Category: TIK365

Things I Know 266 of 365: I’m still not sure who’s informing education policy

Politics is applesauce.

– Will Rogers

Doing some work today, I had the recent Twitter Town Hall with Sec. Duncan hosted by John Merrow education correspondent for PBS NewsHour playing in the background.

At about the 7:30 mark, Merrow read a question:

Here’s a question that actually came up the first time, and the charge was that you didn’t answer it. Joe Bower, “What educators do you work with to develop your ideas and reforms?

Sec. Duncan started to list places he’d been to see the good work teachers and principals were doing.

Merrow wasn’t satisfied, so he pushed again asking for names. Sec. Duncan named some people in his office and some folks he’d met in Tennessee.

At 8:26, the exchange took a turn I rarely see in contemporary journalism:

Merrow: Okay, but again, I’m going to keep pushing you on this, because there’s a spectrum of ideas. There’s a sort of Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee camp, and there’s a Deborah Meier, Diane Ravitch camp.

Sec. Duncan: I listen to ’em all. I pay attention to ’em all. I’m not one who’s going to sit in a camp. I think that narrow mindedness is a real problem. I think there’s a host of ideas along the spectrum.

It’s interesting to me, John. I think so often people like to pit this person against that person. I just don’t see that that way at all. I love all those people you just mentioned. What I like about all of them is that they’re absolutely passionate about education. For me the battle’s not between those folks you named. The battle to me is with complacency. The battle is with a country that’s stagnating educationally and isn’t taking that next step. Am I going to agree with every single person every issue? Of course not. Are they all going to agree with me? Of course not. But what you have is a series of people who desperately want our country to improve and are working hard to get us there.

Merrow: Are there people who don’t listen to? You don’t believe in vouchers.

Sec. Duncan: It doesn’t mean I don’t listen to them because I don’t believe in it. I think it’s so critically important that you do listen to them. I think frankly it’s one of my strengths is the ability to listen. Listen doesn’t mean you agree. Listen it doesn’t mean you’re going to do it. I think the day I stop listening to anyone, particularly someone who doesn’t agree with me, I think that’s when you stop getting better. That’s when you stop improving…The day you start shutting down and not listening to different voices or different opinions, I think you lose a lot there. And, I hope I never get to that point.

At 10:00 Merrow relented. It doesn’t sound to me as though he was satisfied with the answer, but realized Sec. Duncan had given the answer he was going to give.

Listening in, I was more impressed with the exercise than the answer given. My time in school has tuned my perception of espoused beliefs versus enacted beliefs.

The interview progressed, and I continued with my work.

At just about the 14:00 mark, Merrow asked Sec. Duncan if he’d taken any flack for his comments from the previous Town Hall where he commented that 10 days of testing and test preparation were too much for a school. Sec. Duncan jumped in and said he still thought that was too much and that it was at the high end.

Marrow returned to his original question – had the Secretary taken any flack? “Is there anybody officially saying, ‘What are you doing interfering in this?'”

Sec. Duncan laughed it off a bit and said he didn’t think so. At the 14:00 mark he said, “I don’t pay attention to all the criticism,” and then clarified his position.

I kept listening.

It wasn’t until later that I realized something was rubbing me the wrong way. I went back to the video and listened to those first 14 minutes.

Here’s what I needed in those moments, and what I think Joe Bower was hoping for. I needed Sec. Duncan to talk about the ideas of the people he said he loved. It was a chance for a frank, informal conversation about the ideas of Joel Klein or Debbie Meier to which he ascribed. If I agreed or disagreed with what he said, that would be fine. What I needed in those moments was for him to say something.

Look back at the transcript. To a question for specific educators to whom the Secretary turns to develop education ideas and reforms for the country, the answer appears to be everyone. Four minutes later (and admittedly off the cuff) he says he doesn’t listen to all his critics.

Who does that leave?

It’s similar to responding to the question of what books he enjoys reading with, “I like reading all of them,” and then later admitting, “I don’t like reading the ones I don’t like.”

I am truly interested in which education minds are informing policy at the national level.

I am truly upset that I still don’t know.

(And a little worried.)

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Things I Know 265 of 365: I’ve been worrying over grades

But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.

– Pres. Ronald Reagan

I’ve decided, if possible, to take all of next semester’s courses pass/fail.

It was a decision I almost made when I registered this semester, but the schooly devil on my shoulder shouted pretty loudly.

I’m not failing any of my classes and I’m reading and learning more than any aggregate moment of my undergraduate career. The problem is that I’m worried about the grades in a way that makes me uncomfortable and that leaves me wondering if the learning I felt like I was doing matched the grades on my assignments.

This problem works both ways.

Earlier this week, I received a graded stats assignment (and you know how much I’m loving stats). Along with the comments from the Teaching Fellow (what Harvard calls TAs) was an A. I received an A on the assignment.

Then I got angry. I’ve been reminding myself any B I’ve received this semester was someone else’s interpretation of my learning and not a reflection of what I’d actually learned on the assignment. Most of the time, I’ve interacted with the grading TF no more than a sum of 10 minutes. Even if it’s been more, the samples of my work and thinking my graders have seen have been minimal. It’s a little like a standardized testing window.

My anger at the A rested in how quickly I was willing to accept a complimentary grade when it validated my self concept.

I can’t have it both ways. No matter my reaction, the effect is the same. Grades distract me from learning.

This is not to say, as Dave Thomer commented the other day, that I don’t respect and internalized my teachers’ critiques of my work. I’m here to study with experts and learn from them. Part of that means submitting my work for their response.

Whereas a grade hits me like a period of exclamation point marking the end of my thinking on the matter, a paper returned riddled with questions and comments begs a conversation.

I read a grade as, “We’re done here.”

I read comments as, “Say more.”

One of these is internalized as a statement of worth.

The other is read as the invitation to keep thinking and asking questions.

I’m hoping removing overall grades will cancel out some of the background noise and help me focus on my learning and my professors’ coaching of that learning.

Things I Know 264 of 365: Some stories keep going

The process of putting your life into order with a beginning, middle, and end forces you to see cause and effect.

– Catherine Burns

Thursday, I got just about one of the best message I’ve ever received from a student. Freda was in my senior Storytelling class last year. Along with the rest of the class, she participated in our weekly story slams where students were randomly selected to tell a story in front of the rest of the class without notes. The stories had to be true and in the first person.

For one of her stories, Freda told us about the one and only time she’d bullied another student.

Here’s the story. Freda’s starts around 5:50:
Ralen and Freda by MrChase

I remember thinking at the time how amazing it was any time a student felt free to open up and share part of themselves that might not otherwise be revealed. Those were the moments where I felt like I’d stumbled on something right.

Freda’s note today gave me that feeling again and reminded me those moments in the classroom were ripples that are still moving across my kids’ lives though we aren’t with each other everyday.

Here is Freda’s note in all its informal online missive parlance:

Mr. Chase. I have to tell you something. Remember Jermy? The kid I did my story slam about? He friend requested me. I apologized. He said he had wanted to send me a request for years and was worried I’d forgotten about him. I can’t believe it, how could I forget that? I told him that I’d never forgot it and regretted it for like… my whole life, and how I did a school project thingy on it and so, he asked for my number, and he called me up and he was crying, and I was crying and like… I’m just… I’m glad we had that assignment, and I feel so… lucky that I had a chance to tell everyone in class, and even more lucky that I was given a second chance to apologize… and… I guess… I never believed in fate before… but I might now… sounds corny but whatever… So yeah, I just felt compelled to tell you, right now. Thank you for being a great teacher, I love you.

In moments like these, it’s hard not to miss the classroom terribly.

Things I Know 263 of 365: Citizenship is both digital and analog

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.

– Ralph Nader

The son of one of the dean’s here at school was missing this week. Last night, he returned home, and everyone is safe.

After a friend e-mailed me the flier being circulated in conjunction with the search, I posted it to my Facebook page. I also posted it to the Facebook group for students at HGSE.

When I checked Facebook this morning, the post to my general Facebook wall had been shared 14 times in the night.

Each sharer (Is that the proper colloquialism?) was somehow connected to SLA. Former students, students I’d never taught, graduates from our first class, parents of my advisees, students’ friends from other schools – they all shared the post to their walls, though only one of them is near Boston.

It was a reminder of community and one of those infrequent signs that Facebook might be good for something.

I realize none of the people who passed the message along did any serious lifting beyond a couple clicks, but that’s another vote in favor of the virtual network.

The message moved quickly and didn’t require anyone to inconvenience themselves. This was a worry to someone they were connected to and the relative cost for adding their voices was null.

This could have and has had distinctly negative effects. Petitions, rumors and photos go viral in minutes, and attempts to rectify the wrongs take much more work and are largely ineffective.

In this instance, that wasn’t the case. The objective was to spread the word and help someone else. It happened.

Of similar interest was the fact no one in the HGSE group shared the flier to their walls. Ostensibly, they’re the group that had the most investment in the ordeal.

The temptation is to suggest weaker communal ties. I wonder if that’s it. Everyone I’ve met here is quite caring for one another, and I’ve witnessed their support first hand.

The possibility that comes to mind is perhaps the groups – SLA and HGSE – view the agency afforded by Facebook differently.

Without wading into the riptide of the digital native / digital immigrant debate, I wonder if it seems more natural for such an alert to be transmitted virtually for my SLA community while my HGSE community considers it to be a more physically-bound action.  While both are caring and active communities, I could certainly see how the learning environment of SLA would differently shape a person’s paradigm of citizenship and what participatory culture looks like and can look like. It’s possible HGSE citizenship is analog while SLA citizenship blends the analog with the digital.

It seems to me citizenship should be both and the seams should be invisible.

Things I Know 262 of 365: I wasn’t paying attention

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

– Henry David Thoreau

Yesterday, I was the student I’ve heard teachers worry about as they describe the detrimental effects of lifting prohibitions on mobile devices in the classroom.

Two-thirds of the way through 3-hour class, in class discussion, someone made an interesting point I hadn’t before considered. The point wasn’t made directly to me or even in my general discussion. Within the lecture hall, the content of the remark was diluted by follow-up comments moments after it escaped my classmate’s mouth.

I’m not sure what the follow-up comments were. The initial remark made me curious and I started following my questions around the Internet. Browser tabs began propagating one another, and I soon had enough information to qualify as deeper understanding.

I knew something about what my classmate said that I hadn’t known before I started poking around online.

I hadn’t followed or heard a single word of the discussion once I’d tuned out; yet, I’d kept on learning.

What’s more, once I returned to the conversation, I was able to bring more information with me and deepen the level of discourse.

I’ll admit to feeling a little guilty for tuning out. The conditioned student in me worried the professor would notice I wasn’t following the conversation and be upset or cold call me to bring my attention back.

That’s where my dissonance lived.

I was learning, but I wasn’t in the conversation.

I was on topic, but I wasn’t in sync with those around me.

After class, the whole thing stuck with me. The kind of augmented learning I did isn’t possible or even allowed in most classrooms. Teachers and administrators are worried access to tools and information will lead to distraction in the classroom. I’ve taught long enough with cell phones and instant messenger in my classroom to know there’s some truth to that.

The experience also taught me the need to shift my game. If I was doing things or sharing information students’ points of access could provide, I was wasting my time. Constant information access meant I could focus on what we could do and build with that information. It meant we were free to ask better questions.

That’s what I did last night, deeply engaged in my learning and worried those around me would think ill of me for asking questions to build the fund of knowledge.

Not paying attention, as it turned out, didn’t mean I wasn’t learning.

Things I Know 261 of 365: Teachers aren’t stupid

We are not recruiting our teachers from the bottom third of high school students going to college.

– McKinsey & Company

Of every sobering statistic bouncing around the halls here, that we recruit our teaching population from the bottom third of high school students going to college is one I can’t go a week without hearing cited.

The problem, people are arguing, is our teachers aren’t smart enough to do the job.

I’m done with it.

The same people we are asking to improve schools, to whom we entrust our children, and whom we consistently ask to work harder for more hours are also also supposed to do so while we call them stupid?

Then, beautifully, we stand around and wonder why we can’t attract more candidates to the field.

“Only the worst performing people want this job,” we say to potential recruits, “Come apply.”

As tempted as I am to look into the math of all of this, others have taken care of it. David Wees has this compelling post that pulls apart the implicit meaning of the statistic, writing, “I think the US public should be very insulted by this argument rather than being up in arms about how poorly qualified their teachers are.”

Things really heat up in the comments section.

Wees also points to a post by Larry Ferlazzo who actually digs around to understand the math of the claim and tears greatly at its validity.

At the end of it all, Ferlazzo writes, “In other words, this bottom-third thing does seem to me to be a bunch of baloney.”

I don’t want to re-write Wees or Ferlazzo’s argument or this relevant piece from Scott McLeod.

What has been troubling me is the glomming on to the idea that a student’s grades in school are reflections of his intelligence rather than reflections at how well that student played at school.

I’m not discounting the idea that a student who received strong grades in school could also possess other, more disruptive intelligences.

I’m asking us not to discount the idea that the student who received weaker grades in school might be just as intelligent.

In the comments of Ferlazzo’s post, the question is raised of the correlation between higher ACT and SAT scores and a person’s effectiveness as a teacher. A moderate or even high correlation wouldn’t surprise me. I can see little reason why a person who scored well on a standardized test wouldn’t be more effective at helping others learn to score well on such tests.

And, finally, I wonder about anyone’s willingness to use a test administered to 16-18 year olds as a measure for their intelligence as adults. From a developmental standpoint, their brains and bodies are in a state of absolute flux. I’m more intelligent than I was at 17, but I don’t know that I’d do as well on the ACT.

I am certain 30-year-old me or even 22-year-old me was better prepared to lead a classroom than 17-year-old me.

The McKinsey report from which the statistic originated has been around since 2007 and has probably been used to denegrate teachers since then. Any of the people I’ve heard cite the stat this semester could have spent the same 10 minutes I did researching to understand its flaws.

I worry they didn’t.

Things I Know 260 of 365: I’m not sure what I did right

When we fail in this diagnostic role we begin to worry about ‘assessment.’

– David Hawkins

I’m struggling to write tonight. I’ve been struggling to write for the last few days.

I’ve an assignment due tomorrow – 8-10 pages, and I can’t get myself invested in it. Or, I’m too invested in it.

For the last assignment in this class, I submitted work of which I was proud. I spent time and thought on the assignment. I worked to refine my thinking and understand which other thinkers served as progenitors to my ideas.

My work was submitted with a feeling of having been thoughtful and diligent in my work. I had learned something new and refined   old thinking.

When I got my assignment back, I struggled to find positive comments. I struggled to find comments that were in response to my ideas.

I didn’t need praise lobbed at me or ego stroking. I just needed a clear sign of where I was on the right track; otherwise, I start to question if I was anywhere near that track.

Because I am who I am, I submitted a re-write of the assignment. Re-doubling my efforts, I consulted the rubric even more the second time than the first.

While my grade on the second attempt was higher than the grade on the first, I’m still sitting here stymied as I work to complete this new assignment.

It’s a horrible feeling.

I don’t know what I did well in the last assignment upon which I can build for this go-round. I have lists of things to avoid, but I don’t know what I’m good at in context of trying to do what’s been asked of me.

I’ll write more tonight.

I’ll write more tomorrow.

I’ll turn in my assignment tomorrow.

I’ll be hesitant to feel proud.

And the thing that kills me – that absolutely drive me batty – the work I did on the first assignment and the work I did for the re-write was fine work. I am still proud of that work.

But there’s a teacher’s opinion in there. There’s a teacher’s opinion muddying the waters of my learning.

And I’m really hating the fact that matters to me.

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.