So long as Common Core is about students, learning and America; I guess that’s okay
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The IRL Fetish – The New Inquiry
Twitter lips and Instagram eyes: Social media is part of ourselves; the Facebook source code becomes our own code…
Many of us, indeed, have always been quite happy to occasionally log off and appreciate stretches of boredom or ponder printed books — even though books themselves were regarded as a deleterious distraction as they became more prevalent. But our immense self-satisfaction in disconnection is new. How proud of ourselves we are for fighting against the long reach of mobile and social technologies! One of our new hobbies is patting ourselves on the back by demonstrating how much we don’t go on Facebook. People boast about not having a profile. We have started to congratulate ourselves for keeping our phones in our pockets and fetishizing the offline as something more real to be nostalgic for. While the offline is said to be increasingly difficult to access, it is simultaneously easily obtained — if, of course, you are the “right” type of person.
Learning Grounds Episode 002: In which Anesha discusses her learning around school choice and cultural competency
For this week’s episode of Learning Grounds, we sat down with Education Policy and Management candidate, Anesha, to discuss what she’s learning about ideas of school choice and policy’s role in creating equity in the opportunities facing kids today. We also had time to talk about the role of schools in cultural competency.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Things I Know 364 of 365: This is my 14th post of the day
Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
– Pres. Woodrow Wilson, “Fourteen Point Speech,” Point 1
This is the fourteenth post I’ve written today. It is the penultimate post of the series. Tomorrow’s post will be all, “Here’s what I’ve learned by looking at what I think I know.” Today was clearing out the closet of ideas I’ve been stowing in the corners of my computer and my brain this year. And I’ll happily admit feeling some strange, nerdy camaraderie with Wilson’s 14 Points as I wrote.
I’m a little surprised I’m still up writing, that I didn’t head to bed half a dozen posts ago and decide to finish the rest of the bunch tomorrow.
It became clear to me around today’s 4th post that I would be writing all 14 today. I needed to wake up tomorrow knowing the 365th day of this endeavor meant I needed only to write the 365th post. I needed the last post to have its own day, the way it all began.
For anyone following along this year, or simply by looking at the title of the series, it would seem as though I would only need to write one post each day anyway.
That would be true, had life not gotten in the way. The changes and moves of this year (stuff I’ll write about tomorrow) meant some days (quite a few, in the end) didn’t include blogging as a priority.
That is fine with me. I sad a hundred days ago or so, that I’d come to the realization that the rules of this enterprise were my own and that breaking those rules wasn’t cheating, but adapting.
So, as the Postal Service’s “Sleeping In,” plays on iTunes, that’s what I plan to do tomorrow, knowing today I handled the heavy lifting of holding myself accountable for meeting a goal I set for myself almost a year ago.
Today was a goal in itself – Find 14 ideas worth sharing and keep the writing cogent. I hope I’ve succeeded. I think I have.
Things I Know 316 of 365: It’s best to teach two types of writing
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
– Benjamin Franklin
Yesterday, I was listening to and interview of one of my favorite television writers, Steven Moffat. He’s the head writer and executive producer of Dr. Who and Sherlock and one of the screenwriters of The Adventures of Tintin.
Moffat has been a fan of Dr. Who since he was a boy and was asked when he wrote his first script for the show.
I expected mid-20s.
Moffat answered 10 or 12. He and a friend scripted a 4-part series of the show on their own, in their free time.
My mind immediately went to how that interest could have been leveraged in school. The voice in my head sounded something like, “I’m sure they didn’t, but Moffat’s school should have had a program for script writing. He could have latched on to his passion much earlier.”
Thinking it over, I’m glad they didn’t. We might have ruined him. This was a boy so enamored and passionate about writing – this kind of writing – that he spent his free time playing with the form and structure.
While school could certainly have been the place for the development of his talent, it seems unlikely they would have given it room to breathe and time to develop.
I’m so tempted to argue that we should be teaching more forms and genres of writing in school aside from the expository and persuasive essays required by standardized tests. In the current curricular climate, though, we would teach those things in pieces with restrictions and a tone of teaching that says, “This is the way you do it.”
What I love about Moffat’s writing is how far he strays from the expected and how often he breaks the rules. It makes for interesting storytelling.
When I started my students on story slams, my guidelines were purposefully vague – tell a story, make it interesting. The judges in the audience were given two measures – content and presentation. We never stopped to define what a top score in either of those categories would look like. Rather than looking for certain characteristics, I relied on the idea they would know quality when they saw it.
If we could teach writing like this – if we could say, “Work until you think you’ve gotten to quality” – then I’d say we should carve out space in classrooms for our future-Moffat’s. Until then, their curation of their passions is safer in their free time.
Things I Know 311 of 365: Schools need question portfolios
Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.
– e.e. cummings
I stood in the snack food aisle today, in awe of what we can do to a potato. Beyond ridges or smooth, the modern potato chip can look like pretty much anything we want it to look like and taste like pretty much anything we want it to taste like.
Humankind has mastered the potato.
Take that, blight!
After the awe, I started to wonder. How do we do it? How do we make this batch of potato chips taste like dill pickles and that batch taste like prawns? When I buy ketchup-flavored potato chips, is it because they used ketchup or they found the chemicals necessary to make potatoes taste like ketchup? I had to start looking for the dishwashing liquid because the potato chips were too interesting.
–
On the drive home, I started thinking about potato chips and how we keep track of students’ learning.
Portfolio assessment has been around for a while and more resources have been devoted to its use and misuse than I care to plumb. What if we’re doing it wrong?
What if, instead of or in addition to student work, we were to keep a portfolio of the questions students asked?
Imagine a question portfolio that followed students throughout their time in school that reminded them and their teachers of the questions with which they’d wrestled as they learned. What would it look like if, attached to each question, was the latest iteration or the lineage of answers the student had crafted for that question?
What difference would it mean to create a culture of learning where parents were encouraged to ask their children, “What questions did you ask today in school?”
I have a suspicion that in valuing questions, we’d have no other choice but to make school into places where students had the space to answer the questions they thought most intriguing. It also seems likely to me that a student who has been taught the value of a good question and been given the support, resources, and space to seek answers will have no trouble learning anything that’s necessary throughout her life.
We do a decent job of telling kids there are no stupid questions, but a horrible job at showing them that the act of questioning isn’t stupid.
–
Once I got home, I remembered I’d read a passage about the science of potato chips in David Bodanis’s The Secret House. I found it on my shelf and started searching for answers to my grocery store questions.
What questions did you ask today?
Things I Know 306 of 375: We know who we are by what happens when things go wrong
An apology is the superglue of life. It can repair just about anything.
– Lynn Johnston
“I just wanted to apologize for what I said up here. This is a space for coming together, and talk like that isn’t what this is about. I’m sorry.”
Then there were applause and shouts of “It’s okay” as the young man walked back to his seat.
From the other side of the auditorium, I watched as those seated around him patted the student on the back.
I’d been there to see the moment he was apologizing for. As part of a student sketch at Codman Academy’s Community Circle, the student had decided to ad lib one of his lines when describing the character played by one of Codman’s teachers. He’d said the character was a “douche.” A visitor to the school, I could still tell the student had gone off book.
Several things were remarkable to me about the episode. The least of these was what the student said.
Put an adolescent student in front of his peers with a microphone and you are asking him to play with power, to experiment with voice and discover where the line of what he can and cannot get away with lies. In the most fitting and least academic terms, he was feelin’ himself, and the school had invited it.
More interesting was the school’s reaction. The collective inhale after the line was uttered told me everyone else in the room recognized we’d left the script behind for a moment. But there was no outburst. No yells of agreement or signs students in the audience agreed with the statement. And that’s the thing, I know those students existed. At some point in time, this teacher had to have made a comment or taken an action that put him on the other side of at least one student’s good graces. If ever there were a moment for that student to give voice to his frustration anonymously, this was it. No one did.
And that’s culture. No one yelled assent because everyone understood the norms of the space. It was the message I attempted to convey when I would respond to student cursing in my classroom with, “We don’t use those words here.”
Whatever their differences, the assembled students knew they did not use those words here.
I should point out there was a space of about 20 minutes between the ad lib and the apology. Other business had been attended to, and I’d almost forgotten what had happened. Somewhere in that 20 minutes, someone had reached out to the student. Someone had removed the act from the moment and worked to process how what had been said fit with the definition of what it means to be a positive member of the community. I have no proof for this, but years of experience working with teenagers tell me I’m probably correct here. Naturally non-reflective, teens need intervention to help process actions and events. Some adult had likely intervened, and it is to their credit.
In many schools, the student would have been pulled from the circle, yelled at, and assigned a punishment with no mention of apology or what it means to be a community member.
That wasn’t what happened. Someone in the audience, I’m guessing the student’s advisor, had the clarity of thought and purpose to ask what they could do in that moment to help the student understand and learn from the verbal gaff. They’d responded as a teacher.
More than anything else, I was impressed by the student. Public speaking is more terrifying to the masses than anything else, and he stood alone in front of his peers to speak. Not only that, what he had to say was an apology. Few teenagers want to stand in front of their entire school. None wants to stand before the assembled masses and say they were wrong. Somewhere within this young man was a strength of character and commitment to community that allowed him to learn the power of saying “I’m sorry.” It did not excuse what he’d said. The words were out there. Saying he was sorry did work to make amends, to show that he valued the space and the people enough to ask for a chance to earn their trust again.
Many schools have Community Circle or some version thereof. Many schools get the circle part of it right. Few schools get right or focus resources on the community part. Codman does. At SLA and Phoenix, I knew we’d gotten it right when I saw how we reacted when someone went wrong. If anything, that’s the measure of a community.
Things I Know 273 of 365: Value added isn’t
Value-added assessment is a new way of analyzing test data that can measure teaching and learning. Based on a review of students’ test score gains from previous grades, researchers can predict the amount of growth those students are likely to make in a given year. Thus, value-added assessment can show whether particular students – those taking a certain Algebra class, say – have made the expected amount of progress, have made less progress than expected, or have been stretched beyond what they could reasonably be expected to achieve.
– The Center for Greater Philadelphia
Professor Andrew Ho came and spoke to my school reform class tonight about the idea of value added and its space in the conversation on American education.
We started looking at a scatterplot of local restaurants situated by their Zagat rating and the Zagat average price per meal.
Ho then plotted a regression line through the scatterplot and took note of one restaurant that had a higher score than predicted for it’s cost.
The temptation was to claim our overachieving restaurant was a good buy for the money. Who’d expect a restaurant with such inexpensive food to have such a high rating?
Then he asked us what we didn’t see.
Portions, ambiance, quality, location, service, selection, etc.
Any of these is familiar to someone who’s debated with a group of friends when attempting to select a restaurant.
His point was simple. Expectations changes based on what you base expectations on.
Ho relabeled the axes – this year’s test results, previous year’s test results.
He asked us what we didn’t see.
Content, delivery, socioeconomic status, race, home life, sports, after-school activities, tutoring, mentoring, etc.
This is to say nothing of the fact that perhaps there is a natural spread to knowledge and growth that is beyond the influence of a teacher or the fact that different combinations of teachers in the life of a student in a given year could have varying effects on achievement.
A psychometrician, statistician and policy researcher, Ho then laid some data on us from the research on value added:
- Estimates of value added are unstable across models, courses that teacher might teach, and years.
- Across different value-added models, teacher effect. ratings differ by at least 1 decile for 56%-80% of teachers and by at least 3 deciles for 0%-14% of teachers (this is reassuring).
- Across courses taught, between 39% and 54% of teachers differ by at least 3 deciles.
- Across years, between 19% and 41% of teachers differ by at least 3 deciles.
He then made a point that’s come up time and again in my statistics course, “Any test measures, at best, a representative sample of the target domain.”
But we’re not seeing samples that are representative. According to Ho, “In practice, it is an unrepresentative sample that skews heavily toward the quickly and cheaply measurable.” We’re not learning about the population. Put differently, we can’t know all that we want to know. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
When questioned on teacher assessment in his recent Twitter Town Hall, Sec. Duncan said he favored multiple forms of assessment in gauging teacher effectiveness. Nominally, Ho explained, this makes sense, but in effect it can have unintended negative consequences.
Here too, Ho cautioned against the current trend. Yes, value added is often used in concert with observation data or other similar measures. If those observations are counted as “meets expectations” or “does not meet expectations” and all teachers meet expectations, though, we have a problem. The effect is to mute the impact of this measure in the composite. While it may be nominally weighted at 50%, if value added is the only aspect of the composite accounting for variance, “the contribution of these measures is usually much higher than reported, as teacher effectiveness ratings discriminate much better (effective weights) than other ratings.”
Ho’s stated goal was to demystify value added. In that he succeeded.
He left us with his two concerns:
- The current incentive structures are so obviously flawed, and the mechanisms for detecting and discouraging unintended responses to incentives are not in place.
- The simplifying assumptions driving “value added,” including a dramatic overconfidence about the scope of defensible applications of educational tests (“numbers is numbers!”), will lead to a slippery slope toward less and less defensible accountability models.
I’d hate to think we’re more comprehensive in our selection of restaurants than teacher assessment.
Things I Know 235 of 365: Bank of America might be losing my business
The lower- to middle-income groups will be most affected due not only to the fee but the higher minimum balances required to avoid the fees.
– John Kottmeyer
Adjunct professor at Samford University’s Brock School of Business
I’ve been a Bank of America customer since 2003, but that might be changing. It’s not me Bank of America should worry about; it’s all of my options.
A few weeks ago, I signed up for mint.com as a way to manage my money while I’m here at school. Mint, along with its free iPhone app, helps me keep track of my spending and sends me alerts when it notices increased spending in a specific area or I com close to exceeding my budgeted amount.
As part of mint’s services, I was also given recommendations for banking and credit options that would save me money in the long-run compared to my current accounts.
Because BoA has branches or ATMs in almost any location I travel, I skipped the recommendation window and carried on with my budgeting.
Today, a change.org alert arrived in my inbox.
Seems my bank is going to start charging me a monthly fee for using my debit card. Admittedly, $5/month isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but the fee runs contrary to my principles and shows a lack of technological trend understanding on the part of the bank.
According to the BBC, BoA received $20 billion in the banking bailout as well as $18 billion in guarantees against bad assets. I don’t know the exact math, but I’m guessing my portion of that bailout more than covers my $5/mo. fees for the rest of my natural life.
This is to say nothing of the fact that charging new loophole fees in the face of federal regulations designed to stop banks from charging predatory fees is bad PR. Charging businesses for running credit/debit transactions as well as customers for using debit cards makes it easy to paint BoA as greedy, uncaring and unscrupulous. I don’t know that this is the case, but the new fee doesn’t make it difficult to connect the dots.
Ethics and PR aside, the fee has me worried that BoA has no eye on the future of transactions. In five years (as a generous estimate) my debit card won’t exist. My transactions, whether they take place in a physical or virtual space, will happen through my phone. My personal QR code or whatever comes after QR codes will be my method of payment. My wallet will be where I carry my license and maybe a business card. Companies like levelup and Starbucks are already setting the stage for the transition.
Creating a fee scheme around a card destined for extinction is shortsighted and a waste of corporate momentum.
In a pre-digital world, such a move made sense. I needed to travel to a physical space to shut down my account and then another physical space to open a new account. My bank can be virtual. BoA can lose my business without my ever having to talk to another human being. Of course, I will talk to human beings, namely my friends and family as I share why I made the change, how easy it was and how much I’m projected to save over the next three years.
For now, my money is staying put and my accounts are open.
I’ve added my name to the change.org petition and I’m hopeful the right people at BoA are checking their e-mail. If not, my new bank is only a few clicks away.
I’ll let you know.
Things I Know 186 of 365: The teaching is ubiquitous
We seek not rest but transformation.
We are dancing through each other as doorways.
– Marge Piercy
I logged in to the dying social network today and found a message from a former student with the subject line “Blogging Advice”:
Hi Mr.Chase hope you are having a great summer. I am going to be blogging from california in a couple of days and was wondering if you could give me any advice. Thanks in advance!
I responded that I’d be happy to help and asked where would be best to have the conversation. I offered Facebook, IM, phone call, and texting.
I expected a quick IM conversation or phone call.
The student opted for texting, explaining she had no computer access at the moment.
I told her that would be great. A few moments later, I received the first text via my Google Voice number in my e-mail inbox.
I responded and archived the message. This continued back and forth, as you can see below, for a total of 25 messages.
All the while, I was working on other projects at my desk.
A question would pop up on my computer and I would reply to her phone.
It looked like this:
Student: Chase!!!!!
Me: What’s up, kid? Ok. Probably, the best place to start is you to come up with specific questions you have about blogging.
Student: Well, I guess my first question would be about the difference between a more journalist approach to blogging versus a more a free write style of blogging.
Me: Great question. Journalism is going to make sure you’ve got the who, what, when where, why and how in there. The goal is to communicate the story or event to people who weren’t there.
Me: For the journaling piece, it functions more as a personal record that is public. Something for you and your memories that is available to others.
Student: Ok, that makes sense. So what is the best way to establish the so what factor for both of blogging? I get that the journaling type of blogging is more personal, but if you are posting don’t you want people to get something out of it?
Me: The something they get out of it are the stories and thoughts you put into words. Sometimes, I’ll write from the perspective of, “I want readers to do X because of this post.” Often, I just want to tell a good story and make people think.
Student: Makes sense. Does that apply to journalist writing style too?
Me: Yes.
Me: When you’re writing to inform, the goal is to make sure you’re offering information people would want to have.
Student: Wait, that confuses me.
Student: What if it’s something they could care less about until you informed them?
Me: Your job as a writer is to make them care.I would imagine it’s the same as your job as a poet.
Student: You’re right. I would think it’s like writing a persuasive essay but i’m pretty sure it’s different. What the difference between essay and the structure of a blog?
Me: Think of a blog as fitting the information of an essay into a more informal storytelling structure.
Student: So there are no set rules?
Me: Nah.
Just tell the story of the piece.
Then, revise.
Then, proofread.
Then, revise.
Then, post.
Me: My best writing comes from reading blogs. See if you can check out some poetry blogs and get a feel for what others are doing. This will help you develop your taste.
Student: You make sound easy Chase. lol
Me: It’s quite difficult at times. I find the easiest recipe is to find something you want to say and commit to saying it. Again, not always easy, but always good.
Student: Well, I think i’m out of questions. Thanks for taking the time to help me. Hope you have a great summer. Love, Chella
Student: P.S- I know you are going to be amazing at Harvard!
Me: It’s been my pleasure, kid. If any other questions pop up, don’t hesitate to hit me up.
Me: I’m going to try my best to make you proud.
Student: You already have!
The conversation did two things for me.
First, it made me realize I’m still a teacher. I know that sounds odd, but it’s been a huge fear since leaving the classroom. As confident and dedicated as I am to helping people learn, I was still mentally tied to the idea that the classroom or the official title was somehow tied to my powers of pedagogy. This lesson was just in time and just in need for my student and it showed me I am still a teacher.
Second, it made me think about what was necessary for the conversation to take place. Yes, the technology made it happen. I mean, it was a conversation about using technology as a forum for creation. It also could have happened without anything electronic. My understanding is there used to be these things called letters or missives. If my understanding is correct, my student could have sent me a letter with her questions and then I could have replied with my answers and questions. This process could have continued, similar to the one we used, interminably.
So, it wasn’t the technology that led to this learning.
I needed to know her. She needed to know me. Most importantly, she needed to know I cared and would be there if she had a question. I don’t remember making any statements as I was leaving SLA that I’d be willing to help kids with anything they needed. I’d like to think I didn’t have to. I’d like to think they knew.
Today’s conversation helped reinforce that belief.
As I continue to build systems and structures of care in my life, I will focus on and highlight the tools at my disposal for connecting and maintaining connections to people. Always and forever, I will highlight and nurture the caring necessary for community. Even if they’re multi-medium communities of two.