A Place at the Table http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/ Susan Graham has taught family and consumer science (formerly "home ec") for 25 years. She is a National Board-certified teacher, a former regional Virginia teacher of the year, and a Fellow of the Teacher Leaders Network. She invites readers to pull a chair up to her virtual table as she offers her voice-of-experience perspective on teaching today, with a special focus on teacher leadership and continuous professional growth. en Copyright 2008 Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:03:30 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://feeds.feedburner.com/place_table?format=skin1288084http://www.feedburner.com Does Anybody See What I See? 1776. It just isn’t the Fourth until I sing our nation into existence along with Tom, Ben, Abigail, and John. I know all the songs and most of the lines by heart. Each year I have to remind myself that the Continental Congress didn’t really sing and dance their way to the Declaration. Critics may have found the movie trite and historians may be horrified by a musical taking dramatic license with some characters and events. But it strikes me that, when it comes to historical accuracy, Sherman Edwards’ song and dance of the Founding Fathers may not be much different than the highly edited photo-op sound bite version of current events we get on the evening news. I know that 1776 is quasi-history, but if we are completely honest, is there is really any other kind of history? We weren’t there. History is someone else’s best guess based on interpretation of incomplete evidence and less than objective witnesses. The best we can do is take their story of who, where and when, try to verify information we have, and ferret out what is missing. We discern what, how and why by considering multiple interpretations of facts, looking for consistencies or conflicts, and forming our own opinions. Thirty-five years after its release, some school systems are still fribbling over whether middle school civic students should be allowed to see 1776. Sexual innuendo and inappropriate language, rather than historical accuracy, seems to be the concern. I hope some teachers will practice a little civil disobedience and continue to treat their students to two hours of this engaging and uplifting piece of history as entertainment. Our children face enormous challenges against great odds in a very cynical world. There is little doubt that we will leave them with large and serious economic, environmental, social, and international problems. Moving our nation forward is likely to require some audacious new ideas, a great deal of compromise, and considerable sacrifice. Perhaps they might find courage in a version of history where less than perfect people engage in what was sometimes less than noble behavior to arrive at a less than pure policy that still transcends itself and its makers. Maybe those haunting lines, “Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I see?” were theatrical inventions of self doubt created for dramatic effect, but within a few hours of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence the real John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail:
I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is worth more than the means.
 The movie ends with the signing, but the story doesn’t. There was indeed a great deal of gloom and frustration and difficulty ahead. Jefferson and Adams, partners in conception, often found themselves at odds on how to rear an infant nation. But until the shared day of their death on July 4, 1826, fifty years after the signing of the Declaration, there was one common belief on which they never differed:
The objects of... primary education [which] determine its character and limits [are]: To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business; to enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing; to improve, by reading, his morals and faculties; to understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either; to know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains, to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgment; and in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.--Thomas Jefferson: Report for University of Virginia, 1818.
because
Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. John Adams, The Boston Gazette, 1765
If we are to honor our history, we need to prepare the next generation to think creatively as well as efficiently, to value cooperation as much as correctness, and to question as effectively as they recall. So, on the Fourth of July of an election year on behalf of America's teachers, I'm asking along with Adams — Does anybody see what I see? ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/place_table/~3/331870542/does_anybody_see_what_i_see_1.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/07/does_anybody_see_what_i_see_1.html Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:03:30 -0500 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/07/does_anybody_see_what_i_see_1.html Smells Like School Spirit TLN colleagues and I have been having an interesting discussion about distraction. It started with a chat about whether music or even background TV enhanced or impaired the concentration of our students or ourselves. There's always been discussion of aural and visual stimulation, but the more I thought about it, the more I wondered about the olfactory stimuli. Smell is the first and most visceral of our senses. Oliver Wendell Holmes said:
Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.
Pheromones are serious science, and allergic reactions to smells are increasingly a medical issue. While aromatherapy may be dismissed as New Age fluff and candle stores may be fads, smell is big business. We purchase the scent of fresh cotton, kiwi, sea breezes, wild ginger, fresh baked bread and animal musk in air fresheners, laundry detergents, shampoo, dog food, and a thousand other products. So tonight I’m wondering, in my FACS teacher mode (which can lead me down some strange hallways indeed): Is my response to a freshly cleaned and waxed hall an inherent or learned response? Were the fragrances in Pine-Sol, Clorox and Future floorwax chosen because research had determined they would generate positive feelings in me and others? Does the smell of food in my FACS classroom support retention and trigger recall? Will we ever identify all the variables that influence a child’s interaction with school? Does anyone doubt that a fusty-smelling old school impacts student learning? If there are scents associated with failure, can we define the smell of success? If we ever define the smell of a successful school, how long will it be before someone tries to market it like new-car smell? How long before someone suggests it as a solution-in-a-can, the perfect thing to mask the festering odor of neglect and decay? I mean, we've already had the solution-in-a-box. The solution-on-a-disk.The solution-in-a-law. Anyone up for a spritz of School-Smell-So-Good? ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/place_table/~3/324384441/smells_like_school_spirit.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/06/smells_like_school_spirit.html Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:55:16 -0500 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/06/smells_like_school_spirit.html A Broader Bolder Vision (Some Assembly Required) The Washington Post carried a huge ad for A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education, it got my attention and piqued my curiosity. So I went to the Broader Bolder website to read the entire report.
“Schools can’t do it alone,” said Co-Chair Helen Ladd. “Accountability is a pillar of our education system, but schools need the support of the community – both before children arrive at school and during their school years – for all children to achieve high standards.”
As a teacher, my first thoughts were: “Thank you for acknowledging that! These people get it!” Most of our schools do the best we can with the circumstances and resources we are given. To simply turn to public education and say “Geez, don’t you people care about kids? You really ought be accountable. The welfare of America’s children is your responsibility. Get with it, or we will deal with you harshly” is not only heartless but naive. These are the core goals of the “Broader, Bolder Approach” -- • Continued school improvement efforts. • Developmentally appropriate and high-quality early childhood, pre-school and kindergarten care and education. • Routine pediatric, dental, hearing and vision care for all infants, toddlers and schoolchildren. • Improving the quality of students’ out-of-school time. These seem to be pretty logical and not highly controversial goals that were being endorsed by some people whose names I recognized and respected. But when I started digging into the reactions to this manifesto, things got a little more complicated. Just about everyone in the virtual education world had something to say, either good or bad, about the Broader Bolder Approach. Think tanks and research groups all seem to have a position on this proclamation, and each group seems to be “interpreting” the “real” agenda of the Broader/Bolder coalition, based on how it fits with its own organizational agenda. Sometimes it seems that the education discussion is more about power and competition between adults than it is about looking for ways to cooperate for the benefit children. I'm a policy amateur, my knowledge of education politics is shallow, and I don’t pretend to be smart enough to thoroughly deconstruct stakeholders' agendas and motives. I know some of the endorsers by their, in my book, good reputation. I don't really have time or energy to figure out all the backroom alliances or scores that are in the process of being settled. I have a hard time understanding why anyone would have a problem with the stated goals of Broader and Bolder. At the same time, I acknowledge that there is a great distance between good ideas and practical implementations and between envisioning and implementing. Since questions are echoing in my mind, I'll share them here. All of these issues effect education, but are they education issues? Too often, policymakers determine that if something is a child issue, then it can just be rolled into education policy, killing two birds with one stone. Some of the additional “birds” are initiatives like child nutrition (breakfast and lunch), physical fitness, financial literacy, family life education (we don’t say sex), character education (but keep it value neutral, please), drug awareness, bullying prevention, internet safety, social equality, environmental awareness, heath screening, and childhood obesity. While all of these are important issues, is the classroom or school where primary responsibility belongs for addressing them? Does the social activism emanating out of Washington sometimes usurp the role of parents, or does it simply acknowledge that “someone has to do it”? Are we asking too much or too little of our schools? While acknowledging that “schools can’t do it alone” in the end, if we identify these things as education issues, do we, with the best of intentions, inadvertently demand that public education accept responsibility for fixing all of our societal problems? Does this diminish or enhance our schools' mandate to educate children? If these become “education issues,” are policymakers going to have the courage and discipline to provide the resources necessary? Will other areas of government give education the authority to take leadership in implementation -- or will other agencies see schools as a method of delivery for their own programs, under their own control? If childhood health and after-school care become education issues, does that imply absolution for everyone except the education community? If we are still waiting for full funding for IDEA and NCLB, what assurance do we have that the necessary money will ever be made available to address these other pressing (and expensive) issues? And finally, if we constantly hear concerns about the high cost of public education and the ROI on those public dollars, will shifting more social services to us add fuel to the misperception that we are spendthrifts? As I read the profiles of the Broader and Bolder task force, I am sure that they have the expertise and knowledge to have foreseen and addressed (as best they can) many of my questions. But I couldn’t help but be disappointed, as I scanned the list, that K-12 classroom teachers weren't represented. I wonder if I would have been more or less enthusiastic if I had seen at least one practicing K-12 educator on that list? "Teachers hold America’s future in their hands", or so they say. But sometimes what seems doable as theory (some assembly required) becomes a lot more complicated in reality once you’ve unpacked the box. I can’t help but wonder why, if teachers are that important to the future of our nation and if teachers are the single most important factor in student learning, we are so rarely invited to the table when the Bold begin envisioning new approaches to our professional work. Everybody’s talking at me -- but what if teachers were participants in those formative discussions rather than audiences or topics? How bold would that be? ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/place_table/~3/315597933/a_broader_bolder_vision_some_a_1.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/06/a_broader_bolder_vision_some_a_1.html Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:34:54 -0500 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/06/a_broader_bolder_vision_some_a_1.html A Spelling Bee in My Bonnet The 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee is a Super Bowl of American academia, a place where 12-year-olds who can spell ophthalmoplegia are TV stars and spelling judges are hounded for autographs. -- The Washington Post Two hundred and eighty-eight spellers came together to compete in a high stakes, high profile battle of etymology and Sameer Mishra, 13, emerged as the new champion. He was up against some formidable opponents, many of whom are repeat participants, but he had an inside track since his sister had been a three-time contestant and his coach. The Bee made front page headlines. The final round was covered live by ESPN (they love statistics). ESPN's pre-Bee events included interviews with spellers and reviews of former final elimination words. What is it about a spelling bee that captures our imaginations? Is it the ecstasy of victory and the agony of defeat? Is it that we like to see a different kind of kid be a winner? Is it that we all remember standing in a line in sixth grade anticipating our turn? Every performance of the musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee gives four audience members a chance to relive that sensation, bringing them into the cast -- a group of stereotypical competitive spellers. They are “different,” but they explain to us that they really aren’t different all in the same way. They "love spelling” because being good spellers gives them a sense of pride, identity and order during the angst of early adolescence. As an educator, I guess the critical question is, “To what purpose?” Are these young people investing time and energy into competing at this level because they are building vocabulary skills? Do these students take on spelling because they enjoy the competition and they are good at it? Is memorization of proper spelling the intellectual calisthenics that expands their working memory and ability to recall information? Do they hope to take home scholarship money for future education? Or do they just want to hang out with like-minded kids? Are spelling bees academic or archaic? Do they demonstrate thinking skills or memorization skills? Does the acquired learning achievement justify the require learning investment? Does a bee develop self confidence or create unnecessary stress? Is competitive spelling an intellectual pursuit or a sport? Why not see if you have what it takes to spell competitively. Scripps Howard encourages you to test your spelling skill with the qualifying round of words. Go ahead and try. I did okay, but I’m not going to tell you how many I got right. I will share this: I just used spell check to correct six words out of the approximately 500 words in this piece (spell check was one of the words that I misspelled). So is this whole piece loquacious (from Latin meaning wordy; garrulous) or perhaps galimatias (from the Greek meaning nonsense; gibberish)? Well, I did just learn a new word. It may never became a ubiquitous part of my everyday speech, but sometimes it’s just fun to know things. Don’t you think? ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/place_table/~3/304870052/a_spelling_bee_in_my_bonnet_1.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/06/a_spelling_bee_in_my_bonnet_1.html Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:57:01 -0500 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/06/a_spelling_bee_in_my_bonnet_1.html In Memory of Some Who Served Miss Stevens: My first grade teacher who recognized and dealt with learning disabilities that didn’t have names in 1956. I am mildly dyslectic—right and left are, to this day, a problem for me. Miss Stevens realized this when I often put the wrong hand over my heart for the morning Pledge of Allegiance. “Susie, pick up your pencil as if you were going to write. That’s your right hand.” To this day, when someone gives directions for right and left, that #2 pencil is virtually in my right hand. I also had a pretty bad speech impediment--I dropped my “Rs”. I went to the speech therapist once a week, and I was sure it was because she was prepping me to be the announcer at the first grade assembly program. I began my teaching career at my double desk in Miss Stevens’ room. Becky was so impressed with my forays to the “speech lady” that she wanted me to teach her how to say “giwaffe” and “wabbit” so that she could go too. I did not master “Mothers and Fathers” in time for the program. Miss Stevens made me Rhythm Band Director instead. She still remembered my first efforts at instruction when Becky and I were in our forties. Thanks to Miss Stevens, the traditionalist, I never knew I had learning limitations. I knew I was special. Mrs. Burnett: My sixth grade history and language arts teacher who understood cognition before we called it that and who taught me to love language and “set high expectations” before high expectations were buzz words. She wore beautiful and expensive shoes that came from Leon’s, the best shop in town, and although she was a tiny woman, students quaked when she gave them her "teacher look" over the top of her half glasses. We wrote reports on mythology, important historical sites, and the Seven Wonders of the World. My first experience with research began with my World Book Encyclopedias. I was suppose to write about the Acropolis. I began at aardvark and worked my way back. Knowing just to know was fun. Each week we had two prefixes and two suffixes to learn and two vocabulary words for each one we had to learn. On Fridays we had cumulative vocabulary tests—no true-false or matching—a blank piece of paper and either recall the word or write the definition. By the time we finished the last 400-word test I had a mastery of etymology. When I was recognized as a Teacher of the Year forty years later, she wrote to congratulate me, saying that she knew when I was eleven that I had potential as an educator. When I wrote her back I made sure I double checked my spelling, punctuation, and handwriting. Thanks to Mrs. Burnett, the classicist, who I realize now was a true scholar, who gave me the gifts of intellectual curiosity and academic rigor and made me a darned good Jeopardy player. Mrs. McMillan: My junior Honors English teacher, who understood the importance of critical thinking skills and value of project-based learning even though it marked her as “unconventional” and “subversive” in 1967. One Friday a month our homework was a reading from Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy. It opened up a whole new world of organized thought and I started asking questions that pushed against my preconceived answers. It had never occurred to me that "truth" had a bigger meaning than "not telling a lie." Once we had begun to think, she expected us to apply those skills. The last month of our junior year she divided us into four groups of six and assigned us one of Shakespeare’s comedies. She told us that at the end of the month we would perform a one-hour version. We could not paraphrase, we could not rewrite, but we could use the editor’s red pen with complete freedom and then she put each group in a separate room and checked up on us every day or so. We thought we had total freedom and control! She knew that she was forcing us to deconstruct the plot and identify critical text while not losing touch with the playfulness of words nor the universal stories. We were taking responsibility for our own learning. We were ruthless and probably profane. We identified subplots and cut them. We even edited Jacque’s “All the world’s a stage” soliloquy from As You Like It, but we also memorized more than we cut. Mrs. McMillan probably remembers us as the beginning of the end. She didn't return to the classroom the year after we graduated. The administration was concerned because it was felt she was encouraging too much "free thinking." Thanks to Mrs. McMillan the constructivist and rebel, who demonstrated that people learn best when allowed to take control and responsibility for their own learning and who taught me, at sixteen, to think with my head as well as my heart. What teacher do you remember? What student will remember you? ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/place_table/~3/298879041/in_memory_of_some_who_served_1.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/05/in_memory_of_some_who_served_1.html Mon, 26 May 2008 11:37:35 -0500 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/05/in_memory_of_some_who_served_1.html Shelter From the Storm
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm. "Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm." — Bob Dylan
On Thursday, May 9th, in the early morning hours, a tornado ripped through 160 homes here in Stafford County, Virginia. At least 40 homes were destroyed. The damage is about two blocks from my school. Some of the devastated houses, of course, were our students’ homes. We can see these houses from our playing fields. The roof was gone from some, others were missing the whole second story. Still others looked almost like doll houses, the rooms open and exposed with the furniture sitting oddly in order. I got my first phone call before 7 a.m. Our gym and auxiliary gym would be called into service as provided for in our Shelter In Place Emergency Plan. This required an adjustment in the PE schedule and meant that school breakfast would not be served. Otherwise, Thursday would be Business As Usual at Gayle Middle School. Business as usual, although administrators had been called in at two in the morning. As usual, except for the 125 people in the gym, many with nothing but the clothes on their backs, trying to get a little rest on the exercise mats spread out on the gym floor. As usual, except for the fire trucks, ambulances and Red Cross vehicles jamming our parking lot as the buses rolled in. As usual, except for the TV news teams landing helicopters on the football field. As usual, except for the representatives of major homeowner insurance companies arriving to meet with homeowners. As usual, except for the hundreds of phone calls being answered by our school secretaries. As usual, except for the loading dock outside the cafeteria, which became an emergency animal shelter for pets. As usual, except that some of our students were homeless. Morning announcements simply stated that, “We will be adjusting the schedule a little today. We have guests in our gym. Some of our neighbors had to leave their homes when the tornado hit. We’re going to be trying to help them out, so do your best to give them and the workers space and let’s have a good day.” Our faculty and staff tried to use the tornado and its aftermath as a learning experience. The sixth grade curriculum is Earth Science. Seventh grade Civics and Economics could discuss the role of government in emergency situations. Eighth grade Physical Science classes could explore potential and kinetic energy. My seventh graders were completing their last cooking activity. Earlier we had talked about how food met social and emotional needs as well as addressing nutrition and appetite. They decided their chocolate chips cookies were comfort food, so they would each keep one and donate the rest to the children in the gym. Afternoon announcements came on: “Thanks to all of our students and staff for their cooperation during some unusual circumstances. Let's all keep up the good work because we have our SOL tests coming up in another week. Be careful going home and stay away from the firetrucks on the way to the buses. We’ll see you in the morning.” It was close to five when I left, and administrators were still double checking to make sure all the classrooms were secured. Arrangements had been made for all but a few of the visitors in our shelter, and it looked like no one would be spending the night at school. Friday would be school as usual. By Saturday morning I had watched the news, checked the Internet, and read coverage in the three area newspapers. This is what I noticed: There were lots of pictures of torn up houses and blue tarps. There were quotes from Stafford County’s public information officer, representatives of the Red Cross, and the Fire and Rescue Department. There was mention of the fire and rescue assistance from neighboring communities and even the assistance given by the ASPCA which provided crates for the pets of displaced residents. A local Congressman was photographed meeting with victims, assuring them that “We can put the houses back together, but what is more important is to be able to help put people’s lives back together.” And our school? Well, Gayle Middle School was mentioned as the location of the emergency shelter where families who lost their homes were sent -- and the site for a victims’ information meeting. No one seemed to notice that school personnel were called out in the middle of the night. It didn’t strike anyone as impressive that we housed 125 tornado victims, provided resources for emergency workers, public officials and insurance representatives -- or corralled media teams while carrying on a normal school day for over 800 eleven to fourteen year olds. Of course, that wasn't the most important part of the story. The thing is, those 800+ students needed normality, and school is the center that holds together when the rest of their lives are in chaos. We provided a "shelter" for tornado victims, but we also took care of our primary responsibility -- sheltering our students. We had school because our kids needed to be able to come to school. It’s not that our efforts were not appreciated. I know they were. But over the weekend, I wondered why most of what we did didn’t seem worthy of special notice. It was on Sunday, Mother’s Day, that I had an epiphany. Schools are our community homes and like our homes, we expect a great deal of them. Mary Jean LeTendre, long-time national director of the Title I program, has said that “America’s future walks through the doors of our schools every day.” We presume the door will be open, and support will be provided for cultural programs, athletic events, community service projects, elections, and even emergencies. Public schools are sort of a mother figure in our communities. When schools, like moms, are at their best, we hardly notice how much they do and how efficiently they do it. When schools do not meet the perceived needs of their community, they, like negligent mothers, are judged harshly. On Mother’s Day we celebrate and honor our mothers who do so much, so willingly, with so little recognition. So here’s to our public education systems, which so often fill the same role for American society. As Charlie Brown put it, “A good education is the next best thing to a pushy mother.” ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/place_table/~3/290237947/shelter_from_the_storm.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/05/shelter_from_the_storm.html Tue, 13 May 2008 23:34:34 -0500 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/05/shelter_from_the_storm.html Don't Be Too Quick to Label Me! China—Again??? Amritpal: Oh yeah! I’m Belarus! Nobody’s ever been Belarus! LeMaj: Yeah, but now you have to find it! Ryan: I’m Greenland! Kristen: Not! No way you are Greenland, Ryan! You made that up! Geography? No, this is my eighth grade Family and Consumer Science class. For the last week, they’ve been checking the permanent-care labels in their clothes and "claiming" their shirts' country of origin. It's an eye-opening activity. While China may have produced the majority of today's clothes, students huddled around the map are complaining that Honduras and El Salvador are so crowded with markers that some are oozing over into Nicaragua and Guatemala. "No wonder China make so much stuff," says one student. "They've got more land and more people. But Honduras is tiny and look how much comes from there." A quick look at the stickie-infested map makes it clear that clothing construction is concentrated in China and surrounding nations and in Central America. Why? Because clothing construction is low tech, requires minimal infrastructure, and the work force is usually women and children. A quick Internet search indicates that the average wage in many of these countries is less than $5,000 a year and that, in many cases, children younger than my students are working six-day weeks to produce those clothes. Katie is outraged. "It's not fair!" Should we boycott? What happens if we do? Do the child laborers go to school instead? Or do they starve? If a country begins with low wage jobs, will its economy grow, resulting in better jobs in the future? Or will it continue to exploit the weakest members of its society? The social justice issues are only part of the picture. Our conversation soon begins to veer off toward practical economic concerns closer to home. Outsourcing of textile manufacturing and clothing production contributes to the national trade deficit and has been devastating to the economy in southwest Virginia, where we live. What is the real cost of the lost jobs here and the flow of money out of the country? How much more would we be willing to pay for clothing produced locally? What would that do to the retail marketplace, if the price of clothing reflected American wages? The discussion gets fierce at times, but tomorrow we will move from the theoretical to the practical. We will begin their sweatshirt sewing projects, and they can hardly wait. Will most of these students ever sew again? Maybe not, but they may develop a greater appreciation in the future for the people who will construct the clothing they wear. They will be better consumers—more likely to look at quality of construction. But the most important thing they will learn is to manage their own time, set their own standards, assess their own work, live with their own mistakes. These are Career and Technical Education skills that will serve them for a lifetime. Do we stitch things and stir things in my room? You bet! We also do a lot of thinking, and use learning strategies like the world map activity (which a geography teacher in our school is incorporating into his own course) to build 21st Century knowledge and know-how. What really matters is this: In Family and Consumer Science class, we validate academic concepts by connecting them to how we meet our own basic needs and improve the quality of our own lives. Laquisha put it this way: “This is my favorite class because instead of telling us a bunch of stuff, you let us do stuff that makes us figure out why we need to know stuff.” Just a FACS teacher? You bet. ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/place_table/~3/286907828/dont_be_to_quick_to_label_me_1.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/05/dont_be_to_quick_to_label_me_1.html Wed, 07 May 2008 20:14:17 -0500 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/05/dont_be_to_quick_to_label_me_1.html Chester Finn: Mugged by Reality
It'll be interesting to see if she actually reads the book or is content to pontificate based on the EdWeek capsule. I wonder if she reads books or just pontificates. Posted by Chester Finn on A Place at the Table, March 5, 2008 6:02
Chester Finn was pretty miffed back in March when, after reading an Education Week commentary based on his new book Troublemaker, I suggested he might not have learned as much as he thought during his years as a student (long), teacher (short), and policy wonk (interminable). If I hadn't promised my readers, I wouldn't take the time and space to review Finn's book now. But look at it this way —I can save you the aggravation and the price of the book. In all fairness, Finn did choose these words for his subtitle: “A personal history of school reform.” I expected to find a personal perspective, but this is really personal—as in, “if school reform didn't involve me, then it really didn't much matter.” "Checker," as his friends and enemies call him, finds constructivism, a flawed educational approach. After reading his book, I understand why. A basic tenet of constructivism is that the learner builds knowledge based on what he does and experiences. The problem is that, without guidance, human egocentrism may result in false knowledge developed on nothing but personal experience. Thus the child who falls off his tricycle onto the sidewalk may falsely conclude that the tricycle and the sidewalk have conspired to hurt him. Checker, bless his heart (as we say down here in the South), seems to have constructed some really faulty knowledge. After a fine education at Phillips Exeter and Harvard, he attempted teaching and failed. It wasn't his fault--he was only twenty-one and anyway, most of his students were "eighteen-year-olds from the wrong side of the (Newton) tracks." He fell off his tricycle, and he’s been blaming the trike and the rough concrete for his teaching shortcomings ever since. His bad experience led Checker to conclude that he didn't belong at the "retail level" of schooling; so he decided to pursue a career as a wholesaler with his own line of educational nostrums. An equivalent might be Paris Hilton deciding that if she failed selling shoes at Macy’s, the logical next step would be for her to design her own line of shoes, because the customers and the store just don't get it. This is sort of what Checker did. He went back to Harvard and designed his own course of studies for a doctorate in Education Policy. With the encouragement of a faculty member, he and fellow graduate students applied for a federal grant and attempted to lead an Upward Bound college preparation program, which, Finn acknowledges, was not successful. Once again, his quick mind, good intentions, and sincere effort didn’t immediately transform public education. He skinned another knee. This "mugging by reality," as he describes it, "accelerated my transformation from idealist to troublemaker.” For some an encounter with "reality" after twenty something years of being the coddled child of privilege might be a wake up call to what the rest of the world experiences. But Checker decided the trike of education and the sidewalk of the real world were picking on him and he was a victim. He's been getting even ever since. As the book recounts, Checker turned out to have quite a knack for troublemaking. He is good at finding fault, always willing to offer his idealized but untested solutions, and quick to blame others when his solutions don’t work. As he tells his story, he wants to make sure his reader understands that he is a "somebody" who has been a guest in important homes, dined with the powerful, and rubbed elbows with the insiders and other Harvard grads who are now “on the board of...” or “holding an endowed chair at…”. For a journeyman pundit, he's done pretty good for himself in the reflected glory department. He flitted from job to job (he boasts that he stayed nowhere more than four years). He started projects and walked away from them, justifying their failure based on the interference of others or the poor implementation of practitioners. You know the rap: Teachers are all a bunch of self protective unionists. The higher education community is self serving and lazy (this coming from a man who inflated grades and says he was glad to be "rid" of students even as he collected a Vanderbilt University paycheck). The standards-based National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) -- which he straightened out during his tenure as assistant secretary of education in the Reagan years -- was a pristine measurement of learning until Congress, governors, state legislatures, boards of education, universities and teachers sabotaged and compromised the purity of his vision. If standards were a good idea, why not have them for teacher prep programs and teachers? But NCATE was "a veritable Noah's ark of special interests." And since the board of NBPTS is "dominated by teachers, which in practice means their unions," what possible credibility could we hope for there? He writes off the National Board's intense assessments because "it would need to to focus on classroom effectiveness as gauged by student results." (I guess he missed that part about impact on student learning that dominates the NBPTS process.) Despite his opposition, Checker writes, Congress and "many of the country's premier foundations and Fortune 500 companies" invested in NBPTS. "I never stood a chance." In 2001, Checker got even. He dreamed up the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence. Pass a 60-question bubble test and you too will be qualified to teach. It wasn't his fault that in the spring of 2006 the $50 million of taxpayer money invested in ABCTE had produced less than 100 teachers. (NBPTS reached 64,000 this year.) As a private sector adventurer, Finn was a member of the original design team for the Edison Project, remembered for its questionable financial practices in the 1990s. He exonerates himself, even though he acknowledges that he and his cronies never really questioned the cost of the private jets and "posh" accommodations they enjoyed. After all, they were figuring out how to reform schools for profit, and it takes money to make money by eliminating the waste in public education. The fact that Edison foundered on the rocks of mismanagement and left children stranded without operating schools doesn't seem to trouble Finn. By that time, he'd gotten "itchy" and moved on. Edison, of course, was later resurrected on the back of the charter school movement. And speaking of charters... When family connections gave Finn control of the Fordham Foundation, he decided to dabble in charter schools in Dayton. It didn't work out quite as well as expected, but that was the fault of politics, fiscal issues and other things he really couldn’t control. When school gets messy, Finn tends to wash his hands and walk away, leaving lesser mortals to straighten things up. By the end of his book, Finn acknowledges that perhaps this education thing isn’t quite as easy in practice as it is in theory. But please don't assume he's begun to reflect much on his own role in policy failure—or to express any regret that he's always been better at making trouble than solving problems. His closing chapter is pretty strong, but I can’t help but wonder if the 10 points in his carefully honed solutions framework are mostly Powerpoint slides for public speaking engagements. They're the kind of obvious "insights" that aren't likely to stir much disagreement, and they're general enough to support almost any agenda. Since Finn acknowledges that he consults with clients like Michael Milken to determine whether they'd prefer his paid speech to take a pro or con position on NCLB, these unsharpened points must certainly come in handy. Here’s the thing. I find Chester Finn likable, honest and very human when he talks about the education journey of his own two children. He loves them, appreciates their struggle, and he certainly seems to be a careful and patient parent. Clearly he loves his granddaughter, Emma. He seems to be sincerely impressed by the educational struggle of his illegal immigrant friend, relating with compassion his friend's worries about whether his little girl, Ana, will have a chance at a decent education in Los Angeles. In Finn's world, up-close education is about people, but when he can't see the faces, education policy seems to be something like a sport, where schools are the playing fields, and the teachers and students who occupy them are hazards to be overcome. A young teacher friend, Ariel Sacks, writes in her blog that her father taught her "What doesn't help, hurts." So I wonder about Chester Finn: Why did he decide to trade making a difference for just making noise? What causes him to hold the teachers who do what he couldn’t in contempt? Where is his compassion for the children who suffer collateral damage from his failed experiments? When will he be mature enough to stop laying blame and start taking responsibility? And finally, on behalf of our children and the people who have the courage to go into our nation's schools each day and do the best they can to help kids learn: What on earth makes Chester Finn think that being a troublemaker is something to be proud of? ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/place_table/~3/275845389/chester_finn_mugged_by_reality.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/04/chester_finn_mugged_by_reality.html Sun, 20 Apr 2008 20:57:36 -0500 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/04/chester_finn_mugged_by_reality.html Prepare for Re-Entry! Knee Deep In Guilt since Tuesday, March 18 when I took a leave of absence for a knee replacement. Last Friday I was taking a break from preparation for re-entry when I ran across Jamie Sussel Turner’s take on teachers missing school in Education Week. Turner is a principal who knows something about When Life Interferes. She says:
It’s never easy to balance the mother in me who wants to emotionally embrace a troubled staff member with the principal in me who knows that the needs of children can’t be put on hold. To the 20 or so students in a teacher’s care, this is their only chance…”
It’s not surprising to hear her voice, from an administrator’s perspective, expressing the same struggle I have had in trying to balance not taking care of me against not taking care of my students. We both worry about the balance. So, last week I did the following: • Practiced getting my right leg into the car and driving with my left foot. (Please do not report me to the police.) • Worked hard at doing all my physical therapy exercises so that I could get around with a cane and get up once I sat down. (If only I was this motivated to do regular exercise.) • Began to work on my nine-weeks grades. (Don’t tell my home health care nurse—this was against the rules.) • Completed work on the district strategic plan for my content area. (One of those little extra duties I committed to back when I could walk.) • Read an entry for an Advanced NBCT Candidate (Like taxes, it’s due on April 15th.) • Practiced synchronizing body demands for rest, nourishment, and elimination with the school-day schedule. (Only another teacher would understand the need for actual practice.) • Loaded my walker into the car. (Just in case the cane is insufficient for a whole day.) The admonitions of my teaching partner and my principal are ringing in my ears. But the fourth nine weeks begins tomorrow and that means two new groups of seventh graders who need to meet their teacher -- plus that bunch of eighth graders who are impatient to get back to more hands-on instruction, which requires my presence. I am blessed to work for a principal, who like Jamie Sussel Turner, understands that teachers are his most valuable asset. Not all administrators get it. I have heard teachers who have been made to feel guilty for not anticipating their own preschooler waking up with a fever, for not being able to get an after-school appointment for medical testing, or for taking a day to be there when a son comes home from a war zone. But part of me understands. They have a school to run and their first responsibility has to be to the welfare of students. They will be the ones to take the heat if scores aren’t high and parents are upset. But somewhere along the way, they missed that leadership class where you learn that real schools function through the efforts of real human beings who have common, everyday problems that stubbornly refuse to get out of the way. Turner says,
After a decade of living and breathing the life of a principal, I look back and recall the topics on my mind in the months leading up to the start of this exciting new role: student learning, team building, professional development, curriculum renewal, parental involvement. Not once did I anticipate how the everyday life of the adults who inhabit our school might interfere with these lofty goals. Not once in graduate school did the topic come up. Not once in my reading did I encounter this theme. No wonder I felt unprepared when life inevitably did interfere.
I’ve often complained that teacher prep programs rarely prepare teachers for the human aspect of teaching—the unhappy or angry child, the overwrought or unconcerned parent, the necessity of working with as well as alongside colleagues. In mentoring new teachers, I find they have been taught to differentiate instruction, but they often stumble when school requires them to differentiate for individuals and their circumstances. Reading Turner’s reflection makes it clear that preparation for school leadership may be lacking this same vital element. Maybe it’s because it has to be learned in practice and cannot be taught in theory. Humans, whether big or little, just won’t fit into pigeonholes and stay put. Life is messy. Maybe we need to take a deep breath and just accept that it won’t always work perfectly, but we do the best we can to balance our focus on outcomes and our compassion toward people. Re-entry from a disrupted life, job, or education is never easy. By the end of tomorrow I'll probably be flat as a pancake. By the end of the week, I'm guessing my students, my co-workers and I will be glad things are back to normal. I’m already feeling the pressure. But I'm willing to pay that price. The alternative is to be lost in space. I miss my middle school world. ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/place_table/~3/270342199/prepare_for_reentry_1.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/04/prepare_for_reentry_1.html Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:02:27 -0500 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/04/prepare_for_reentry_1.html Knee Deep in Guilt For three weeks, Beth is being me. We are amazingly alike. As women of a certain age we share a birthday and short gray hair, and we are by nature and lifestyle the nurturing type. Our brilliant 29 year old sons and talented 25 year old daughters went through school together for most of their lives. We live near each other, read constantly, love to travel, cook, talk over dinner, and we both think diagramming sentences is entertaining and gratifying. But that’s not why Beth is me. Beth is me because she’s my long term substitute at school while I am recuperating from a knee replacement. When I realized in late February that I was losing the end-of-the-semester race with my bad knee, I had to make a lot of arrangements in a hurry. I did not call to set the surgery first—I called Beth. “If I do the knee the week before Spring Break, can you be me for a few weeks? I’m looking at the calendar, and there’s a week of Spring Break, plus a half day and a workday. That means I’ll be out 15 days. Will you do it?” Teaching Family and Consumer Science is very teacher intensive. You can’t fall back on stalling strategies like “Read Chapter 4 and answer the questions in a complete sentence” for more than a day or so. Good FACS curriculum is very current, very interactive, and very hands-on. So I wrote and wrote and set up materials in stacks around the room. And made lists: "Here are big ideas. Here is a list of information they should master. Here is a list of skills they should be able to demonstrate." I worried—a lot—but guess what? I talk to Beth daily and my students are fine. I had to call a couple of parents, and we’ve adjusted some of the plans, but it’s going okay and it looks like I’ll be able to go back in another week and a half. I know my kids are going to be all right. I know that none of them will be damaged for life because I missed 15 days of school. School has an immediacy to it that doesn’t allow adjusting the schedule, and so teachers are forced to make hard choices about things like health, or family events, or being available for their own children. You can’t just make up the work later. And teaching is relational, so you can’t just plug in another person and get the same effect. Ask any parent whose child has a long term substitute. I know my students are concerned for me, but I know they feel a little cheated that I’m not there. I know their parents feel the same way. I know I need to get well, but I wish I could do my physical therapy and take a nap without wondering what fifth period is up to and worrying that I’m leaving them stranded. And I also wonder this: Does the fact that I’m struggling with all this guilt indicate that I’m a responsible educator? Does it reveal that my classroom practice is overly teacher-centered? Or does it simply mean that I have a distorted opinion of my own importance? I think I’ll take an aspirin and lie down. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/place_table/~3/263662420/wallowing_in_guilt.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/04/wallowing_in_guilt.html Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:26:32 -0500 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/04/wallowing_in_guilt.html On Serving Two Masters USAJOBS
The U.S. Department of Education (ED) is looking for the best and brightest to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence throughout the nation. If you are a highly motivated, creative individual who would like to work for an agency that establishes policies on federal financial aid for education; distributes as well as monitors those funds; collects data on America’s schools and disseminates research; focuses national attention on key educational issues; and prohibits discrimination and ensures equal access to education; ED is the place for you! The U.S. Department of Education is recruiting to fill up to 5 temporary (not-to-exceed one year) positions under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA). The positions are located in Washington, DC. We anticipate that the positions will be filled in June/July 2008 and that the work will extend through July 2009.
It seems that, with less than a year to go, Secretary Spellings has decided to bring some teachers on board as Teacher Ambassadors. There will be twenty Ambassador Fellows and five resident Washington Ambassadors.
Teachers with successful strategies for increasing student achievement are encouraged to obtain principal support to apply for Teaching Ambassador Fellowship positions with the U.S. Department of Education through the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) for the 2008-2009 school year. Teachers will be chosen based upon their record of leadership, impact on student achievement, and potential for contribution to the field. All Fellows will complete a collaborative project to contribute to the field of education at the national level, and will be encouraged to work with their principals and with government liaisons throughout the year. The program offers two tracks: Classroom and Washington Fellows.
 Bess Keller and David Hoff of Education Week wrote that Secretary Spellings offered this rationale of the program.
“It’ll be very useful in both directions for teachers to understand what the issues are at the macro level,” she said in a recent interview. “But it’s also hugely beneficial for us to make sure we know: Is this policy implementable, doable, realistic, and righteous by the classroom teacher?”
I spoke with Bess on the phone, and she asked me what was driving me to consider the job and what might make me hesitate. Why is easy. I’m within commuting distance and in a place in my life where I could do this. I named this blog “A Place at the Table” and I’ve been advocating for teacher perspective in education policy. Part of me argues that not applying is sort of the same as not voting—I lose the right to complain about who is appointed and what they say and do. So why am I hesitating? I have some unresolved concerns: Why did it take the current administration seven years to decide that teachers should be part of the process? There are over 2 million teachers in America. Are 5 full timers and 20 part timers really adequate sample of teacher voice? Which teachers are going to be able to apply? What is the criteria for choosing these teachers? What are the job expectations? Here are the criteria and the job expectations the application overview offers:
Teachers with successful strategies for increasing student achievement are encouraged to obtain principal support to apply for Teaching Ambassador Fellowship positions with the U.S. Department of Education through the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) for the 2008-2009 school year. Teachers will be chosen based upon their record of leadership, impact on student achievement, and potential for contribution to the field. All Fellows will complete a collaborative project to contribute to the field of education at the national level, and will be encouraged to work with their principals and with government liaisons throughout the year. The program offers two tracks: Classroom and Washington Fellows.
 But there will be a new administration in January and regardless of who wins, there is likely to be a new Secretary of Education and some major adjustments in the DOE. Realistically, how much real impact will these Ambassadors have with their time on the job split right down the middle of two administrations? Will this matter more than time spent with students? And finally, if this is about teacher leadership, doesn’t it seem a little paternalistic to require that I get my principal’s permission to apply? I was in a movie theater watching Elizabeth: The Golden Age when I finally figured out what was gnawing on me from the beginning about this job prospect. Up on the big screen, I was witnessing betrayal, intrigue, and dead bodies at every turn. And right smack in the center of this political chicanery was... the Spanish ambassador. That was it! The job title! Ambassador: a diplomatic agent of the highest rank accredited to a foreign government or sovereign as the resident representative of his or her own government or sovereign or appointed for a special and often temporary diplomatic assignment. An ambassador is a liaison of sorts, but he is not a disinterested one. Who does a Teacher Ambassador represent? Teachers -- or the Department of Education? If teachers, then it would be teachers doing the choosing. But USDOE is doing the picking, and it's logical (and not unfair) to assume that the ambassador will represent the interests of DOE. Does DOE want to know what teachers really think or do they want teachers to validate and promote DOE’s positions? I have 20 days to left to apply. Is this the opportunity for which I've been waiting? Or a sell out? Or something in between? What do you think? ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/place_table/~3/254487796/on_serving_two_masters_1.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/03/on_serving_two_masters_1.html Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:48:32 -0500 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/03/on_serving_two_masters_1.html On Making the Earth Stand Still
So the sun stood still in the middle of heaven, and hurried not to go down.... Joshua 10:13 (KJV)
Friday afternoon, as the last kids left the building, the intercom spoke unto me:
Please note that the clocks have been reset. Although the clocks read 4:57 it is now really 3:57. Our clocks have been reset for Monday morning when Daylight Saving Time is in effect.
I detest Daylight Saving Time. Just when we get to that point in the year when I can wake to sunlight and the busy birds, and then sing “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” as I drive to school, I am forced once again to rise in darkness and arrive at school just as dawn is fading into daylight. Every year I rage against it, demanding to know “WHY???” So, for all who share my frustration, I did my homework this time around. Benjamin Franklin came up with the idea of Daylight Saving Time while serving as Ambassador to France. It was a logical idea in a world lit with candlelight. It seems that one of the first efforts to actually implement Franklin's idea came in 1907. An Englishman, William Willett, wrote a pamphlet titled “The Waste of Daylight.” Defending his proposal to put all of England on a schedule of moving up their clocks 20 minutes on four consecutive Sundays in March, Willett argued:
Everyone appreciates the long, light evenings. Everyone laments their shortage as Autumn approaches, and everyone has given utterance to regret that the clear, bright light of an early morning during Spring and Summer months is so seldom seen or used. Nevertheless, standard time remains so fixed, that for nearly half the year the sun shines upon the land for several hours each day while we are asleep, and is rapidly nearing the horizon, having already passed its western limit, when we reach home after the work of the day is over.
But Michael Terman, a clinical psychologist and head of the Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, notes that light-sensitive individuals who suffer from winter depression are just beginning to get over their symptoms when along comes Daylight Savings Time. Quoted in a recent article published in Live Science, "Time Change: Springing Forward Could be Bad For You," Terman says:
We are placing these people back into February. We are dealing with a public health issue and the extension of Daylight Saving Time at both ends is extending the period of year in which people are most vulnerable to depression.
 William Willett died in 1915 with time as yet unaltered (maybe his failure had to do with the unlikely prospect that folks would remember to change their clocks FOUR weekends in a row?). But the energy demands of World War I soon pushed much of Europe to implement DST. For a year, in 1918-19, the United States followed suit, but most states dropped the practice quickly after the war. Farmers preferred their sunlight on the front-end of the day. Also, in those days natural daylight was the primary source of light in public and private buildings. Incandescent light was supplemental for dark days and late hours. Factories featured the distinctive saw-toothed clerestory windows, and public buildings such as schools were characterized by their big windows admitting light and air. The need for energy conservation revived DST in the U.S. during World War II. After the war, DST became optional again -- much to the growing dismay of railways, bus and air lines and the broadcasting industry, where commerce depended on timetables. The debate continued every spring and fall for the next 20 years. Then Lyndon Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act into law, which created the familiar April to October system. Just last year, Congress extended DST by another four weeks, ostensibly in response (once again) to the energy conservation arguments. But the research justifying DST as an energy-saver is more than 20 years old. Some current research indicates that while there is minimal electrical power conserved through DST, it results in increased use of gasoline, greater emissions, and pedestrian deaths. It seems that we are spending those extra daylight hours driving around in our cars, burning gas, and running over (sleepy?) people on our way to convenience stores and the golf course. Hum. So what does all this mean to me as a teacher? (My editors sigh in relief) Science has proven what every teacher knows about teenagers: Their circadian clock tells them not to sleep in. And since many of my students are responsible for getting themselves up in the morning, they often listen to what that clock tells them. They need eight to ten hours of sleep and they are not getting it. And while, in theory, DST gives them more time outside, the lack of sleep will not be offset by an increase in healthy outdoor activity for many children. Their working parents want them to stay in where they are safe after school, which is reasonable since juvenile crime peaks at three in the afternoon. And, you may ask, do adolescents learn more early in the day? As my friend Nancy likes to say, not so much. It’s interesting to me that (at least where I live) we do high stakes testing during the first couple of hours of the school day -- especially in light of what this research summary, "What is the Best Time of Day for Student Learning?," tells us. A couple of quotes:
According to Carskadon, the students' brains--at 8:30 in the morning, during second or third period--were essentially still asleep.
(W)hen given the opportunity as part of the experiment to try to fall asleep in the morning upon arrival at school, almost half of the 10th-graders went into deep REM sleep (sleep that usually only occurs in the middle of the night), and they fell asleep on average within 5 minutes.
 They might all be Highly Proficient if we tested them at 3 p.m.. But by then the Hidden Gifted have left the building. Oh well. I'm writing this ahead of my posting date, so let me say back here in Real Time that I’m going to bed early Sunday night so I can be ready for Monday, because there will be lots of tardies and grumpy people at my school. Unfortunately, I’ll probably be one of them. I guess I’m just young at heart! ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/place_table/~3/249158781/on_making_the_earth_stand_stil.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/03/on_making_the_earth_stand_stil.html Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:39:33 -0500 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/03/on_making_the_earth_stand_stil.html Lessons Not Learned Education Week, sister publication of Teacher Magazine, featured Chester Finn 's "Lessons Learned" on the Commentary page last week. Mr. Finn, known to his fellow alums of Phillips Exeter Academy (and most of the world) as "Checker," is usually styled as an “education guru” because he is a Hoover Institute Fellow and President of The Fordham Foundation where he contributes regularly to The Education Gadfly. For something like three decades, he has been more than willing to explain to people in positions of power exactly what is wrong with public education. It’s nice to know that he has learned some lessons along the way. Here are some examples: Lesson 2. People are good at different things--and plenty of human traits matter besides academics. Lesson 11. Don't read too much into test scores. According to David Hoff’s blog, in his new book Troublemaker Finn offers, as examples, his own children, who drank powdered milk to help with the financial strain of private schools, where their educational future didn’t balance on a single test -- a test that might include a question like this:
The Finns want to pay for their two children to attend a private high school in suburban Maryland. Tuition at the median private high school for day students is $10,000. The Finn family recoups the cost of private school over public school by drinking powdered skim milk rather than fresh skim milk. If the cost differential between powdered and fresh skim milk is $2 per gallon, how much milk does the Finn family drink per school year to save enough to pay for tuition? (You may use scratch paper to determine your answer.)
Anyway, while I would agree with Lessons 2 and 11, I wonder why Finn still promotes the National Assessment of Educational Progress (he served as first chair of NAEP's governing board), which is at best a very limited, and at worst, a deeply flawed method of determining the abilities of America’s young people. Lesson 3. Even the biggest-name schools have kids "left behind," victimized by an inferior education. Lesson 5. By the time kids with tough lives have been further scarred by bad schooling, traditional "intervention" programs aren't apt to yield lasting success for many. Lesson 8. School choice without quality doesn't do enough. Lesson 9. I also erred in thinking that competition per se would trigger great changes in traditional schools. Lesson 10. Hard as it is to make government reforms succeed, private ventures also face trouble sustaining their edge and not slipping into wary, bureaucratized, status-quo-ism. I guess these really were lessons learned the hard way. NCLB doesn't seem to be fixing things. The Edison Project Schools (where Finn was a "co-visioner" at the start-up) proved to be a disaster of private enterprise in public education. It is a lot easier to write a business plan for effective schooling than it is to actually make it work. Since Finn has learned these lessons, I wonder why he and his colleagues at the Fordham Foundation continue to support school privatization schemes? Lesson 4. Teaching is truly hard, and being smart and well educated doesn't make one good at it. From the sound of it, Checker really did learn this lesson most painfully. After attending Phillips Exeter Academy ( pricey now, pricey then) and earning bachelor and master degrees from Harvard (ditto), it must have been pretty traumatic to discover he couldn’t cut it in a public high school classroom. I give him credit for publicly confessing that he showed poor judgment when he brought to class a pig's head obtained from the local butcher and used it as a visual aid for Lord of the Flies. Perhaps he should have thought about running that idea by someone with a little more experience teaching teenagers, even if they didn’t have quite as fine an educational pedigree. In any event, Finn says he "came to realize that, if I were going to make a difference in American education, it wouldn’t be at the retail level." Lesson 6. Persistence counts, even in the nation’s capital. Lesson 7. Character counts, too, along with leadership and courage. Yes, these things do count. And I wonder, if Finn has learned these lessons, why he derives such pleasure in styling himself as a gadfly (meddler, busybody, pest, nuisance) and a troublemaker. I spend my day with people of persistence, character, leadership and courage. (Many, Finn might be surprised to learn, are also smart and well-educated.) They are classroom teachers. They didn’t give up after a year. They come back to the classroom every day to try to improve the lives of their students. Some of them are amazing. Some of them struggle. But they are sticking around and putting in the time it takes to become accomplished teachers. Finn went back to Harvard and got a doctorate in Education Administration and Policy. And while I may not be qualified to question the screening process for the doctoral program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I wonder about it. If a new CPA fails to survive an entry level job at an accounting firm, is the obvious path to skip the “retail” level and go back for a PhD. in Economics? Perhaps so. Perhaps this explains something about the quality and practicality of education policy today. 12. Nothing in education reform is easy. No, it’s not. And quite frankly, those of us out here on the front lines could do without professional Troublemakers who leverage their privileged backgrounds, elitist education, and the contacts that go with them into careers directing the campaign from the rear. Public education is serious business. The future of our economy, government, and people depend on it. If Finn is serious about determining what works and what doesn’t, perhaps he should spend less time posturing in the plush chairs of non-profit think tanks, or the marble halls of government, and a little more time in quiet contemplation, observing and listening to the teachers, school administrators, and students who spend their days in our public schools. There are lessons yet to be learned there. ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/place_table/~3/245716150/lessons_not_learned_1.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/03/lessons_not_learned_1.html Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:57:27 -0500 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/03/lessons_not_learned_1.html A Movable Feast or Beast? Annie Gowen writes in The Washington Post:
Thirteen-year-old Danielle Mangrum loves her new room. It has two TV screens, so she can watch the Disney Channel while her 9-year-old sister, Diamond, watches a DVD on the other. It has an elaborate stereo system, new leather furnishings and a table where she can hunker down and do her homework. It also gets 20 miles to a gallon.
Good for Danielle, she’s doing her homework! And if you read the whole article, it’s clear that these parents, just like my PTA friend, are trying hard to give their children the best of all worlds. Most of them worry about finding a balance in a fast-paced lifestyle where both parents have careers and their high-achieving children supplement heavy school loads with lots of enrichment activities. These parents are cognizant of how much time their kids spend in the car and the "quality" of that time. Attentive auto manufacturers have identified that concern and are marketing to it by producing new vehicles with “homelike features.” And that's the way we like it -- plenty of choices. I picked my current car for its sunroof, seat warmers, audio system, sturdy cupholders and storage space. I wanted it to be comfortable even though I'm not burdened with a long commute or afternoons of carpooling these days. But many Americans do spend an awful lot of time in the car. Here where I live, outside the nation's capital, the average commute is more than half an hour. Grown-ups can make that travel choice for themselves, but children don't have much say in the matter, and too many are spending way too much time in the car. My younger colleagues occasionally verbalize their concern about strapping their children into the backseat at 6:30 a.m. for the 30-minute drive to day care. Yes, the car seat is safe, but they wonder about the long term effect when a two-year old spends an hour a day in total body restraint in the backseat. What understanding does a child construct from this and other regimented daily travel schedules? We look (and drive) long and hard for the best dance studio or the most challenging soccer league for our older children. But in our effort to provide them with the “best” opportunities, do we strip them of all their unstructured time? Is possible that they would get the same benefit from parks and rec teams and other activities that may be less advanced but closer to home? Perhaps what worries me even more is how children spend car time and “wait time.” It seems they have become almost totally dependent on electronic entertainment. Auto manufacturers market “quality family transportation" in the car that provides each child with a personal video player/game station in the back while the adults listen to their own musical selections or cell phone conversation up front. Together, but alone, they proceed down the highway of life, encapsulated in virtual bubbles. What happened to looking out the windows and talking to each other? (Warning: old fogey commentary ahead.) The quality of car time has changed. Back in the day, my carpool sang songs together. When they were little, it was Old McDonald; in middle school, we sang with the radio. We played games. “A: My Name is Alice, I come from Alabama, my husband’s name is Alvin, and we sell atrocious alligators.” There was the Geography Game where the next player had to name a geographical location that began with the last letter of the preceding location. (Just so you know, there are more places that end with "A" than begin with "A".) We played Twenty Questions -- like "I’m Thinking of an Animal,” starting with doggy and kitty cat in preschool and advancing to obscure species such as pangolins, tapirs, lemurs, and the naked mole rat by middle school. In Technology's Impact on Child Growth and Development, David Elkind says:
The high-tech culture has also changed children’s social relationships. Before the digital culture predominated, there was a language and lore of childhood that was orally passed down from generation to generation. They consisted of games, riddles, rhymes, jibes and so on that were adapted to the child’s immediate environment. This traditional culture of childhood is fast disappearing. In the past two decades alone, according to several studies, children have lost 12 hours of free time a week, and eight of those lost hours were once spent in unstructured play and outdoor pastimes. In part, that is a function of the digital culture, which provides so many adult-created toys, games and amusements. Game Boys and other electronic games are so addictive they dissuade children from enjoying the traditional games. Yet spontaneous play allows children to use their imaginations, make and break rules, and socialize with each other to a greater extent than when they play digital games.
I put great thought into the quality of cupholders during my minivan period of life, a guilty acknowledgement that, too often, I fed our kids fast food on the road. But I also cherished the laughter and silliness of car games and the long philosophical discussions on road trips. Today’s parents are shopping for the backseat tray tables and the DVD players with individual audio ports, and it is quite possible to drive cross- country with potty stops being the only interaction with the other occupants of the car. I suppose it is unrealistic to try to turn back the clock, but I wonder: Have we given new meaning to providing our children with a "moveable feast" -- or have we, with the best of intentions, fed our children into the belly of a "movable beast"? ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/place_table/~3/240053269/a_movable_feast_or_beast.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/02/a_movable_feast_or_beast.html Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:22:22 -0500 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/02/a_movable_feast_or_beast.html Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? his column in The Washington Post last Wednesday. The topic was climate change and its impact on fossil fuel and alternative energy policy. Interesting, if not riveting, but Kamen got my undivided attention with this quote from Energy Alert, a newsletter distributed to petroleum industry clients by their lobbying firm: “Remember, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu." If you're thanking your lucky stars that as a teacher you are immune from this kind predatory policy powerplay, wake up and smell the coffee or you just might be the bacon! Every education decision begins as a policy decision. And every policy decision begins as a political decision. But when education is on the table, teachers too often discover they are not sitting with the stakeholders—they find they've been relegated to the little seats at the children’s table. In fact, about the only time teachers get invited to the table with the big boys and girls is when they are guests of honor at awards ceremonies. After a chicken breast dinner, a beefy elected official or corporate sponsor will make a moving speech about how teachers make all other careers possible. Finally (and I do mean finally), the honored teachers will be announced, receive a plaque, and have a grip-and-grin photo op with the officials or corporate representative. It warms a teacher’s heart to feel appreciated, and if you get recognized by the right group, it can warm a teacher’s pocket as well. But after the party’s over, the teachers will go back to their classrooms while the elected officials and corporate executives will sit around the table discussing what needs to be changed in public education and making decisions about how those changes can be achieved. When it comes to policy, teachers rarely get an invitation. The truth is that Teachers of the Year, Disney Teachers, Milken Educators and all the other honored teachers are, to a certain extent, prize pigs—cleaned up, put on display, and then sent back to the farm. Do not misunderstand me: I am not denigrating teacher awards. Mine hang prominently in my office. I am honored that the organizations that gave me those awards recognized my efforts. And while I was proud to represent my profession, I was embarrassed that I was singled out. Awards only ripple the surface of the deep pool of deserving educators, but they can serve a purpose by focusing public attention on the importance of education and putting a face on the contribution of the many thousands of dedicated teachers who touch the lives of children daily. However, it is naive to assume that those who recognize teachers are completely altruistic. The presenter of the blue ribbon often gets the floor longer than the recipient -- and he usually has a more carefully crafted message. I’d like to offer my fellow "recognized teacher" prize pigs and wanna-be prize pigs a few lessons learned from some of the giants of pig literature. Learn to talk: Wilber lived to see another day because Charlotte pointed out that if a pig speaks up, he just might avoid the unfortunate and unintended outcome of being a blue ribbon winner on the path to being a blue ribbon special. Overcome fear: Piglet , a timid little pig, regularly says, “Oh my!” but he faces his fear and summons up the courage to explore the 100 Acre Wood with Pooh. Make new friends: Babe stayed off the menu and found acceptance and success by networking in a less than optimal environment and by building alliances with all the stakeholders -- the dogs, the sheep and the farmer. Remember who you are: Napoleon forgot his porcine origins--walking upright, wearing clothes and moving into the farmer’s house (or centrally located office). He betrayed Old Major’s vision of Animalism and became what he abhorred—an animal who viewed himself “more equal than others.” Stick together: Three Little Pigs who watched out for each other outsmarted the wolf at their door. Some idealist teachers refuse awards on principle because they consider them demeaning and manipulative beauty contests. These little piggies stay home. Some teachers are disillusioned and hurt when they realize that their recognition served as a platform to promote the sponsor’s agenda. These little piggies cry we-we-we, (which, unfortunately, tends to be interpreted by others as as me-me-me). Some courageous teachers realize recognition for what it is, an opportunity to make a difference. These little piggies prefer to have roast beef and want a seat at the table. Through Teacher Leaders Network, I have had the honor to sit at the table with blue ribbon teachers from all over the country. Because they are well informed, pragmatic, well spoken and gracious, they have parlayed their 15 minutes of fame into lasting policy influence at the local, state, and national level. They are not on the menu. Nor are they simply decorative centerpieces at the policy feast. They are finding seats at the table, and they are determined to be part of the conversation that takes place there.]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/place_table/~3/234439446/guess_whos_coming_to_dinner.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/02/guess_whos_coming_to_dinner.html Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:29:38 -0500 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table/2008/02/guess_whos_coming_to_dinner.html