No one ever comes out to say they don’t like my more political posts, but I am regularly told by others that I’m “so political”, which means that not everyone is comfortable with what I have to say. I’m not going to argue with folks about this, but instead let readers know if you love reading about what I’m doing in the lab, but you’re not so crazy about the rest of what I write, there is a simple solution. I put all of my lab reflection posts in one category, “Week in Lab” which you can access in the sidebar, or subscribe to it on RSS. I’m not going to change who I am and what I write about, but I’m if that’s not what you want to spend your leisure time reading, I offer this easy solution.

If you hate when I gas on about what I’m doing in my lab, you can do the same by looking at or subscribing to the Politics/Policy category.

Here is what is going on:

Second Graders on Kindness. I’ve been using VoiceThread to capture what we are learning. This week’s focus is on manners for hosts and guests. I added some video from a Flip camera and I’m pretty pleased with the quality.

Third Graders are still working on how we interact with the environment in City Wildlife, but we haven’t been doing much writing or VoiceThread, but they are doing important background work by learning keyboarding via Dance Mat Typing. They will be writing a paragraph on the computer in a few weeks.

Fourth Grade seemed cursed. This is a very difficult age, and this particular group of kids seems to have a lot of emotional lability. I made the mistake of direct confrontation and anger in dealing with one class, and they are trying to make me pay for it. I expect it will all even itself out over time, but it’s likely to be unpleasant for all involved for the time being. That was my part, to add to it, the project I was trying to do on PBS Kids Go! Dont’ Buy It wouldn’t work on Firefox. I had to give them an IE page to make it work. So we had both social emotional, and technical problems in altogether in one big happy mess.

Fifth Grade was my just miss of last week, but it went better this week. I had the kids do Inspiration diagrams to show a season, and most did better with a pictorial representation. I’m going to have them give voice responses next week on the VoiceThread. Their work on Galileo there was pretty good.

Sixth Graders are starting to work on research reports. This week was just topic selection. Each teacher is taking a different approach. One wants a compare and contrast of two civilizations, while the other is asking them to form a question to answer. Going forward, I will be working with them on summarizing and paraphrasing vs. plagiarism. Between times, I’m having them add some information to a VoiceThread:

We can imagine the misery of this boy and certainly should consider how much he was able to pay attention in class during  the months of his ordeal. And when his 10-year-old brother with a swollen jaw complained of a tooth ache, it again took months to find an oral surgeon, who found he had six abscessed teeth. There is no press report on how he was doing in school during these months. According to the U.S. General Accounting Office, untreated cavities are nearly three times as prevalent among poor children as among middle-class children.

Children with a mouthful of aching teeth can’t concentrate; children who can’t see will have reading difficulties; children who  can’t hear what the teacher is saying will likely look like they aren’t paying attention.

Much of that section of Bracey’s report is about  the effects of poverty on the brain, and its relationship to the achievement gap. This is  based on a study that started making the rounds about a year ago, and some other work as well, showing that poverty has a physical effect on the brain. This brought up the question among those of us teaching in these communities about how deterministic this was. Often when educators bring up arguments like Bracey’s we get asked, well how is that different from the argument that Charles Murray makes? First, he argues pure genetics and is extremely deterministic in his conclusions about how low poor folks and minorities will perform. In I Worry: If Poor People are Stupid, Why Bother? sought to answer this by saying, hey we need to stop blaming the victim, and also asked that we not paint the findings too widely, and make them a self-fulfilling prophecy. What I started to think about was my own experience raising a non-neurotypical child, and how different parents approach this challenge, so I’ll offer it up in the hope it offers some insight.

My son was diagnosed with autism quite late. He was 8 years old at the time of his diagnosis. At that time, I began attending parent advocacy meetings (I strongly recommend FEAT Families for Early Autism Treatment, or similar groups to anyone family that has a spectrum diagnosis), and we began attending parenting classes to learn what to do to help Leroy. I was told at the advocacy meeting that I should get a comfortable car because I would be spending a lot of time driving Leroy to various therapy appointments, and that typically in ASD (autism spectrum disorder) families, mom stays home and takes the child to therapy/home-schools the child/does home therapy, while dad works a heck of a lot to pay for it all. I offer this not just to share the inherent sexism of this arrangement (which we do not replicate in our family), but as a setting for what happened next.

Parenting class was interesting because it involved both parents, mom and dad. It was based on ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) and had us coming up with a behavior we wanted to eliminate in our child, and plan to do that. One father, who had not been as involved as his wife in their son’s treatment, said flat out, “why should I expect him to be able to do this like a normal kid, when his brain isn’t normal?” In other words, why should I bother if he has brain damage. The wiring of the autistic brain is different than neuro-typicals, but the dad didn’t realize that this was not destiny and could be affected by “working” on his child’s behavior. The rest of us spent a good amount of time explaining about neuro-plasticity and how you could affect not just behavior but brain wiring by doing the therapy.

Here are some  of the lessons from I’ve taken from my reading and experiences:

1. Poverty and biology are not destiny, autism shows that early intervention makes a difference, studies of early childhood education can make a difference. The bad news, this takes a lot of effort, and a lot of money. Harlem Children’s Zone targets pregnant moms, and families with kids in strollers, and spends up to $4,000 above what the state provides for each student of school age.
2. We’re all individuals, even poor kids, just like there are different degrees of autism. My son was not diagnosed until he was older because he has a milder form of it. My brother had a classic and severe form that showed signs very early. Some kids in poverty will not have brain effects. Some have more functional families and support systems. Some have more “resilience”. Some get lucky and don’t have as many “stressors”. The studies of brain effects from poverty are about the population as a whole, and really can’t speak to the condition of each individual child.
3. While you need to focus on the individual child, ignoring the context in which they live is really brain dead. Wishing childhood poverty away, will not make it so. Pretending that these kids all start out with the same opportunity is foolish. Expecting schools to erase the income gap without providing significant resources is just cruel, but what do we expect from a society that lets a 12 year old die from an untreated tooth abscess?
4. Just because we can’t erase the achievement gap doesn’t mean teachers get to “phone in” the job. We can still help our students do better, and that does not require us to be miracle workers.

• Finland, Singapore, and the U.S. are on an airplane that’s about to crash…
• The Bracey Report 2009
• Education Policy Blog: Poverty and Brain Development, or, I Worry: If Poor People are Stupid, Why Bother?
• Study: Poverty dramatically affects children’s brains – USATODAY.com

1. You started with warmup which was to write down three main points for creating a good presentation for an upcoming project.
2. Speed dating was next. You lined up like you would for a line dance and then shared your topic/three points with a partner, listened to the partner and moved on down the line. Then did another more complex configuration. You then shared what was learned.

I noticed that the activities were focused on short writing and speaking assignments, and you moved around a lot. Your teacher seems to make you do a lot of work, and was not doing as much work himself.

This pattern of having students move around in various groupings is common in well run elementary classrooms, I wonder how typical it is in secondary?

Questions:

1. Do other teachers at Burbank have you move around and do most of the work, or do they do the work?
2. Does Mr. Ferlazzo ever lecture (read material) to you?
3. Do you feel like you learned something in speed dating even though you are repeating yourself?

Mr. Ferlazzo then reviewed the project assignment and reminded you about what you learned about “lousy” presentations when you went to the computer lab. Someone asked what you should do to make sure it isn’t lousy, and he said, “the opposite of what they showed.”  A student questioned the assignment about what is a lousy vs. what is a great presentation. Could you do things from “lousy presentation” elements (a web site) and still have it be a good presentation? What about if you learn from it.

Questions:

1. Would you want to sit through a presentation that had any of the elements in the “lousy presentations” show?
2. Did some people mention elements you would want in a good presentation during the “speed dating” that might help you?

Mr. Ferlazzo kills a lot of trees in his class. He handed out a paper and asked you to create a two-column organizer with the words, invent vs. discover. He then had you write what you thought they were, and do a  pair/share/report out about it. He then passed out articles on Math and whether it was invented vs. discovered. You read, and then did a pair share discussion about your thoughts.

1. Someone said discovered because math is like the alphabet, it just is there, but not all alphabets/writing systems are the same. Our alphabet has sounds associated with it (a = “a” sound), but Chinese writing pictographs do not have sounds but ideas associated with them. Are numbers different? Are they always the same?
2. Is something more “real” if it has a number associated with it. Is an “A” grade for getting 90% or higher on multiple choice tests more “real” than an “A” grade on an essay?

I was very impressed with how seriously you took your work, even though you have a really good sense of humor. Your thinking about the question Mr. Ferlazzo gave was very impressive.

Students reading articles

One student made the mistake of saying “I don’t know” and was referred to Mr. Ferlazzo’s poster that says:

I’m not sure, but I think that…

Mr. Ferlazzo made frequent appeals to you being IB students, what does that mean to you? Do you think that you are more capable because you are in IB? Do you think you should be better than that?

There are a lot of diagrams on the walls, many have been made by students. I couldn’t tell which ones the IB class had made, did you make any of them?

Thanks for letting me visit and take pictures!

• Tuttle SVC: America : EU :: Minnesota : Finland
  Brilliant and short, it takes apart the comparison of America to the EU (or Finland for that matter). I won’t give away the punchline, just click and have a chuckle.

• My Own Private Finland | LFA: Join The Conversation – Public School Insights
  Where Claus von Zastrow points out the reality of teacher evaluation and autonomy in Finland in contrast to the reality being offered by so-called “reformers”.

• Lessons from the North: A Conversation with Canadian Education Leader Raymond Théberge | LFA: Join The Conversation – Public School Insights
  Claus again on our neighbor to the north, and the great job they’ve done on PISA. Their secret, social services for immigrant families that are centered in the child’s school.

• Learning Is Messy – Blog » Blog Archive » “Are We Fixing the Wrong Things?” By Yong Zhao

  Where visiting administrators from Singapore go to Brian’s Title One classroom to find out how to teach mathematics

• The Return Of Jay Greene And The United Cherry Pickers – EdWize
  Diane Ratvich and other point out that countries (Finland) and states (Massachusetts) with the strongest teachers unions seem to have better scores than places (like Texas) that don’t.

• The Bracey Report 2009
  Bracey takes apart  international score data to show that the U.S. may have lower average scores on math and science, but because we have a large number of students, and we have a large number of students at the high end of the distribution (offset in the average by the large number in the cellar of scores), we have more high-end math and science graduates, than countries that score higer on PISA. He also does a nice job on the breakdown of our scores by school poverty-level which yields and unsurprising correlation.

The last edition of the Carnival hosted by Jennifer Duarte and Michelle Klepper is  here, and as always it’s chalk full of useful information for working with English Learners.

Future hosts will include Shelly Terrell at Teacher Reboot Camp: Challenging Ourselves to Engage Our Students on February 1st and Karenne Sylvester at Kalinago English: Teaching Speaking Using Technology on April 1st.

You can see all the previous twelve  editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival here.

The unit is on Astronomy which we started by learning about Galileo. The next part was to transfer what we learned about the findings of Galileo (heliocentrism) and some more information to an understanding about seasons and what causes them. Part one went well, and many of the students got that our solar system is  heliocentric part on a straight up recall basis. The last two slides on the VoiceThread below have some of the students sharing what they learned in pairs:

The second part, on solstices, equinoxes, and seasons, did not go as well. As you can see from their responses, they didn’t get it.

What worked with the first task? First, they read a story in their regular class, then watched a movie on his life with me, so they had it not just once, but twice. The second lesson was  based on a short lecture with images, and a BrainPop video, proving Gary Stager’s point that they aren’t enough, and my point that they should be used as an into or review, rather than alone.  Still, many seemed to abandon a heliocentric view altogether in their written comments, which shows they still don’t have a firm grasp on it. What might help? I think they really need more on how the tilt of the earth interacts with the sun to create seasons, and I think they need more “hands” on activities, where they manipulate and create. I’ll be having them do some work with objects in Inspiration, chalk, lights, and globes in the period before Thanksgiving break to do this.
Link to Astronomy Unit posts
Solstice Take 1
Solstice Take 2

Self-Control Unit for upper grade

I will come back to this unit over time between other units.  The latest thing I was doing with students was having them explore frustration. I showed them some YouTube videos dealing with frustration that were short and sweet, and have them comment about times they feel frustrated, and what it felt like. Probably bracketing Winter Break, I will ask students to look back at what they came up with for dealing with self-control, and tying it more directly to the times that most challenge that self-control so they can apply the tools when they are most needed. It’s still my feeling that a low-tolerance for frustration is the root of a lot of low-performance, and low self-esteem issues for kids academically. I’m also trying to use it at home with my son.

New units

All the grades are moving onto their second Language Arts units. Since my work with students is tied to those unit themes, I needed new unit plans. I’m liking using the Understanding by Design (UbD) unit planner I learned about from Chris Lehmann. I think I’m still not using them optimally, but I feel like we are getting to the big picture ideas, which was my goal.

Second Grade on Kindness is very similar to the Friendship unit for third grade that just finished. If I am doing this again next year, I will focus on how kindness sounds (tone of voice, word choice) more with second, and dealing with differences and conflict in friendship more with third, because they are getting too similar now.
Planner
Page for kids

Third Grade on City Wildlife at the request of one teacher will have a new focus on human interactions with the environment, and how we can leave a lighter footprint. I’ve also been asked to have the kids work on one paragraph writing, which is earlier than I’ve done writing with the kids in teh past, but this is a good thing I think. I’m starting them on keyboarding with Dance Mat Typing to get some pre-requisite skills.
Planner
Page for kids

Fourth Graders on Dollars and Sense is focusing on media and consumer education. They will also be doing some work with Junior Achievement, so some basic business knowledge will also be part of this.
Planner
Blog entries for kids

Fifth Grade on Astronomy will focus on heliocentrism and understanding the scale, and order of the Universe (e.g. stars are not out there with the Sun, and planets, but much farther away outside our solar system).
Planner
Blog entries for kids

Sixth Grade on Ancient Civilization has the kids focusing on the Nile and it’s importance to the development of civilization. Their teachers will also have students doing research reports. I had the two teacher split how they want to do this. One is having them develop a question to answer, the other is having them compare/contrast two civilizations.

Planner
Blog entries for kids

Moving Forward list of education blogs

Support Blogging list

Twitter for Teachers list

Plurk for Teachers (Plurk is like twitter, a 140 character microblog, but the comments are “threaded”)

Classrom 2.0 Social Network (this one is really big, so pick a group to join)

Ed Tech Talk You can listen to podcasts on ed tech topics, and if you listen life, chat with others about the show (I forgot to mention, I have show here called It’s Elementary).

Edutopia groups BIG miss not mentioning this one. I moderate a forum on classroom management here, but there are others on project-based learning, etc. It’s more about pedagogy and less about technology.

Instructify is part of LEARN-NC out of UNC-Chapel Hill and is a great resource blog. I used to work for them as a free-lancer.

Just the Facts: The meeting was set up by the superintendent, a new one from Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC, and a Broad Academy grad. He apparently has made parent engagement as a priority, which I think is a good thing. They invited principals at schools in PI to bring 5 representatives, including two parents, and three teachers. They also asked middle and high schools to send a student representative. The turnout was somewhere in the 100 – 150 range, filling the entire community room where board meetings are normally held. They promised snacks, but had nice mini sandwiches, some veggies, cheese, crackers, and a selection of desserts. I was almost sorry I had treated myself to Der Weinersnitzel for dinner before the event. It started with an outline of the problem (test scores rising–but not enough) necessary for the community and parent folk (and probably more than a few of the staff, although lord know it feels like I have the school % proficient by significant sub-group, etc. tattooed on my frontal lobe). Then we were split up into homogeneous groupings (admins, teachers, parents/community folk, students), and went off in groups to identify the various problems in the way of achievement.

Where it starts to fade: From that point forward is starts getting more more hazy. We started off identifying problems that were global/systemic, about teaching, about process, etc. They were perfectly happy to have myself and a number of other teachers rant about the fact that with poor children, teacher may be the most significant in-school factor on student achievement, the out of school factors take precedence. Being earnest sorts, many also offered suggestions about things that were within the realm of control of not just the district (hey, could you stick to a plan for a while, and quite changing things so abruptly on us all the time?). The only coherent observation that I have from this, and it’s a pretty good one considering how whack I was feeling by the end of the session was this…some of the high school folks kept saying stuff about how we need to focus on the basics, we have kids coming up to us who can’t read or read at a fifth grade level. At the same time elementary teachers discussed  how for kids the curriculum was so restricted, lacking in more high-interest content (like Science), and is just not engaging or culturally congruent with our students’ lives or interest  in any way, shape, or form. I understand the point the high school teachers are making, but I think they don’t understand that when they ask for more of the “basics” they are exacerbating the reading problem they are having in high school. It’s not because they  haven’t been taught reading, it’s because they don’t or can’t learn material that is so far from their experience or interest as to be laughable. They need more science (with reading and mathematics) and less time on second rate stories that were picked for some silly notion of alignment.

Where I totally lost any sense of what was going on: We got back together to share what we found out in our separate groups. Students complained that they asked for help and couldn’t receive it in a way that worked with their lives. Specifically, she had to watch siblings, took a bus (no car), and couldn’t go to tutoring after-school which was the only time that her teacher offered it. A parent who I’ve seen at board meetings who didn’t like how numbers games were played by schools to stay out or get out of PI. Suggestions about programs that were working (a book club at one middle school to encourage reading) were also offered. Whoever summarized what teachers had discussed, offered something that not only bore no resemblance to most of the discussion in the group, it wasn’t even really coherent to myself or my neighbor. The rest is but a blur, and then we went back to our homogeneous groups to come up with “solutions”. We were behind, and  were barely able to get some comments from fewer than 10 of us (there were at least 40 -60 teachers), when we saw the administrators heading back down. We went back, and strangely, none of the administrators were there. The facilitator was looking for someone from either the admin or teacher group to share the “top” priority solution we had come up with. Since we hadn’t listed everything, let alone prioritized, I shared that there was a discussion about extending the school day or year, but that although we hadn’t had a chance to speak, I knew that myself and others felt that there was no way we were going to get to where we needed to, if we used that “extra” time to do more of the same. What else was said is lost on me now.

In conclusion: I hope they take all the index cards they had us pin up and come up with some notes, because I have no sense of what was discussed on at a global level at that meeting. I will say this meeting was the first time I heard the term PLN used in my district.

Below are Tweets I sent from meeting which may make more sense that all I wrote above. It’s in blog chrono order with the latest at top:

Some teachers want to extend day or year but I think it won’t get us where we need to go if it’s more of the same.7:51 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

This townhall marks the first time I’ve heard term PLN in my district7:49 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

teacher preaching to choir here it’s the parents not here at townhall7:06 PM Oct 22nd from txt

Parent talking about long lunch line at kids school is so long that they can’t get food in time.7:06 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

Cmmty org at townhall discussed curriculum not being relevent among other points.7:02 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

Should parents be involved? Kids some won’t care but they should.7:00 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

I AM a goddess and don’t you forget it.6:59 PM Oct 22nd from txt

Students need support but are embarrassed to get help.6:57 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

Not interactive listening to teacher talk for two hours. His school does projects on their interests.6:55 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

Backpack overload. Hey solution, at son’s school they have a single class set of text and one for home for each student.6:54 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

Students want more support and are being pushed out. Some of the interventions don’t mesh w/schedule and life.6:51 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

What were our take aways? Student group is concerned about push for grades? not clear but hard 2 talk in lg grp6:49 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

Saw the super doing walkthru of breakout6:37 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm
Tying test scores to teacher pay will exacerbate discrimination in high minority low score schools6:32 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

poorly done pcing schedule has little to do with reality6:28 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

those were my issues6:15 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

#4 Equal start gap starts early and we need comp early childhood and parenting.6:15 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

#3 we need to stop blaming each other, parents, schhols, kids and stop working ag each other6:13 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

#2 the environment while teachers are the biggest IN school factor home and enviroment are bigger6:12 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

#1 equity all schools are not equal need significant resources to erase gap.6:10 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

Lady from parent ctr at SDSU is leading us in an activity where we list four issues impeeding achievement.6:08 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

Breakout groups coming up5:49 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

teacher citing teachers as biggest factor is specious as teacher is biggest in school factor, but out of school has larger effect.5:49 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

That parent feels title one funds arer not being allocated well in general and schools are pushing out behavior problems.5:48 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

Parent is dinging luther burbank because they got out of PI with scores from only 18 students, and thenis building a stadium.5:45 PM Oct 22nd from txt

a teacher talked about teachers being the most important factor for student success…5:44 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

Trying to close achievement gap that is still a yawning hole in our test scores.5:38 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

Crowd is somewhere in the 75-150 range at scusd townhall.5:37 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

Next year our % goal for AYP is ~56% which will be damn hard as it’s a 11point jump5:33 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

Surprised super is not here at townhall?5:26 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

as with most comtgs the intros and late start mean we just started the general session now.5:26 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm

Starting dist town hall on PI schools focus is on family engagement.5:18 PM Oct 22nd from Ping.fm