My Teaching Goal For The Next Four Years: A Minor Musing On The Moral Question Facing Teachers

A while back, PNR posted this quotation:

For the conservative, people are an asset — in the coldest economic terms, a potentially productive unit of labor. For the progressive, people are a liability — a mouth to be fed, a problem in need of a solution. Understanding that difference of perspective renders understandable the sometimes wildly different views that conservatives and progressives have about things like employment policy. For the conservative, the value of a job is what the worker produces; for the progressive, the value of a job is what the worker is paid.

At the time it struck me that conservatives and liberals are my cats at different times of the day. To them, I'm a unit of labor necessary to provide food, clean the litter box, and scratch behind their ears. I'm also a problem that needs to be solved when they try to wake me up to get kitty treats every morning.

I also wondered whether how self-proclaimed Christian conservatives squared the analysis in the quotation with the belief that humans are created in God's image. I shrugged off that question, mused that I believe that Kant's idea that humans should be treated as ends unto themselves rather than means to an end is superior to utilitarianism, and went on with my day.

That quotation came back to me yesterday as I was sitting in an in-service-- professional development a really boring training session over the Charolette Danielson model for teacher evaluation. Danielson and the Common Core, for that matter, view teachers as a unit of labor whose sole purpose is to produce other units of labor. As one of my colleagues said, there's no idea of what it means to become an educated person in any of this model.

As I sat there, I came to the distinct conclusion that the real moral question that education has created for teachers is rather simple: How does one teach within these models or under the Core without producing students who chant mindless aphorisms such as "Four legs good, two legs bad" or "I must work harder."

Harrison Ford Would Have Made A Great Teacher

His finger pointing skills demonstrate both variety and depth.

A Minor Musing Wherein I Ask Advice About Teaching

I'm getting ready for the upcoming school year. As always, I want students to learn to write more concisely. (Insert your own "Do as I say, not as I do joke here.).

This morning Alan Jacobs, a Baylor University professor, tweeted the following series that made me think about trying to use Twitter as a tool.

Trying to put complex ideas in a series of 140 character sentences requires careful word choices especially if one cannot use "2" for "to" or "b4" for "before." Jacobs illustrates that one can easily create a series of events that can become a paragraph. Certainly dealing with Pascal or reducing a key thinker's main idea to a tweet requires careful thought.

Further, Twitter seems to be growing as primary source of news. Major news sources tweet, post, and broadcast simultaneously. One can certainly gauge reactions to events by following trending hash tags.

On the other hand, most people seem to believe that Twitter is still reserved for status updates: "I'm watching Colin Cowherd on ESPNU, writing a blog post, and petting my cat." That perception will cause a few emails to be sent to the boss's office. Further, unless things have changed dramatically, web filters will block Twitter and getting anything unblocked takes God, Congress, and 47 scissors to cut the mountain of red tape. YouTube became available for teachers at my school last just last year.

So Jacobs makes a great point, but I'm left with questions. Are parents willing to accept their students using Twitter or do parents believe it's the ultimate time waster? Most importantly, is it worth the effort to get Twitter unblocked so that I can use it in the classroom?

Wanting More Than Just The Facts

Over at Madville, Homeschool Dad (H.D.) makes a comment asserting the Common Core will threaten how history is taught:

Yes, the logic is the important thing, but so are the political ramifications. We cannot allow big government to change our history books to say something other than what actually happened.

H.D. seems to be saying he's a fan of Joe Friday and wants "just the facts." Facts, however, rarely exist in a vacuum. Writing at Ten Miles Square, Keith Humphreys gives the following quiz that illustrates the point:

Which US President dramatically cut federal criminal penalties for marijuana possession, was a forceful advocate for expanded food stamps and affirmative action, and worked closely with Congress to create the Environmental Protection Agency?
(a) John F. Kennedy
(b) Lyndon Johnson
(c) Jimmy Carter
(d) Richard Nixon

The share of GDP devoted to social spending increased from 22% to an unprecedented 26.7% in just the first three years of what UK Prime Minister’s Rule?
(a) Clement Atlee
(b) Ramsay MacDonald
(c) David Lloyd George
(d) John Major

As governor, he signed a bill that expanded access to legal abortion, over two million of which subsequently occured [sic] on his watch. He also passed the biggest tax increase in the history of his state. Who was he?
(a) Mario Cuomo
(b) Patrick Lucey
(c) Terry Sanford
(d) Ronald Reagan

As President, he delighted the wealthiest Americans by pushing for a decrease in the top income tax rate from 91% to 65%
(a) Ronald Reagan
(b) Gerald Ford
(c) Calvin Coolidge
(d) John F. Kennedy

After their election in 2010, the UK Conservative-LibDem coalition inherited a record annual government spending level of about 670 billion pounds. They introduced what was widely termed “austerity” fiscal policy, with government spending in the first year doing what?
(a) Decreasing by about 70 billion pounds
(b) Decreasing by about 40 billion pounds
(c) Decreasing by about 10 billion pounds
(d) Increasing by about 20 billion pounds

The correct answer to each question is (d). Kennedy cut taxes; Nixon increased government aid to poor people, and Reagan made it easier to get abortions. None of the facts mean anything without some context. All can be used or twisted to prove political points.

I'm not a fan of the Core, but the assertion one must teach only facts has always troubled me just as much as the Core does. Knowing what happened without knowing why an event happened or the implications resulting from the event is just as dangerous as knowing nothing

Sunday Confession: Wrath At A Fellow Teacher Edition

Bless me readers, for this morning I have committed the sin of wrath. I read these paragraphs:

A high school English teacher in New York state who had students pretend to be Jew-hating Nazis in a writing assignment has been placed on leave.

The teacher at Albany high school caused a storm of criticism after having students practice the art of persuasive writing by penning a letter to a fictitious Nazi government official arguing that "Jews are evil".

I had a moment of charity when I thought that this is a rookie teacher, but "[t]he district has not named the teacher, who was described as a veteran."

It was at that point that I uttered "how can anyone be so stupid and still breathe?" I may also have used a few words that are not safe for work, but I did not take the Lord's name in vain.

The goals of the assignment could have been met with a dozens of  prompts that do not smack of antisemitism.

For the assignment, the teacher asked students to research Nazi propaganda, then write a letter trying to convince an official of the Third Reich "that Jews are evil and the source of our problems".

"Review in your notebooks the definitions for logos, ethos, and pathos," the teacher's assignment said. "Choose which argument style will be most effective in making your point. Please remember, your life (here in Nazi Germany in the30s) may depend on it!"

Perhaps, the teacher should have read this recent New York Times article and learned that Nazis along with many regular citizens did not need much convincing:

Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.

“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were everywhere.”

Although Hitler's Willing Executioners has been criticized as hyperbolic, the book makes the point more forcefully.

A bit of research and a little common sense would have prevented this whole situation.

A Minor Musing: NCAA Brackets, Horoscopes, And The Classroom

John Spencer teaches "a sixth-grade ELL teacher in an urban, Title One School" in Arizona school. In a recent post he discusses the small victories of teaching. One stuck out:

Two students talk to me before school, asking about the NCAA Tournament brackets. It wouldn't seem like a big deal, except for the fact that they spoke no English at the beginning of the year. Both students worked far harder as students than I worked as a teacher.

Everyone who walks into my classroom speaks English. And yet, I have students ask me to help "put things in regular English." This past Friday, during study hall (yes, we still have study hall, but that's a post for a different day), a student brought up the local paper and asked me to help with the following passage:

Recognize the importance of indulging a loved one. Your positive attitude, coupled with the fact that it is Friday, helps you create the optimism and cheerful attitude you like to exude and also receive. Choose the right invitation for you. Tonight: In the whirlwind of life.

Even horoscopes can be a difficult read for some students. It wasn't "regular English."

I suppose some will suggest that I should have made sure that the student had all his homework done before giving him the "privilege" of reading the newspaper. At least one South Dakota blogger will accuse me of promoting some sort of UNESCO plot to take over schools because I helped a high school student learn what "indulge," "optimism," and "exude" mean when used in context. I'm sure some teachers will point out that  I didn't take full advantage of the teachable moment by having him sit down and and write an essay explaining if learning to use vocabulary a little better made him "exude optimism."

That being said a student came to a teacher to learn something; it doesn't matter if it's NCAA brackets or a horoscope. Spencer concludes his post:

So, when someone asks me about our achievement levels, I'm not going to spout off a bunch of test scores. I'm going to talk about achievement. Real achievement. The kind that lasts beyond the sixth grade. And I'm going to recognize that even if I was a part of the process, my students worked incredibly hard to pull it off.

He gets it right. The real achievement is the work students do to learn.

Please, Please, Please Let This Become An Educational Trend

Writing at College Guide, Keith Humphreys points to a college text book innovation.

Everyone who has spent time on campus has had to buy a "Big Book of Everything [that] is incredibly handy both for established experts and students"  because . . . they’ve got everything in them . . . ." Of course everyone who has had to carry one of the books across campus can attest that the BBoEs "are as portable as anvils and they cost a mint.":

Humphreys reports that at least one publisher is willing to change that:

Enter an innovation of which I just learned after agreeing to write a chapter in a forthcoming Big Book of Everything: The publisher is going to let each buyer order the subset of chapters he or she wants rather than hawking the work as an all-or-nothing venture.

The high school BBoEs aren't quite as big nor quite as expensive, but the difference is not that great. Besides, high school freshmen and sophomores are much smaller than college students. I haven't done a scientific study, but I'd be willing to bet that most high school students are carrying more pounds of books per pound of body weight than most college students carry.

As an English teacher, I would love being able to buy only the short stories and poems I knew I was going to teach. Now a lot of students are carrying around a huge book that I can't possibly get through in a semester. Given shrinking budgets, this innovation would be a Godsend. Further, Kindles, Nooks, and tablets of all sorts are becoming ubiquitous. Being able to purchase electronic licenses for the book chapters or stories one needs to teach and loading them on these devices seems to be rare act of common sense.

If this idea catches on at the college level, it should eventually trickle down to the high school level. I may be able to customize at least one textbook before I retire.

A Minor Musing About Parent/Teachers' Conferences

I had 21 parents visit me last night. Their students had a combined GPA of 3.4 in my classes. Four of the students earned Cs; five earned Bs; twelve earned As. I have concerns about two who I believe were were not working to the best of their ability.

I expect another 20 or 30 parents to visit me during another round of conferences later this week. The GPA of their students will be similar to the GPA of the students whose parents visited me last night. I will see the parents of 2 or 3 more underperforming students

I know correlation doesn't equal causation, but those numbers have held true for the past 15 years. I'm not going to argue that schools do not have to improve. I'm going to point out that most successful students have help at home that many struggling students don't have. I'm also going to contend Common Core or whatever the reform de jour will be next year is not going to help struggling students who don't have parental support catch up with successful students who do.

Quotation Of The Day: Kids Are Smart Edition

From his Rolling Stone interview, President Barack Obama spells out what every teacher knows:

“You know, kids have good instincts,” Obama offered. “They look at the other guy and say, ‘Well, that’s a bullshitter, I can tell.’”

Quotation Of The Day: What Education Reformers Don't Get Edition

John T. Spencer gets what every ed reformer does not:

I'm struck by the fact that the biggest things I believe about education are not practical, theoretical or even pedagogical. They're more spiritual than anything else: the notion of kids as both amazing and broken, the idea of humility as the best method of leadership, the notion of learning as a holistic process; being progressive and hopeful and yet respecting the voices of the past.

Nearly every education reform, including Referred Law 16 begins with the premise that kids are means to make rich people richer. The people proposing them are arrogant enough to believe that they know more about students than people who have been in the classroom for decades. They believe that students need know only what's on the test that Pearson or some other textbook company publishes. The past matters only when it doesn't confront reformers with the truth: the virtue in most request is conformity.

Sometimes Learning Is Hard

A fellow staff member came into my room just after the bell rang because to show me this cartoon. I expect a dozen students to show it to me before the day is over. Every student who has taken one of my classes in the past 10 years has probably had this image in their mind as I have threatened defenestration for some minor infraction.




I didn't ask for permission; the original can be found here.

 Alan Jacobs quotes Orwell while musing about the same principle when discussing learning how to write well:

And then, as is typical of Orwell at his best, comes the unexpected kicker:

It is a mistake to think such methods do not work. They work very well for their special purpose. Indeed, I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried on without corporal punishment. The boys themselves believed in its efficacy. There was a boy named Beacham, with no brains to speak of, but evidently in acute need of a scholarship. Sambo was flogging him towards the goal as one might do with a foundered horse. He went up for a scholarship at Uppingham, came back with a consciousness of having done badly, and a day or two later received a severe beating for idleness. ‘I wish I’d had that caning before I went up for the exam,’ he said sadly — a remark which I felt to be contemptible, but which I perfectly well understood.

I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried on without corporal punishment. What a terrible thing to say — but what if it’s true? What if there are certain valuable skills that children aren’t going to learn unless we let Sambo have his riding crop and the nuns their hand-smacking rulers? I wouldn’t make that choice — I wouldn’t let some sadist with a riding crop within a mile of young boys, and I wouldn’t let the nuns have their beloved rulers back — but the belief that certain unpleasant rote-oriented skills can be learned without strong negative reinforcement may be a wish-fulfillment fantasy.

I don't want to use a hand-smacking ruler. Jokingly threatening defenestration is far better than actually carrying out a real defenestration. I have to agree, however, sometimes learning can be a difficult process, and teachers harm their credibility if they deny the truth of that fact to themselves or their students.

Why Don't Billionaires And Politicians Want Students To Think?

Jan Carr, a self described "scrappy public school mom" points out that real education is more than a bubble test; she rightfully asserts that a complete education is "inextricably entwined with books, literature, writing, and the life of the mind; it develops critical thinking." She also asks some questions I would like to hear answered:

For me, many years later, the task is this: determine the bias of those currently attempting to bury our public education system in data and testing requirements. One motivation is obvious: there’s profit to be made. If education can be wrested from the classroom – from teachers, principals, and other actual educators – and the focus shifted to cold data and analysis, then tech companies and faux educational corporations can gorge themselves at the public trough. Hey, if it looks like greed and smells like greed, it’s greed! But there’s another, underlying motivation. It seems no accident that prominent among those who would hijack our nation’s public education system are powerful billionaires such as Eli Broad, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, and Rupert Murdoch. . . . Why do they want students reduced to a string of data, our kids to fill in bubbles, not learn to think? Perhaps because kids who think critically will ask questions, key questions. For instance, why is there an increasing and radical disparity of wealth in our nation? And who exactly controls our nation’s political system now that corporations are free not only to pour money into lobbying, but also to anonymously contribute boatloads of bucks to political campaigns?

To have a real democracy one needs an educated populace. Why don’t these billionaires want our kids to think critically? And why are they trying to bust the union that serves and protects our nation’s schools? What exactly are they afraid of?

HT: Diane Ravitch

Quotation Of The Day: Educational Gurus Edition

Richard Feynman takes a look at gurus:

If your guru fails to meet these minimal qualifications, put away your wallet. They're wasting your time:

• Has your guru taught in a real classroom the past three years?
• Does your guru allow his research to be peer reviewed?
• Does your guru grasp statistics?
• Is your guru free from the financial interests of a billionaire?

Bye Wong!
See you later Marzano!
Hasta la vista Duncan!
Arrivederci, Gardner!

If we're even going to pretend we're a profession, we need to stop buying snake oil.

HT: John T. Spencer

Comics Matter And They Still Belong In The Classroom

Artist Kerrith Johnson captures the iconic nature of many of contemporary comics major heroes. Because these characters have become icons, they can easily remind readers, teachers, students, and skeptical members of the public, that there's something more the mundane of day-to-day life. Johnson's "Believe" series attempts to keep superheroes "iconic but positive." This artwork would be far more effective than some of the motivational crap that clutters school hallways and classrooms.

A few of my favorites:

For the Lincoln-Douglas debaters:

For all other students who write, speak, act, or create:

Because we all make mistakes and need a little help:

There are good people out there:

Lightening strikes every day:

When all of these things come together, there can be a little magic:

Quotation Of The Day: First Day Of School Edition

From this New York Times Verlyn Klinkenborg post

Now try turning a thought into a sentence. This is harder than it seems because first you have to find a thought. They may seem scarce because nothing in your education has suggested that your thoughts are worth paying attention to. Again and again I see in students, no matter how sophisticated they are, a fear of the dark, cavernous place called the mind. They turn to it as though it were a mailbox. They take a quick peek, find it empty and walk away.

Time to go exploring.

The Only Good Teacher Is A Fired Teacher?

Reelz Channel had its audience rank their 10  favorite movie teacher. The public chose The Dead Poets Society's John Keating, an inspirational romantic. The poll results certainly are not scientific, but it seems rather ironic that the public's favorite movie teacher is a guy who was fired.

The top 10 movie teachers:

Getting Ready For School: The Calm Before The Storm

John T. Spencer has a thoughtful post, "The Week Before Kids Arrive." Every teacher should read it.

Among other things, his post has prompted me to think about using space better. As a start, I'll probably try using this method to make the desk usable throughout the whole year. I also have to look at student desk placement. Finally, Spencer reminded me I need to purge more stuff even though I purged a few drawers last spring.

I'm also going to write up specific checklists. I did several after reading The Checklist Manifesto, but I didn't use them last year and got swamped by mundane activities.

I'm also going to spend a full day going over last year's screw-ups, blow-ups, and oops moments. As a human being, those moments are legion, so I'll limit the number to about 20. I am going to write out plans to avoid having those elements reoccur. If necessary, I'll go shopping.

For example, I have students email some essays; I use the comments feature to write comments as I grade them, and then I email them back. I had two corrected sets on a flash drive that died. I don't want to repeat that experience, so I bought a portable hard drive that should be more stable. It's a bit more cumbersome, but it worked well at debate camp.

On a philosophical level, I want to do some things to implement what I learned when I read Susan Cain's Quiet during the summer. Stephen Hurley sums up the book here and here. I have little to add. Hurley also posts Cain's TED Talk: She has three action steps that at the 16:43 mark.

I need to spend time developing methods that will make my room an introvert safe zone for students.

Testing Results Rank Students But Don't Measure Learning

The New York Times covers a Texas testing controversy. The statewide tests rank students but don't measure learning effectively:

Now, in studies that threaten to shake the foundation of high-stakes test-based accountability, Mr. Stroup and two other researchers said they believe they have found the reason: a glitch embedded in the DNA of the state exams that, as a result of a statistical method used to assemble them, suggests they are virtually useless at measuring the effects of classroom instruction.

Pearson, which has a five-year, $468 million contract to create the state’s tests through 2015, uses “item response theory” to devise standardized exams, as other testing companies do. Using I.R.T., developers select questions based on a model that correlates students’ ability with the probability that they will get a question right.

That produces a test that Mr. Stroup said is more sensitive to how it ranks students than to measuring what they have learned. That design flaw also explains why Richardson students’ scores on the previous year’s TAKS test were a better predictor of performance on the next year’s TAKS test than the benchmark exams were, he said. The benchmark exams were developed by the district, the TAKS by the testing company.

South Dakota also uses Pearson. The company's name appears 82 times in the 2012 Dakota STEP Test Coordinator Manuel. The Dakota STEP also uses "item response theory." According to the 2011 Technical report:

The process of calibration, linking, and scaling utilizes item response theory (IRT), which is based on the idea that the characteristics of individual items can be used in conjunction with student item responses to produce estimates of students’ levels of achievement. The particular model used in calibration and linking for the Dakota STEP assessment is the Rasch IRT model (Rasch, 1960). [Italics in original]

Earlier this month Josh Verges reported:

That will change soon as South Dakota gets on board with a national education reform movement that has the support of the Obama administration and Republican governors. By 2014-15, state law requires that half of every South Dakota public school teacher’s yearly evaluation be based on quantitative measures of student growth.

 Verges may have buried the lede:

Schopp doesn’t know how the state will evaluate its teachers two years from now, but she’s confident the process will be an improvement over what schools are doing today.

“It’s not going to be a perfect system, but it’s not a perfect system right now,” she said. “In fact, it’s pretty dysfunctional.”

Tying evaluations to tests that don't measure learning has made the system more dysfunctional. I have a sinking feeling that the final response, like the tests themselves, will follow a Texas model.

Plains Pops: How Teachers Can Approach Tech And The Web

At Lifehacker, Adam Pash advocates a fragmented approach. He notes that Facebook does everything competently, but requires a large investment:

Facebook is a microblogging platform, a blogging platform, a photo-sharing platform, a location-sharing platform, a chat platform, an email client, a pseudo-music-sharing platform, a gaming platform, and so on. It's an incredibly powerful service. For many, Facebook isn't just a site on the internet; it's the internet.

And that's why you're locked into Facebook; that's why it's so hard to leave. You've invested so much, not just in sharing photos or posting links, but in the whole ecosystem.

Facebook does about everything well enough. It's a full-fledged internet operating system. But like most operating systems, the stock applications aren't as good as the apps and services built by companies who are passionate about one thing.

Pash contends fragmentation offers the following advantages:

1. If, say, I decide Instagram has made some bad choices and all of the sudden totally sucks (a completely realistic but not necessarily inevitable possibility now that they've been acquired by Facebook), I can abandon Instagram and start using one of a million other photo-sharing services. If Facebook mucks up their photo sharing, I'm probably going to write a series of short, angry status updates, grit my teeth, and keep using Facebook.

2. You can easily define your communities based on what you're sharing. On Rdio, for example, I specifically follow people whose musical habits I'm interested in. I may be interested in your listening habits but have no interest in the pictures you're sharing. I'll follow you on Rdio and not on Instagram. Handy.

3. People who make just one thing tend to really care about it and have really great ideas about how to make it better. Cf. the discussion above about stock apps.

This whole discussion swings back to something we've talked about a couple times before: The Unix philosophy, the core of which surrounds the virtues of software that does one thing well. It's a fantastic philosophy that has implications well beyond software, and the more experience I have (with software, systems, people, etc.), the truer it rings.

John T. Spencer adds another reason to go piecemeal: one can use the technology in the "wrong" way:

I don't think I've ever known anyone else who uses a spreadsheet as a calendar. For me, it works, though. I have the date, the day, the task or event, the type of task and the location. For recurring events, I simply write "every week" or "every day." Then, I use the sort function to see what I need to do each day or to see the timeline of a particular project (sorting by category).  I like being able to ask, "When is Galileo testing?" and simply sorting it with one click. Calendars don't allow me to do that.

I'm not suggesting everyone should use a spreadsheet for a calendar. I'm odd. I get that. I like every event in one place and I find the calendar to be inefficient. But it has me thinking about technology and customization. It has me thinking that maybe acceptable use should be broadened to also mean, "Use the tools in the way they weren't intended to be used."

Too often, students learn a rigid definition of how a particular technology tool should be used. PowerPoint and Google Presentations are meant for presenting new information. Spreadsheets are for crunching numbers. Twitter is for telling people what you're doing. Blogging is for short writing entries. Google Docs should be used for writing only.

At one level, Pash's desire for the perfect tool and Spencer's urging to use tools in the "wrong" way may seem mutually exclusive, but both writers require and allow for user autonomy and experimentation. Both will get results that a do everything site like Facebook will never provide.

Why The Internet Is A Tool Not A Teacher

Writing in today's New York Times, Mark Edmundson concludes:

A truly memorable college class, even a large one, is a collaboration between teacher and students. It’s a one-time-only event. Learning at its best is a collective enterprise, something we’ve known since Socrates. You can get knowledge from an Internet course if you’re highly motivated to learn. But in real courses the students and teachers come together and create an immediate and vital community of learning. A real course creates intellectual joy, at least in some. I don’t think an Internet course ever will. Internet learning promises to make intellectual life more sterile and abstract than it already is — and also, for teachers and for students alike, far more lonely.