Is Our Children Learning?

Four Lessons From This Week, March 30th

2012-03-30T11:19:00.001-04:00

Portfolios Are a Great Idea In Theory...
I've always liked the idea of portfolio assessments. In New York City we used them ostensibly to track student progress, but they weren't really used for any other meaningful purpose. A lot of educators talk about portfolios as a better, "more authentic" alternative to standardized testing. The trouble with portfolio assessments is creating a system that produces valid and reliable results. The resources (financial and otherwise) needed to ensure that student work is selected and assessed fairly and consistently are considerable, if not prohibitive.

Policymaking Is Like Making a Coloring Book
In a phone call with David Johns, a Senior Education Advisor to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Mr. Johns explained that federal policy making is like creating a coloring book. You want to provide an outline for localities to follow, but leave room for them to adapt and add their own ideas. The question I had was what happens when states or districts don't have the knowledge, willpower or capacity to appropriately "color in" the policy?

Creating a School Budget is Incredibly Demoralizing
This week in Building a Democratic School we were asked to design a budget for our schools. It is very difficult to maintain a commitment to small class sizes, parent involvement, more support services, field trips, arts, sciences, and technology simultaneously. Many of us, myself included, finished the experience feeling shellshocked.

Do Not Count on NBC to Follow UDL Principles
In UDL we were asked to evaluate an example of UDL learning tool based on UDL's Guidelines. I looked at Checkpoint 7.2. The key considerations of this checkpoint are:

How does this help learners meet the goal?
How does this account for the variability of all learners?
Are the activities and information valuable to learners?

I examined NBC Learn, a tool that tries to place science in a more exciting "real world context". I ultimately gave the tool a failing grade however, because I believe that the Winter Olympics tool was more an attempt by NBC to cross-promote their content than actually engage all types of learners. Does anyone honestly care about the Winter Games?

I Used to Think...And Now I Think

2012-03-26T16:02:00.000-04:00

One of Richard Elmore's recent contributions to the ed reform debate has been a framework for reflection, asking participants to complete the phrases "I used to think... And now I think..." What started as a discussion prompt at workshops has now been published as a book. New Orleans has clearly been a challenging experience to process in some ways, so our group will try to rely on this framework for our reflections this week. As always, we welcome your comments!

I used to think community engagement was helpful to school reform, and now I think it is vital.

In some ways the efforts undertaken by the Recovery School District in New Orleans are nothing special. While the scale of charter growth is unparalleled, the reforms otherwise are pretty standard: school closures, increased autonomy, more accountability...

So, I had to keep asking myself, why does the environment feel so especially volatile here? To be sure, New Orleans is not New York City where I had my introduction to the heated emotions of school reform debates. There's a stronger undercurrent of race in the conversation here. On top of that, Hurricane Katrina remains an open wound for the city. The fact that the Recovery School District's efforts began in the aftermath of the disaster adds a layer of emotional complexity to the discussions about what's happening with the schools.

From our conversations with teachers in the Orleans Parish schools and community members who were highly critical of the RSD's reforms, it was clear that there are many people who feel angry, hurt and disenfranchised. An ed school classmate who also visited New Orleans recently said somewhat ominously, "They're going to have a revolt on their hands if they don't do something."

Closing schools, removing ineffective teachers and opening charter schools is invariably going to be contentious. That doesn't mean it's the wrong thing to do. But I do believe taking these actions without authentic efforts to include the community is wrong. In fact pursuing these actions without incorporating community ideas almost ensures they will rally around their schools and teachers, even if they've been failed by them.

On our last day of school visits someone said to us, "People here would rather have failing schools and input then great schools and no input." I wasn't sure if this comment was meant to reflect respect or disdain for the idea of community engagement, but I can tell you it's an unfortunate presentation of the choices. There has to be the way to give people a voice AND great schools, right? To attempt otherwise is to imply the community has no legitimate views or role in improving their own schools.

This post and others cross-posted at Beyond Appian Way

What Kind of Schools Do Black Children Deserve?

2012-03-22T12:00:00.000-04:00

For me the trip to New Orleans brought to the surface a painful and troubling truth about educational equality. It's a truth that's often forgotten, or buried under subtext or coded language. The fact is, when we talk about school reform we're talking about race.

This truth is especially palpable and sensitive in a place like New Orleans. Even before the trauma of Hurricane Katrina this was a city struggling with a deep history of racism. Race is especially relevant if you're talking about New Orleans public schools considering that roughly 8/10 of the white students in New Orleans attend private schools.

When you visit a school like John McDonogh Senior High School, you can't help but to ask yourself, "Is this the best we can offer for black children in this country? Is this what we think they deserve?" Without even getting into the murky waters of teacher quality at this school - I didn't spend enough time in classrooms here to make fair conclusions - the building itself serves as a clear example of what we're willing to subject children to if they are born with the wrong skin color, in the wrong neighborhood.

I don't think that anyone on either side of the debate in New Orleans can ignore this reality, and neither can we.

This post and others can be found at Beyond Appian Way, a blog by students from the Graduate School of Education writing about travels outside of Cambridge, MA.

What the Way We Learn Says About the Way We Teach: Appropriate Praise

2012-03-21T12:26:00.001-04:00

After reading Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide for my course, Universal Design for Learning, I had a lot of takeaways on teaching and learning. Earlier I wrote about the implications for the development of teachers over time. The key being not just experience, but constant reflection and analysis of mistakes.

The other piece of this chapter that really struck a chord with me was a summary of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck’s research on praise, motivation and learning. Over 400 fifth graders in New York City were a part of this study which tested the effects of praise based on ability versus effort. Students were given the same test, but half were complimented on their efforts while the other half were told they were smart.

The students who received praise for their effort were more likely to choose a more difficult test afterward, choose to learn from students who did better on a third test designed for 8th graders, and to do better on a second administration of the original test. The students who were “smart” avoided a more difficult test, chose to look at students who did worse on the 8th grade test, and actually scored lower on the second administration of the original test. The implications of this research in the classroom are self-evident. It’s instinctive for a lot of us to praise our students by saying how smart they are, but if we neglect to praise effort, we are in fact setting them up for failure through our good intentions.

I made another connection between this research and education however when I thought about the members of my generation who have been drawn to teaching. The fact that generally our generation has been raised with a lot more praise, a lot of it most likely ability-based rather than effort-based, has been examined at length.

When thinking of its consequences for education I thought about Teach for America and to some extent similar programs like NYC Teaching Fellows (I was a member of Cohort 14 in 2007). These are our country’s “best and brightest”. The selectivity of TFA inherently affirms this status. Once you’ve been admitted, you’ve essentially been told, “You are very smart.” For many this is just the latest in a long sequence of ability-based praise. What happens when these young people are tested in the classroom?

Young teachers, TFA or otherwise, need certain tools to show resilience in the face of adversity in the classroom. For many, this might be the first genuine experience with high-stakes failure. If we want them to learn and persist we need to be thoughtful about the way they are prepared to deal with this. This means explicitly addressing the likelihood of struggle for these young teachers, rather than inculcating them with the myth of the novice teacher as superhero. Once they are in the classroom, it is vital that feedback is crafted and communicated in a way that supports growth, reflection and persistence.

Whether we’re talking about first-year teachers or veterans, it’s clear that the learning process has a lot to do with the teaching process. If we want a teaching force of experts it will take more than time in the classroom or bringing in the “smartest” people. We need a system and schools within it that encourages ongoing learning.

What the Way We Learn Says About the Way We Teach: Learning From Mistakes

2012-03-16T16:59:00.003-04:00

I’m in the process of reading Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide. The book argues there’s a lot more to decision making than the conventional wisdom that we are logic-driven creatures. In fact, our emotions are incredibly important and powerful part of making intelligent choices.

In chapter 2, "The Predictions of Dopamine", Lehrer explains the neuroscience behind the creation and transmission of feelings in our brains. As I read, I was struck by a number of implications for students and teachers.

One example Lehrer provides to illustrate the neuroscience of decision-making is a story of an artificial intelligence program called TD-Gammon which was designed to be the Deep Blue of backgammon. The key difference in this computer’s programming however was that its mastery was not produced through the ability to process millions of moves in a second. Rather, TD-Gammon learned from its mistakes. It began at a simple, novice level and played itself over and over again. When backgammon master Bill Robertie first played against TD-Gammon he beat the machine easily, but still remarked that the computer was the best he’d ever competed against. A year later, the lessons the computer applied from its first experience against Robertie made it a truly formidable opponent.

The story of TD-Gammon has a couple of interesting implications for the conversation about teacher quality. Firstly, it provides yet another example of why the wrong-headed campaign to discredit experience in the classroom is so counterfactual. Teaching is a skill, just like playing backgammon or analyzing radar (another key example from Lehrer’s book), that is honed over time. The more time in the classroom the larger the pool of mistakes and lessons learned a teacher has to inform his or her practice.

That said, this defense of experience comes with an important caveat: You have to be willing to learn, reflect and be self-critical. Lehrer writes: “Robertie didn’t become a world champion just by playing a lot of backgammon. ‘It’s not the quantity of practice, it’s the quality,’ he says. According to Robertie, the most effective way to get better is to focus on your mistakes.”

When you think about the structure of schools, where each teacher works in isolation and receives little to no feedback, there is not the support for this type of learning. All of the responsibility falls on the teacher, and self-reflection is not necessarily an inherent skill. There’s a reason there’s only one Bill Robertie. He has a unique ability and inclination to focus on his mistakes, analyze them and learn from them. For the rest of us without this built-in talent, there needs to be structures and supports. That’s why the most successful schools are learning organizations where teachers are encouraged to be reflective practitioners. What worked for TD-Gammon would certainly be valuable for teachers and their students.

Multiple Perspectives and Multiple Truths

2012-03-15T15:41:00.002-04:00

When I was in high school I was lucky enough to take an IB Film class. As part of the course we studied the films of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, including Rashomon. The movie is about a brutal robbery and murder, but the story is retold several times from the perspective of different characters. By the end of the film, you’re unsure of what really happened, and who is to blame.

After returning from New Orleans I’m left with a similar sense of confusion. I expected to go to New Orleans and compile the “true story” from conversations with different members of the community. However, the different stories didn’t piece together the way I thought they would. Rather, I’m left with many contradictory perspectives, unified only by the passion of the people who shared them with our group.

In the coming days, through conversation with our group, research and follow up conversations, I hope to synthesize a coherent summary of what I learned. I hope to dig deeper into the performance of the Recovery School District’s direct-run and charter schools. I want to get a better understanding of the admissions process and demographics of the Orleans Parish School Board’s seven direct-run schools, and dozen charter schools. There are so many questions that need answering, because each story I heard seemed to implicate someone else, and complicate the overall narrative. I’m now left struggling to answer the most fundamental question, What is going on in New Orleans?

This post and others about my trip to New Orleans can be found at Beyond Appian Way

Ira Glass on Being a Beginner

2012-03-02T14:27:00.001-05:00

This is where I'm at...

How Do You Know If a School is Right for You?

2012-03-01T17:14:00.001-05:00

After two exhausting pairs of demo lessons and interviews I'm on my way back to Boston. The lessons went well, and reassured me I still know how to teach. They also reminded me of incredible amount of uenergy required to keep students engaged in learning.

As I think about a possible return to the classroom I'm wondering about making the application process work for me. My experience in two separate schools taught me a lot about what I hope to find in a work environment. I also have certain criteria as far as teaching in a 'high-need' school. Add to this list expectations I've developed at Harvard - meaningful family engagement, staff collaboration, ongoing and constructive feedback and support, opportunities for teacher leadership - then you have a pretty comprehensive picture of my ideal school. But am I being unrealistic?

I got my first two teaching jobs without even demonstrating I could teach. Setting the bar at an interview process that includes a demo lesson seems like an important first step. As I move forward though, I wonder if the theoretical school I've envisioned while at Harvard is out there somewhere. Does that perfect mix of the right vision, leadership, curriculum, and community exist?

I liked a lot of what I saw and heard today, but I still have a lot of questions I need answered before I know if I've found the right fit.

Back to School...Again

2012-02-29T22:55:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow I will be back in the classroom and I'm feeling that familiar mix of excitement and nervousness. How will my lesson go? Will the students listen and will they learn?

I'm also feeling some new feelings that could only happen after the past six months at Harvard. I'm wondering how this time has affected me as an educator. Will I be rusty? Will it be 'just like riding a bike'? Perhaps the question with the highest stakes is: Will I be better?

A demo lesson is perhaps not the fairest way to answer this question, but the question looms large nonetheless. Embedded within it are the questions what have I learned here and has this time been worth it? Instinctively and emphatically I can say yes to these latter queries, but if this learning is not reflected in my work tomorrow then the value of it all must be reassessed.

Let me get to the point. I have spent six months learning - a great deal - about some of the prevailing theories in education and leadership. I have identified and examined deficit thinking in my own pedagogy. I have learned the power of leadership is rooted in a clear vision that empowers an entire community. I have learned about the instructional core and the need for coherence between the strategies of policymakers and school leaders and the work of teachers. And yet, when it is time to apply these lessons to my work will I be able to? Or will they remain theoretical, lost in the ether of academia.

These are not first day jitters. These are growing pains. I know the transition from student back to teacher may not go perfectly, but this work, like all others, is learned best through practice.

Four Lessons From This Week February 24th

2012-02-24T18:38:00.003-05:00

Intercorrelations Raise Some Interesting Questions
In Understanding Educational Testing we looked at intercorrelations of different subject areas of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. The fact that there's a strong correlation between seemingly unrelated subjects - spelling and math computation for example - raises the question of what tests actually test. Is the correlation resulting from out of classroom factors? Or does it point to overall school/classroom/teacher quality?

There's a Need to Expand Our Definition of Parent Engagement
We had some very interesting readings in Professor Mapp's class this week. Overall they pushed me to think of different ways to define parent engagement. Are parents who cannot attend parent-teacher conferences or help with homework, but instill a hard work ethic in their kids participating in schooling? Somewhat related, another reading prompted me to ask how can schools tap into families' "funds of knowledge" to develop a more meaningful and engaging curriculum for their students.

It's Really Hard to Re-imagine School
In Building a Democratic School we worked on our mission statements and student schedules, and I found myself constrained at times by my actual experiences. I'm imagining a school with more freedom, more choice and more project-based learning than my students experienced, but I'm having trouble thinking about how this will look in practice.

Representing Content Isn't as Simple as I Thought
This week in Universal Design for Learning we looked at the first of UDL's three guiding principles: Provide multiple means of representation. The online "document' raised some really interesting ideas about the limitations of prints and the need to provide students with customizable representations of content. In some ways, this is not a new concept (providing visuals, manipulatives, etc), but technology offers a lot of new and exciting methods to do this. Now the challenge is expanding access to these resources.

"In too many instances..."

2012-02-22T15:27:00.001-05:00

"...It seems that almost everything matters except students' learning. The intercom goes on incessantly, classes are short or cut shorter to accommodate something else, fragmentation is accepted as the norm, quiet is more honored than talk, the world is shut out of or made only marginal to the curriculum, mechanisms of control are pervasive and occupy considerable time and attention, and expectations."
- "Engaging the Students" -- A Letter to Teachers, Vito Perrone

Four Lessons from This Week: February 17th

2012-02-18T14:45:00.004-05:00

Tests Aren't Always Designed for the Right Purpose...
Or used in the way they were designed. Often tests that are meant to diagnose student strengths and needs are being used for accountability. Some claim that their standardized tests can do both - assess students and teachers - but it's a lot more difficult than it sounds.

Shopping at the Mall Can Be a Lot Tougher Than the Corner Store
Class has a big impact on a family's economic, human, social and cultural capital which are instrumental in school selection and therefore school selection. It is not enough to give parents choice, when not all families have the same resources to inform their choices. Thomas Stewart and Patrick Wolf liken the skills needed in the setting of school choice to shopping at a mall instead of a convenience store. There are a lot more options, but it takes a lot of information to best take advantage of them: "Our central argument is a play on the biblical adage that from those to whom much is given, much is expected. In the field of parental school choice, to those from whom much is expected, much needs to be given."

There's a Delicate Balance Between Choice and Structure
In Building a Democratic School we were asked to design a sample student schedule. This was a good way to think about our priorities for teachers and students, and how to establish a schedule that supports those priorities. A lot of us talked about the desire to give students as much freedom and choice in their learning as possible. But a conversation with students from Boston Arts Academy also brought up students' need for a certain level of structure that in fact enables freedom at the same time.

It's Time to Think About Disability in Terms of Variability
Advances in neuroscience are changing our understanding of the way different students learn. This has exciting implications for students we previously thought were out of reach for conventional classrooms, like students with autism. We still have a long ways to go toward understanding these differences and how to capitalize them for learning, but for now it's a step towards shifting our ideas of these students from disabled to differently abled.

Do Successful Schools Need Parent Involvement?

2012-02-15T19:50:00.000-05:00

Presented without comment...for now.

Very curious to hear comments and reactions!

"I'm Normal to Me"

2012-02-14T21:41:00.000-05:00

The theme of this week in UDL is "From Disability to Variability". It's a powerful shift of perception that's so necessary in our society and within our classrooms. Our syllabus asked us to watch this video by a girl with autism who summarizes this view well when she says, "We have special talents." Of course it requires a different outlook and approach to teaching if we want to really optimize the variable talents in our classrooms.

Four Lessons from This Week: February 10

2012-02-10T12:00:00.000-05:00

Making Meaningful Inferences About Test Data is Hard
This quote from the August 16, 2003 edition of the Palm Springs Desert Sun which Dr. Koretz presented to class on Monday illustrates what is common (and wrong) in the way test scores are interpreted:

Coachella Valley Unified School District posted the highest overall percentage gain in the state, with a 33 percent jump in English language arts scores over the past year and a 62 percent increase since 2001.

It's a lot tougher to make valid inferences from test scores than we realize, and it usually involves looking deeper at data by examining scale scores and standard deviations in order to make valid comparisons.

"Ghosts" Need to be Interrogated
Having talked about the presence of "ghosts" at parent-teacher conferences and other meetings, I want to add the importance of interrogating those ghosts as teachers. That is, we need to examine the own experiences and memories we bring to our interactions with students and their parents as well those brought my parents. Ideally this gets us to a place of better understanding and thus, better communication.

There Are a Lot of Ways to Think About a Democratic Classroom
The video I watched of a Central Park East Elementary classroom was an interesting jumping off point for me as I read about different approaches to pedagogy in the classroom. Freire's work in rural Brazil exploring literacy and the meaning of culture was especially fascinating and made me think about applications to a classroom in the Bronx (or Brooklyn, Chicago, Baton Rouge...). All of the readings also challenged me to think about the extent I could or could not create a democratic classroom within a more traditional public school setting. This led to an interesting discussion with members of a panel on Thursday about the workshop model that could be a post unto itself...

Human Beings Weren't Born to Read
It's a rather obvious statement when you think about how recently print came along in in relation to human existence. That said, it's a profound idea when you think about our expectations for every child to be able to read at a certain level by a certain age. Furthermore, it's an idea that says a lot about the powerful plasticity of our brains in general to adapt and reorganize to develop completely new skills. Put simply: "We are, it would seem from the start, genetically poised for breakthroughs."
- Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, 2007

Ghosts at Parent-Teacher Conferences

2012-02-09T12:02:00.003-05:00

Last night in my class on community and family engagement we discussed the "ghosts" that attend parent-teacher conferences. The idea, which comes from Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot's The Essential Conversation, describes the way that parents and teachers bring their own prior experiences and traumas into their interactions.

One story that struck me was about an African-American father who grew up in Detroit, Michigan, but whose son now attends an affluent private school in Seattle. Paul, the father, shares his experience of the humiliation and anger he felt in the sixth-grade when his teacher told his parents he was at a fourth-grade level in math, even though this was not true. He eventually has a chance to show off his skills, and when his teacher reacts with surprise, saying, "Paul has never, ever done these problems before in this classroom," his father replied, "Well, you never challenged him." As he recounts this story, Paul realizes the way it has affected his relationship with his son's teacher, who he feels also doesn't push him hard enough in math.

This story was powerful in its own right, but it reminded me of an experience in my second year of teaching. I was rarely challenged during parent-teacher conferences, but in one case, my student's aunt was very upset about the reading responses I was asking her niece to complete. She didn't feel like the one paragraph summaries her niece was doing were at a high enough level. She showed me the reading response worksheet her own daughter did as evidence.

While I felt defensive in general, and also believed that one paragraph summaries were more authentic and rigorous than answering questions on a worksheet, I realize I was missing a major part of the interaction. How much of this aunt's frustration came from a place of her own experiences in school? Who were her teachers and did they push her enough? In what ways was I letting her niece slip by with subpar work, and repeating the injustice done to her upon the next generation?

In this context, the frustration and passion she communicated were more than understandable, they were restrained. Parent-teacher interactions are challenging for so many reasons. All human relationships come with challenges of communication and perspective. When you recognize the "ghosts" of teachers and parents, you start to see there's a whole new level of complexity right below the surface.

Ending the Deficit Model in the Classroom

2012-02-08T09:00:00.001-05:00

Not long ago I was reading a blog post by a New York City teacher. He intended to show the many challenges students in high-poverty schools face by writing a post from the perspective of one of these students. Unfortunately, the result was a caricature. The imaginary student's home life was an amalgamation of some of the worst stereotypes about children living in the Bronx.

Before coming to Harvard I hadn't learned the language to describe this type of thinking, why it bothers me or the ways in which I perpetuated it my own classroom. However, if there is only one lesson I take away from my short time here, it will be identifying and responding to deficit-based thinking.

The idea that children, schools and communities affected by poverty are little more than a collection of ills and deficiencies is pervasive in education today. The teacher blogger from the Bronx sees his students this way, and sadly he's not alone.

I think about my own time in the classroom. In particular, I think of a student I nicknamed The Scowler. Last year The Scowler was one of my most challenging students, but how much of this was because of my deficit-based approach? He didn't have reading comprehension skills. He didn't have basic numeracy skills. He didn't have a strong work ethic. He didn't have strong self-esteem. In my mind, The Scowler was a combination of weaknesses.

But in reality, this boy was much more than that. He was an incredibly sweet, kind and sensitive kid who cared about other students' feelings. He grew a lot socially from an extremely introverted boy who refused to answer yes or no questions to someone willing to share his ideas, even in math his most terrifying subject. He loved our field trips to museums and he loved food. How might I have reached The Scowler more effectively if I had taken a strength-based approach to teaching, and focused on this latter list of his characteristics rather than the former?

I don't think all educators use deficit-thinking in their classrooms, but I think it's a easy trap to fall into when you're working in an neighborhood affected by poverty. Whether it's the way we view the students, or very often their parents, many educators can't see past what they see missing to see what's there. The result is a perspective that undermines the dignity of students and their families. At the same time this view amplifies feelings of isolation and anxiety, because it makes the work of teaching that much more insurmountable.

In my original view of The Scowler, I felt frustrated and overwhelmed. Had I looked at his strengths I would have seen him as an invaluable partner. Imagine the multiplying effect of seeing every student and family in this way?

There are a lot of ways deficit-based thinking affects our overall educational ecosystem. But that isn't to say teachers and schools cannot control our own view of our students, their families and their communities. Rather than being blinded by inadequacies that weaken our classrooms, we can see the power they have to make our work stronger.

We All Know Why We're Here

2012-02-06T22:01:00.000-05:00

For Building a Democratic School the syllabus asks us to watch this documentary about Central Park East Elementary, a progressive school founded by Deborah Meier. At the time the documentary was shot, the school served a diverse group of students, including kids from East Harlem. One mother, a teacher at a traditional school, comments, "A lot of people are afraid that oppressed kids need discipline and a traditional classroom, and I think that's bull."

Deborah Meier - We All Know Why We're Here from Gary Stager on Vimeo.

Four Lessons from This Week: February 3

2012-02-03T11:20:00.001-05:00

Setting Standards Isn't So Different From Making Sausage
According to Dan Koretz, you probably won't feel very good about how it's done. It's rarely a good sign when a process is defended as arbitrary, but not capricious. We learned about a number of different methods districts and states use to set performance standards, and disturbingly, they all produce very different results.

There's a Lot of Research to Support Community-Family Engagement
It seems very easy schools, organizations and leaders to pay lip service to the importance of community and family engagement. It seems equally easy for others to dismiss these as "touchy-feely" ideas with little practical application, but to do so is to ignore a growing body of research - qualitative and quantitative - that shows that improving parental involvement has real effects on student learning. In fact, those dedicated to improving schools should recognize that doing so requires parental involvement.

Another Way to Think About 'Vision' is a 'Unifying Framework'
"The 'new initiative every year' model doesn't work. Teachers need to be involved in articulating the framework, and a school must be willing to commit to the implementation of the framework over the long haul. Finally, I would argue that schools without a unifying framework still have an unspoken one - a defacto assumption of what this school is about.... To honestly answer the question 'What does your school stand for?' takes a willingness to ask again and again how your practices are improving, what students know and can do, and how day to day realities in the classroom match the ideals you have articulated." - The Hardest Questions Aren't on the Test, Linda Nathan, 2009

There's a Lot Education Can Learn from Neuroscience
In some ways, neuroscience just supports a lot of practices that are already popular. Differentiation is basically another way of thinking about Universal Design for Learning. At the same time, I feel like neuroscience adds another layer to this type of instruction by providing a scientific rationale for providing multiple representations of content, multiple ways for students to express ideas and multiple ways to engage. This quote from Teaching Every Child in the Digital Age, by David Rose and Anne Meyer explaining the way strategic processes are distributed is a good example:

Different layers of an action are added on at the same time and mutually influence one another. For this reason, skill instruction is often more effective when the various components of the process are learned simultaneously rather than one at a time (Gopher, 1996). Thus, a tennis instructor may model the whole serve and encourage the learner to try it out, only analyzing individual steps (ball toss, backswing, step forward, swing, and follow-through) when particular aspects must be corrected. Likewise, each subcomponent of a task like writing an essay makes the most sense to our students if it is taught in the context of the whole task.

Learning About Learning: Professors as Role Models

2012-02-02T15:02:00.000-05:00

There's something very special about being a student again after being in the classroom, in a school of education, no less. It gives you a lot of time to think about "good teaching" in its many forms. I'm always impressed by the professors who manage to lead student-centered learning when lectures have clearly been the dominant norm. Last night, in a lecture hall with 80-something students, the class was buzzing as we worked over slogans and campaign ideas that would promote the power parent engagement at all ages.

I've also recently noticed the way a couple of professors have brought their own narratives into their teaching. This is a technique I never really thought about consciously until it was advocated and modeled by Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot last semester. Last night I admired the way my professor Karen Mapp brought her own stories into the discussion a number of times. She didn't do it in a way to make the class about her, but as vivid illustrations of the content, in this case the power of family involvement in shaping student success.

Again today, I read a book by another professor, Linda Nathan, and was equally impressed by her candor and ownership of a past mistake. As she talked about a missed opportunity to address homophobia in her school, it was clear she felt passionately about this issue, and felt regret over her failure.

My professors' use of student-centered learning and their own narratives have provided inspiring models for my own teaching. My experiences at HGSE thus far also prompted a simple and exciting revelation in the middle of last night's class: I haven't had this much fun learning since I was in third grade. While I'm sad it will be over so quickly, I am more excited to be a part of this learning community while I can.

Looking Beyond What Works "Just Fine"

2012-01-31T12:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday in Dan Koretz's educational testing course we were talking about test scales: how they're set, what scales do and don't mean, and the misinterpretations often drawn from them. As an example we were looking at the SAT and GRE scales and in passing Dr. Koretz made a comment about the kinds of scores those of us in the class likely earned to be sitting there. I thought about my own scores and general experiences with the SAT and GRE and standardized tests in general, and a reading from another course, Building a Democratic School, came to mind.

In the introduction to her book, The Hardest Questions Aren't on the Test, Linda Nathan describes leading a tour of Boston Arts Academy for leaders from another school. One of the members of the tour talks about resistance to developing small learning communities at their school:

"'They just aren't convinced that small makes a difference in high school. And to be honest, neither are some of us. I went to a big high school and it was just fine.'

To me, this teacher had hit on the essence of what makes changing schools so difficult. Most teachers become teachers because they did well in school. The system worked for them: it worked 'just fine.' How can teachers truly grapple with different approaches than those they experienced as a student?"

This thinking could easily be expanded to include current and aspiring policymakers dealing with education today. It's difficult to get in a position of authority without at some point having success with standardized tests. It's fair to assume that those of us at Harvard, in state and local education departments, and leading organizations like TNTP and TFA have generally done quite well on these tests.

To what extent does this contribute to a blind faith in testing-based accountability? It's often very easy to project your own experiences as common and it's difficult to see the flaws in a system that served you just fine. Finding a way to set aside these experiences and assumptions is vital then to figuring out a system that serves everyone well.

Four Lessons From This Week: January 27

2012-01-27T17:53:00.000-05:00

In an effort to hold myself more accountable to my writing, and to reflect more often on my learning, I'm going to try to write at least once a week about what I'm learning. Here's my first attempt. Questions and comments are always appreciated!

Testing Forces Us to Make Choices
Designing a test inherently involves choosing a subset from a larger domain of knowledge. It's impossible to test everything, even once you've narrowed your curriculum to a set of standards. New York's recent math exams provide an extreme example as half of the test items assessed only a dozen standards. These decisions to narrow what is assessed, coupled with attaching the test to high stakes leads to interesting results:

In Family-School Partnerships, Assumptions Matter
After reading a few perspectives on the importance of parents in education (here, here and here) our class discussed the various roles expected of parents. We generated a list of over 20 roles including protector, advocate, nurturer, disciplinarian, and partner in learning. Then we listed the various efforts to push or support parents in fulfilling these roles. Finally we generated another list of the assumptions these roles and efforts are based upon. These assumptions, some positive, but many negative, can be explicit, but are often subtle and always powerful in shaping our ideas of parent roles. Some assumptions that resonated with me were that parents are literate, that teachers know better than parents, that the deficit is in the home rather than the school, and that parents trust the school. Finding a way past these assumptions to recognize the diverse strengths and needs of parents has to be a prerequisite of a positive home-school relationship.

In Ed Reform, Those Who Forget History...
"Although many groups have entered school politics, especially in the protest movements of the last half century, this pluralism is misleading. The politics of education has not been conducted on a level playing field. Policy elites - people who managed the economy, who had privileged access to the media and to political officials, who controlled foundations, who were educational leaders in the universities and in city and state superintendencies, and who redesigned and led organizations of many kinds - gained a disproportionate authority over educational reform."
- Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform, 1995, David Tyack & Larry Cuban

Reaching the Needs of Diverse Learners Can Help Us Reach the Needs of All Students
"The needs of diverse learners who have until now been disenfranchised in a print- centric world can drive us to discover, develop, and apply the astonishing power of new media to expand educational opportunities. Learning is supported and facilitated by the interaction between the learner and the curriculum. When that support and facilitation is missing, “learning disabilities” arise. If the curriculum can be flexibly designed, it can meet more learners where they need to be met. It can challenge and support the vast variety of needs, skills, and interests arrayed in a diverse classroom....

Designs that increase accessibility for individuals with disabilities— those who are typically “in the margins”—tend to yield benefits that make everyone’s experience better."

- The Future is in the Margins, 2000, Anne Meyer, Ed.D., and David Rose, Ed.D.,

Connecting the Dots: What Does it All Mean?

2012-01-26T12:00:00.000-05:00

In a way my coursework at Harvard has felt very therapeutic. Just having time to think and reflect on my teaching and education in general has been a positive experience, but at the same time my classes have helped me think about specific aspects of my experience in the classroom.

My course on Teacher Quality helped place my own experiences with training, induction, mentoring, and evaluation into the larger context of national trends in education policy. Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Learning helped me think about missed opportunities for leadership in my own classroom, my schools and New York City's entire school system. Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot's class, Ecology of Education, helped me think about the role my own identity and culture played in my teaching.

As I've read, discussed and reflected upon different areas of education at times it's been frustrating and at other times cathartic. Sometimes I've found it difficult to concentrate on my reading as my mind drifts to my own experiences, but ultimately I've benefited from the opportunity to connect the various challenges of teaching to one another and to the bigger picture of education.

It's fitting then that this last semester one of my classes focuses on the topic that dominated much of my teaching for four years: testing. Testing took over my instruction. Testing loomed over my evaluations and tenure process. Testing cast a shadow over my feelings of self efficacy.

So, it's about time I got to the bottom of it all. What's the point of testing? What can tests tell us and what can't tests tell us? What about the tests we used in New York City in particular? To use the language Dr. Koretz is teaching us, were these tests "valid" or "reliable"? Perhaps if I can answer these questions I can answer some final lingering questions about my time in the classroom.

What I've Learned and What I'm Learning Next

2012-01-24T16:46:00.001-05:00

So it's almost February? 2012? Whoops.

December flew by. Finals, a trip home to California and an amazing week in New York City. January hit and I took two intensive courses as part of Harvard's J-term.

The courses were Leadership for Instructional Improvement and Designing Effective School and Community Interventions for At-Risk Children. They were great complements to one another, helping me think about what schools can and cannot do to impact learning. The first class helped me think about what is called the instructional core, the intersecting relationship between a teacher, a student and the content. Any reform that hopes to change schools for the better must keep this core in the center. It's an idea I alluded to in my last post, but one that has gained a lot of clarity thanks to my J-term learning.

The course on interventions for at-risk children taught me a great deal about risk and resilience and the many factors beyond a school's control. This was an important course for me, because its content strikes right at the center of the debate surrounding education reform right now. Can we expect schools to overcome the effects of poverty? Or is ameliorating the effects of poverty a prerequisite to educational success? The answer is more complicated than most people seem willing to accept.

Schools and quality instruction can be powerful factors in building resilience in young people. In fact, the presence of a caring, supportive adult (yes, even a teacher) in a young person's life is the single most powerful factor in developing resilience. That said, there are a lot of factors outside of the classroom that are vital to healthy psychological, social and cognitive development. Schools cannot do this work alone, but neither are they powerless to help children living in poverty. Unfortunately that kind of nuance isn't popular or common in the education reform debate.

Once J-term ended it was time to pick classes for my second and final (!) semester. The kid in a candy metaphor was thrown around a few times when we first got here, and it's all too true. I had about a dozen classes I was interested in for the spring, not including classes offered at the Kennedy School or the Business School.

After a lot of thought I opted to stick to ed school classes, rather than taking a business school class just for the sake of taking a business school class. We've just started our first week of the semester, but I'm already incredibly excited for the learning ahead of me. I'm enrolled in four classes:

Understanding Educational Testing with Dan Koretz
The Why, What and How of School Family Partnerships with Karen Mapp
Building a Democratic School with Linda Nathan
Universal Design for Learning: Meeting the Challenge of Individual Differences with David Rose

Each of my professors is an expert in their field. Each of them have literally written the book on the topic of their course. It's hard not to feel like I'm missing out when I'm only taking four courses, but at the same time I cannot wait to dive into the content of the four classes I am taking.

Hopefully I'll do a little bit better sharing it this semester.

If I Forget You...Keeping the Classroom at the Center

2011-12-01T12:00:00.000-05:00

Last week I had the opportunity to visit my old school and spend some time with my students from the last two years of my teaching. It was a great day. The excitement and joy of the kids was truly overwhelming.

At the end of the day one of my students, a heartbreakingly adorable girl whose thick Spanish accent is slowly lightening up, told me that one of her former classmates is "mean now". We talked briefly about this before we had to go our separate ways. Although it was a small moment in the course of the day, it sticks out in my mind now as a reminder of the profoundly multifaceted world of children.

It stands out now in stark contrast to the relatively simple, safe environment of my college classrooms. Today in my class on teacher quality we simulated a panel on teacher pay structure for the Rochester City School District. We clearly grappled with the intricacies of teacher pay as we weighed different benefits and costs, and the concerns of different stakeholders. Nonetheless, the exercise felt incredibly uncomplicated compared to the ecosystem I used to share with 25 - 30 children. This disconnect is one I am constantly aware of and working to bridge as I prepare for my transition from the theory of education reform to its practice.

Earlier in the day during that same visit to PS 310 I received a note from one of my old students. It was a short thank you note, but I was deeply moved by the innocence and sincerity of its tone. For some reason as I read the note my mind flashed to a phrase from a Hebrew psalm, "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill!" Those words, "If I forget you," were unshakable. Just as Jerusalem is at the heart of the Jewish faith, so must the classroom and the kids within it remain central to my work in education. If I forget that, I need to find a new line of work.

Solving the big problems of education is certainly difficult. I am grateful to have the time and space away from teaching this year to study, think and discuss the questions of how to build a better system. At the same time, I am consistently thinking about the distance between my work at Harvard and the work I did in the classroom. The classroom is where the solving of the big problems will eventually take place, and as my short visit reminded me, there are countless variables that are often hard to remember from afar.

In several of my courses we have discussed the concept of the instructional core. Essentially it is the idea that at the center of the framework for all successful education systems is a successful relationship between teachers and students. While the ideas for education reform may originate in universities or district offices, this idea can't be ignored. The teacher-student interaction is remarkably complex, but it is the nexus of educational transformation. It's vital education leaders never forget that.