Category: Post-A-Day

132/365 What are Our Schools’ Sidewalks and are They Safe?

Hallway from mingchuno via flickr.com

I’ve been reading Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It’s slow going, and the tome invites some pauses through it’s heft, let alone its content.

Early in the book, Jacobs focuses her examination not on blocks or parks or buildings, but on sidewalks as the keys to urban environments. Most specifically, Jacobs’ argument in the chapter centers on sidewalks a mechanisms for safety.

It is not police patrols that make the difference, she says, but the patrols of those who inhabit the space.

This, as most things do, got me thinking about education.

If, as Jacobs argues, it is the use of streets and their sidewalks that keeps these spaces safe, where are our best sidewalks in education?

The choisest answer would be the hallways of our schools. This, base don my own empirical evidence is not so. The bullying of my childhood, the fear of those who would torment me was greatest in the hallways and other similar spaces.

If anything, our classrooms are the most closely monitored educational spaces in schools. They are where our eyes are surveying for “appropriate behavior” and the like. Thse spaces are not the sidewalks of schools. They are the homes. They are the living rooms, kitchens, and dining rooms of schools. The safety of our classrooms is the safety we afford our families and those guests we welcome into our private spaces.

By all accounts, our hallways should be the sidewalks of our school communities. They are where we catch up, where we transact, where we get our news. Most importantly and most upsettingly, they are where we decide not to enforce the standards of our community.

In visiting schools across the country, I listen to the words of the hallways and watch the physical interactions. No matter the professed attitudes of respect, the lessons on character in the classrooms, the hallways bely the true stories of the cultures of our learning spaces. They are where we can look to measure what is expected and professed against what it allowed.

I do not mean to argue that we should monitor our hallways with draconian measures or install greater numbers of cameras. I would prefer the absence of guardians to such measures.

No, what we must do in our hallways, to keep the sidewalks of our schools safe, is simple. We must be present. Physically. Mentally. Morally.

For many schools, this is nothing new. The policy for teachers has been to stand outside their doors during passing periods for quite some time.

The extent to which I’m arguing presence, though, is new. It is not enough to stand outside classroom doors. Instead, we must be present like the neighbors Jacobs describes, interact with those passing through, and create the social capital of community.

To do less is to be another version of Big Brother. To do only a little more is to create spaces of safety and community.

131/365 Trust the Start

My new job has me thinking quite a bit about the flow of systems. For the majority of my career, I’ve been at one end of the educational system – in the classroom – working directly with students and other teachers to make learning and formal education better.

Now, I find myself somewhere in the middle of the system. I’m not in charge of anything, per se, at either end of the system. I support teachers and students and I support the leadership of the district. Sometimes (not often) that support looks drastically different.

I’ve found myself realizing and hoping for a specific string of trust to be enacted and embodied by the district.

It starts like this – Trust that teachers are doing all they can to support students’ growth and learning.

From there, direct interactions should be set up in such a way to give them support they need to do what they feel they need to do to help kids. This would be at the principal level. From there, outside the schools, intermediate district personnel should move to support principals based on the assumption that they trust that teachers are doing all they can to support students’ growth and learning.

If I believe that’s what principals believe, I’m going to be better at my job.

The same assumption is what I hope for those to whom I report. As I move through schools, help teachers and administrators learn and consider new practices, I hope that those in charge of me assume that I trust that teachers are doing all they can to support students growth and learning.

I want others to assume it in the system, and I want those others to assume that I believe it as well.

If we all operate from this believe, if we all trust that teachers are doing all they can to support students’ growth and learning, a foundation is established on which we can build, improve and design pathways to even greater capacity.

Assuming teachers are doing all they can is not assuming that they are doing the absolute best, it is assuming that they are doing their absolute best in the moment, and that it can always be augmented.

If I work with a group of teachers to build capacity around some new tool or practice, approaching our time together from the assumption that they are doing all they can will result in conversations much more replete with respect, listening, and care than conversations based on the assumption they are slacking, skating, or faking their way through the school year.

I want the best for anyone who endeavors to add to the learning, understanding, and choices of students. The best way I can think of to support and work alongside these folks is to trust they are doing the best they can and move from there.

130/365 Three Rules I Like for Living

Keep your word to yourself and others…Be trustworthy with yourself.
Whenever you’re offered water, say “yes.” We’re human beings wherever we go…Be who you are, no matter where you are.

I’ve been experimenting with listening to podcasts as I run and commute to work lately. One I’ve subscribed to, which is in the review stage, is Bulletproof Executive Radio. I’m not yet certain if I’m going to keep it in the mix, but the words above from Guest Michael Fishman struck me as good ones this evening as I was finishing up my run.

What would be your three rules for living a better life?

129/365 Poverty is a Thing and We’re Getting Worse at Fighting it

From a recent Bill Moyers post:

Most people in poverty do not receive cash assistance. In 1996, for every 100 families with children in poverty, there were 68 families who accessed cash assistance. In 2011, for every 100 families with children in poverty, 27 accessed cash assistance.

With the Farm Bill’s faltering in Congress putting food assistance for children in poverty in a dangerous limbo, maybe it’s time we agreed poverty as the most important issue in education. Anyone who thinks differently can remove themselves from the line of helpful voices.

128/365 Zoomie Has Some Questions about American Education

One of the many folks I was fortunate to meet and talk with during IDEC2013 was a young Taiwanese student named Zoomie. She asked if I was available to sit at dinner and talk about education in America, but I had another commitment, so I wasn’t available. We worked out that she would email me, and I’d my best to answer whatever questions I could.

I got Zoomie’s email tonight, and thought I’d post her questions here in the hope that others might leave their answers in the comments and I could forward more than my own simple viewpoint on for Zoomie’s project.

So, what do you think?

Q1: Tell me about the school life for the students here  (middle or high school )
Q2: Do you like current USA education system?
Q3: Where do you think there are problems?
Q4: Do you like to change it ?
Q5: If so , how could it be changed？
Q6: What did you think the most America adults will think current education has problems?

As you answer, keep in mind that Zoomie is still working on her English so answers in the American idiom might prove puzzling. This has the added benefit of being a set of questions that has me curious as to others’ answers.

127/365 These are My Questions about Equity and Social Justice

I had the privilege today of participating in the Coffee Talk that opened today’s programming at the International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC).

Forgoing keynotes or panel discussions, conference organizers decided to pull together folks from different backgrounds but of similar interests to have conversations and then spread those to the larger group.

When I showed up, I realized today featured a different setup entirely. In an attempt to meet the wants of attendees (it is democratic, after all) organizers had collapsed the different coffe talks into one and then encouraged attendees to take part in a modified fishbowl.

Coffee talkers began in the center of a set of concentric circles. We could say our piece or not and then vacate our seats for attendees to jump in and participate.

It was an altogether difference scenario from that for which I’d prepared myself.

For the first hour, I sat and listened. The larger audience and set of speakers compounded my worries that I wouldn’t have anything to add.

As speakers took turns speaking theire thoughts into the mike, I knew I didn’t have any pronouncement that was necessary to lay upon the layers of declarations that had come before me.

I started listening for a different reason – What questions did these pronouncements raise for me.

In a room of people who spend much of their time considering democratic education, social justice, equity and all that accompany these thoughts, it struck me as a place to deploy questions.

Mine were as follows:

  1. How do we better understand those who disagree with us – whether on the importance of equity and social justice or on the path to these goals? It strikes me as less than enough to be against those who disagree with us. If there is hope for progress, we must come to a place of understanding. This is not an argument for abandoning our principles and beliefs. Rather, it is a call to ask questions of those who disagree so that they might consider their beliefs more closely through their answers.
  2. How do we prevent the drive for equity from meaning we are all equally unhappy? Not unlike a toxic relationship, those who speak of privilege and power often do so in a way that makes me think we are struggling to make those who aren’t us feel the unhappiness we have known rather than striving for equal happiness and joy.
  3. How do we remember adults are not fully formed? Several times during the conference and in general dealings with adults, I’ve noted tones of voice in comments that are less forgiving, less caring, and less empathetic as adults speak to adults than I think those same adult speakers’ voices would hold were they speaking to young people. We’re all unfinished. We are all growing, and we are all imperfect. How do we remember this as we help each other become more perfect?
  4. What does it take to pause and appreciate the small movements and moments of success as we work toward our ideals? This is tough. The race is difficult and the road is long. Because of this, we often lose track of the milestones we pass. When those with whom we disagree make small concessions, we must learn to pause and appreciate such movement. If not, we’ll lose the patience necessary for moving forward.

If we can consider and craft answers to these questions, I think there will be greater hope of progress in the walk toward more democratic systems of education. Maybe.

Image via m.gifford

Learning Grounds Ep. 021: From primary sources to private school to teaching kids history with Meredith Stewart

In this episode, Zac talks with History Teacher Meredith Stewart about primary sources, teaching at an independent school, education policy, and her approach to teaching history to middle and high schoolers.

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125/365 Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Transparency?

While I’m sure this idea has some connections in my brain to the U.S.’s current hemorrhaging of classified information, the real drive of what I’m about to think through has to do with policy, process, and our ability to come to the table and get work done.

In preparation to be interviewed today, I was asked to take a sheet of paper, visualize in my head the current state of education and then draw it to be explained during my interview.

What I ended up drawing was a series of faces, bisected along the vertical access, appearing angry and contemptuous on the left side and happy and open on the right side. Also, only the right side of each face had an ear. From each of the mouths (right and left sides) I drew lines that made their way to other faces after getting lost in a knot of other lines from other faces in the middle of the paper. I labeled the faces: Educators, Businesses, Students, Communities, Policymakers, Academics.

It wasn’t until I sat down to draw that the problem I’ve been attempting to explain verbally to people for the last few weeks came into focus.

What if our drive for transparency and our expectation of publicly-consumable communication is hindering our ability to get actual work done.

Let’s take policymakers for a start. They, like members of all other groups, are connected to some other set of constituents – peers, voters, allies of other sorts. When they sit down a whatever table is being sat at to work through the problem-of-the-moment, contemporary thinking calls for “transparency” before they even approach said table. They are expected to make known their views on the issue at hand, the other parties, what they plan to do and what they will do for their constituencies. In many cases, during the conversations, they are tweeting and posting to Facebook and updating their constituencies as to their progress. Much of the time, this includes explaining how firmly they are holding to the preconceived notions they touted pre-table.

This transparency of process, of motive, and of intent is harmful. It leaves no room for listening. It commits to a course of action before any other courses can be considered. For these policymakers or any of the other stakeholders practicing this breed of transparency, to do anything other than what is expected would mean the loss of face and (more damaging) the loss of power.

As much as I believe in transparency (and I vigorously do), perhaps it is time to admit not all steps of all processes need be transparent. Perhaps consideration of a new curriculum or policy to be adopted would go differently if those representing the stakeholders were able to be at the table alone so that they might be able to say, “I don’t know what we’re going to do, and I don’t think some of the points you’ve been making are half bad” without worrying about being billed as sellouts to their causes.

I understand the dangers and histories connected to closed-door, back room meetings, and I’m not proposing decision-making free of accountability. Our constant need to know, though, and our constant drive to offer our praise or condemnation before the thinking is through might be impeding progress.

When my students would write in my room, I stepped back. I reasoned it might not be helpful to them or their final products if I looked over their shoulders and said, “That’s what you’re going to write?” in the middle of their sentences.

Perhaps there’s a lesson there.

Thanks to Dean for inadvertently making me think about this stuff.

Image via JayGoldman.

124/365 Some Excellent Words to Start IDEC2013

Today marked the official beginning of the International Democratic Education Conference. As luck and fortuitous timing would have it, this year’s conference is in my own backyard of Boulder, CO on the CU – Boulder campus. It’s been a full first day of meeting new folks, thinking about what democratic education means and whether our contemporary definitions of the concept shift depending on context.

I’ll have more on the conference tomorrow. For right now, I’ve been mulling the words of Grace Lee Boggs, a 98-year-old Detroit activist who recorded a message as part of IDEC’s opening. The conference is surely a collection of education activists who are constantly considering their roles as change makers. Reflecting on the decades she’s spent working in communities in Detroit, Boggs said this:

Movement building is helping people realize that the end of one way of life is not the end of all life.

I like these words for their complexity. They harness the essence of learning. Growth, wisdom, new skills, these all mark subtle changes in and transitions from one way of life to something new, without also marking the end of the individual who existed before.

The words are also dangerous. While I heard them (and I’m sure Boggs meant them) as a credo for the assembled activists, I can’t help thinking how easily they could fit in the mouths of the colonizers as much as the colonized. They could find home in the pages of Abby Hoffman’s Steal This Book while just as comfortable in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I suppose this is the more important message for those who think of ourselves as change makers.

122/365 The Difference Between a Policy and a ‘Race’ (Part I)

Oklahoma ranked 34th and 20th in rounds 1 and 2 of Race to the Top, respectively. Connecticut ranked 25th in both rounds. Florida ranked 4th in both rounds and was awarded $700 million in Round 2 funding.

The difference between setting policy and sponsoring a competition is that it’s difficult to hold competition losers to the rules of the contest once they’ve lost. As states move to comply with the rules of the game they’ve already lost, we’re likely to see them taking their toys and going home. I can’t blame them.

According to this July 3 EdWeek piece, Oklahoma is having a difficult time pulling together the tech necessary to implement the digital edition of the PARCC assessment in the 2015-16 school year.

A survey of the state’s schools found only 20% of the states schools have the banwidth and devices necessary to deliver the assessment, according to EdWeek.

While they’re still planning on PARCC-ing, EdWeek reporter Benjamin Herold writes, “Officials said Oklahoma is not formally withdrawing from PARCC, but the details of how the state will remain involved now that it is not planning to use the consortium’s tests remain unclear.”

In Connecticut, officials have asked permission from federal officials to give schools the choice in which tests to administer to students. A Smarter Balanced state, Connecticut’s governor would like schools to be able “to choose whether to offer the Smarter Balanced test or the Mastery or CAPT test — or both” according to a July 11 article in The Hartford Courant.

Reporter Kathleen Megan suggests the delay in implementing Smarter Balanced testing is needed while teachers adjust to the new Common Core curriculum which is described as “more stringent” than original Connecticut standards.

If this is referring to comparisons such as the Fordham Institute’s 2010 comparison of CT to CC ELA standards, such a claim of stringency would appear apt.

Examining Fordham’s complaints about CT’s reading standards, though, reveals some questionable claims.

The reading expectations generally place as much emphasis on content-less and often unmeasurable comprehension skills and reading “reflection” and “behaviors” as they do on important content. For example:

Make connections to text representing different perspectives [such as] family, friendship, culture and tradition, generating personal and text-based responses [sic] (grade 2)

While it’s likely difficult to evaluate students’ connections to different perspectives, the claim that such skills as the ones above are unimportant is devoid of a basic understanding of the research surrounding what draws students into reading and keeps them there. This is to say nothing of the sustainability of civic awareness for students whose teachers encourage the taking on of multiple perspectives.

While it’s certain that Connecticut English Language Arts standards could likely have been revised toward increased clarity and structure, it’s unlikely they deserved the “D” awarded by Fordham compared to Common Core standards.

This is all to suggest that both Oklahoma and Connecticut are moving in a direction that isn’t directly tied to thoughtful consideration of what is best for their students and teachers.

According to the Children’s Defense Fund’s 2013 report on children in Oklahoma, “A child dies before his or her first birthday every 22 hours” in the state and nearly a third of Oklahoma 19-34 month olds are not fully immunized.

In Connecticut, the two main teachers unions have praised the governor’s request for flexibility. These are the same unions who were on board for the adoption of the new measurements of teacher effectiveness as required for the application for Race to the Top funding when it was first announced at the height of the economic collapse.

The money didn’t come to Connecticut and the state is bracing to take on new standards, tests, and systems of teacher evaluation just the same. With one year of flexibility, it’s likely that teachers will understand that all of the pieces to which their unions agreed are highly stressful and coming without the funding their acquiescences to these changes was meant to attract.

While it’s unlikely RttT losers like Connecticut will completely depart from the suggested path of the contest, there’s no policy or law keeping them from pausing to reflect on the rush of changes and asking, “What are our priorities for the children and adults in our education system based on the expertise of the system?”

To be certain, that dialogue will be better-informed, more thoughtful, and more productive than any policies adopted as part of a race.

What about Florida? That’s a post for tomorrow.