Category: epm12

Things I Know 259 of 365: teach.gov soon to be the new Windows Vista

This yesterday from Education Week:

Duncan Tuesday then announced that the Education Department would be handing over control of its TEACH campaign—including website teach.gov—to [Microsoft] the Redmond, Wash.-based software company which has recently become an increasingly visible education technology partner.

and later

Meanwhile, Duncan announced the handover to Microsoft of the TEACH campaign, the federal government’s online teaching advocacy and recruitment initiative, at the software company’s Partners in Learning Global Forum Tuesday in the nation’s capital.

The handover will eventually involve a transfer of the initiative’s website from a government to a non-profit Web domain, as well as efforts from Microsoft to bring in other private partners.

To re-cap, one of the largest software companies in the world with a vested financial interest in having direct access to teachers and schools across the country will now have control of a formerly public site of resources for advocating and guiding interested people to the teaching profession.

This isn’t the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, this is Microsoft – a for-profit company. Policy oversight has eroded to such an extent that no veil is necessary as portions of public education are made private.

I just checked. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards still appears to be in operation. Not that it matters. They need not worry about advocacy, or the other original goals of teach.gov:

  • Increasing the number, quality and diversity of people seeking to become teachers, particularly in high-need schools (rural and urban) and subject areas in greatest demand: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), English Language Learners (ELL), and Special Education;
  • Connecting aspiring teachers with information about the pathways to teaching including preparation, certification, training and mentoring;
  • Celebrating and honoring the profession of teaching

No need for the National Board for Professional Teaching Practices or any other teacher’s organization to worry about “celebrating and honoring the profession of teaching,” Microsoft is on it.

Things I Know 258 of 365: Everyone might not want to be us

In preparation for our next assignment, one of my classes welcomed David Rose, founder and CEO of the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) to talk to us about Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

Of the numerous ideas about UDL Rose shared, two struck me most powerfully:

Disability is in the intersection between the variability of the school and the variability of the students. The smaller the variability you build into the school, the greater disability you’ll have in your students.

and

“Universal” means everybody. Do not have the notion of the standard child. What really is universal is variability.

While I whole-heartedly agreed with Rose, I couldn’t help being mindful of who was in the room. We were a room full of graduate students. Whatever our variabilities, we’d learned to tuck them away to fit the narrow path that led us to that lecture hall where we could learn to build systems that would ostensibly help more students be like us.

While many of us question the industry standard definition of intelligence, without that definition and its tendency to exclude folks who aren’t us, we wouldn’t have been their to hear Rose, to nod in agreement and dutifully take notes as he shared his learning.

Each of us here has learned to play the game of school superbly. I wonder, then if taking Rose’s words to heart means making it so more people can play the game or changing the game entirely. To my mind, they are two separate things.

Things I Know 257 of 365: It’s time to give up the drug of classroom management

We are constantly working towards the highest level of compliance possible.

– Mike Davidson

A few weeks ago, I had a telephone interview for a part-time job. If I’d gotten it, I’d be working with pre-teachers who are planning on seeking jobs with “no excuses” charter schools. While these aren’t the types of schools I’d choose to work at or send my kids to, if there’s a chance I can help out someone who’s headed to or in the classroom, I’ll pitch in.

Aside from my resume, it became apparent quickly the woman interviewing me had typed my name into a search engine and was struggling with how I might fit the model of the program.

“Now, we find our teachers struggle with group work and projects in the first year,” she said. “So, we focus on teaching them direct instruction and classroom management. It seems that you’re more of a constructivist.”

She had me.

“Yes,” I admitted, “I tend to favor inquiry and constructivism as pedagogies.”

And that was where it became clear to us both that I wouldn’t be the best fit. We said our goodbyes, both a little relieved.

I don’t think it’s a matter of the teachers not being able to handle group work or projects. It’s a matter of not asking questions or inviting them.

A friend of mine disagreed with me on the topic this weekend.

Here’s the thing, across international lines, new teachers polled after entering the classroom report they wished they’d had more training in classroom management. Kids, it turns out, are difficult.

I posit the idea that they’re asking for the wrong thing. I humbly beg whoever’s got their hand on the spigot of classroom management training to turn off the flow.

Let’s stop teaching classroom management. We’re not really teaching classroom management, anyway. Nor are we teaching learning management. The deeper we dig into classroom management, the closer we find ourselves to teaching management. If a kids happen to learn in the process, it’s likely because we’ve eliminated their access to anything (read everything) more interesting.

More heinous is how far training on classroom management takes new teachers from investigating how to foster caring relationships with their students, how to build systems to support curiosity in their students, and how to refine the theories of learning driving their own practice.

Implied in my interviewer’s claim that their teachers struggled with inquiry in their first year was the allowance that such an approach would be something they picked up in their second or third year.

It’s possible this could happen, but I’d wager such a turn would be by freak chance and not the natural evolution of things.

Managing children so that you can teach them becomes a bit of a drug. You get them semi-compliant and quiet the first year, and you start thinking about how you can get them to let you teach a little more next year.

New teachers struggle with classroom management because, given the choice, most students would not sit through their lessons. This should tell us we need to throw our interest behind improving the lessons, not finding new carrots and sticks for getting kids to listen while we teach.

Things I Know 256 of 365: I’ve drafted my purpose, and I’m looking for your thoughts

I just finished my first draft of my paper on the purpose of schooling. I’ve posted it open to edits on Google Docs with the following letter to those interested in helping:

Hello,

This is my Purpose Paper. I’ve posted it online for your thoughts and feedback. The final paper is due Monday, Nov. 7 @ 8 PM, so I’ll probably take it down sometime Monday morning. This paper is worth around 50% of my grade for this class, so it’s important in that way. Mostly, though, this paper contains ideas in which I believe profoundly. Because of that I want to make sure I make the case for them and communicate them as best as I can.

With that in mind, I welcome your help. I know the Internet is a place where anonymity can allow us to give in to the urge to rip and shred. While I don’t shy from critique, these are my ideas and they come from my beliefs. I guess I’m asking for the humanity you would hope any teacher show any child in their care. Thank you, in advance, for helping me with my learning. The rubric for the paper is at the end. Feel free to comment there any anywhere else within the text.

The tenets of the assignment:
Beneath many aspects of school reform often lie articulated and unarticulated beliefs about the purposes of schooling.  In order to provide a foundation from which to explore your developing knowledge about school reform, please write a well structured essay (not to exceed 2250 words) answering the following questions:

  • What do you think the purpose(s) of schooling should be? Why do you think this should be the purpose of schooling?
  • What has informed the evolution of your beliefs (you may reference past experiences, readings, research, work in the field and so on)?
  • What would a school or other educational setting that embodied your vision look like?
If you have any questions, feel free to direct them to my twitter account (@MrChase).
Thank you,
Zac Chase
If you have the time and inclination to jump in and take a look, any comments toward improving it would be greatly appreciated.
The link is here.

Things I Know 255 of 365: Schools need to examine their Educational Complexity Indices

In other words, the amount of embedded knowledge that a country has is expressed in its productive diversity, or the number of distinct products that it makes. Second, products that demand large volumes of knowledge are feasible only in the few places where all the requisite knowledge is available.

– The Atlas of Economic Complexity

Since finding it a few days ago, I’ve been obsessed with The Atlas of Economic Complexity published last month by researchers at Harvard and MIT. This is for a number of reasons (not a few of which are centered around the tremendous visualizations).

In estimating the Economic Complexity Index for each of the countries in the atlas, the authors took into consideration two main factors – diversity and ubiquity.

They examined the products of each country and determined the global ubiquity of those products as well as the diversity of products from each country.

The authors offer a few examples:

Take medical imaging devices. These machines are made in few places, but the countries that are able to make them, such as the United States or Germany, also export a large number of other products. We can infer that medical imaging devices are complex because few countries make them, and those that do tend to be diverse. By contrast, wood logs are exported by most countries, indicating that many countries have the knowledge required to export them. Now consider the case of raw diamonds.

These products are extracted in very few places, making their ubiquity quite low. But is this a reflection of the high knowledge-intensity of raw diamonds? Of course not. If raw diamonds were complex, the countries that would extract diamonds should also be able to make many other things. Since Sierra Leone and Botswana are not very diversified, this indicates that something other than large volumes of knowledge is what makes diamonds rare…

I’ve started applying similar measures to classrooms. Consider the Educational Complexity Index of the tasks many classrooms require of their students.

Take reading as an example. Many classrooms across the world ask their students to engage in reading. At some point in the last century reading was not nearly as ubiquitous task (in the U.S.) as it has become. Sesame Street, Blue and her clues, and Dora have all increased the ubiquity of reading tasks that were often the domain of schools. Still, the reading tasks exported by television were not as complex as those required by classrooms. As such, the market was altered, but not greatly.

This was so until the entrance of the Internet into the Education Union. Intellectual trade shifted greatly with the advent of the Internet and its educational exports. Not only did it flood global education markets with reading tasks, increasing the ubiquity of such tasks, it allowed for increased complexity of those tasks as well.

Such is the case of many other educational exports such as mathematics, music, history, etc. Schools, which spent more than a century enjoying great security in the relatively low ubiquity of their exports have felt tremors in the last few decades indicating an erosion of that security as other providers have made these exports more ubiquitous.

Also working against the favor of schools have been their repeated moves to pare down the diversity of educational products they bring to the market. With the exception of boutique programs, many schools that once offered a broad range of offerings from the arts to after-school extra-curricular activities have eliminated those programs. In many cases, these programs have been eliminated to offer students more intense versions of those same educational products mentioned above with a total disregard for the modern ubiquity and competitive complexity of those same products offered by other educational providers.

Still, something can be done, but it will require schools to develop a heretofore absent understanding of educational markets, taking into consideration the ubiquity and diversity of those product offered by other educational providers. One way for schools to increase their relevance, other than re-diversifying their offerings, is to design learning tasks that are more complex and bring to bear the full resources available within schools. Such tasks would call on students to put into play their understandings across several disciplines such as science, English and history. Ideally, they would also ask students to integrate their learning from other market providers as well – creating greater educational synergy.

Schools have long been the only superpower of learning in the educational economy and have thereby been resistant to take note of or take seriously the new producers of educational experiences. If schools hope to maintain this position they must shift practice and consider what can be done to inspire greater educational complexity within their walls.

Things I Know 254 of 365: I’m working on crafting my thinking around the purpose of school

Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to ; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.

– Thomas Jefferson

The thing that’s been driving my thinking as of late has been an assignment for my School Reform class that asks us to articulate what we believe to be the purpose of school and then describe a school that would embody that value or purpose.

I’m open to feedback and have included my notes below. I think I know where I’m headed, but it’s clearly still in notes/outine stages.

Purpose Statement: The purpose of school is to provide a space for gradual practice and mastery of literacy, numeracy, citizenship and inquiry.

Premises:

Learning is incremental. – Carol Dweck

Making Learning Whole (David Perkins):

1. Play the whole game.

2. Make the game worth playing.

3. Work on the hard parts.

4. Play out of town.

5. Play the hidden game.

6. Learn from the team.

7. Learn the game of learning.

Ted Sizer:

p. 43 It is a new experience to make up one’s own mind.

p. 44 The supervised youth does the homework but may never learn the self-discipline that he will need in the future.

p. 48 Many adolescents parade their new sexuality. The choreography in a high school hallway during a break between classes is colorful, with awkward strutting, overdressing or underdressing for effect, hip swinging, hugging, self-conscious and overenthusiastic joshing, little bits of competition clumsily over expressed. (If they’re on silent, where does this socialization happen?)

p. 50 Eighty years ago, most adolescents had far more sustained contact with both older and younger people than do today’s youth. The separateness and the specialness of adolescence were less attended to.

p. 51 They are impressionable, but also autonomous; the two are not contradictory.

p. 51 Franklin Zimring: “How do we train young people to be free?” he asks. “If the exercise of independent choice is an essential element of maturity, part of the process of becoming mature is learning to make independent decisions. This type of liberty cannot be taught; it can only be learned.” Adults can help this learning, in powerful ways, by example, by being honest, by trusting young people, and by giving them the compliment of both asking much of them and holding them accountable for it. (This aligns w/ Perkins. Also reference Elmore saying in class that people often underestimate what students can do.)

P. 52 In a word, we shouldn’t pander to youth. WE should show them respect by expecting much of them and by being straight – and part of being straight is telling them that they are still inexperienced and therefore must share their freedom with older people until they have learned the dimensions of liberty. (Learner’s Permit)

p. 52 Wise teachers and parents wait, explain, encourage, criticize, love and explain again.

p. 53 But the kid who’s fun to teach is the questiong one, the kid who wants to know why. (Connect to Dweck and the importance of building a school modeled around supporting and drawing out an incremental theory of intelligence.)

p. 113 Hold a students commitment requires convincing him that the subject matter over which he is toiling is genuinely usable — if not now, then in the future. (Connect to Perkins and making the game worth playing.)

p. 105 observing-recording-imagining-analyzing-resolving

p. 103 One thinks, one imagines, one analyzes those ideas, one tests them, and then thinks again.

p. 94 Israel Scheffler, “Knowing requires something more than the receipt and acceptance of true information. It requires that the student earn the right to his assurance of the truth of the information in question.”

p. 86 The essential claims in education are very elementary: literacy, numeracy, and civic understanding.

p. 84 Education’s job is less in purveying information than in helping people to use it – that is, to exercise their minds.

p. 68 A sensible school would have a variety of means for exhibition – timed tests, essays, oral exams, portfolios of work.

Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner:

p. 1 To the extent that our schools are instruments of such a society, they must develop in the young not only an awareness o this freedom but a will to exercise it, and the intellectual power and perspective to do so effectively.

p. 11 Change changed. (RE: fourth information age)

p. 19 It’s not what you say to people, it’s what you have them do.

p. 23 Once you have learned how to ask questions-relevant and appropriate and substantial questions-you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know.

p. 33 The full spectrum of learning behaviors – both attitudes and skills – is being employed all the time.

John Holt:

Loc. 69 What teachers and learners need to know is what we have known for some time: first, that vivid, vital, pleasurable experiences are the easiest to remember, and secondly, that memory works best when unforced.

Loc. 374-377 A child has no stronger desire than to make sense of the world, to move freely in it, to do the things that he sees bigger people doing. Why can’t we make more use of this great drive for understanding and competence? Surely we can find more way to let children see people using some of the skills we want them to acquire—though this will be difficult when in fact those skills, like many of the “essential” skills of arithmetic are not really use to do anything.

Loc. 520 All children want and strive for increased mastery and control of the world around them, and all are to some degree humiliated, threatened, and frightened by finding out (as they do all the time) that they don’t have it.

– When we feel powerful and competent, we leap at difficult tasks.

– There are times when even the most skillful learner must admit to himself that for the time being he is trying to butt his head through a stone wall, and that there is no sense in it. At some times teachers are inclined to use students as a kind of human battering ram. I’ve done it too often myself. It doesn’t work.

– I feel even more strongly now than then that it is in every way useful for children to see adults doing real work and, wherever possible, to be able to help them.

– While this goes on, I say nothing. (RE: Dan Meyer “Be less helpful.”)

– Where the young child, at least until his thinking has been spoiled by adults, has a great advantage is in situations – and many, even most real life situations are like this – where there is so much seemingly senseless data that it is impossible to tell what questions to ask. He is much better at taking in this kind of data; he is better able to tolerate its confusion; and he is much better at picking out the patterns, hearing the faint signal amid all the noise. (loc. 910)

Purposed practice:

– school of play for half the day for young children. The rest of the day is focused on literacy, numeracy and citizenship. At the lowest grade levels, less focus on inquiry as it occurs naturally in kids as noted in the reading. Field trips will be a strong and frequent portion of the early years experience. Students will be asked to reflect on what they experience with moviemaking, photos and other tools as the become available. Teachers will help facilitate discussions of relevant literacy, numeracy and citizenship content while on field trips with an intent on modeling its integration into experiential learning. Students will exhibit mastery through assessment techniques agreed upon by the faculty and older students. These criteria will be on a regular review schedule and be required to include multiple forms of assessment.

– as students move to mid-adolescence, the inquiry process will be made more explicit. The Learner’s Permit referenced by Sizer will accompany greater freedoms in charting learning experiences outside of the classroom. These may include designing field trips for the entire cohort or small groups around inquiry projects of their design. Other students from inside or outside the cohort will be allowed to accompany the planning students on the trip. Should the trip interfere with the scheduled literacy, numeracy or citizenship instruction, that instruction must be re-scheduled by the planning students. All field trips will be designed with a product in mind (Perkins) as well as a public presentation (Lehmann).

My earliest notes:

  • learner’s permit
  • junior version of the game
  • math, literacy, citizenship
  • Sudbury
  • SLA
  • make as many mistakes as possible as quickly as possible
  • time for personal coaching

Things I Know 253 of 365: I chose this frustration…and it’s excellent

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

– Oscar Wilde

Part of the beauty of the program of study on which I have embarked is its lack of requirements. Though there are some sorts of courses I need to take to graduate from my particular program, I’ve much latitude in deciding exactly what that looks like. This semester, I’ve chosen to fulfill four of the five requirements.

The idea was to open the spring up to cross-registering courses in the Kennedy School or Harvard’s Business School or School of Public Health.

As I registered at the top of the semester, the freedom of choice I told myself I’d experience in the second half of my time here drove a good deal of the selections I made.

With a certain degree of surprise, my statistics course continues to be the course in which I most feel myself and my understanding of my capabilities growing.

It is also the course in which I know I’m making the most mistakes. I simply don’t know a lot of what we’re learning about. As such, I tend to misuse the language of statistics. It’s like someone who’s fluent in Spanish visiting Paris and recognizing just enough of what’s being said to make the inability to communicate perfectly frustrating.

As I sat in the library tonight compiling a report that referenced t-tests and chi square tests, friends and fellow classrmates happened by. They noticed the sprawl of papers covering my study carrel and commented they were glad they weren’t in the course. One person even said you couldn’t force her to take the class.

It occurred to me then that this might be why I’m enjoying my statistics class so much. No one made me take it. It is a pre-requisite for the next level of stats in the Spring, but I’m not taking that class. None of the millions of possible next jobs after school requires me to have a knowledge of statistical analysis.

I’m enrolled in the class because it seemed like it would be interesting and I didn’t know anything about the subject matter. It is new.

Each time a homework assignment makes me want to disrupt the tranquility of the library with a yelp of, “For the love of all that is holy, someone just tell me the answer,” I remind myself – I chose this. No external, deus-ex-machina force worked to force me into this class. I chose to learn this, to work with material heretofore unknown to me.

Having that choice and agency have made all the difference. I am learning because I chose what to learn. I was curious and free to follow that curiosity.

Things I Know 251 of 365: Writing differently lets the words say more

Our research suggests that the lack of education related to literacy is problematic, and the situation is exacerbated in the field of education.

– Barbara R. Jones-Kavalier and Suzanne L. Flannigan

My last post was a bit of an experiment.

I had an idea of what I wanted to say. When I’d written out the text, though, it didn’t say enough.

I tried adding more words, but that turned out making the text say less.

I tried changing the words, but it turned out they were working pretty hard to say what I wanted them to say.

It occurred to me that pictures might help. From time to time, images have helped communicate what I’m trying to say in a post.

I looked around Creative Commons, but couldn’t quite find what I needed.

This led me to the drawing option in Google Apps. I was able to create rudimentary versions of the images my words couldn’t stretch themselves to cover.

When I tried to embed the images, they didn’t quite fit. The post still seemed flat. I wanted it to say more.

I needed to write in video. I needed image, sound and words to work together to say more than what I was able to say in text alone.

This has me thinking about the kind of message creation called for in classrooms. The as I’ve been thinking about recently, the essay is the coin of the realm. Should it be?

In attempting to make images, texts and audio work together, I needed to pull together understandings of message and meaning well beyond putting sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into some sort of cogent narrative.

What’s more, I still needed that narrative to make it all work. I still wrote the post. Even more importantly, what I put together wasn’t very good. It did what I asked it to do, but it could be so much better. The room for revision in fifty different directions makes me want to jump back in and try. When I was in my online program last year, I couldn’t figure out why this kind of composition wasn’t a part of the courses. We were people learning together who would never be in the same physical space. The easiest thing to do would be to construct an environment that allowed us to be people with each other and build learning artifacts that actually spoke to who we were.

This is the type of writing we should be teaching. Not forsaking traditional texts, but folding them, extending them, and reconnoitering them into what they can be.

Students’ writings want to say more. We should let them.

Things I Know 252 of 365: How we shape learning shapes learning

I’ve been thinking about shape a lot lately. Specifically, how the way we shape things shapes how we shape thoughts. I know I’m not the only one to have considered this, but I’m the only one in my head to be considering it, so I’m going with it.

Friday, I visited an elementary school to observe and report.

I saw first, second, fourth and fifth grade classrooms.

In working toward a goal for a learning task in one of my classes, I noted the arrangement of each of the classrooms. My sketches weren’t perfect, but they reflected the general arrangement of each room.

In first grade, there were groupings of five or six tables, there was a carpet by a dry erase board. A teacher desk suffocated beneath papers. A kidney-shaped and a circular table both hinted at where the students might work to complete a collaborative task or work together with the teacher’s help. When I walked in, students were everywhere. Some were at their desks completing math work. Some were reading. Others were working together on the ground to paint what looked like it was the makings of a tree trunk. At one point, students transitioned from their myriad tasks to a whole-class reminder of the previous day’s learning and then community time at the carpet with the teacher.

The second grade class had even more of the frenetic energy you’d hope to see in a place where people are learning. The class’s co-teachers were across the room from one another working with small groups of students in rotation while the other students worked their way through stations where they read, counted using number lines, colored, completed their poetry journals and fitted blocks together to form vocabulary words. Just when I thought I’d gotten a handle where everyone was, they slid seamlessly to another station.

The portion of fourth grade I observed had fewer stations, but the co-teachers worked together to move student learning. One sat at a kidney-shaped table with a small group while the larger class worked on an assignment in organizations ranging from 1 to 6. The task involved manipulatives and the students each used them to find answers to the problems they were addressing and explain their answers to group members who weren’t seeing their logic. Though focused on one task, the room was still abuzz with difference.

Fifth grade took a turn. Groupings of desks changed from a standard of 4-5 to 3-4. The room had a clear front and back. The teacher was at the front. Her desk was at the back. The students were facing her. Focused on a singular task, student shared their answers and the teacher asked if the class thought those answers were correct.

I’ve only got a sampling of four classrooms, but I think I can see where this is going. All I need do is examine the learning spaces I head to throughout the week to see the natural end of this progression.

Each class is a variation on a theme. Scaled up and down according to the room and how many people we need fit inside it. The these horseshoes are where we learn about reforming how students learn. They are where we read about and discuss the importance of collaboration and choice. In these spaces, we examine student- versus teacher-centered practices and question why it is so difficult to move teachers’ practices to the former.

Some professors have attempted to break the space against itself and encouraged group work and movement. But the spaces weren’t meant for this. They don’t invite creative uses.

I looked at the collection of how teachers were using the spaces in the schools I’ve visited this year and noticed a trend.

The learning was different. The lessons were different. The voices and sizes were different. But the spaces moved toward one singular design.

I know where this leads my thinking, and I wonder what kind of thinkers, creators and citizens these spaces encourage and invite. No matter our professed values, are we building spaces that ask students to question, build and move forward?

Things I Know 250 of 365: This school almost made me cry

One of the nation’s highest priorities should be to learn from the best practices of these high-performing schools and to insist that all schools serving low-income children aspire to the No Excuses standard of excellence.

– Adam Meyerson

The students are lined up outside the school doors. In matching navy blue sweat suits, sleepiness hangs over them like a morning haze. I attribute their silence to the same tiredness I remember my own students wearing as they entered my eighth grade classroom.

The door to the school opens and the flood of students I remember witnessing as a teacher and experiencing as a student doesn’t happen. The students remain in a single-file line. The groggy morning murmurs have ceased. The line has moved from quiet to silent. Just over the threshold, the principal meets each student and asks them to lift their pant legs so she can see their socks. The few students wearing blue jeans are asked to lift their shirts so the principal can see their belts.

The students file down the hall – still silent – and sit in “community circle” and wait to be dismissed to their classrooms. The teacher overseeing community circle this morning is the only voice to be heard in the room, “I’m sorry eighth grade. Seventh grade is so quiet, I’m going to have to dismiss them first.”

Without a word, the seventh graders gather their backpacks and lunch boxes and file past me back down the hallway. One of my host teachers says, “Don’t be surprised when they don’t speak to your or acknowledge your presence. They’re on silent.” If a student were to turn to look at me or say “hello,” she explains, the student would receive a demerit. I later learn the principal’s spot checking of socks and belts also held the potential of demerits. Anything other than plain white socks or jeans without a belt are grounds for a demerit. “They are symbols of status,” the host teacher explains.

I bite my tongue at this. I am a guest, and it is not my place to point out the school’s treatment of its students is a constant reminder of status.