Teacher in a Strange Land

Gimme a "C!"

2009-12-05T21:09:24-05:00

I generally keep the fact that I used to be a cheerleader to myself. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, as cheerleading in the 1960s was mostly about little pleated skirts and personality. I am of the generation of women who prefer to be known for their intellect and professional accomplishments rather than their pom-poms.

Cheerleading, however, has evolved, as a concept--it's become more athletic and competitive, involving a range of gymnastic skills and strength. It's less about popularity and more about coordination and discipline, at least theoretically--with Texas as possible exception to the rule, of course.

I was surprised to see Frank Deford, on NPR, equivocate on the subject of whether cheerleading is a true sport. I thought that battle had been won decades ago, when high schools and colleges began implementing Title IX, and all female sports (and wannabe sports) took a major upward leap in proficiency and aggressive athleticism. Deford's point was a good one, though: Colleges that declare cheerleading a sport can then justify eliminating other female sports--and spending more on expensive male-only programs, like football.

While discussions on gender equity in sports will likely go on forever, there's no denying that cheerleading has developed into a team activity requiring significant physical ability--a sport.

I am always amused by the passion with which people--OK, men--will squabble about whether a particular activity is a "sport" or not. I fail to see how 22 outsized, fully padded bruisers in $200 helmets, moving a pigskin bladder two feet while knocking each other down (and sometimes out) is undeniably a sport --but things like archery, hunting, synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics are questionable.

A lot of the arguing has to do with money--who will pay to see what--and the necessity of winners and losers, which means that dog racing is a sport, but marching bands are entertainment, even though every band member on the field is engaged in a complex, physically strenuous activity requiring stamina, precision, coordination, memory, the ability to read music and skin thick enough that tuba jokes bounce right off.

I once had an acrimonious dispute with the Athletic Director in my high school over whether band members should be eligible for varsity letters. The block H, he explained, was reserved for true athletes (as were the varsity jackets with the leather sleeves). He suggested that the band get nylon windbreakers to show their spirit--and eventually admitted that he was worried that the football team might not be proud to don varsity jackets if bassoonists could wear them, too. He found no irony in the fact that the 100 members of the marching band spent two months trailing the football team around for the purpose of playing the fight song with frozen fingers every time Biff kicked a field goal.

In K-12 World, any competitive activity that involves skills, strength or teamwork ought to qualify as a sport. Why not? American schools spend much more on sports than schools in other countries. If we insist that sports engage kids whose strengths are kinesthetic rather than academic--and believe that sports build confidence, teamwork and discipline--then we ought to offer as many "sports" as we possibly can, so their benefits are broadly available.

It took about five years, but the music department eventually won the campaign to wear the same varsity letter as the football team. Our block H had a small pair of eighth notes to distinguish it from the others: letters with golf balls, the winged feet and-- eventually-- the little mortarboards of the Quiz Bowl kids. I'd call that S-U-C-C-E-S-S.

Platoons! What Are They Good For?

2009-11-30T15:45:33-05:00

The use of military and sports metaphors to describe teaching and learning makes me crazy. I hate it when teachers say they're "in the trenches." Calling common standards "goalposts" grates on my sensibilities, as do drills, recruits, maneuvers, tactics and racing to the top. I can never figure out who's fighting--or who's winning--or why we're at war to begin with.

And now we've been advised to develop instructional "platoons" in elementary school, the better to lock and load, pinpointing our achievement targets with more precision. We can become an elite teaching force, a well-oiled instructional machine, mowing down mathematical skills like Sherman marching to the sea, and all that.

In 2005, I was teaching music in a K-4 building. I ate lunch with the three fourth grade teachers, all of whom were smart and hip. I was consistently impressed with their ongoing conversations about How to Make Things Better for Fourth Graders. They shared everything--lesson planning, materials, moments of instructional illumination, things kids said in class. In the fall, they started dividing up the lesson creation process, with each teacher going deeper into one of three subjects in the fourth grade curriculum--math, science and social studies. They all taught reading at the same time, using the assigned building-wide program, but they were experimenting with flexibly sharing their students for mini-lessons around particular skills and topics.

There were about 85 kids in the 4th grade, and their rooms were side by side. By the end of September, the teachers knew all the 4th graders--and were convinced that they could do a better job of instruction if they specialized in teaching one subject, and ran the 4th grade reading program collaboratively, as well. They drew up an elaborate plan--they called it "switching"--detailing the benefits.

They didn't make it past the first 15 minutes with the principal, who emphatically said that parents preferred a single teacher for their young children--a teacher who would be responsive to a particular child's unique needs. It would also take valuable instructional time for the kids to move to a new class; when the teachers explained that the kids would sit tight, and that it would take approximately 30 seconds for teachers to move next door, the principal got huffy.

She said there was research showing that elementary students achieved more when they stayed with the same teacher all day. At the time, the K-8 movement (a reactionary response to the maligned "middle school concept") was taking root in urban districts, keeping kids together all day. And finally, she shot the plan dead by telling them that she was the decision-maker, and she was convinced that their plan was nothing more than a sneaky way to make their lives easier and reduce their personal workload.

They had a second meeting with the principal, and this time the union representative came, but no dice. Further--the principal had now noticed that the teachers were occasionally switching kids for reading and put the kibosh on that as well. One teacher, 28 kids, no switching--and that was that. Because I got to hear lots of lunchtime exasperation about this situation, I did a quick scan of research and found one or two old studies that supported the principal's position, and a couple that supported the teachers' position. What all the research does say is that the quality of teaching matters a great deal--and that teachers' relationships with students are all-important. No surprises. But no research slam dunk for either side of the issue.

Of course, that was just switching, not platooning, which suddenly seems to be all the rage. There is now a widely accepted theory that elementary teachers' lack of mathematical knowledge is the cause of our failure to rout and crush the international competition on math battles--I mean tests. It's worth pointing out that the research on this is mixed, too--but we're already on the march, strategically selecting a few good teachers to lead the charge.

In the end, it's just another example of our national faith in tools and levers--rather than people--to solve problems. The fourth grade teachers in my school were willing to lead and invested in the outcomes of their simple plan. That should count for more than snappy language.

Happy, Happy. Joy, Joy.

2009-11-23T22:17:19-05:00

I wish I had a dollar for every time a parent told me their fondest wish was that their child be happy. As in: "I'm not worried about Jason's grades--I just want him to have friends and be happy." Or: "I'm not going to insist that Mandy practice her flute. If it doesn't make her happy, she can just quit."

I sometimes wonder about the pursuit of happiness as iconic American goal. I'm quite sure that Jefferson had something more noble and laudable in mind than deciding whether he should jot down a bit of transformative political philosophy--or perhaps take a nap, whichever seemed more fulfilling at the moment.

It's a good week for thinking about what makes us happy--and how we, the village, can raise our collective children to pursue the kind of happiness that matters, while simultaneously being aware of and grateful for their many blessings.

In TIME magazine this week, Nancy Gibbs muses on the confounding information that Americans scored higher on the ongoing Gallup "well-being index" this summer than they did last summer. Although happiness plummeted in the months after the economic meltdown, our national sense of well-being began to increase in the spring, and has remained relatively high since, even though the news--pretty much all the news--has been downright awful.

Gibbs suggests that Americans have adjusted their expectations, and that's a healthy thing:

While optimism is the all-American anesthetic, at some point Expectation Inflation was bound to take its toll. I'm struck by how many people tell pollsters that the voluntary downshifting and downsizing of the past year have come as a kind of relief. Maybe we've lowered our standards. But we already knew that money can buy only comfort, not contentment; happiness correlates much more closely with our causes and connections than with our net worth.

How does this square with current education oratory and thinking, wherein "low expectations" are now equated with soft bigotry? It's clear that our generational train of progress-through-education--the laborer's son becomes a merchant, the merchant's son a professional, with each subsequent generation achieving more--is creaking to an end. We are outstripping our natural resources and have tilted our economy into crippling debt. The gap between rich and poor is growing; I'm guessing the people who expressed relief about downshifting were moving from the top tier into the middle.

We can expect all we want, but the reality is that we seem to be heading into a period where the Real Housewives of Atlanta might become appalling symbols of tacky excess, rather than an amusing glimpse into the style and habits of people lucky enough to pursue their personal pleasures. Are we re-defining happiness as much more than recognition, entertainment and stuff?

Speaking of expectations, how can we blithely critique teachers for not using "high expectations" as a handy tool to leverage student learning, when we're ambivalent about providing those same kids with adequate health care? Don't we want all children to reach for more than credentials and possessions--should we expect them to become productive in ways other than generating wealth?

Maybe we need to re-examine our current goal focus on college degrees, and how many more dollars they're likely to yield over a lifetime of work, and start looking at non-material aspirations and rewards, for our own children and for the nation. Here are the three core outcomes I want for my own children, as a result of their formal and informal education:

Important work. Work that leads to making something better, whether it's particularly lucrative or not. Work that is variable, challenging and absorbing.

Civic engagement. Involvement in groups, relationships with people who have similar goals, volunteering, participating in relevant ways in the life of their community.

Intellectual curiosity. A life-long interest in a broad range of issues and disciplines, and willingness to read, travel, discuss, ponder, and consider alternative points of view.

Of course, I want my children to be free from hunger and fear (and the fact that I take such basic needs for granted probably speaks to the privileges I enjoy as an American citizen). Continuous happiness, however, seems like a pretty lightweight and empty goal. Gratitude is a better place to begin.

Thanks for reading Teacher in a Strange Land. Happy Thanksgiving.

Image: TheABU@ Flicker Creative Commons

Contented Cows

2009-11-13T12:59:35-05:00

My favorite professor at Michigan State (known locally as "Moo U") was fond of telling his grad students that researchers should just explain what they found in their studies, and resist the urge to add specific policy implications. Good research should stand on its own, he said--and determining What It All Means was the reader's job.

Cynic that I am, I would add that readers should draw their own conclusions without input from research funders, as well--whose strategic fingerprints often turn up in the policy implications section of glossy, graphics-laden reports.

Public Agenda's fascinating new report, Teaching for a Living: How Teachers See the Profession Today, divides teachers into three loose groups--the disheartened (40%), the contented (37%) and the idealists (23%). Discussing the report with a group of teachers in New York this week, one teacher noted that she is frequently idealistic, disheartened and contented in the space of a single day--but we generally agreed that the data and characterizations squared with our prima facie impressions about our teacher colleagues. Some are passionate believers in using education to change the world, some have settled into situations where they have support and resources, and feel confident that they're efficacious. And some, unfortunately, see little to be optimistic about--poor working conditions, poor leadership, and poor results.

What struck me in the Education Week article about Teaching for a Living was the summary of policy implications:

Are the Idealists the best prospects for high-needs schools and for reinvigorating the profession, and what do school leaders need to do to retain them in the field? Given the Idealists’ passion for improving their students’ lives, how can administrators ensure that they have the skills and support to fulfill that goal? More than a third of Idealists voiced a desire to move eventually into other jobs in education. How does the field respond to those aspirations? The Disheartened pose a different challenge. Some may be ill-fitted to the job and ready to move on, but how should the field encourage and support their transition? Others may be good teachers trapped in dysfunctional schools and, in the right environment, might change their views and become Idealists.

Which group is missing in this analysis?

Why would we want to convert disheartened teachers into firebrands, especially since idealistic teachers in the survey were overwhelmingly young and frequently admitted that they weren't interested in teaching as a long-term career? The thing about idealists is that they burn out--or they become pragmatic, understanding that changing the world happens slowly, but is worth the effort.

Maybe giving the satisfied and confident teachers a bovine label--contented--was intentional.

Public Agenda has a reputation for solid, non-ideological research and thoughtful analysis. Here's the teaser for the report, on their own web page:

Two out of five of America’s 4 million K-12 teachers appear disheartened and disappointed about their jobs, while others express a variety of reasons for contentment with teaching and their current school environments, new research by Public Agenda and Learning Point Associates shows.

Compare that to Education Week's opener for a similar report published in February--the "MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Past, Present and Future:"

Teachers’ views on their profession have become markedly more positive over the past quarter century, at least partially validating the widespread school-improvement efforts of the period, concludes a retrospective survey report released this week by MetLife Inc.

Sixty-two percent of American teachers said they were "very satisfied" with their job in the MetLife survey, taken in 2008. When you add up Public Agenda's idealistic teachers and contented teachers, you come up with 60%--about the same number, actually. The difference? Policy suggestions for what to do about teachers who are dissatisfied. Maybe we should be providing them with the resources and support that they say they need, turning their discouragement into realism.

Contented cows give better milk, after all.

Image: dali, Flickr Creative Commons

Brave New (Charter) World

2009-11-08T15:08:31-05:00

Let’s get biases and politics out of the way first. I am a big fan of the charter school concept—defined as the rich idea that when it comes to schooling, one size does not fit all, and big monolithic districts do not and cannot serve diverse children as well as site-directed, purpose-driven, innovative schools. If I lived in Detroit, I would choose a magnet school or charter school for my children—and even though I live in a district with fine public schools, one of my children attended a public school and the other attended a private school. Ideologically, I’m with Dewey on this one: I want the best possible education for all children, the kind of carefully chosen options my own children had.

One more thing: I think that positioning charter schools as the opposite of public schools, rather than a necessary supplement to public education, has poisoned the discourse. And—it goes both ways. It’s not just public schools and public school teachers being skeptical (or downright nasty) in their remarks about charter schools. Public school academies—charters—seem to be bent on repeating the worst sound bites about public schools, whether they’re strictly true or not, thereby displaying the aphorism that your mother repeated when you were seven years old: you don’t make yourself look better by tearing someone else down.

I have a number of friends now working in the charter school movement in Detroit, a city where a handful of good charter schools have begun to flourish and bear fruit. Last week, they invited me to attend a showing of “The Providence Effect,” a full-length film depicting a school success story: Providence St. Mel, a K-12 Catholic school on Chicago’s tough west side.

Providence St. Mel has accrued considerable recognition after parents adamantly refused to close it on diocese recommendation, 30 years ago: President Reagan visited, around the time the “Nation at Risk” report was being crafted, and Oprah Winfrey has taken a personal interest (and contributed more than a million dollars). Providence’s outcomes—an average ACT score of 23, and 100% college admission for graduates—resemble those of well-heeled suburban public schools. Now, there is an attempt to replicate the “Providence effect:” a charter school in Englewood, led by Providence graduates and veteran teachers, and based on programs and principles at the original PSM.

The screening was part of a two-day professional conference for charter school proponents and teachers, and featured a panel discussion with Big Names in the Michigan charter school movement, a State Board of Education member, various business-leadership types, and the principal of the new Providence charter school. The room was set up for hundreds of people, but I’m sure the attendance numbers (perhaps 60 people) were disappointing to the organizers. As I was parking on the rooftop of Cobo Hall, charter school teachers wearing conference badges were flooding out of the building, recognizable as teachers by their youth, their post-collegiate dress and tote bags—plus their “let’s go get a beer” demeanor.

Impressions from the film and the panel discussion:

The movie has a campaign-film aura—gauzy graduation footage with students inexplicably wearing white gloves, bits of talking-head rhetoric, quick-cut black and white shots from Chicago’s troubled past, backed by a vocal track of adolescents singing. It’s impressive, all right, especially their catch phrase: It’s not rocket science. The lingering message: anybody with high expectations and tight rules can turn around kids destined for the dumpster.

There is curiously little about instruction in the film; we do see a few examples of very traditional classroom teaching. There is a clip of first-graders in a race-to-the-board competitive spelling game (the teacher assigning points to teams, a la Professor Dumbledore), and a HS math lesson where the teacher puts an equation on the board and announces “No calculators!” (which drew a spatter of applause from the audience). An elementary teacher models a familiar and effective questioning strategy but then suggests that nobody in his circle believes that second graders can do work at this level.

Among the panelists, the principal of the new Providence charter school was most grounded in reality. She admitted that while they were on a strong upward curve, test scores were still mediocre. Asked how they deal with discipline, she said that students were put on a “three strikes and out” contract—if they couldn’t abide by the rules, they held a conference with parents to decide if the child was a “good fit” for Providence. According to the principal, every child, even kindergartners, has a grade point average (another murmur of approval from the audience). Nobody asked about parents who never bothered to come to school, the advisability of a five-year old having a GPA before he understands cumulative averaging, or where the kid who is not a good fit ends up.

There was a kind of professional pep rally atmosphere. The panel moderator took questions from people who seemed pre-selected, often acknowledging the “great work” Joe was doing or the “outstanding leadership” of Mary. There was an angry question on why charter schools get less money than public schools, on average, from the public coffers. Reginald Turner, the State Board member, clarified: charter schools get the same per-pupil allowance as other public schools in the surrounding area. And guess what? There aren’t many charter schools in Grosse Pointe, where the funding level is high; charter schools are generally found where there is dissatisfaction with public education and not much money. And they get the same public monies as the other schools nearby—you might even call that equitable.

When asked what Detroit could do as a first step to fix its failing public school, the business folks agreed: get new teachers, preferably from Teach for America (which one panelist described as “the Peace Corps of teaching,” an unfortunate metaphor in a city trying to pull itself out of devastating depression). A woman asked what special training Teach for America corps members got that would make them particularly effective in Detroit. The panelist replied that it wasn’t a matter of training—it was a chance to get “graduates of the top colleges” into the classroom.

If you believe U.S. News and World Report, two of the top twenty Schools of Education are right here in Michigan, including the long-running #1 in Elementary and Secondary teacher preparation, Michigan State University, and the #4 public university in the country, the University of Michigan. There is also a strong network of regional teacher preparation programs. There is no shortage of smart, highly qualified and skilled teachers here in Michigan.

Michigan is a teacher-exporting state. About three-quarters of our best and brightest would-be teachers go to work in other states (when they can get jobs). Of those who remain in Michigan, a significant segment gets jobs in newly formed charter schools—because there are no jobs in public schools. The best new teachers in Michigan? They’re the folks who went streaming out the door to grab a beer with their teaching colleagues as I was parking my car.

When it comes to evaluating charter schools, the key question is always: Compared to what? Charter schools in Detroit have many potential resources that public schools do not, beginning with positive public assumptions and PR.

Charter World is an interesting place, with different beliefs, incentives and catch phrases than Public School World. It would be a shame to lose the opportunity to do something truly different with charter schools, relying instead on rhetorical flourishes and empty myths.

Online Grading: Treat--or Trick?

2009-10-31T12:34:44-04:00

My estimable teacher-blogger colleague, Ms. Bluebird, is sputtering about the parent-accessible online grading system in her district. She bemoans the fact that parents aren't tracking their children's assignments and grades, even though it's now become totally convenient to (as the kiddies say) creep on their progeny. Evidently, this is an issue of deep concern to lots of teachers, as Ms. B's first 13 commenters enthusiastically jump on the "parents just don't care" bandwagon.

Ms. Bluebird totally rocks--but on this issue, I disagree. When it comes to online gradebooks, I believe what's happening here is a misguided faith in the magic of technology to solve problems (even things we didn't realize were problems beforehand). If parents weren't allowed to peek into teachers' gradebooks twenty years ago, what makes us think they're interested now? And furthermore--is it even a good idea to nurture grade-stalking in parents?

Points to consider:

Expecting parents to track their children's grades--and do something about low grades or missing assignments--shifts responsibility for learning and monitoring the grade to parents. And guess what? It's the student's job to do that, not Mommy's.

When parents are suddenly hawking their gradebooks, teachers feel compelled to put lots of numbers in the book, proving that they're organized and soldiering away, assigning lots of homework and giving lots of grades. My principal sent us a memo suggesting that we add at least one new grade per week, it being worrisome when parents see that several days have gone by with no grading.

Some of those grades represent formative assessment: constructive feedback to students in the process of learning to master a concept or skill. Formative assessment is supposed to be non-punitive--information that helps a student improve. If curriculum is appropriate--in the sweet spot where it challenges, but builds on prior learning--then formative assessment will show lots of room for growth. Try explaining that to one panicked parent at a time

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. (Einstein said that, not me.) An online gradebook converts all assessment data to numbers. Because it's...digital. Sometimes, kids need coaching or commentary, not a comparative percentage. Sometimes, it's OK to paint a pumpkin, just to see how it turns out. You don't have to grade everything, to make it real or valuable.

I find my district's online grading program so inflexible as to be nearly useless. I collected lots of valid assessment data on my students that could not be represented in the gradebook program (the program routinely converted a memorized D-flat major scale into 60%). I never checked on my son's grades, either, although it would have been extremely easy to do so--and, trust me, I am a caring parent, with a deep commitment to his education. I got his report card, and I went to parent-teacher conferences. And that--really--was enough.

Image: Snelly23 @ Flickr Creative Commons

Fast Track, Slow Ride, Grow Up

2009-10-29T23:44:42-04:00

At the last high school graduation I attended as faculty member, I sat on the stage, robed and hooded, with the rest of the teachers who served as honor guard for the class. Normally, commencement was held in the football stadium, but a downpour forced us into the auditorium where all graduates and attendees were up close and personal, not to mention damp and uncomfortable.

From my vantage point, I could reach out and touch graduates as they crossed the stage--and see right up the gowns of the young men sitting, splay-legged, in the front row. In spite of the class advisors' admonitions--and, probably, their mothers'--many of the boys were wearing shorts and flip-flops and didn't appear to be duly impressed with the ceremonial aspects of the occasion. I was surprised at how many of them were bearded, or sporting cool-dude facial hair; physically, these were full-grown men.

I started thinking about my district's four-option school entry program: students could enter school via "developmental" kindergarten and/or regular kindergarten, and those who "needed a little more time" could do a year in junior first grade, before moving on to regular first grade. Parents tailored two- or three-year combination plans to get their kids to second grade, and the large majority of those taking three years were boys. Because of the desire to give their sons a leg up, back then, many of the young men sitting in front of me were a hormonal nineteen years old. They'd been driving for four years, and could easily have been carrying an M-16 in Iraq. In an earlier century, they would have struck out on their own long before, as farmers, wayfarers or fathers.

Today, of course, the conventional wisdom is that their economic goose is cooked unless they seek further education. This week's cover story in Newsweek--"Why College Should Take Only Three Years" (by Lamar Alexander), and a follow-up roundtable with higher ed luminaries discussing "What is College For, Anyway?" don't manage to make an airtight case for the three-year plan. But both pieces shed light on the big questions that we ought be asking about a college education:

Are high school seniors poorly educated and thus unready for college--or are they merely bored with the low challenge of high school?

What does anyone need to know and be able to do to make a success in a modern economy? Seriously. Is there a formula for job readiness in non-technical fields?

Which comes first: a broad, internalized knowledge base, or the skills to analyze and evaluate the surfeit of information and data available to everyone?

Does technology make it easier and faster to learn--or more challenging to develop focus?

Is there a one-size-fits-all plan, a general agreement about how much coursework represents a bachelor's degree? And does the new standard for being well-educated now automatically include a second degree, beyond the B.A.--upping the educational ante once again?

No consensus reached. In fact, the various experts did not agree on the primary purpose of pursuing a college degree--is it building workplace skills, developing an educated citizenry in a democracy, or simply the credential needed to the lock the bearer into a higher socioeconomic stratum?

Here's an image from Robert Zemsky, education reformer and professor at the University of Pennsylvania: College is like a supermarket where we let students freely choose courses. When they get to the cash register, we tell them they don't have the right things in their shopping carts, so they must continue shopping, for five or more less-than-fruitful years. Might it be an intellectually productive thing, this academic mucking about? Or is it a nationally embarrassing inefficiency, a waste of time and money?

I'm not sure. At some point, young people need to grow up, spend time working, traveling, living independently, making their own choices. Going to college or trade school should be motivated by a desire to learn something, however, be it plumbing or Shakespearean sonnets. And--you can't put off adulthood and real life forever.

Image: Uhuru1701, Flickr Creative Commons

Artsy Smartsy

2009-10-14T15:24:38-04:00

First, read this--Claus von Zastrow's brilliant, poignantly hilarious treatise on why public schools and teachers just can't win, posted last week on the Public School Insights blog. It encompasses the entire range of criticisms--building yurts with tongue depressors!--and skillfully illustrates the "painted into a corner" nature of being a public school advocate these days. No matter what you believe, no matter how thoughtful your research-based educational practice, someone disagrees. Probably viciously.

Conflict over the role of the arts in intellectual development and public schooling is one of the oldest of these squabbles. As a music teacher, I was pink-slipped six times in 30 years and shifted to a new position 17 times; I've spent a professional lifetime defending the necessity of the arts in school curriculum, from every angle. As human beings, we were created and designed to make representations--in sound, drama, movement and image--of the things that matter most to civilization.

People who believe that children do not need well-designed experiences with the arts to be fully educated are wrong. The evidence comes from the fact that children naturally create art, music, dance and dramatic play all by themselves, with no education whatsoever--and that all aspects of human communication, from political to religious to commercial, revolve around artistic expression. Developing aesthetic discretion is a useful skill for children, not to mention a lifelong pleasure.

Yesterday, in the Washington Post, David C. Levy, former director of the Corcoran Gallery and founder of the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, takes on the challenge of flaws and gaps in K-12 arts education in America. The piece starts strong--but then Levy jumps on the knee-jerk Teacher Blame Bandwagon, claiming that art education is suffering because school art teachers are lousy artists--"many of them can barely draw." He attempts to soften this indictment by mentioning that art schools are guilty, too: they require a "smorgasbord of classes in unrelated media," making rigorous training and serious specialization impossible. Then, he asserts that the situation is vastly better for prospective musicians (who have a range of "elite musical ensembles" with a "demanding meritocracy" to sharpen their skills).

Really?

Levy's irritating and erroneous assumptions about arts education pile up; he claims that schools don't stress artistic skill development, preferring to let kids just "express themselves"--and that most children begin playing musical instruments early enough to have ten years of instruction with a competent professional before pursuing a music degree. Perhaps in some major cities--but not in my neck of the woods. Levy may well know a great deal about the professional art and music world, but he's clueless about the vagaries of K-12 scheduling, hiring and programming and regional support for the arts--not to mention the nature of teaching large groups of children, where a jack-of-all-trades artistic sensibility comes in handy, as does a bagful of tricks for keeping "media" on the table, rather than in the hair or on the clothes.

The vast majority of kids learn to understand the making of art, and to sing, dance and play an instrument, in a classroom. While there is certainly variance in the quality of teaching, most arts teachers want nothing more than to develop skills and excellence in their students, to ignite a musical or artistic passion that burns well past graduation. Only three or four in 100 students will pursue a career in the arts, but all of them need to learn some basic skills, as an entry point to enriched taste and enjoyment. College-bound high school students in traditional public schools have no room in their schedules to take a variety of arts courses--even if their school offered them. Elementary schoolkids who get a 45 -minute art class once a week are lucky, indeed. The picture, as Levy notes, may be gloomy--but let's not point fingers at teachers.

It's not only wrong-headed--it's counterproductive.

In one of my district's financial crises, a high school art teacher who taught jewelry, pottery and graphic design was shifted to an elementary art job (13 weeks apiece in three K-4 schools). As Fine Arts Department chair, I was sent to make sure he was "doing a good job," since he was vocally disappointed when jewelry-making and graphic design courses were dropped from the school curriculum. I watched him teach perspective to first graders, their first art lesson with the new teacher. He used words like "foreground" and "horizon," explaining as he went along. They drew houses. Amazing, realistic houses. They were incredibly excited, and couldn't wait to show their drawings to their parents.

I was beyond impressed, but he was nonchalant.

"Just basic art," he said. ”Anybody can teach perspective."

Image: Flickr Creative Commons, Jansen Mann

Best Concert Ever

2009-09-25T10:57:43-04:00

In his marvelous 1977 book, On Teaching, Herb Kohl suggests that teachers should read the books their students love, and listen seriously to the music that engages the young people they teach.

Teachers, Kohl says, cannot expect students to eagerly embrace the literature and arts their teachers deem classic, beautiful or essential for an educated person, unless teachers return the favor and seriously honor their students' tastes and preferences.

You might argue that Kohl wrote those words before Lady Gaga was even born--and was younger himself in the post-Woodstock era when On Teaching was written. But he has a point. Our aesthetic values and ideals begin forming when we are children, shaped by the arts that surround us. The goal is broad experience, learning to draw knowledge and pleasure from a wide range of artistic sources. If nothing else, listening to the music our students love can be seen as a useful exercise in anthropology.

My late mother-in-law--may she rest in peace--was convinced that my husband was at Woodstock in 1969, and concealed this fact from his parents for decades. It's not true--he was actually in Ann Arbor, safely grinding away at another boring summer job. But in her mind, he was just the kind of rebellious hippie youth who would hitchhike across the country to listen to all that racket.

Craig Wilson, in USA Today, makes the case that the music at Woodstock was glorified racket, pretty much--the half-a-million-strong experience, the mud and the enthusiasm being the classic and essential parts. Only a handful of the musical performances at Woodstock were truly memorable and lots of musicians turned in marginal work, possibly because rain-induced electrocution was a distinct possibility at any moment.

Wilson goes on to say that few would call Woodstock the best concert ever--and that what makes a live performance unforgettable is probably a combination of arbitrary circumstances, judgment and brilliance, an alignment of the listener's personal stars. In the past 40 years, I have been to literally thousands of concerts. One of my life regrets is not keeping a list of all the concerts I've seen (although a list of all the concerts I've played would certainly be longer and--perhaps surprisingly--less interesting to me). And maybe a meticulously kept list would spoil the spontaneity of a response to this question:

Best concert ever?

For me, as a formally trained musician, the answer would necessarily be divided into two distinct captions--art music and popular music. I've seen most of the major symphony orchestras in the U.S., and a number of Famous Classical Musicians live. For dazzling talent, I would choose Cecilia Bartoli, at Hill Auditorium. For pure listening pleasure, nothing came close to seeing the Empire Brass at the Wharton Center. For artistic excellence and heart-in-the-throat richness of sound, my favorite "classical" ensemble is the Cleveland Symphony (although hearing them in Severance Hall may have something to do with it).

On the popular music side, I offer a top five: Richard Thompson at the Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor, an evening chock-full of irony and artistry. For pure fun, the Subdudes at the Ark in Ann Arbor. Randy Newman, solo at the piano, at the Royal Oak Theatre (we were in the front row, I was nine months pregnant, and I remember hoping fervently that all the research about what babies could hear in the womb was true). First runner-up: a tribute concert for Lowell George, at the L.A. Forum, back in 1979. Nearly all my favorite musicians were on the program, which went on for hours. When I got in line for popcorn, Laraine Newman was ahead of me. I have kept the T-shirt for 30 years, even though it's size x-small.

My all-time favorite concert has to be seeing Stevie Wonder at Cobo Hall in Detroit, back in the 70s. Stevie Wonder is always exciting and fresh, but he was home that night, musically and emotionally. Our seats weren't that great, but I was caught up in the feeling of being part of Stevie's family and his generous passion. Signed, sealed, delivered: best concert ever.

Image: NYC_Comet, Flickr Creative Commons

Used Teabags and Other Fertilizer

2009-09-19T17:37:12-04:00

On the day after Labor Day, the Tea Party Express rolled into town, more than an hour after their scheduled, synchronized and programmed arrival time, to hold a totally spontaneous, grass-roots rally on the front lawn of my church. Although several of my friends called and asked me to make an

appearance, I'd already made a considered decision not to attend for two reasons: #1, I was afraid that whoever does the people-counting for unrehearsed, impromptu media-ready events like this would somehow include me in the numbers of Tea Party supporters, unless I carried a sign saying "I believe health care is a human right" (a decidedly dangerous move). Other items I might display--a button saying "Who are these morons?" or my bible, which I keep handy in the choir room at said church--could inadvertently cause the counters to think I was associated with the Tea Partiers. Reason #2 was even more compelling: it was raining like crazy.

I should mention that my church just happens to be in the center of town, situated on a lovely historic millpond, not surprising since it was built in 1881 when water was key to transport, power and civilization. People built communities around millponds, joining together to help and support each other, in good times and bad, sickness and health. A former governor and numerous state and local dignitaries lie quietly in the adjoining cemetery behind a wrought iron fence (which fell down, when the totally spontaneous protestors climbed on it, something we don't let the Sunday School kids do because it would be disrespectful). The Spontaneous Tea Party Express was simply looking for a scenic and central location--and nothing could be more white-picket-fence and photo-op perfect than my little church.

Since the bus full of paid organizers was late, the volunteer locals who turned up had to wait for marching orders before beginning their completely spontaneous demonstration. They stood around keeping their birther billboards and guns (unloaded, one hopes) dry. Bored, they proceeded to decorate the front lawn of the church with Obama-as-monkey and Obama-as-Joker signs. As their constitutional scholarship was apparently limited, the church secretary had to remind them of the legal prohibition from putting overtly political signs within ten feet of church property. You know, separation of church and state, one of those annoying and evidently now outmoded concepts.

Later, the Youth Group came to church for their regularly scheduled American Friends Service Committee peace training after school, and were witness to a lot of wet, free-floating hatred. What bothered them most was adults putting vile signage in their tomato garden, the in-town patch that represents the larger, hands-on church project to feed the local hungry and homeless, which has yielded about a ton of fresh produce in 2009. The bus finally came, and disgorged Teabaggish Headliner Joe the Unlicensed Plumber; Joe gets $10,000 per speech, these days, which means he doesn't have to worry about health insurance any more. Or plumbing, for that matter.

The youth group kids are still trying to process it all, including Joe the P's remarks about Hanoi Jane, which were inscrutable to them. I'm trying to process it, too, in terms of Thoreau, civil disobedience, and just whose country has been taken away, and from whom. I am always for civil liberties--freedom to write, speak, worship, love and grow vegetables. I did plenty of marching and sign-carrying in the 1960s myself, and I'm not sure how much good it did. Trying to equate the bombing of Cambodia with a political initiative to provide health care for all Americans feels a little schizophrenic, however.

Perhaps Buffalo Springfield's semi-immortal words are right. Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.

There's something happening here--What it is ain't exactly clear.

There's a man with a gun over there, telling me I got to beware.

There's battle lines being drawn. Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.

What a field-day for the heat--a thousand people in the street,

Singing songs and carrying signs. Mostly say, hooray for our side.

Image: ND_estuary, Flickr Creative Commons