are moving, and that's convection. In the microwave, they're heated by the waves.”

Whenever she goes to a national conference, Harman presents a lab like this to other teachers in order to show them simple ways that they can make science relevant to students without having to invest in fancy instruments or tools. Her favorite thing is learning, she says. A fervent desire to get a good education was what drove her to enlist in the Marines after junior college—to get on the GI Bill. “If you can be a Marine, you feel like you can be anything,” she says.

Next to learning, her favorite thing is teaching. And her third favorite? That would have to be mentoring other teachers in an effort to affect the system and further inspire students. As a teacher of the year, Harman often had to travel, and says one of the best parts of her experience was the opportunity to work with and mentor a young teacher who assisted with her classes.

“The teacher that I am today is because of all the mentors that I have had,” she says. “Sir Isaac Newton said, 'If I have seen further than others, it's because I stood on the shoulders of giants,' and that's really how I feel that I have achieved any level of excellence—it's because people have helped me get to that place. It's so important to have great mentors, not just in those first couple of years of teaching, but to have somebody that you can continue to talk to.”

Of course, a good teacher can only do so much without a classroom full of students—a lack of attendance, says Harman, is one of the key problems plaguing schools today.

If she could change the system, Harman believes this is a problem that could be solved.

“I would start charter schools run by national board certified teachers where students have to come to school,” she says. “They'd be contractually obligated and would have to sign an agreement that says they will come and do their homework and that their parents will be involved. If they miss assignments or are tardy or get busted for drugs or anything, then they're out. The most disheartening thing is that every student is not given the opportunity to learn. There are areas where students aren't pushed to give one hundred percent, and that just breaks my heart.”

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COMMENTS

Do you think that having students sign “contracts” is a way to make them into more engaged learners?
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Do Teacher Induction Programs Work?

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:00:16 +0000

The first few years as a teacher can be rough—an estimated one-in-three newcomers leaves the profession within five years.

Teacher induction programs are designed to ease that transition, to promote teacher retention and improve classroom efficacy. But the amount and types of support new teachers get varies widely, from informal buddy systems to comprehensive—and expensive—structured induction programs.

The question is: Are those comprehensive programs better, and are they worth the cost?

 The good news is, few schools espouse the sink-or-swim approach anymore, says Dr. Richard Ingersoll, professor of education and sociology at University of Pennsylvania who has analyzed national survey data on first-year teachers for correlations between induction programs and teacher retention.

"Only five percent of teachers get nothing," he says, "but what the rest get really varies." Various induction efforts include mentors with common planning time, orientations, reduced course or lesson-planning loads, observation, and feedback.

 So which of those methods work? "What we found is: The more you get, the more you get, so to speak," Ingersoll says. "But the two factors that seemed to have the strongest positive effect were having a mentor from the same field and having structured, common planning time with a mentor."

Those elements are included in some mandatory induction plans instituted on the state level, as in California’s Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) or Texas’ Beginning Teacher Induction and Mentoring. Other programs are implemented by school districts, and still others are managed by nonprofits like ETS.  

The New Haven Unified School District outside San Francisco offers a two-year BTSA program that teachers must complete to become fully credentialed. Each new teacher works with a BTSA specialist and two supporting teachers: one in the same field with common planning times and a consulting teacher in charge of observation and assessment. The extensive program costs around $4,100 per teacher, says Jodie Schwartzfarb, secondary BTSA specialist for the district. But, she says, "I’ve had teachers say, ‘We wouldn’t have made it without the program.'"

Still, Institute of Education Sciences (IES) recently published a major study on teacher induction, finding no difference in teacher retention rates or overall student achievement between comprehensive induction programs and the supports schools already had in place.

But induction advocates point out that may simply be because induction programs have in many schools become, de facto, fairly comprehensive already.

"The teachers in the control group often had a lot more support than they were expecting—three-quarters of them had an assigned mentor," says Dr. Michael Strong, a researcher at University of California-Santa Cruz and former research director at the New Teacher Center (NTC), one of the programs IES studied.

NTC’s own research on comprehensive teacher induction has found a great deal of support for the NTC model, which employs fulltime mentors, each with a maximum caseload of 15 teachers. In one study, Strong calculated that the program cost $6,600 per new teacher—but brought a return on investment of $1.66 on the dollar after five years, with 88 percent of teachers still in the classroom after six years.

"There's a lot of support for this kind of approach on the front lines," he says, "yet there isn't a lot of scientific evidence to prove it."

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COMMENTS

What kinds of support do beginning teachers need most—and which efforts are just a waste of time and money?
Leave your response in the comments below.

Calming Classrooms With Movement

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:50:04 +0000

With physical education classes being cut from curriculum due to budget troubles and classroom time being reallocated to increase focus on standardized test performance, American students are spending more school time stationary.

Some teachers like Jeanne Trainum in Williamsburg, Virginia, though, are asking students to get up and move throughout the day, without sacrificing their lesson plans. Trainum teaches math problems with the help of a beach ball. Students partner up and are given a beach ball that has math problems written on it. Students throw the ball back and forth, answering aloud each question that is closest to their catching hand. The activity is still controlled – no running allowed – but it gives students a break from desk time that they look forward to, Trainum said in her submission of the activity to the National Association for Sport and Physical Education's Teacher Toolbox.

"Teacher Toolbox is one of our most popular web site sections," said 23-year veteran teacher Francesca Zavacky, now a senior program manager for NASPE, which recommends that children spend at least 60 minutes each day in physical activity. The toolbox highlights activities for students of all ages K-12 and family fun activities to encourage the movement to continue at home outside of school.

Other top “energizer” suggestions from teachers around the country include:

•    Science: Playing a version of “Monkey in the Middle” to demonstrate how free radicals operate around stable molecules and electrons (a soccer ball).

•    Geography: Having students organize themselves in the positions of the 50 states.

•    Language: Each letter of the alphabet is given a spot on a half basketball court. Students must shoot a ball from the letters that spell out a given word.

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COMMENTS

How has physical education programming changed during your time as a teaching professional?
Leave your response in the comments below.

What Can U.S. Educators Do to Improve Math Skills?

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:06:15 +0000

As U.S. students continue to lag in their math skills, when compared to students from across the globe, the long-term economic stability of the United States may be in jeopardy.

In a special 2009 supplement to The Condition of Education, it was reported that in math, U.S. 15-year-olds’ scores now lag behind those of 31 countries.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan responded to the report by saying, “These results show that for us to stay competitive and move forward we have to get our students ready for global competition.”

The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel from the U.S. Department of Education noted that an individual’s success in math provides additional college and career options as well as increased prospects for future income.

While careers in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are “plentiful, well-paying, challenging,” according to a report in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), the explanations for the continuing math achievement gap are varied. The AMS report notes, for instance, that many U.S. students do not participate in mathematics because of the social stigma attached.

Another difficulty highlighted in the report is the mathematics preparation of teachers, which The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel concluded must be strengthened to improve teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom.

Innovation adding up
But even before these latest findings, educators around the country have been working to help students achieve in math.

Math Circles is an outreach initiative, backed by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), that brings mathematicians and mathematical scientists into contact with students and teachers after school or on weekends to work on interesting problems or topics in mathematics. The goal is to get the students excited about mathematics as they participate in real-world problem-solving.

Dr. David Auckly, an associate director at MSRI who also works on the organization’s outreach programs, including Math Circles, said that in Eastern Europe, for example, students practice math as an after-school activity as they would band or football. He sees Math Circles as one way to encourage that sort of interest and enthusiasm.

The 2008–09 San Francisco Math Circle (SFMC) included 41 teachers and 365 students, with an average of 96 students and 17 teachers attending the program weekly. And the effects are exponential—the 41 teachers who attended SFMC, for example, influenced at least 2,200 students when they returned to the classroom.

Dr. Brandy Wiegers, coordinator for the National Association of Math Circles, explained that SFMC exemplifies how Math Circles can support teachers in helping students with their math skills/achievement. There are at least 60 other programs across the country in 20 different states that are striving to meet this same goal.

In an external evaluation of SFMC, one teacher-participant commented that Math Circles provided an extracurricular program that gave access to math enrichment activities for students at any level. And on the other side of the equation: One student interviewed said that Math Circles made math fun and provided new ways of learning.

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COMMENTS

Is it student enthusiasm or teacher preparation that is most closely linked with U.S. students’ lagging math skills?
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Teacher of the Year Eric Kincaid: Always Learning

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:40:01 +0000

Walden University is proud to have more than 20 state teachers of the year—including Eric Kincaid—currently working toward advanced degrees at its Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership.

Name: Eric Kincaid
Award: 2008 West Virginia Teacher of the Year
Teaches: Biology
Teaching Since: 1995
Studying at Walden: Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

For some students, science education begins and ends in high school. For others, however, it's a course of study that knows no beginning or end.

For 2008 West Virginia Teacher of the Year Eric Kincaid, science was something that was part of his earliest days, even if he didn't use that word for it. “I was always collecting specimens in middle school,” says Kincaid, a biology teacher at Morgantown High School in Morgantown, West Virginia. “'Specimens' is what my mother called them. I'd come home with little bugs and rocks and stuff like that in my pocket.”

Early on, this helped him see that education was something larger than just what happened at school. Learning could clearly take place anywhere, at anytime—something Kincaid says he learned from his grandfather who, although he had to drop out of school at age 13 to work, continued to educate himself. “He read everything he could and learned everything he could,” says Kincaid, noting his admiration. “His knowledge really blows me away even though he only has an eighth grade education.”

In his classes, Kincaid tries to help students see that education isn't always about a scholastic context. He works to show them that scientists are doing research outside of the classroom walls all the time. What's more, they're often doing research that looks a lot like the genetic work he does with his AP kids—analyzing DNA, trying to diagnose genetic disorders, and even manipulating the genome.

“I like finding new articles or videos, because the kids really like getting those news stories. I like showing the kids what the potential is. A couple of times I've found things that were published the day I showed it to them, so they can see it's not just coming from their text books—this is information that is coming up all the time,” he says. “I also want to try to get kids to get the information on their own—to teach them how to use the tools that we have that will allow them to get information, and remember it, and use it, and apply it. If I can do that, then I'm pretty happy, because the amount of information we're getting now is amazing. There is no way you can actually remember it all. If we can give them the tools to get information on their own, then they have a better chance of being successful.”

Of course, there's also the learning that goes on for students after they leave his class—that's the kind of learning that may end up taking students much deeper into science than their teacher will ever go. For Kincaid, a student who can outdo him is a dream come true.

One of his favorite memories of teaching involves a very reserved pupil who had just lost her father and didn't seem engaged in class. “It was amazing what her academic ability was, but she was very quiet—never said a whole lot,” he says. “That was just as I was starting to try to teach genes and different genome studies, and she ended up taking what I taught her and going into that research on her own.”

Today, that shy, reserved student is working on a combined M.D./Ph.D. at Harvard University. “She is doing cancer research—she wanted to fight the cancer that killed her dad,” says Kincaid. And now, she's the one offering words of encouragement: “She writes, 'Keep up those genomic studies, keep looking at those techniques and all that, because that's what enabled me to get ahead,'” he says. “That's why I'm here now.”

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COMMENTS

How do you demonstrate to students that what they are learning in the classroom has practical applications in life?
Leave your response in the comments below.

Reentering the Classroom Following Retirement

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:10:29 +0000

Every teacher knows the value of doing your homework, and if a retried teacher is considering reentering the workforce, the situation is no different. Whether changing financial conditions or renewed passion for teaching is the driving force to get back into the classroom, there are important tips that can help smooth the transition for a teacher who is planning to come out of retirement.

Megan Hookey, vice president of the National Retired Teacher’s Association, which is the American Association of Retired Persons’ (AARP) educator community, says the key for any retired teacher who wants to reenter the professional education arena is flexibility. “Across the board we are certainly seeing an increase in people who are returning to the classroom because of financial reasons,” she says. “If they operate within what is available within the school system, they can usually find some work.”

Hookey adds that often, retired teachers find themselves in an ideal position to market what they have to offer as an experienced educator. “He or she has walked in the shoes of an active educator, and there is no doubt that this is valued.” She suggests that even with years of experience, a returning retiree can expect a much smoother transition if first ensuring the full support of administration—and cautions there can be a few challenges awaiting someone getting back into the classroom after years outside of it.

Hookey also recommends that teachers try to reenter a school district where they have previously worked. “A returning educator is also in a good position to address areas of need and how their skills can fulfill that need,” she says.

When approaching administrators or trying to get hired, Hookey acknowledges the possibility of discrimination against older job candidates. “There are certainly times where people might make judgments on a person’s capabilities based on their age,” she says.

“One of the problems people often run into is an assumption they cannot work with the new technology.” She recommends teachers be armed with knowledge, even if that means taking a computer course. “Actually, studies have shown that one of the fastest groups to adapt are people over the age of 50,” she notes. “When trained, these individuals have the ability to perform at the level of people decades younger.”

A positive mental boost can be for retired teachers to remember they are not alone. According to the AARP, by 2010, one in three workers will be over the age of 50. Hookey adds, wisdom and age often yield more respect in teaching than in other professions. “Generally, in the world of education, people who have taught before are valued. That is perhaps a unique experience,” she says.

In addition, reentering the education workforce might mean other things besides just traditional teaching. Hookey recommends retired teachers consider becoming a mentor or coach to new teachers.

Hookey directs retired educators to the AARP’s Worksearch tool, which provides tips for retired persons who are back on the job hunt. The site not only includes tips such as how to avoid the “overqualified” label, but also resumé advice and links to Web sites that list jobs exclusively for the retired population.

Essentially, retired teachers have a priceless edge reminds Hookey. “They have not burned out, and they still possess a desire to turn on those light bulbs in the minds of their students,” she says. Keeping that passion close at mind will inevitably be one of the most invaluable tools for any teacher who returns to the workplace.

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COMMENTS

If you are retired or just generally feeling like it is time for a career change, try reevaluating your job skills at AARP’s Worksearch page.
Leave your response in the comments below.

I Miss Recess

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:18:34 +0000

I guarantee that if your child goes to school and you ask them what they did that day the first thing they will say is, "We went outside on the playground." Or, "We played." Or, "We ate lunch" depending on the child. Kids love to go outside for recess. I think it is more than just the joy of free play, I think it is also the joy of being outside, in the fresh air. It is our default mode to feel the breeze or notice the particular color of the leaves in the sun.

When I taught, I knew that every day I could, our class would go outside. At my children's school one of the pre-k classes checked to make sure everyone had a change of clothes and then took the whole class out in the rain. It was a chore to get them changed after they came in but they remembered that experience the entire year. When I taught I felt it was sort of a relief valve for myself and some students because we knew if we could make it to outside time, we were more than half way through our day.

I am reminded of this now, because since I have left the classroom, some days I don't get recess. I am busy, trying to get my job done, and sometimes, I forget to eat, or I keep putting it off until all of a sudden it is too late. So I eat at my desk or in the car, and try to take care of a little personal business. Then get back into the work. But, if I take the time to go outside for a few minutes, it is like shedding a costume. I am much happier when I go back in. I am more productive and focused. I am able to see my work with fresh eyes and look at problems in a new way. I miss recess, it is important in so many ways beyond the simple fact of kids getting to run around for a few minutes. It is the reset button on the day. I need that time, almost as much as lunch because it is food for the soul. I wouldn't have kept my kids inside during recess, I will have to remember not to keep myself inside either.

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About John Holland

I have always felt that stories are an intricate part of how people live and interpret their lives. Having good stories to tell is part of why I became a preschool teacher.

It is not uncommon to hear young teachers say they grew up wanting to teach—perhaps influenced by a great teacher they had early in their life. All too often this story ends with young teachers deciding to leave the profession in their first five years. My story is different. I really backed into teaching, and perhaps that's why I've stayed. I do know that teaching has become my passion.

I never planned to be a teacher at all. I went through college thinking that I was going to be an artist. Ever the optimist, I sheltered myself from the reality that being an artist and paying the bills is not easily done at the same time. So when my future wife said, "You can do anything you want as long as you can pay your half of the rent," I was faced with two choices: a) I could continue working for a painting contractor painting houses and come home from work with stories about watching paint dry; Or b), I could try teaching. At least with teaching, I told myself, I would come home with better yarns. And although I am now embarrassed to say it, in those pre-career days I also thought: "I'll get the summers off to make art."

I began by substitute teaching, to get my feet wet and make sure I was headed in the right direction. And I did it all. I substituted in every possible situation, from preschool special education classes to high school P.E. I worked in urban and suburban school districts. I spent class time with kids who came to school without warm clothes to wear in the winter—and with kids who came in the latest designer fashions. Even though I had never wanted to be a teacher I found that I was good at it. I relied on my spontaneity, my creativity, my empathy, and my willpower to get me through each day. The kids taught me about the real heart of teaching by letting me know very quickly what they needed in terms of respect, guidance, humor, and love.

Then I went to school to learn how to be effective.

After an amazing experience as a long-term substitute in a Head Start classroom, I chose to teach preschool. Though I use the word "chose" to describe the decision, the feeling was really, “This is it. This is my calling. This is what I am meant to do.” Spending every day with the same little kids in that long-term sub position helped me see that I could make a huge difference in 17 lives each year. As a man, I was often the first male authority figure my students had ever encountered on a daily basis. This responsibility helped me see how my ability to communicate what a man actually is could affect my students for years to come.

As a preschool teacher, I am primarily responsible for teaching social skills, thinking skills, beginning reading, and math. I am the students' first teacher, and I can select content that will be important (perhaps life-changing) for them, no matter what path they choose to take later in life. Most importantly, I teach my students how to learn.

I still love to paint. Canvas, not houses. But as a male pre-k educator, I know I contribute to society in a profound way. And I have much better stories to tell my wife after work.

I have been a preschool teacher for the past 12 years. I am one of the only male National Board Certified pre-k teachers in the country and a member of the Teacher Leaders Network. As a member of the Center for Teacher Leadership I have been the moderator for the Virginia Forum, an online community of accomplished teachers. I am pursuing my doctorate at Virginia Commonwealth University and serve as a National Board coach, mentor, workshop presenter, and university student teaching supervisor. My current passions include ethics in educational policy, teacher leadership, and 21st century learning. I am also a relentlessly positive professional artist and education writer and professional developer.

Read more from John at his blog, Inside Pre-K.

Cost Effective Ways to Adopt the Latest Technology

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:14:59 +0000

The most transformative recent game-changer in bringing education into the 21st century is low-cost laptops. Many schools at the NYC DOE and beyond still don’t know much about these devices and have trepidations. Innovative educators know that these devices are the key for any classroom interested in preparing students for the world in which they live, play, and work. Chris Lehmann echoes the sentiments shared by me and others like CIS 339 principal Jason Levy as he shared at a recent Tech Forum conference that "Technology needs to be like oxygen. Ubiquitous, necessary and invisible." Low-cost laptops, for the first time make it possible for this idea to be a reality. Every school needs to get on board TODAY. Schools all around the nation have jumped on the bandwagon and are featured in the most recent issue of Tech & Learning magazine in the article Netbooks make the grade which features schools across the nation who are using these devices.

Unfortunately some schools still believe the myths and lies shared by the hardware companies and industry dinosaurs who will tell you that you need expensive equipment, training and tech support to do this work. Let me dispel some of these myths. The big computer companies are lying. Of course they want you to buy their expense devices. You don’t need to. The dinosaurs in the industry who want to sit you on their knee and tell you about how they walked to work every day in the snow up hill both ways, are dying to hang on to the idea that their jobs are still necessary. They don't want the secret out and they don't want to change. I spoke to one yesterday in fact. He shared how schools will never keep up with innovation because they must do system-wide refreshes of devices and nothing in life is free. Oh really? Google is free. Google Apps are free. Wikispaces are free. Ning for education is free. YouTube is free. Google Voice is free. Schools can develop student iSquads and enable students to be self-empowered to fix technology for free. Well, he said, “That free stuff won’t last I tell ya.” “I’ve been around a long time. I know Missy.” Ugh! Innovative educators are smart enough to move on when we encounter the old timers stuck in Rip Van Winkle's past. These free tools will be around and they are scaring the pants off of the old timers. Businesses like Microsoft, Apple, and the rest are going to have to change their model to the new direction of a savvy and innovative society.

WHERE DO YOU START? WHAT DO YOU NEED?

Do Not Give Teachers Hardware
Every school needs to identify which teachers are interested in preparing students for the 21st century. If you’re a leader, when you discover who these teachers are, do not give them hardware!!! If you are a teacher, do not tell your principal you want hardware. I’ve had a lot of experience deploying hardware to teachers and in many cases it is not a good practice.

Instead, if you’re and administrator have your teachers apply for the equipment they think they will need to enhance teaching and learning. This will enable you to prioritize your purchasing decisions and limit them to the teachers who have demonstrated that they are planning to use it effectively. This also gives you crucial information in enabling you to have conversations about the work your teachers are doing. If you are a teacher, the conversation shouldn’t just be about hardware. Show your principal you are serious and have all the information together that s/he will need to support you.

You can create a free online application using Google forms or SurveyMonkey. The application should require a pedagogical case for why your teacher needs equipment, information about how the equipment will be used to enhance instruction, an indication of which standards this aligns to, and if you collect your information properly this can contain all the information needed to place the order. For teachers the application process demonstrates to his/her principal they are serious. For administrators this ensures you are aware of the teachers plan for incorporating the use of the equipment into instruction, provides school leaders with an idea of how teachers will be using the equipment purchased, and indicates which teachers are serious about this work. Here is a sample of what the form might look like. I recommend a separate form for each type of equipment.

Whether your school has funding today or not, it is essential teachers and schools start documenting what it is they want so they are prepared should funds become available and there are a lot of ways to fund education. If there is not money in your school budget here are some alternate sources. Some are NYC DOE specific, others are not:

Resolution A Funds from City Council
NYC Ed Tech Grant Opportunities Page
eSchool News Funding Resources
DonorsChoose.Org Giving Page

THE 21ST CENTURTY CLASSROOM BASICS
No more paper, no more books will be necessary in the 21st century classroom. When all student have devices their materials are available directly from their laptops. This also means no more handouts, no more copies, no more heavy book bags. Here is my recommendation to get started with the 21st century classroom.

Brand: Lenovo
Netbook - 4187RVU S10e Ideapad, 2.65 lbs, 10.1-IN Display
Cost: $359.95 Cost for 32 devices: $11,488
Note: This particular device was selected because it is the one available where I work at the NYC DOE -available via SHOP DOE / FAMIS

Brand: Sharp
PG-F212X Conference/Classroom DLP Multimedia Projector
Cost: $599.95
Vendor: B & H FOTO & ELECTRONICS

Brand: Flip Video
Ultra 2nd Generation Camcorder (Pink)
Cost: $129 Cost for 4 devices: $516
Vendor: B & H FOTO & ELECTRONICS

Brand: Canon
PowerShot A1100 IS Digital Camera (Blue)
Cost: $139.95 Cost for 4 devices $556
Vendor: B & H FOTO & ELECTRONICS

Total Cost for 21st Century Classroom: $13,159
When you keep in mind these devices have a life of life of 3 – 5 years, this ultimately translates in significant long-term savings for the school.

WHAT YOU DON’T REALLY NEED – DISPELLING MYTHS OF BIG BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY DINOSAURS
Many schools are sold equipment they don’t really need and they buy it because they don’t know better. Here are some items you don’t need if you have the above package.

A more expensive laptop, server, external hard drives, expensive software
Today your students should be doing their work in the cloud. What does this mean? This means their work is done using what is available on the internet for free. Work is created using Google Apps which includes free Word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software, email and more. Work is stored using Wikispaces. These contain unlimited storage and are free. Students' work is available anytime, anywhere, from any computer.

Interactive Whiteboards and Projector Carts
Somehow teachers and administrators have become enamored with interactive whiteboards. You can save about $5000 per classroom when you realize you don’t need an interactive whiteboard or projector cart. You can accomplish the same instructional goals with a laptop and projector. The benefit is rather than having the teacher front and center in the classroom s/he can be eye to eye with students as the classwork is projected behind him/her. This can be interactive as students work is in the cloud and a teacher can access any website at anytime to feature the student, or the student can come right up to the computer and/or plug in their own computer to project. You may hear that the software is the reason you need to make this costly purchase. I have found there are free alternatives to achieve the same goals.

Laptop Carts
Some schools will find they may need to purchase a cart which generally runs about $600 but I have seen other schools that have developed alternative and more secure methods for storing devices. The best solution I have seen is the Depot. This is a secure room or closet for which the teacher has a key. Shelves are built in the area. Devices go on the shelves and the door is locked. Ideally there is electricity so devices can be charged.

THE TIME IS NOW
Innovative educators and administrators, it is time to start one classroom at time, one school at a time, one district at a time, one nation at a time. You don't need a special initiative. You don't need special funding. What you need is innovative rethinking the way teaching and learning occur. Join other schools like the NYC DOE's Model Technology Schools. If you don't know where to start or what to do with 21st century tools read about, connect with, and/or visit the the 8 Innovative Schools that Provide Ideas and Inspiration for 21st Century Education.

______________________________

As the Technology Innovation Manager for the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE), Lisa Nielsen oversees the creation and implementation of innovative technology and instruction. She has spent more than a decade working in various capacities in educational innovation at the NYC DOE and Teachers College, Columbia University including as a manager of instructional technology professional development, a literacy and instructional technology coach, program developer, teacher, librarian, and staff developer. Ms. Nielsen is a Google Certified Teacher, International Edublogger, and creator of The Innovative Educator social network, blog, and wiki. She is also a permanently certified educational administrator and teacher. While serving in the capacity of teacher she was honored as Teacher of the Year and nominated by her district as Technology Educator of the year. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by me are strictly my own and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of the NYC DOE or any other entity.

The (Un)certainty of Professional Persistence

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:08:01 +0000

There has been a lot of good discussion on my post about the future of books, libraries, librarians, and schools (thank you, everyone). In addition to the comments on the post itself, there are some excellent thoughts elsewhere as well:

Flat World Library Corporation
Dangerously irrelevant libraries
Ten hard questions
Random questions on future libraries by Scott McLeod

I was struck, however, by something that Erin Downey said in her own post:

What has, does, and will distinguish us from [coffee shops, community centers, and Internet cafes] are LIBRARIANS. Your barista doesn't know how to help you find a price guide for 19th century china dolls, or figure out what the primary motivations were of the Romantic poets, or locate the best resource for building an addition to your house (as well as getting the right permits for local construction!). We do all that and more on a daily basis without breaking a sweat - we're trained information professionals.

As I read Erin’s post, she seems awfully certain that librarians will be around and will be essential to the new order. I confess that I’m not that certain.

Perhaps I’m reading her wrong, but her paragraph strikes me as one of absolute certainty in librarians’ worth: Of course we’ll be around in the new paradigm! We’re LIBRARIANS, dammit! We’re TRAINED INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS who are VALUABLE in and of ourselves and also PROVIDE VALUE TO OTHERS. As I read her paragraph, I started substituting other professions in place of librarians: Of course we’ll be around in the new paradigm! We’re JOURNALISTS / TELEGRAPH OPERATORS / BUGGY WHIP MAKERS / TRAVEL AGENTS, dammit! We’re TRAINED PROFESSIONALS who are VALUABLE in and of ourselves and also PROVIDE VALUE TO OTHERS.

I think that the shifts we are now beginning to experience are going to be much more disruptive than we expect. I don’t think that we can take for granted that any current information-oriented profession is going to be around in the new paradigm. I think it’s a safer bet to assume that most of us in information-oriented jobs either are going to be replaced by something new or will see our professions so radically transformed that we may need to give them new labels.

Whether we’re librarians, teachers, administrators, or professors – or newspaper journalists, television producers, radio broadcasters, or magazine publishers – or travel agents, stockbrokers, medical professionals, or postal service workers, I think we need to be more uneasy. We need to be less complacent, less certain. We need to be more proactive and forward-thinking rather than self-congratulatory and self-satisfied.

The professionals in information-oriented fields who will be best able to navigate the seismic transitions that are yet to occur will be those that DON’T take their individual jobs – or even their entire professions – for granted. We all need to be more on edge than we currently are.

______________________________

Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Educational Administration Program at Iowa State University. He also is the Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), the nation’s only center dedicated to the technology needs of school administrators, and was a co-creator of the wildly popular video, Did You Know? (Shift Happens). Dr. McLeod blogs regularly about technology leadership issues at www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org.

Teaching with Learning Objectives

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:18:38 +0000

It’s a simple premise: our students should know what they are learning and why. The best way to accomplish this is through having learning objectives for every lesson. Yet, teachers tend to make some common mistake around learning objectives. Knowing these common mistakes will help you maximize your practice of using learning objectives:

1) CLEARLY POST LEARNING OBJECTIVES.

Don’t make the students continually guess what they will be learning. It’s not fun for the students, and they will eventually give up trying. Your learning objective should never be a secret. Your learning objective should be written or placed in a prominent place in your classroom. Some teachers write it in PowerPoint, some use document cameras, and others have their learning objectives written in a dedicated space on their white board. Do what works best for you and your students, but the key is to consistently post it.

2) MAKE YOUR LEARNING OBJECTIVE RELEVANT.

Reference your learning objectives in the beginning of each lesson. If you continually talk about (give attention to) the learning objective students will come to understand that this is important and something they should pay attention to. Another way is to have the students do some activity around the learning objective. For instance, you may ask students to reflect on their progress in achieving the learning objective and what they need to meet it.

3) WRITE THE LEARNING OBJECTIVE IN SIMPLE, STUDENT-FRIENDLY LANGUAGE.

Avoid going crazy with a paragraph-long learning objective. Keep it simple, allowing the student to understand it. To ensure students understand the learning objective you can have students rewrite the learning objective in their own words.

4) DOUBLE-CHECK TO SEE IF IT IS REALLY AN OBJECTIVE OR ACTIVITY.

Examples of activities masked as learning objectives:
“Read Chapter 2 in the your textbook.”
“Summarize Chapter 2.”
Examples of a learning objectives:
Students will be able to
“Describe the author’s perspective in Chapter 2″
“Compare and contrast between current author and a past author’s perspective”

5) ENSURE YOUR LEARNING OBJECTIVES DRIVE THE LESSON.

Every activity and assessment must be connected to your learning objectives. Often teachers have great activities, but they have nothing to do with the learning objective.

______________________________

Eric Hougan started his career in business and eventually did a career change into education, merging his two passions: business and teaching. It was during this transition, while a preservice and student teacher, that Eric realized the significant gap of resources and support for student teachers. Ever since, Eric has worked extremely hard collecting tips, strategies, and resources to address the sometimes mystifying process of becoming a teacher, addressing such topics as certification, and ways to develop a beneficial relationship with one’s cooperating teacher and university supervisor. Eric hopes this on-line community will address the hiring process by offering interviewing techniques and posting potential teacher interview questions. Overall, the purpose of this website is to provide a supportive network with wonderful resources for individuals pursuing a career in education.

Hougan completed his Master of Arts in Teaching from National-Louis University in Chicago, IL. Currently, he is a secondary-level teacher in Washington. Eric is involved in many school improvement initiatives and is a club adviser for Future Business Leaders of America. Seeking further professional development, Eric completed his National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. In the community, Eric is a Board Officer for the King County Bar Association’s Future of the Law Institute. Eric is also an author, recently writing Road to Teaching: A Guide to Teacher Training, Student Teaching, and Finding a Job. For his school and community efforts, Eric was recently recognized as a 2008-9 Phi Delta Kappa (PDK) Emerging Leader.

Making Room for the Self in School

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:17:12 +0000

(This piece originally was published by the National Association of Independent Schools as an online feature of Independent Schools Magazine.)

It was cold, a November evening, and I was the administrator on duty, so I was walking around the campus shortly after dinner on my way to the athletic center to lock the building. The last coach to leave after practice was supposed to lock up but never did.  

My mood was not good. The sun had set at about 4:15, and the hours of darkness and gloom seemed to move in and out of me with each frosty breath. As usual, I was thinking about my English class, trying to come up with ideas to engage this group of pleasant, not very motivated juniors. Like most of my colleagues, I was frustrated — feeling guilty over my inability to transfer my enthusiasm for literature and writing to my students. Wasn't that my job, to motivate my students?  

As I approached the athletic center, the building looked deserted, just the glow of the night lights seeping weakly into the darkness. I yanked on the door handle, and it opened; the building was unlocked. I'd have to walk through the whole place to see if anyone remained inside.

  As I climbed the stairs to the second floor to check the weight room, I heard the thumping of a basketball muffled in the cinderblock walls of the stairwell. It grew louder as I walked down the hall toward a window overlooking the basketball court, and I saw Pharaoh, a junior who wanted to make the varsity, dribbling and shooting, first with his right hand and then with his left. He moved in and out of the shadows, intent on his drills, perfecting his game — running, jumping, turning, pounding the ball, sweating, and completely unaware of me.  

Pharaoh wasn't much of a student. In fact, he was at that moment on academic probation, so I should have gone down to the court and suggested that he use this time between dinner and study hours to study. But I couldn't do that. It was wonderful to watch him, to see his enthusiasm for the game and his work ethic as he repeated drill after drill. Although I didn't share his passion for basketball, I could certainly see and appreciate it.  

I wondered if, perhaps, the students in my English class could see my passion for literature and simply didn't share it. We are so accustomed to bromides about teachers' passions igniting student motivation. Quite reasonably, we want teachers who model a love of learning, but although we can cite occasions when such models have inspired students, these seem more the exception than the rule.  

The truth is that motivation is both simpler and more complicated than we tend to acknowledge in schools. Too often, motivation is confused with happiness, with the result that teachers worry about keeping their students happy. Teachers struggle to become entertainers and stand-up comics — learning must be amusing and undemanding; they inflate grades and maintain sufficiently low standards to avoid student discomfort; and they lavish praise on the most mediocre achievement.  

Yet there was Pharaoh that night sweating on the dimly lit court, doing the tedious drills over and over, alone — no one telling him what to do, no assignment, no judgment, no encouragement, no coach. He was the embodiment of motivation. Though he wasn't amused, wasn't diverted, if I had stopped him and asked, my bet is that he would have said he was having fun — the sort of fun that comes with intense, hard work doing something you love to do, something that matters to you, something you want to master, rather like the painful fun some of us have when we immerse ourselves in creating a new course or an exciting lesson — all that intellectual sweat of reading and thinking and writing and imagining and rethinking and rewriting.  

And it is here that we teachers and administrators so often lose sight of the simplicity and complexity of motivation because we forget about a fundamental difference between teachers and students. Why are teachers in school? Why are students in school?  

Teachers are in school because we love literature or math or Spanish or history, just as Pharaoh is in the gym because he loves basketball. Somehow, for reasons that differ for everyone, this thing we love matters to us. It touches the core of who we are, our sense of self — that bundle of emotions, experiences, needs and knowledge that we recognize as self, the source of meaning and our sense of truth as we live it. It really doesn't make any difference whether our passion emerges from positive, healthy reasons or from unhealthy reasons; the passion and the self are fused into a need that we experience as motivation. And, despite its frustrations, school seems to satisfy teachers' needs.

Students, on the other hand, are in school because they have to be — before they have any idea what they might want from school. Their studies, generally, don't matter much to them. Their academic choices are either made for them by various adults or are selected by them from options determined by adults — the limited options of a prison. What does matter to them is the social life of school — their friends and enemies and surviving the sociocultural jungle of hallways, dining rooms and locker rooms — which is the reason their social lives consume so much more energy than do their studies. Some students, like Pharaoh, discover another dimension to school. They find meaning in basketball; others find meaning in math or art or science. While the majority appear simply to serve their time until released into the relative freedom of college, these lucky few enjoy a successful fusion of self and endeavor.  

Another of our bromides is that success in one area breeds success in other areas, and although there is some truth to this lullaby, Pharaoh's passion for and success in basketball never inspired passion or success in his studies, beyond the need to get the grades that would keep him eligible to play. English and history never touched his sense of self. He was happier in the classroom when he played basketball; he would have been miserable without it. But his studies didn't matter to him, nor did he become a scholar as a result of basketball anymore than I became a math whiz because I loved literature.  

So students are in school because they have to be, and teachers are in school because they choose to be. And we choose to be because, regardless of whether our reasons for being there are noble or rather sad, school fulfills fundamental needs of our self. In schools, teachers are the meaning-makers; students are the receivers of the meaning we have made. Making meaning is an intimate expression of the self, the source of our engagement and our willingness to do the hard work of thinking and studying that our subject, our passion, demands — and to put up with the more tedious ancillary activities like attending meetings and making sure the athletic center is locked. For Pharaoh, meaning comes from basketball, and he is engaged and willing to work hard and think in his domain — and to put up with the tedium of the classroom.  

The key to the sort of positive motivation we long to see in our students, Pharaoh's motivation for basketball or our own passion for history or science, is this fusion of self and endeavor. Years of working with students and teachers, along with studying some of the current research into how the brain learns, have convinced me that we need to rethink school structures and teaching methods so that we find ways to tap into and involve the students' self in their education. Despite the claims in our glossy catalogs and our conviction that our schools are "student-centered," they remain largely teacher-centered.  

During the many years I chaired a department and then served as assistant head of school, I interviewed hundreds of teacher candidates, and whenever I asked them why they wanted to teach, EVERY ONE OF THEM responded with some variation on the theme that they wanted to pass their knowledge on to students. Not one said, "Because I want to help students learn how to make sense of their life. I want to help students develop their own sense of meaning." Sure, they wanted their students to care deeply about science or whatever they taught, but their strategy was to model their own passion and dazzle their students with the meaning they had created. It was not to help students find science or literature or history within themselves, perhaps even to discover how Latin or math might satisfy the deeper needs of the self. Little wonder that schools are structured and designed to include not the students' selves but the teachers' selves.  

We have this idea that learning is a rational, logical, and linear process and that we can summon students' rational functions, cut them free from the emotions and the body, and teach them to think what we think, value what we value, care about what we care about. We insist on our ability to separate reason from emotion even though our own thinking and caring are rooted in an integrated self in which, although we might pretend otherwise, mind and body and emotion are linked. While Pharaoh's experience with basketball might be like my experience with literature, the experience of school for most students differs from the experience of school for most teachers.

  Recently, I spoke with a colleague, a 30-year veteran of Spanish and ESL classrooms, about her frustration with her Spanish 3 students. She had just corrected their latest test, and she felt discouraged by their lack of progress and their apparent indifference to learning — indifference not to the grades but to learning. Earlier in the term, she had suggested to them various strategies to improve their Spanish. So, now, she decided to develop that conversation further and to see if, together, she and her students could reduce the frustration both felt — she because her students learned so slowly and reluctantly, and they because their grades were so poor. Below is a compressed, redacted version of that conversation, which I videotaped. What is evident in the conversation is the difference between the assumptions and context of the teacher's point of view and those of the students' point of view.  

TEACHER: Before you see the results of the tests, I want to know if you did anything different to prepare for this test as opposed to the last test, which you remember we talked about individually to pinpoint some things you might do.  

STUDENT A: I spent a lot of time studying, but when it came to test time, I had a kind of memory lapse.  

STUDENT B: Yeah, it was totally a bling. I spent like such a long time studying.  

STUDENT C: We should have smaller quizzes on each part of what will be on the test so that it's all more in your memory.  

STUDENT D: And the book goes really, really fast. And there's only one practice exercise for each new thing.  

TEACHER: Does anyone remember a suggestion I made to deal with that problem?

  STUDENT E: Yeah, I did try the websites and did some practice, but practice quizzes would help more. If we have more practice quizzes, maybe you don't even have to put them in the grade book. They would be more like just for us, for our practice. Or maybe it would be a really small grade that would count like a homework.  

TEACHER: Let me ask this. What's the difference between me doing that and you doing that on your own?

  STUDENT A: It would be your format. We might make a practice quiz in a completely different way, and then we would be unprepared for your test because your way is different.  

STUDENT E: Also, on the day of the test, I had to memorize a map for my history class, and there were two other courses I had to memorize things for. And even in this class we had something else due on the same day as the test.  

STUDENT A: I usually have an easier time talking about a thing than I do with writing it. Like with show and tell, I can probably get up there and use the command form of the verb, but when I have to write it, it's something completely different. Speaking and writing are two different things for me. Speaking Spanish and writing Spanish are completely separate for me.  

TEACHER: So what can you do as a student to work on the one you feel less confident about?  

STUDENT A: I would appreciate some ideas.

  STUDENT F: It takes time to learn the preterit. You have to keep going over it and practicing, and that gets back to the speed issue, how fast we cover this material. I know this must be frustrating for you because this should be more review for us.  

TEACHER: Well, but my job is to take you where you are and move you forward. But what's frustrating for me is that I don't think at the third year level I should be taking class time to conjugate verbs with you or memorize verbs with you. However, if you need that, what can we work out together? If you are feeling that the verbs are a problem and there's just so much to memorize, we have to deal with that problem or neither of us is going to accomplish what we need to.  

STUDENT A: The problem with every homework assignment is that you just look at the previous page for the answer and write it in. You have the answer right there to get it right, and you've done the homework.  

TEACHER: So what's the next step? The next step is actually knowing it, and that's where we are stuck. If you don't have all the little pieces in your working memory, you struggle when asked to apply it. Whose job is it to get you to know it?  

STUDENT G: Another teacher last year had us applying the stuff more. We wrote stories using the preterit. Or after each weekend, she asked us what we had done over the weekend, and we used the tense to tell her. It wasn't something that was graded. It was just practice to help us know.  

TEACHER: OK, so you're talking about contextualizing it without the penalty of the grade. And the other idea I'm hearing is the smaller practice quizzes. What about the issue of whether the smaller quizzes should count or not count?  

STUDENT G: I think it should count less than a test grade. But we need to feel the pressure so we must study for it.  TEACHER: So is it the grade that puts the pressure on? What about just wanting to know it? Am I being totally unrealistic? It almost seems that I have to be punitive to get the kind of behaviors that I think will make you successful. There's something about that that bothers me.  

STUDENT A: Well, we are teenagers. We know that colleges look at grades. Thirty years from now, I'm not going to need what I learn in history class, but right now, I need to know it for the grades. That's the drive behind everything — needing the grades.  

STUDENT B: It's like he said. If we have homework and we can flip the pages back and forth and get the answer, we are going to do it. We get hours of homework every night, and we want to get done what we can fast. So if we know we have a quiz coming and we won't be able to look up the answer, we'll spend more time on that that night memorizing so that we can get the grade. If we can short-change something else, get it done quicker, we're going to do it.  

TEACHER: What I want is for your skills and knowledge to improve, and I can facilitate that, but there's a big part that has to come from you. And the key is doing a little each day. You can't short-change the work as you go along and then cram for the test. Each topic builds on the previous one. What I would like you to consider is what you want to get out of all the time you put into this course. Maybe we could try a sort of scientific study to see if we can get a better result — try different strategies for studying and preparation to see if they result in improvement.  

[The students mumble some assent to this general idea. The teacher pulls the tests from her folder and prepares to return them to the students.]

  Don't let this test, this grade, define you. It is just an indication of a point in time. Success is determined by what you do with this information, how you respond. I know it's not fun to put in a lot of time and then not get a good result. That's why we're talking about this. We want to try to do some things — you and me — to produce better results.  

This teacher cares about her students and struggles to find ways to motivate them to learn. She also loves the language and the study of Spanish cultures and fears that the combination of poor grades and her prodding them to take more responsibility will defeat her students. "I hate the thought that I might make them hate language when it's really their approach to learning that needs adjustment." Despite having "always felt it was [her] job to motivate them," she has discovered that learning must be a partnership between teacher and student with each sharing the responsibility for motivation. "I think I try to do a lot to motivate them, but it doesn't always work, and then I get very frustrated or discouraged. Maybe it would help the learning if we all had some input into motivation. Maybe this is something we need to do together. Maybe making this more transparent will enable them to move away from the cookbook approach or from their just giving up when they meet an obstacle. The teacher and the student have to be motivated, and maybe we need to be emotionally involved in the process together. I think, without realizing it, I have been setting up the emotional context based on what I think will motivate them instead of hearing from them."

Yet, despite these significant discoveries, the class discussion between this teacher and her students suggests that their differing assumptions and interests will continue to generate frustration. The teacher, whose interest includes getting the students to learn Spanish well enough to be able to enjoy communicating in it, assumes that in helping the students understand the nature of learning, she can bring them to a new level of consciousness. She hopes that consciousness will result in change. Ideally, her students will embrace the need to do the daily work to fix the basics of vocabulary and grammar in long-term memory and will accept personal responsibility for this work. But even as she gently pushes them toward the notion that a good part of the responsibility for learning falls on the learner, they push back and reveal their very different assumptions and interests.  

Their honesty in articulating the reality of school for teenagers is instructive. They have too much to do and too little time to do it and feel rushed to get it all done. They must triage and find short-cuts in order to manage the load. As a result of the messages they receive from parents and teachers and the way the whole system is constructed, they assume what matters are the grades, which are the currency of colleges. The issue for them is not speaking Spanish but getting into college. Spanish really doesn't fulfill any deep need arising from the self; it has no deep meaning for them. But getting into college does, regardless of whether the need emerges from healthy or unhealthy sources. Each time the teacher pushes the students to accept responsibility for their learning and for their test grades, they push back. "Here is what you can do," the teacher suggests. "Here is what we need you to do," the students counter. "And here are the reasons we can't do what you suggest."

  In terms of how school is currently structured — as an institution reflecting the passions and needs of teachers — it doesn't seem particularly surprising that some of the issues for students are grades, homework, quantity, pace and coverage. We need to look at these issues to see how they affect motivation, learning, and responsibility. The concerns and values reflected in their conversation with their Spanish teacher and their resistance to becoming as involved in the classroom as she wanted are reactions to a system that has always pretty much ignored students' selves.  

Occasionally, a few brave teachers and administrators create alternatives to the status quo. The most rewarding teaching of my career happened in one of these ventures — a school-within-a-school that allowed a few students to have what was frequently a powerful and transforming educational experience. The Independent Immersion Program (IIP) had only two criteria for admission: a passion to study a specific area and the ability to work independently. Prior grades and standardized test scores were irrelevant. In fact, many of the most successful students in this program had done poorly in more traditional schooling. For students in the IIP, the usual distribution requirements for graduation were waived, replaced by a web of courses they chose or created because the courses were related to interests that mattered deeply to them. The IIP was an invitation for the students' self to guide and participate in their education.  

Individual students over the years came to the program with interests in astronomy, painting, writing, music, genetics, architecture, medicine, international studies, film- making, mathematics, environmental science, computer science, marine biology. They built their curriculum around these centers of interest, which led them to a mixture of some traditional courses at the school, some courses at colleges or at other schools, some independent studies with professional mentors, and internships. These students created their own schedules, which usually involved work in their program not just during the regular class day but in the afternoon and evening, as well. And there were no grades. All assessments were narrative and included extensive narrative self-assessments by the students. The focus was on learning and on the students' development, not on grades. The students made decisions and choices for themselves. They were guided by advisors and professional mentors, but their choices determined the direction of their studies. Any mistakes in their decisions were theirs, as were the successes.  

Freed from the fear and loathing of grades, students in IIP learned to make their own decisions and developed the sort of confidence we all need. Two of the IIP graduates spoke for many others in the self-evaluations they wrote. The first was written by a visual artist, a painter:

This year I let go of a lot. I let go of having to mimic reality directly on my canvas. I let go of painting and drawing from photographs, a tool useful when beginning to paint and draw, but a tool that also hinders one's form of expression. I began painting from my mind and emotions. I let go of caring how so-and-so would react to a painting and started painting for myself. I gained self-confidence and realized that not everyone is always going to like my paintings . . . the clothes I wear . . . or even me.

The second was written by a dancer:

Beyond all of the skills and knowledge I've gained and beyond all the work I've accomplished, there is one thing I have gained this year that I only dreamed of last year and even this fall: self-confidence. I'm naturally a shy and easily intimidated person. I often have no confidence in myself and think the worst of everything I do. Often, I'm embarrassed to share my work with others in fear they will not like it and think I'm not good enough.  

I felt I needed someone else to decide what was good so that I wouldn't be wrong. It was as if I couldn't think for myself. I didn't trust myself. I guess I've always had this issue; I was so hung up on acceptance from others because I never accepted myself. I had it backward for the longest time. I thought acceptance from others would bring self- acceptance. Something was only good if others said it was.  

Somewhere in the middle of my [IIP] program, I found confidence. I stopped caring about the opinions of others and realized they wouldn't be able to accept me or like my work until I do. You and only you have the power to make yourself happy. This has been the ending of a three-year search for myself here at the Academy.  

You can't let someone tell you to have confidence and then have it. I had everyone from teachers to friends to therapists telling me I just needed to be confident in what I did. No matter how many times they told me, it wasn't enough. Compliments, good grades, long sincere one-on-one talks, no amount of positive reinforcement from other people could boost my confidence. You have to find it yourself. That's what [this school] has been trying to teach me. I need to discover things on my own, and it starts from within.

These are persuasive testimonies to the power of bringing the students' self into the classroom. These students become the sort that teachers long to teach: motivated, able to make meaning, skillful, knowledgeable, confident.  

Several years ago, I taught a student named Angela in honors junior English. We struggled together. I tried to teach her how to write, but I failed. The grade always stood between us. She was afraid of the grade and tried to please me so that I'd give her a good grade. Then, in her senior year, she became a music student in the IIP. Like many students who are given the freedom to design their own program of study, Angela followed paths connected to her central interest in music, though perhaps connections not immediately obvious to an outside observer. For example, she felt she needed to improve her writing; it was important to the future she envisioned for herself, which included writing lyrics. So she asked me to teach her an independent course in writing. I can't describe how much I enjoyed, I think we both enjoyed, that experience. We felt liberated from the tyranny and oppression of the grade. We focused on writing. She experimented. She wrote for herself about things that mattered to her. She read the work of good writers and became a stronger reader and thinker, and her writing improved dramatically. She became a scholar.  

The partnerships that characterize education in the IIP represent an ideal; not all high school students have discovered an area of real interest, though it might be revealing to examine whether this lack of deep interest is a function of American adolescence or the result of years of schooling that excludes the self of the student. But the fact remains: IIP isn't for everyone. (No single approach works for everyone, another truth we too easily and typically forget.) As a result, some of my colleagues continue to insist that the majority of adolescents need the schools we have created for them, and our job is to expose them to a variety of possible areas of study and to motivate them. My colleagues are both right and wrong. They are correct that adolescents benefit from experiencing the array of possibilities for study and careers, but the schools we have created, schools structured to coerce or cajole students to become passionate about the things that matter to teachers, are the reason we have so few motivated students. Each of us thinks our course — our passion — is the most important, the most meaningful, and most of us assign homework as though our course were the only one in which the students were enrolled. Those Spanish 3 students voiced the sorry results of the schools we have created for them.  

We can do better if we recognize that just as our passion became the source of our motivation, so their passion, once discovered, will be the source of their motivation. And since motivation is rooted in the needs, interests and emotions of the self, the key to tapping adolescent motivation is to create classrooms that welcome the emerging self of our young students. That is our job — not to motivate our students but to create circumstances and conditions that allow motivation and discovery to occur, to invent different ways to increase the likelihood that school will be emotionally relevant to students so that their studies begin to matter to them as much as what goes on in the halls and gym matters to them.  

In the last two decades, we have begun to learn more about how the brain works. And the more we learn, the more reasonable becomes the notion that students' emotions, past experiences, psychology, beliefs, knowledge — the amalgam we call the self — affect learning. Although it is too soon to draw definitive conclusions, some of the current research, particularly that of Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a neuroscientist with a doctorate in education who works at USC with Antonio Damasio, is provocative. Contrary to the traditional view that reason can be separated from emotion, Immordino-Yang and Damasio (and others) have found compelling evidence that, for the most part, they are inseparable. Meaningful learning may be the result of "emotional thinking." Their hypothesis is, "that emotion-related [neurological] processes are required for skills and knowledge to be transferred from the structured school environment to real-world decision making because they provide an emotional rudder to guide judgment and action." They go on to suggest,

First, neither learning nor recall happen in a purely rational domain, divorced from emotion, even though some of our knowledge will eventually distill into a moderately rational, unemotional form. Second, in teaching students to minimize the emotional aspects of their academic curriculum and function as much as possible in the rational domain, educators may be encouraging students to develop the sorts of knowledge that inherently do not transfer well to real-world situations. . . . [K]nowledge and reasoning divorced from emotional implications and learning lack meaning and motivation and are little use in the real world. (1)

Emotion fuels the brain; we engage in endeavors that are emotionally relevant to us. For our primitive ancestors, these endeavors — like finding food and shelter and eluding predators — involved physical survival. Today, though the jungle may be a more sophisticated sociocultural world and though survival may have a more prominent social aspect, the neural mechanisms remain the same. So adolescents, like the students in the Spanish class, master emotionally relevant knowledge that they can use, for example, to fit into a clique or protect themselves from the alpha bullies. And they learn emotionally relevant skills to manage massive amounts of emotionally irrelevant exercises so that they can achieve grades that will gain them admission to college. But the Spanish itself remains largely emotionally irrelevant, distant from the needs of the self. Some students, like Angela, find themselves: they discover a connection between a need emerging from the self and a school-sanctioned endeavor, at which point their education becomes emotionally relevant. The real world and the world of the self unite.

Even students who, unlike Angela, haven't discovered a passion that focuses their education can experience moments when the self and classroom material meet. I recall one such moment in my classroom. We were studying Hamlet, and a student named Will was struggling to talk about what the play meant to him. He fumbled with words and made little sense trying to use the standard English-class-speak about tragedy and tragic flaws that had been stuffed into him for years. So I and the other students kept asking him what he meant. Finally, there was a moment when his face flushed and he broke through a sort of mental constipation, and he said, ìYou know what this play is about? It's about this guy who worshipped his father, and his father was this distant, demanding perfectionist — this ‘Hyperion.' And Hamlet could never please his father, so he was probably closer to his mother, who was a lot warmer and approachable. And then his father dies and his mother turns all her attention to Claudius, and Hamlet has no one.î On and on he went, flipping through the pages of the text, reading lines that supported the emotional logic he had made of the play. He became excited and engaged for the first time in classroom literature. He was talking about the play, but the play was also a mirror in which he saw much of his own life. It was the emotional logic of his own experiences that made the play meaningful to him. Will's self had entered the classroom.

  Another important aspect of the self is the individual way that we perceive and understand the world and the problems that confront us. Not only must the problems be emotionally relevant to the self in order to motivate us to solve them but our perception of them, what they mean to us, influences or even creates their emotional relevance.

  In her research on two children, Nico, who had the right hemisphere of his brain removed, and Brooke, who had his left hemisphere removed, Immordino-Yang (2007) has suggested that people have differing profiles of cognitive strengths and weaknesses and that we tend to recruit our strengths and compensate for our weaknesses to understand and solve problems. As a result, a teacher and her students might understand and, therefore, attack a problem in subtly to widely differing ways, depending on their individual profiles:

. . . [E]ducators should think seriously about the problems they put to their students and the various neuropsychological ways that these problems could actually be interpreted and processed. What we intend as a simple math exercise, for example, could in essence be a verbal problem to one child, a spatial problem to another, and even an affective or social problem to a third, who may be thinking of the emotional implications of, say, the solution to a mathematics word problem.(2)

This theory could have important implications for the interactions between the teachers' and students' selves in the making of meaning. In its suggestion that teachers become more aware of the differing ways individuals understand the problems and explanations we present, it also provides insight into what might be the causes of the many communication problems that arise between teachers and students. 

In his book Successful Intelligence, Robert Sternberg tells a personal story that seems to illustrate the importance of understanding our students' ability to transform problems so that they can solve them. Sternberg describes the difficulty he had as a boy with spatial problems:

By the time I was in high school, though, a strange thing had happened. My scores on tests of spatial ability improved radically. . . Or so it seemed. Had my spatial ability improved? Not really. It was no better than it had been years before. But I had come to realize that many spatial-ability problems on these tests can be solved verbally rather than visually. In other words, instead of trying to visualize what, say, a set of forms would look like in another spatial position, I tried to talk the problems through to myself. I would describe the figures verbally and then try to match that description with the answer options.(3)

In Sternberg's description, I hear echoes of the student in the Spanish class who said that for him, "Speaking and writing are two different things. Speaking Spanish and writing Spanish are completely separate for me." Teachers with good spatial intelligence and teachers who cannot appreciate the difference between speaking and writing frequently tend not to understand students like Sternberg or that Spanish student. We become frustrated by students who fail to understand our "obvious" or "easy" assignments. If we don't understand how a student perceives a problem and dismiss her attempts to solve it, we only succeed in making the problem emotionally irrelevant and in alienating her self from the classroom.  

These illustrations reinforce my belief that we need to design schools that intentionally include the students' self in their education — include their experiences, their emotions, their profile of cognitive strengths, their perceptions of the world and of problems, their evolving sense of who they are and what they believe. The old days of assuming that schools can isolate and address a rational portion of the whole and transform it into an echo of the teachers who lecture it may at last be finished.  

In her essay on Nico and Brooke, Immordino-Yang also observed that "their families and teachers may have played a major role in their recoveries [from their hemispherectomies], through allowing these boys the freedom to actively engage in their own learning, without restricting them to preconceived notions about how they would function or recover after surgery." We teachers typically approach students with preconceived notions, derived from our sense of self (how we function, what we need, what we understand). Too infrequently do we allow the freedom for students to engage in their own learning, even though we think we do. Watching Nico and Brooke approach problems, attempting to understand their perceptions, listening and responding to their needs allowed the teachers to become partners with the boys in meaningful and successful learning — an approach very similar to the relationship between teacher and student in the IIP.  Students and teachers, self-serving partners in learning — seems like a slam-dunk.  

Notes

1.    Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen and Antonio Damasio (2007). ìWe Feel, Therefore We Learn: The Relevance of Affective and Social Neuroscience to Education.î Mind, Brain, and Education 1 (1), 3-10.
2.    Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen (2007). "A Tale of Two Cases: Lessons for Education From the Study of Two Boys Living With Half Their Brains." Mind, Brain, and Education 1 (2), 66-83.
3.    Sternberg, Robert. Successful Intelligence, Plume (1997).

______________________________

Alden (Denny) Blodget (BA, MFA) is director of Sustainable Teaching, offering online professional development and support to teachers in their first four years of teaching. He was a teacher and administrator for 38 years. He taught theatre and English, created and chaired the arts department at Taft School (Connecticut), chaired the arts department at Packer Collegiate Institute (New York) and was assistant head of school for 18 years at Lawrence Academy (Massachusetts). Since 2000, he has worked with Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang creating workshops for teachers to explore the implications of her research for the classroom. He has written several articles for Independent School magazine (National Association of Independent Schools publication) and other publications.

Denny has spent his life in the educational reform movement and led the transformation of Lawrence Academy’s curriculum and teaching methods that resulted in innovations that attracted national attention from other schools. He serves on the Board of Trustees for The Long Trail School in Vermont and is a guardian ad litem for the Family and District Courts of Rutland County (Vermont), representing abused and delinquent children.

There's Gambling in Our Ed Assessment Casablanca?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:11:36 +0000

Yesterday's release of the National Center for Education Statistics' report Mapping State Proficiency Standards Onto National Assessment of Education Progress Scales: 2005-2007 seemed like it was almost lifted from the movie Casablanca. We are shocked, shocked to learn that many states' "standards" are hardly standards at all. For years, we've been reading about how student proficiency on state exams has been on the rise, while NAEP scores have remained virtually stagnant. Now, NCES paints a grim picture of the situation, demonstrating that most states are below or only meet the basic learning standards established by NAEP.

How can that be? The cynic in us says that states have been downgrading their state assessments to meet NCLB and AYP expectations. As they need to demonstrate year-on-year gains in math and reading, they've had to readjust their tests and their scoring scales to demonstrate such gains. It is why we hear that, according to state data, students in Alabama beat students in Massachusetts when it comes to reading proficiency. Of course, there is no telling what those numbers would look like if Bay Staters were taking Alabama's state test instead of their own MCAS. The full NCES study can be found here.

Perhaps the strongest statement on the NCES report came from Congressman George Miller, the chairman of the House Education Committee. In response to the latest data comparisons, Miller said: "The quality of a child's education should not be determined by their zip code. It is unacceptable that many states have chosen to lower the bar rather than strive for excellence. This means that many students aren't even expected to rise to meet rigorous standards — they are allowed to linger in a system that doesn't challenge them to do better and doesn't help them to develop the complex skills and knowledge needed to succeed in the jobs of the future."

These are strong words from the man who is in charge of managing reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act next year, the Congressman who will ultimately decide the future of AYP, the adoption of core standards, and the development of the assessments and data systems to track against those standards. And they are right on the money. Effective assessment has hardly been a strong suit in U.S. public education, particularly considering the rough patchwork that has long made up our testing systems. That's why so many people are providing a big bear hug to the notion of common core standards. In the pursuit of a better mousetrap, we hope that core standards provide a common baseline for all assessment, regardless of the state administering the exam. If we accept the concept of core standards, it means that fourth grade reading proficiency means the same thing in Alabama as it does in Massachusetts, the same in Texas as it is in Oregon. And if the we are all working off the same standards, in theory, we should all have similar benchmarks by which to measure proficiency. Proficient is proficient.

But if we are moving from the promise of core standards to the realization of common expectations, we can't overlook some of the core realities that underly the data. Yes, we should be appalled that proficiency percentages on state exams don't track well with NAEP proficiencies. But we should be equally appalled (if not more so) by what NAEP itself tells us.

As Eduflack has discussed before, the eighth grade reading NAEP has long been considered the best measure of true student achievement. It provides a strong longitudinal approach to learning (as kids have been taught reading four eight years), and those reading skills are essential to success in other academic subjects. We look at Massachusetts, with the highest eighth grade NAEP scores, and see it as the gold standard in reading proficiency. But only 43 percent of Massachusetts eighth graders score proficient or better on the reading NAEP. Is that really the bar we want to set, where nearly six in 10 students are scoring below proficient? Is that the best we can do, or the best to which we aspire?

Core standards will only take us so far. At some point, we have to raise our game when it comes to both teaching and learning, ensuring that all students are gaining the skills and knowledge necessary to both hit the mark on the requisite assessments and achieve when it comes to both college and career opportunities. Standards only mean so much if we aren't achieving the goals they set forth.

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Patrick R. Riccards is CEO of Exemplar Strategic Communications, an education reform and organizational positioning consultancy working with partners such as American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, International Society for Technology in Education, KnowledgeWorks Foundation, the Pennsylvania STEM Initiative, and Stanford University. Patrick is also author of Eduflack, an online commentary about effective education communications.

The Connection Between Life and Death

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:36:43 +0000

A disturbance over the Rockies a few days ago resulted in a storm developing over us in the next few hours.

A 23 pound striped bass just ate some sand eels a few hours ago--she's hungry, and she knows she's about to make a long journey south. She knows nothing of North Carolina, but she will spend the winter off its coast.

In another universe, the weather would be grand tomorrow, and the 1st Annual Doyle Striped Ass Bass Bash would go on as scheduled, and the she-bass above would be caught, clubbed, bled, then eaten with much joy and beer.

But she will live.

And because she lives, a few thousand more sand eels will die while wriggling in her belly.

That's how it works. Really.
***

Yesterday I mentioned Hansel and Gretel in class--a lot of my lambs did not know the story.

Today I mentioned Tithonus--he was granted immortality, but forgot to ask for youth. I was messing around with the class, talking about some technological "advancement" that was likely to occur after I die. I welcome death. Not today, but someday.

Hey, it's biology class.

I have to be careful--I do not want to frighten children. I do not want them to cower in a corner. Still, this is biology. Organisms live. Organisms die. We have plenty of people selling immortality. I'd be remiss if I failed to mention death in a class studying life.

We are afraid of what we know to be true.
***

Getting older is weird--I am shocked every time I look in a mirror.

As strange as it is, though, the biology is fascinating. Death is fascinating. It's scary when you focus on the "you" in you, less so when you focus on life in general. Still scary, though.

I am charged by the state of New Jersey to teach biology, the study of life. Our culture assumes immortality.

Religion has no place in the science classroom, but I think death does, at least in biology class. Death cannot be approached without religion in its most basic sense.

What to do, what to do? Do what's in the best interests of the children.

So I teach death.
***

So a sand eel survives. On Sunday, a day it does not recognize as the Sabbath, it will eat plankton. Or rather, it will eat thousands of tiny, individual organisms lumped as "plankton" because we, humans, see tiny organisms in the sea as insignificant.

Each organism matters, or it does not. Life matters, or it does not. Pure logic.

That we, humans, choose to lump individual organisms in a category such as "plankton" or "algae" or "animal" to reduce groups to something less than us may be one of the characteristics that defines what we are.

I have no idea why we are here or why, but I spend most of my moments in bliss, happy to be alive.

Two days ago, as I was walking to school, I was steaming about some hypothetical situation, and a crow flew overhead.

It cawed. In joy. (My evidence? Little, I know, but I recognize joy--if you cannot recognize joy, you'd have stop reading my words long ago.)

A mid-October morning, about 65 degrees Fahrenheit, and I get a needed kick in the ass from a crow.
***

You are not special. You will die, too.

So live.

______________________________

Michael Doyle was very briefly a longshoreman, briefly a lab tech in a booze plant, more recently a pediatrician in the projects, now a high school biology teacher. Keep up with him on his blog, Science Teacher.

Online Teachers and Online Training of Teachers

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:01:18 +0000

According to an article in eSchool News, online programs are seeing a dramatic spike in teaching applications.

Specifically, K12, Inc. and Connections Academy are reporting massive spikes in applications, and the article theorizes that it’s because of the layoffs in the traditional brick-and-mortar schools. There are some other contributors as well—such as specialists like mathematicians wanting to share their knowledge and teachers who are seeking a change.

I can’t say I’m all that surprised. As online learning continues to grow rapidly even as there is contraction in the traditional system, there will be more jobs available in online, and for certain people—although certainly not all—online teaching presents a more attractive career path for a variety of reasons (the ones cited above, flexibility, etc.).

Additionally, there is an interesting piece in Education Week that is an interview with Chris Dede, a professor of learning technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. When Professor Dede speaks, I make it a matter of habit to try and listen (or read in this case!), and this interview doesn’t disappoint as he talks about both the current state of and the future of online professional development in a short piece.

As I’ve noted before, professional development is in fact a big area of nonconsumption in many districts and presents an exciting place to provide potentially much more useful, just-in-time training to teachers that matches with the need they have in a format that will be most effective for them.

Professor Dede paints a richer, more nuanced picture—from the current challenges facing online professional development and why simply converting face-to-face professional development to an online format doesn’t make sense to the types of customization, interaction, and reflection that are possible in this world. In addition, he sees that, in this case, the market seems to be working and pushing online professional development to improve. He also believes that two factors—the need for scale in professional development and the need for fundamentally more affordable models—as a big drive for why online professional development will evolve and grow rapidly in the years ahead.

Also, one note — watch the video of Professor Dede where he talks about our book. I actually don’t see this as a disagreement at all, as readers of this blog will know. We don’t say in the book that schools will go out of business in the book as Professor Dede asserts. That’s why it’s called Disrupting Class–not Disrupting Schools.

______________________________

This post originally appeared on Innosight Institute's Web site. The author, Michael B. Horn, is the Executive Director of Education at Innosight Institute and the coauthor of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change The Way the World Learns along with Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M. Christensen and Curtis W. Johnson, president of the Citistates Group.

Why Web 2.0 Teaching Is Hard

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:25:50 +0000

This blog post is for Gerry Paille from British Columbia (http://twitter.com/tuchodi) who asked me on Twitter to explain a tweet about that Web 2.0 teaching is not easy. Here, Gerry, I Hope this is something you can use.

When you play basketball yourself - you work on your shot and you practice. You're in your own mind - your own head.

But then, one day you grow older and become a coach. Now, you have to get in the minds of other people. You have to not only understand basketball but psychology and team dynamics, motivational speaking, and the technical aspects of equipment. You have to not only see a player for what he/she is today but for what he/she could be. (Like how much are they going to grow in 3 years.) You have to put people in the best place that suits the team and not necessarily the person. It is a much more complex task than just managing yourself.

This particular example embodies why using Web 2 in teaching can be more challenging than the traditional test and lecture because you are moving from just speaking and giving a lecture and having them memorize and take a test to methods that require much more individualization and personalization as well as more collaboration. Each person has to ENGAGE. They have to JOIN. They have to WRITE.

They are moving to a more active tense which quite honestly, can make the teacher TENSE.

"Mrs. Vicki, I cannot join the space? Mrs. Vicki, I cannot find anything? Mrs. Vicki, what do I do? Mrs. Vicki, I am lost? Mrs. Vicki Mrs. Vicki?"

(Most teachers have nightmares where their name is called over and over and they don't know why.)

You are evolving into a coach.

Now, good teachers can be coaches and not use Web 2.0 tools, however, if you are using Web 2.0 in the classroom you HAVE to be a coach.

You cannot do it for them (the golden rule is that I never touch the mouse) - you have to teach THEM how to do it. (Isn't that what we are supposed to do anyway?)

This, my friends, is why I tweeted the other day that if anyone thinks using Web 2.0 in teaching is easy is not doing Web 2.0 teaching. Web 2.0 teaching gets past the tools (signing up and USING the tools for the sake of the tools) and allows the tools to mash together to create learning experiences.

This is not something any of us have perfected, I think. (For example, I fell flat on my face trying to work out with my students using some of the Skype extras this week and wasted at least 20 minutes!) However, this is something we aspire to!

So, using Web 2.0 tools in teaching is not easy but it is worth it.

It is worth it in engagement and thinking skills and the polish that comes from being buffed and buffeted by the sandpaper of the problems we face any time technology is involved.

The world we live in is full of change, technology, problems, frustration, and lots and lots of people and these are things you cannot condense to words and put in a textbook but are only written upon the textbook of experience when you engage students in positive learning experiences online.

______________________________

Vicki Davis is a teacher and the IT director at Westwood Schools in Camilla, Georgia. Vicki co-created three award winning international wiki-centric projects, the Flat Classroom project, the Horizon project, and Digiteen with teacher Julie Lindsay, currently at Qatar Academy. These projects have linked more than 500 students from both public and private schools in such countries as Austria, Australia, Bangladesh, China, Japan, Spain, Qatar and the US. These collaborative projects harnessing the most powerful Web 2.0 tools available including wikis, blogs, digital storytelling, podcasts, social bookmarking, and more. Vicki is a cofounder of the Women of Web 2 and has been featured in various media including Thomas Friedman's book, The World is Flat, the Wall Street Journal, and the Boston Globe.

Vicki blogs at the Cool Cat Teacher blog, which has been an edublog award finalist for Best Teacher blog for the last two years and is currently ranked the top teacher blog in the world according to Technorati. Vicki is a Google Certified Teacher and Discovery S.T.A.R. Educator. She lives in Camilla, Georgia with her three children and husband, Kip.

Vicki published her first book in Fall of 2008 entitled ClickSmart about the holistic method of teaching software that she uses in her classroom. This method enables her to teach a wide variety of software programs and build technical fluency and digital savvy that continues to distinguish her students in their global projects. Vicki is also a freelance writer and conference presenter.

Finally, Some Motivation That Works

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:26:00 +0000

I think I have finally struck upon some valid motivation for one of my super-low kids!!

Let me explain the back-story. This kid is heavy-set, academically low, a talker, a player, a does-not-pay-attentioner, and generally all-around "slug." On the first math test, this kid got a 20-something. On the second math test, he got a 17. And these were not hard math tests, or unfair tests. He just was not trying at all, and it showed.

Conversely, a lot of my other kids HAVE been picking it up and trying harder. I am finally starting to get through to them that paying attention and doing their work the way we practice in class really CAN help them get the right answers and get better grades.

In my morning class, every single one of my kids who had scored low on the first test dramatically improved their grade on the second test, and the kids who had done well on the first test, also did well on the second.

In my afternoon class, which contains the "slug" (and several others), there wasn't quite the same dramatic results, but there were a few kids who improved and several others who passed both tests.

So I decided to make a really big deal about this. At the very beginning of school, I had gotten stacks of "Buy one adult meal, get a kid's meal free" cards from Denny's, Golden Corral, and Popeye's. So I took the time to fill them out with the kids' names, my name, our school name, etc along with the phrase "Math Improvement!" if they had improved their score, or "Math Skills!" if they had passed both tests.

I gave these out on Tuesday. Everybody in my first class got one, and they loved it. Somewhere around 60% of my second class got one, as there were still several kids with very poor grades.

On Wednesday, my "slug" started paying attention. He was raising his hand to answer questions. Correctly!! He brought the homework in on Thursday morning with work shown and completed. The kids took the 6-weeks cumulative assessment on Thursday, and this kid, while not having everything correct, had work shown for every question. He had labeled his coins, he had shown me his addition when he needed to, he had drawn place value charts.

When I graded the tests, I found that this "slug" -- who had made a 20-something on his first test, and a 17 on the second -- had scored an 80 on the 6-weeks test. An EIGHTY!!

Now maybe the planets aligned just right for him to finally get with the program. Maybe something I said about effort finally seeped through.

But I have a feeling it was the idea of free food that finally jump-started his engine.

And you know what, I'm ok with that.

Somebody will definitely be getting a Golden Corral coupon come Monday morning.

_____________________________

About John Pearson

I used to be a design engineer. Now I'm a 3rd grade math teacher. Conference calls have been replaced with parent conferences. Product testing has given way to standardized testing. Instead of business cards, I now pass out report cards. The only thing that hasn’t changed noticeably is the maturity level of the people surrounding me all day.

Read more from John at his blog, Learn Me Good.

Should we ban private schools to improve education?

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:33:07 +0000

Outlaw private schools now to save U.S. education.

Bangladesh school needs English teacher and principal

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:33:45 +0000

We are looking for a volunteer English teacher and a retired person or couple for the position of Principal for our new study centre in Sylhet , Bangladesh . The centre runs O level and A level curriculum for the prospective students. Though the centre runs with commercial attitude, it also has a social objective in its business plan. The centre sponsors education expenses for the children in need from its income. We plan to help 200 children every year gradually.

Sylhet is a very beautiful place with its scenic beauty. The city is situated by the river Surma and surrounded by many tea gardens. It is a city with all the modern facilities from international airport to modern medical facilities. To mention, 80% of the British Bangladeshis are from Sylhet.

We aim to provide our volunteer teachers with private flat, maid, local transportation and food allowance for free.

We would be grateful if your company can help us getting suitable persons for us please.

Hope to hearing from you soon.

Thank you,

Regards,

Suvagoto Das
tilottoma_sylhet@yahoo.com

The Importance of Learning English

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:59:45 +0000

This is a question that Mexican students have been asking their teachers for many years. Lately, college students have realised that they have to learn English for some important reasons. Nowadays, Mexican students are asking for English as a subject in their curricula. They have encountered a serious dilemma because everytime they need to learn about a cutting-edge technology the best journals are in English, as well as the most innovative textbooks. In addition, Mexico has very important touristic sites and 90% of the tourists speak English.

So, why aren't the education authorities adding English to the curriculas? That's a mystery. Due to the fact that our main student population hasn't got the resources to pay for special tutoring, they need to study languages as a part of the college curricula. English is part of the high school curricula in Mexico, unfortunately it's not enough. Students acquire a basic knowledge in English which doesn't allow them to communicate.

I have been teaching English for 33 years. I teach it "as a tool". This means that I give a meaning to learning this language. Everytime, we learn a new pattern, a new tense, a new set of vocabulary words; I set a goal to using this new knowledge. It can be as simple as meeting people at a disco or as complex as writing a research paper.
Nowadays, it's easy to find a use for English. People love films, music, internet; and finding out about everday breakthroughs in science and technology is a thrill.

I hope that one day Mexican teachers unite to work for the benefit of students instead of for staying in their comfort zone.
Alejandra Cabrera

Report urges end to extra pay for Master's degrees

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:05:50 +0000

By Stephen Sawchuk

States are spending billions in education dollars each year rewarding teachers for earning advanced degrees that show little correlation with improved student achievement, a report released yesterday concludes.

The policy of giving teachers salary “bumps” after they earn master’s degrees in education “is in the drinking water everywhere, but we know the relationship between the degree and student achievement is nonexistent,” said Raegen T. Miller, a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank.

Mr. Miller co-wrote the policy brief—one in a series on school financing in the economic downturn—with Marguerite Roza, a professor at the Center for Reinventing Public Education at University of Washington, in Seattle.

By decoupling such degrees from salary schedules, states and districts could free up funding for other types of compensation policies that might promote student achievement, the authors suggest in the report.

The brief arrives even as transformation of teacher-compensation systems rises to the top of the national agenda, propelled by the $200 million in additional money provided through the federal economic-stimulus package.

Read the rest of the article here.

Moral Education

Wed, 20 May 2009 01:52:45 +0000

In what ways are elementary and secondary teachers most effective at teaching morality, ethics, and social responsibility in the classroom? How do teachers create a foundation of ethical responsibility for children at an early age to mitigate the destructive influences of entitlement and moral relativism?

Teacher Appreciation

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:01:54 +0000

Sometimes I need a little inspiration about the value of teaching/teachers. I like to google "quotes about teachers and teaching" and then quickly link to those inspirations. I also used these in thank you notes to my own children's teachers to let them know how much I appreciated them.

In today's climate of budget cutting here is one that I have used in correspondence with political officials and voters who don't understand that we really are NOT wasting resources in our public schools--we educate ALL children. Special needs kids, illegal non-English speaking kids, poor kids, troubled kids...and it costs money. However, here is the alternative: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
Andy McIntyre

Whatever happened to Art?

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 23:51:16 +0000

My most memorable memories of when I was in school were the classes where I got to draw or paint. It is a very calming technique to keep your kids quiet and also to clear their minds of any stress and worries. I also remember going home and showing it to my parents and thinking how great it was that they liked my drawings. Art is a technique that should be kept in classroom today.

Snacks in the classroom

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:06:24 +0000

What do you think about having snacks in the classroom for kindergartners? Is that in place now, and if it's not, would it be a good idea to keep kids attention?

Can you teach on Facebook?

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:06:58 +0000

Much debate has arised lately on the benefits of utilizing Facebook, and other potential social network sites, for educational purposes. Have you had the experience of either teaching in this environment or in being a student in this environment? What are your thoughts on social network sites being used in education?

Name Recognition

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:36:50 +0000

With each new school year, or each new class, I would make sure that I knew all the student's names by the end of the first day.

This was beneficial in two main ways:

1. It let the student's know that they were important to me.
2. It helped with classroom management. It's easier to say, "Johnny, please read the next paragraph", instead of, "You, yes you, in the second row wearing a red shirt, please read the next paragraph."