Category Archives: Education

The Reason I Didn’t “Fix” Your Child

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Assessment, Education, Games, Life in the Classroom, Parent Involvment

U30451904 By Mark

It was at a intervention meeting, where her child's teachers (including me) and the grade-level counselor had gathered to strategize how better serve her child, that she said to me from across the table:

"You didn't do your job. You were supposed to fix my child. Why didn't you fix him?"

She said it with steel in her eyes and barbs in her voice. She was simmering near her boiling point and I started wondering if anyone else in the room knew the extension to reach the school resource officer.

Everyone was flabbergasted. She went on about how at the summer orientation I talked about all the things I do in class to help struggling students: extra support to break down complex tasks, face-to-face writing conferences, online resources, peer support, modified texts…the list went on. In truth, I had done all those things for her son. I had offered these to her child, yet her child still was failing.

Isn't it always the case that we think of the right thing to say well after the moment has passed? That moment passed six years ago, but here goes:

"Ma'am, I'd be more than happy to share with you the reason I didn't fix your child…

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Extending the School Year (finally)

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, Social Issues

Stopwatch_Full

By Mark

The press was briefly abuzz recently when President Obama mentioned his ideas for extending the school year. While this seems to be far from a concrete policy decision, it reopens a discussion to which we seem to return every so often. 

Is Obama out of line? Aside from the cute arguments of fifth graders who want their summer break, why do people resist this concept so vehemently? If we can't change this, how can we change anything else about our faltering education system?

I love my "three months paid vacation and a month off at Christmas" (as if), but am for extending the school year. What are your thoughts?

The Goal of School

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Education

Picture 1

by Travis

Just the word school will conjure emotions. For some, the word elicits sunny days and the warm feeling of heading off to school with new clothes and a box of supplies. Others made have a visceral reaction to the word school. One that is not pleasant.

Schools have not been about individualized learning until recently. The goal of school was to create a shared belief in a system. For most, there were three lessons to learn:

Behave
Conform
Do

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Why Major Education Reform Will Always Fail

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Social Issues

Crocs By Mark

We have some new leadership in my building that is making me very optimistic. One of the movements being promoted by our leadership is the concept of PLCs, or Professional Learning Communities. We've had these in our building for a while, but the current push involves analyzing student data to assess past practice and inform future endeavors.  Makes good sense, prompts a good deal of collaboration, and seems to be ready to push teachers toward improving practice. If it sticks, I see good things on the horizon.

Not too long ago I talked to a retired teacher whose building in a different state had attempted PLCs in her last few years of teaching. "We dumped that pretty quick," she explained. When I asked why, she explained that it didn't seem to be doing any good. When I asked her how she knew that, she couldn't really answer the question, but she knew that she and her colleagues didn't really like it. They said their principal called it "reforming" their school culture…they knew it was just another passing education fad.

This small is example is all you need in order to see why major education reform will always fail.

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Growth by Association: One good teacher makes a difference

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Assessment, Education, Education Policy, Mentoring, Professional Development, Teacher Leadership

Pd_small_pencil_sharpener By Mark

Nearly every training and inservice repeats the same mantra: we must increase student learning. So we get shipped off to learn about a new strategy or a new tool or a new curriculum. We meet about goal setting and analyzing student data and impact on student learning. We are constantly doing extra in an effort to better the service we provide our students.

All that extra work, and it turns out there is something out there which has delivered a measurable impact on student learning, and it doesn't involve a special training or new curriculum.

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The Obama Speech: How Should Schools Handle Hot Politics?

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, Science, Social Issues

Campfire_j By Mark

Let me be clear from the outset: I'm not here to argue about whether Obama's speech is good, bad, ugly; propaganda, motivation, or mind control. There are too many unproductive shouting matches going on about that elsewhere on the web. Missing from those shouting matches is reasoned discussion of what I think is a more important question with a much larger impact on what I do as a teacher.

The controversy about the broadcast of Obama's "work hard" speech has precipitated some interesting responses from school districts across the country, ranging from the superintendent of schools in Tempe saying all teachers shall show the address and parents are "not allowed" to opt out, to districts like mine who instructed teachers to get parent permission before showing the speech. These policies have an impact on classroom instruction–much more of an impact than the speech itself–because it brings up the question about how schools should handle politically charged and divisive content, and what the school's role is in mediating that content for students.

Many an educator who attempts to make content relevant will want to connect to current events. Whether its genetic engineering, military endeavors, alternative energies or health care, it is easy for a curriculum to turn into a volatile tinderbox, because these topics and others have clear political implications.

How should schools handle hot political topics?

Five ways I would change education if money was not an issue

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Education

by Brian

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1. 
I would provide tuition waivers for all public school education
employees for any class taken at a state community college, college, or
university.  One of our goals should be to instill a love of life-long
learning in our students, and we can best accomplish this by example. 
In addition, the requirement to earn 15 credits or 150 clock hours
every 5 years to maintain our certificate is an unfunded mandate that
puts an disproportionate burden on young teachers, whose salaries are
the lowest.

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Knowing vs. Thinking

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Education, Life in the Classroom, Literacy, Mathematics

I read an article a couple of weeks ago that really caught my attention. Unfortunately, when I went back to it – or at least TRIED to go back to it, I couldn't for the life of me remember where I had read it. Darn. It was about the use of technology in the classroom and how, if we aren't careful about how we use it, we might actually be doing more harm than good to our students' ability to think critically.

What technology and the use of the internet can give us is instant access to amounts of information so vast that our ancestors couldn't even have dreamt of it. Yes, I am a Google fanatic, and even as an English teacher who refuses to spell "relief" any other way, I have been known to use "google" as a verb. However, when I recently assigned my students a research project, I was reminded of how dismaying it is to see how they confuse "finding information" with "thinking" and "learning." They are great at cutting and pasting information into beautiful PowerPoint presentations or blogs or webpages. What this lost article pointed out and what I have fought against in my classroom is the ease with which technology negates the need to actually think. I require that for every sentence of fact, students are required to present two sentences of their own analysis, but often students are willing to settle for a lower grade in order to avoid the "pain" involved in activating their brain.

It reminds me of a conversation I once had with one of my daughter's elementary school teachers who felt it was unnecessary to require kids to memorize the multiplication tables or spelling lists because they would always have access to calculators and spell check programs. I tried to explain how understanding the concepts underlying the equations and word structure was just as important as being able to solve the equations or spell the words correctly, but she was in complete disagreement, stating that there are plenty of other areas where the kids can be asked to "think," and that if we skip some of the rote memorization, we can move on to more and better concepts. I understand the point she was trying to make, but recognizing patterns in equations or word formation is basic to analysis of any kind.

While we're touting the use of technology as "best practice," we have to be conscientious that we are not substituting flashy presentations and clever sound bites (or bytes) for true critical thinking, which is fundamental to the success of civilization.

P.S. If anyone read that article and could lead me back to it, I would greatly appreciate it!

Training

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Education, Mentoring, Professional Development

A recent article printed in the Christian Science Monitor covered the issue of teacher training (http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0327/p01s01-ussc.html?page=1). The key controversy is that ”Some policymakers say the focus needs to be on improving traditional education schools, which produce 4 out of 5 teachers in the United States. Others are strong advocates of so-called alternative models designed to streamline entry into teaching for exceptionally talented students or mid-career professionals.”

As I sit through yet another sound bite for differentiating instruction based on the needs of my students, and as I am being asked to contemplate taking part in an alternative academy for low-performing ninth graders next year, I marvel again that we, as educators, don’t practice what we preach. Why should we expect every prospective teacher to flourish under the exact same training? We certainly don’t expect that from the kids in our classrooms.


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