Back to blogging (but with more humility and brevity)

Happy New Year!

As I noted about this time last year, I really haven't blogged or tweeted much in the past few years. I have spoken up when an issue really, really mattered to me, but otherwise, I have been less active on social media for three reasons: 1) a year and a half ago, I started a full-time PhD program and part-time graduate assistantship in education (educational leadership and policy specifically); 2) A little over a year ago, one of my children was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes; and, 3) for the past three to four years, I have been very active in local education matters and in local politics.

This has all been. . . humbling:

My doctoral studies have opened a world of education to me that has served to show me how much I don't know and how much I don't know how to do. I might have been a medium to big fish in the education blogging world, but when I walked through the doors of VCU's School of Education, I was a little baby fish once again. This is what I wanted, but it has meant a lot of hard work. I am learning a ton and am mastering at least the basic of areas (like statistics) that I had no fluency in at all previously. I am older than most of my classmates, which means at times that I know a bit more about some things, and I came in a decent writer. However, at the same time, that mantra about teaching an old dog new tricks. . . Well, yeah, I'm swimming against the current there. Plus I have three children at home, and there is no way I am going to give them up the way I gave up blogging and social media, so sometimes I do not get to do some things that might put me in a better position career-wise.

Which leads me to humbling experience number two. You can be the perfect parent (and I am far from that) but there are always things that you can not protect your child from, like chronic, genetic auto-immune diseases. And in the face of those things, as a parent, you can do everything in your power to put your child in best position to lead the healthiest, fullest life possible, but you are still at the mercy of the limits of the human body and of medical science, and of what happens when you are not around. This experience has aged me a great deal and taught me a lot, and it's also made me nicer, more forgiving, and less likely to spend time judging--I don't have the time and I don't find it productive and you never know what people are going through.

Which leads me to humbling experience number three. Three or four years ago, local conditions were such that I decided to get involved. And you know what? I discovered that local is more important and that it also takes much more face-to-face engagement, much more listening and compromise, and greater understanding for and empathy with those with whom I might disagree. Outrage and anger won't get you very far--at least not where I live. And, while you must hold decision-makers accountable for what they say and do publicly, it's important to find out as much as you can about what has actually happened before taking action. The situation is often more complex than you realize. This work is immensely satisfying and interesting, but it goes slowly and requires dedication, humility, genuine kindness, and patience.

These are three qualities I am not sure I had in such great supply when I started this blog, but that was a different phase in my life. And I have missed it--the blogging, the tweeting, the thinking out loud and publicly, the dialogue, the conversation. So, I've decided that the way I can still do this is to leave the big investigations, solution-suggesting, and "hard-hitting" analysis for my academic work and to use the blog to share bits and pieces of the educational puzzle, as I have been doing on the All Things Education facebook page but with a little commentary. Stay tuned.

If we teach it, they will write it.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I am a convert to the concept that literacy development (beyond decoding) is based primarily on knowledge, not skills. I used to think otherwise and even taught that way.

I write about this all of the time, especially in the context of ramped-up emphasis on reading tests, specifically in Virginia on Reading SOL tests (more on the recent ones soon). See this guest post at the Core Knowledge blog,and see this post, this post, this post, this post, this post, this post, and this post chez moi.

So, yes, I am a fan of E.D. Hirsch's work on content-/knowledge-based curriculum as well as of Dan Willingham's cognitive-science-based rationale of such an approach. However, there's one place where I have to disagree: that we cannot change whose ideas we study.

From a recent article in Politico by Peg Tyre about Hirsch's influence (bolded emphasis mine):

Knowing the national language of culture, even haphazardly, has a vast, far-reaching and brutally cumulative impact on learning. For those who begin their education with sufficient stores of background knowledge, it forms a virtuous circle: They have higher levels of reading comprehension, which helps them understand the daily social, intellectual and political discourse, which in turn helps them obtain more background knowledge. Those who do not have it languish. To level the playing field between rich and poor, schools should intentionally build background knowledge in all children in a wide range of subjects, or, says Hirsch, “It will be impossible to break the cycle of illiteracy that persists from parent to child.”  

Which is where his List came in. To make it, Hirsch, along with two professors, scanned newspapers and popular journals for high-frequency concepts and then polled 500 professionals—lawyers and writers—to determine which of those concepts were the most crucial for cultural literacy. “I have a Spock-like mind,” he reflects. “I like to take things to their logical conclusion.”  

Still, critics loved to point out—and they were right—that it is long on the Founding Fathers and the English literary canon. Isn’t championing, say, John Locke over Lao Tzu a choice rife with unspoken values and cultural biases? Hirsch sighs. “I agree with those who say we have to change American culture, but we cannot do it at the expense of people at the bottom,” he says when I ask the inevitable question. “Vocabulary—and cultural literacy—is shaped by history. There is really nothing to be done about that.” OK, I say, that might have made sense in the 1970s, but what about now when the complexion of American public schools is changing? The population of Latinos is growing and this year, the majority of children enrolled in public schools are expected to be non-white. How can any dictionary of cultural literacy keep pace with such a rapidly changing world? Hirsch grows crisp. “Why do you think one’s color or ethnicity would affect one’s vocabulary? Without a doubt, Latino culture is having a big influence on America, and the language of culture will change around the margins. But educated conversation is still going on. And you want to make sure those kids—particularly those kids—have the tools they need to be included.”

Dan Willingham said something rather similar in his book Why Don't Students Like School (page 36):

We might ask ourselves, Which knowledge should students be taught? This questions often becomes politically charged rather quickly. When we start to specify what must be taught and what can be omitted, it appears that we are grading information on its importance. The inclusion of omission of historical events and figures, playwrights, scientific achievements, and so on, leads to charges of cultural bias. A cognitive scientist sees these issues differently. The question, What should students be taught is equivalent not to What knowledge  is important? but rather to What knowledge yields the greatest cognitive benefit? The question has two answers. 

For reading, students must know whatever information writers assume they know and hence leave out. The necessary knowledge will vary depending on what students read, but most observers would agree that a reasonable human target would be to read a daily newspaper and to read books written for the intelligent layman on serious topics such as science and politics. Using that criterion, we may still be distressed that much of what writers assume their readers know seems to be touchstones of the culture of dead white males. From the cognitive scientist's point of view, the only choice in that case is to try to persuade writers and editors at the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and so on to assume different knowledge on the part of their readers. I don't think anyone would claim that change would be easy to bring about. It really amounts to a change in culture. Unless and until that happens, I advocate teaching that material to our students. The simple fact is that without that knowledge, they cannot read the breadth of material that their more knowledgeable schoolmates can, not with the depth of comprehension.

While I agree with Hirsch and Willingham in how literacy develops, I disagree there's nothing we can do about whose history or culture we learn about or that changing whose ideas we learn about depends upon who writes and edits major newspapers. Obviously, writers and editors of newspapers have a lot of influence but there are other places of influence, like schools.

Hegemony as defined by Autumn Tooms Cypres (2013) is:

"a socio-political construct that explains how groups or individuals can maintain their dominance over other groups of individuals in a society via coercion rather than violence. This phenomenon is achieved through persuading those in the subordinate group to accept, adopt, and internalize the dominant group's definition of what is normal. This kind of veiled oppression is achieved via mechanisms such as the media and school curriculum, which are used to inculcate and maintain this viewpoint and the power of the dominant class."

If I say that there's nothing I can do, I am accepting and aiding unhealthy and imbalanced cultural hegemony of white males. Since schools and curricula (and not just newspapers and publishers) can help achieve hegemony then one of the best places to "change the culture" and over turn hegemony of white males is to start teaching the ideas and work of non-white males, too. Essentially, if we teach it, they will write it.

Jane M. Gangi, an associate professor in the Division of Education at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, New York, and Nancy Benfer, an instructor in literacy and literature at Mount Saint Mary College and a fourth-grade teacher at Bishop Dunn Memorial School, have endeavored over the course of their careers to expand what is read in their classrooms and in the classrooms of the teachers they teach. They also have also worked with architects of Common Core, to see that a more diverse set of literature and authors are included with other works in Common Core recommended texts. They explain their reasoning here:

One is rooted in the proficient reading research. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, researchers asked, “What do good readers do?” They found that good readers make connections to themselves and their communities. When classroom collections are largely by and about white people, white children have many more opportunities to make connections and become proficient readers. Appendix B of the CCSS as presented added to the aggregate that consistently marginalizes multicultural children’s literature: book lists, school book fairs and book order forms, literacy textbooks (books that teach teachers), and transitional books (books that help children segue from picture books to lengthier texts). If we want all children to become proficient readers, we must stock classrooms with mirror books for all children. This change in our classroom libraries will also allow children of the dominant culture to see literature about others who look different and live differently.

A second reason we must ensure that all children have mirror books is identity development. For African American children, Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are not enough. They must also see African-American artists, writers, political leaders, judges, mathematicians, astronauts, and scientists. The same is true for children of other ethnicities. They must see authors and illustrators who look like them on book jackets. Children must be able to envision possibilities for their futures. And they must fall in love with books. Culturally relevant books help children discover a passion for reading.

Unfortunately, no changes to the Common Core Appendix B have been made.

Education writer, edu-color activist, and Montgomery County Public School parent Melinda Anderson has advocated for public education to better serve students of color including recruiting and retaining more teachers of color, developing more culturally competent teachers, and teaching richer and more relevant curricula including literature by and about people of color:

The mirrors metaphor is strong and powerful. Writers of color started a Twitter campaign #WeNeedDiverseBooks as a rallying cry to build momentum for greater diversity in literature. The need for people of color to see themselves reflected in the pages of books, in school curriculum and classrooms, and in leadership positions is real and inescapable. Equally, people of color need to be recognized for their excellence – it matters who we as a society lift up as worthy of recognition.

I would argue further that all students would benefit from a shift in the canon. As a K-12 student, some of my greatest experiences with literature were with works by authors of color: Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, Ralph Ellison, Claude Brown, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Sandra Cisneros. In later and more recent years I have added: Amy Tan, Yiyun Li, Kazuo Ishiguro, Haruki Murakami, Julia Alvarez, Junot Diaz, Edward Jones, Manil Suri, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Esmeralda Santiago, Isabelle Allende, Reinaldo Arenas, and Naguib Mahfouz. And those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I read these books because many of my teachers assigned them (and most of my K-12 teachers were African-American) but also because they were in my house growing up--my parents read them and gave them to us to read. Then I was hooked and on on my own, I read more.

The cultural canon is movable.  It takes hard work, but it can be done. After all, Hirsch said he had a "spock-like" mind. Star Trek isn't exactly what comes to mind when we think of the "cultural canon," is it? No matter your stance on it, the Common Core would be a great place to start as would Virginia's Standards of Learning.

If we say that we value black lives, that black lives matter, then we also have to show that black ideas, inventions, research, and creativity matter and have been integral, not just to students of color but to our country as a whole.

Long time, no blog

Hello readers!

I had thought that a doctoral program in Educational Leadership would mean I would be doing lots of reading, writing, and blogging about education. But it didn't exactly turn out that way. The reading and writing part held true. I kept up with all of my education reading and it served me well in my studies. In fact, after long days of reading academic journal articles, reading education news and blogs was a way I unwound and relaxed. And, of course, I wrote: notes, questions, and thoughts about what I was reading and then papers and projects and exams.

But the blogging, well, not so much. And then all of a sudden it is the end of the semester and I haven't posted anything in over three months. Nothing. Not even one post. Not even a draft. And I went days and weeks without tweeting.

My negligence of this blog was in part due to lack of time; between my classes, my graduate assistantship, my family, and a few humbling hard balls that life threw at us, I didn't have much free time to blog to or to keep up with the reparte that goes with blogging and tweeting. Sometimes even if I had the time, I didn't have the mental energy.

The desire also wasn't totally there. This doctoral program was in part to be an exercise in learning and studying education in a way I hadn't before--from an academic standpoint. As such, my perspective has become even more circumspect and cautious. There is just so much complexity to how people learn, how people in K-12 settings behave, why educators and decision-makers make the choices they do, and in how policy works. Although some guiding principals and values remain as influential as ever on me, I am more reluctant than ever to make what could be unsubstantiated claims or take strong stances.

I also realized early on this semester that the classroom is not like my blog. I am not the only one in the room. I don't get to remain in the bubble of my own experiences, thoughts, and writing. This is a time to share but also to listen and absorb. My classmates and my professors have experiences and thoughts, too. And while we benefit from learning from one another, we also learn how we are informed differently and in some cases misinformed or uninformed.

On the other hand, in grad school sometimes I have found myself having to come up with something to say in order to contribute, whereas here when I have something to say, I say it and then I hope I might be contributing. I hope I have started to lay the groundwork to contribute academically--I've got some ideas :) But in the meantime, while I have breather, I may have few things to say here, outside of the doctoral classroom that I've been saving up. Stay tuned. . .

I'm so DC that. . .

Glenn Sullivan, a recent graduate from Lake Area New Tech Early College High School. in New Orleans published an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled, "My school district hires too many white teachers":

In my school, as in many schools — especially in reform-oriented school districts — a lot of the good, black teachers have been replaced by younger white teachers. Before Hurricane Katrina in 2005, nearly 75 percent of the city’s public school teachers were black. That began to change after Katrina, when charter schools began to grow in number. The percentage of minority teachers across New Orleans public schools dropped from 60 percent to 54 percent between 2010 and 2013, according to data compiled by Tulane University’s Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives. This troubles me. Particularly upsetting to me was the departure of the music teacher, a veteran black educator who helped run the New Tech school choir and put together trips for students.

This sparked some conversations in the grassroots ed reform community about teacher diversity. In one instance, Rutgers student, aspiring teacher, and education activist Stephanie Rivera blogged about reactions to the New Orleans student's commentary on the Bad Ass Teachers' facebook page, which in many cases was dismissive of Mr.Sullivan's point of view. From Stephanie's post:

What I find frustrating about most of these comments is their complete dismissal of the greater issues reflected by this post. The comments that argue that “there aren’t enough teachers of color” are ignoring the boundaries that keep many people of color pursuing this career. Many had oppressive\racist\non-cultural relevant education experiences, so many are reluctant to enter an environment they grew up hating. Many ignore that college-access, especially for people of color, is limited. Thus, completely leaving out the opportunity to even pursue a teaching certificate. As long as students of color are given more barriers than their white counterparts to go into teaching, the longer teachers of color will be the minority.

Another irritating argument includes that “it doesn’t matter what color a teacher is, as long as the teacher is good, that’s all that matters.” That is completely missing the point of the importance and benefits of students of color having teachers who look like them (see: Study: Minority students do better under minority teachers, Why students need more Black and Latino teachers). Yes, all teachers regardless of race can be trained to be effective teachers of black students, but black teachers can “be more adept at motivating and engaging students of color.” Additionally, by having students of color see people who look like them in successful positions, it can help prove to them that they can hold such positions too. Also, comments such as “color doesn’t matter,” is possibly one of the most racist statements one could make. By saying, “I don’t see color,” or “color doesn’t matter,” is basically saying “I don’t see your experiences, your stories, your struggles. Those elements of your identity and life don’t matter to me.” Colorblindness is not justice, equality, or being a good teacher. Colorblindness is ignoring the very issues that your students need you to fight against.

Indeed. According to the Woodrow Wilson-Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowships for Aspiring Teachers of Color,

• Nearly half of the nation’s students (44 percent) are students of color, but the latest data show that just one of every six teachers (16.7 percent) is a teacher of color."

• Research also shows, overwhelmingly, that students of color perform better – academically, personally, and socially-when taught by teachers from their own ethnic groups." 

• Current trends indicate that, by 2020, the percentage of teachers of color will fall to an all-time low of 5 percent of the total teacher force, while the percentage of students of color in the system will likely exceed 50 percent.

And, according to this Washington Post analysis, the student-teacher diversity gap is widening:

Students of color make up almost half of the public school population, but teachers of color make up just 18 percent of that population nationwide. And the disparity is even larger in 36 states. It’s largest in California where 73 percent of students are nonwhite while just 29 percent of teachers are nonwhite.

Teacher demographics can have an impact on students, CAP argues. Studies have shown that minority students fare better when taught by minority teachers and nonwhite educators may also find it easier to relate to students with whom they share a background.

First of all, I wish that white teachers would not take assertions such as "we need more teacher of color" so personally or as an attack on them. I am a white teacher who has mostly taught students of color. While I am certain that I can always do better as a teacher and in particular with students of color, such statements and conclusions are not directed personally at me or usually at other white teachers; they are addressed to public education as an institution. Second of all, the research shows that there are objectively disproportionately fewer teachers of color and that students of color do objectively do better with when taught by people who share their culture and background. Instead of focusing our energies on defending ourselves, we white teachers should a) see how we could help attract and retain more teachers of color to the profession and b) reflect on and act upon improving our own practice in order to counter racism and to be more culturally appropriate for all students

And this is one instance, as public education and edu-color activist Sabrina Joy Stevens has pointed out, where people of color run into the arms of reformers--when they experience racism or culturally irrelevant education in the public education system and when statements about those experiences aren't acknowledged or acted upon. I would expand on that to say that such educators are no better on matters of race than reformers like Michelle Rhee are. Reformers like Rhee may differ with most teachers on what shows and how to show what a great teacher is or what makes great teaching, but she sounds the same as defensive white teachers when she says, I don't care who you are or what your background is, all that matters is that the teacher is a great one.

And it is not just students of color who should have more teachers of color. White students need more teachers of color, too. I'm going to go in a more personal direction now and I hope you'll stick with me. As I may have mentioned before, I grew up in DC in the 1970s and 1980s. I went to DC Public Schools for my entire PK-12 career. I was in the minority in all four DC public schools I went to and the majority of my teachers, principals, and counselors were black. I can't quantify the influence this has had me, and frankly, for a long time, it was just an experience I took for granted, as the natural state of things because I didn't know any different. But as the realizations of this influence have come to me in different pieces and in various stages and varying levels of intensity, I can qualify it.

My mother only recently told me the following story: My older sister and were young enough to be in elementary school and we were having a conversation with our parents about racial demographics in this US. It came up that the US was majority white and my sister and I asserted that it was majority black. My mother felt pleased that our experiences in DCPS had led us to such a conclusion, but as a civil rights lawyer, she also wanted to make sure we understood the reality, that the rest of the country was not, in fact, majority black even if our city and our schools were, so she made sure to correct our understanding.

When I got to college (and I went to "Diversity University") we had these frosh year workshops (there are no freshman at Wesleyan) where we explored topics of diversity, racism, sexism, gender, and homophobia. During one discussion in the spirit of openness the workshops encouraged, one white male student from rural New England said he had never been around or gone to school with so many students of color. That really surprised me, especially because Wesleyan didn't really seem to me to have so many students of color. I looked around and thought that, well, I have never gone to school with so many white people. I don't think I said anything at the time, but it was then that it started to dawn on me how unique my experience might have been. Toto, we ain't in DC anymore. For the most part I received a great education and I dearly love the friends I made there, but I experienced a certain amount of culture shock at Wesleyan and wonder sometimes if I would have been happier at a big state school.

This came up a few other times at Wesleyan--many of my classmates took a look at my blond hair and blue eyes and soccer cleats and assumed I was fresh out of a Massachusetts boarding school. This took me aback because my parents would never ever have sent me to a DC private school, let alone to a boarding school in New England, though in retrospect that's kind of what Wesleyan is, only for older teenagers and in Connecticut. I remember finally breaking out my high school yearbook to show one dubious hallmate from New York City that my school was not anything like a Massachusetts boarding school.

Again, I can't say anything concrete to speak to how my PK-12 schooling experience was good for me but I know I wouldn't trade it. And, I don't claim that the DCPS schools I went to existed in some racism-free bubble, that I am personally immune from contributing to racism or that I have no work to do. Just as being in a majority black setting in school influenced me, so must have the racist culture outside of school (see Shankar Vedantam on how the culture we grow up in influences our point of view).  I think given the racial composition of my neighborhood (mostly white) and given what I could pick up from the culture that surrounded me outside of school once I got older than I was during the afore-mentioned US demographics conversation, I well realized the role of racism in our country. But imagine what it was for a middle class white girl with educated parents to be the minority in her school and to go to schools where African-Americans were in most of the positions of authority. As I said, I have long taken this experience for granted, but now imagine how different (for the worse) I would be and how differently I would think and see the world without it.

DC, like New Orleans, has lost many black teachers (a post on this is in the works). The principal, counselor, and teacher corps in DCPS is markedly more white than it used to be even when factoring in that the white population of DC has increased.

And, while they are not in the minority, my own children are now in schools that are fairly diverse socioeconomically and racially (though not that diverse beyond back and white), I noticed right away when we moved here that the vast majority of their teachers and principals and people in leadership roles are white. This isn't to say that the teachers and administrators they have aren't good at what they do--they are fabulous, but it troubles me that there isn't more diversity. My husband and I can have frank conversations with our children about US history and racism and about racial dynamics in our own communities, but those conversations ultimately can't replace experiences.

I'm so DC that I know that the lack of teachers of color in my childrens' schools is a problem, but I am also so DC that this lack still surprises me and I get overwhelmed by where to start to try and change it, in what can sometimes feel like a foreign country.

But I have to start somewhere, right?


UPDATE 9/18: I'm not sure how I missed this but Melinda Anderson published a piece in Ebony in May 2014 succinctly chronicling the story of black teachers from the Brown v. Board era to now (in NYC, New Orleans, Chicago, and Philadelphia). Please read that here.

Mama's got a brand new facebook page

Hey all,

Want to keep up with me and what I'm writing and reading and thinking about on facebook? You're in luck! I now have a facebook page, also called "All Things Education."

I'd be honored if you'd go like it and invited your friends to do the same.

Thanks so much.

-Rachel

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Two years ago, I decided to blog much less frequently for various reasons, including a desire to listen and reflect more, get back on the real (as opposed to writers) job market, and engage more in-person in local education matters.

Well, two years later of teaching preschool and of being more active locally (in fact, just before writing this post, I was crafting a letter about the problem of teacher attrition in my school district), I am going to retain my practice of better listening and reflection and of local activism, but I will be edu-blogging more frequently (so get ready!). And, here's the big news:  I am (sadly) leaving my preschool teaching position to (happily) start a full-time PhD program (the hints of this are here in the start of this unrealized series about taking the GREs) in Educational Leadership: Research & Policy at Virginia Commonwealth University. I will take a full load of courses and will be working for a professor in the School of Education for twenty hours per week.

People have asked me, what do you hope to do with that? And my answer is simple: I hope to take full advantage of this opportunity to be sponsored to study, read, and write about topics about which I am immensely interested, education research and policy. When I got my masters degree, it was mostly in conjunction with teacher licensure, to become a teacher. With this PhD, I hope to become more knowledgeable and to contribute knowledge to the field. If I get a PhD-level job I like when I finish, great. But I would gladly return to teaching in the public K-12 classroom, too.

To all of my readers: thanks for sticking with this blog for almost four years thus far, thanks for your support and for your push-back, and wish me luck.

My GRE Experience

This summer I am spending some time getting ready to take the GREs, in case I want to go back to school for something or other. Despite some misgivings, I have decided to "go public" with my experiences preparing for and taking the test. Since I write so much about high stakes testing and since it has had such an effect on the educational lives of my children and on my life as a teacher, I figured writing about it was too good an opportunity to pass up-- like when Katie Couric broadcast her colonoscopy live on public television. Not, mind you, that I am Katie Couric and not that I wish to increase the incidences of GRE test prep, nor will I broadcast live my review or examination sessions (can you imagine?).

So, other than this introductory post, I will also write posts about each of the sections: verbal, quantitative, and analytical. I am reluctant to submit to this test, but I can't get into graduate school without it, so I don't have much choice. If anything, the place I find myself in will authenticate (that sounds like one of those words that isn't a real word, doesn't it?) my experience. Despite other and superior means of demonstrating my qualifications for entry into graduate school, I am stuck taking this test. Am I a hypocrite for deciding to prepare when I deride test prep so much? Maybe--you'll have to see how much and in what ways I've decided to prepare before you judge that.

I took the GREs once right after I graduated from college. I was told this was the best time to take it when everything, especially test taking, is still "fresh." I actually found it was a horrible time to take it because I was burnt out and had no thoughts of going back to school anytime soon. Also, the GREs were nothing like the tests I had in college, thank god. I did not prepare, I did not take it seriously, and I scored poorly. The second time I took it was a few year later-- fifteen years ago (fifteen!) when I was applying to masters and teacher certification programs. (In case you're interested, I wrote about my experience in ed school here.) I reviewed a little--I was motivated to have a strong application--and then just took the plunge. I did surprisingly well--not like Merit Finalist well but well enough, for me--I'm not a good test taker.

For this time, I checked out a GRE book from the library and I'm currently plugging my way through it. The verbal section is really not something I can practice for. The best I can do is be familiar with the format and stick to the format. I will probably write the most about this section--it's the most problematic as far as I'm concerned. The quantitative sections, I do need to review for. Most of the math is rattling around in my brain somewhere but I wouldn't be able to access it without reviewing first, especially with the math I don't use on a regular basis. There's also some types of questions that I don't remember being on the versions of the SATs and GREs I took long ago. Preparing for the writing section will probably just mean familiarization with the format. I think the biggest hardship will be losing the ability to sleep on what I wrote and edit it later. My usual writing process is to think and read for days or even weeks or months about something, then vomit out a draft and then leave it for a bit, think more, and then clean up the mess in stages. Can't do that on the GRE.

Now, it's been very hard for me to accept that I have to take this god foresaken test. Though it's kind of fun to re-learn the math and I know that at least some of it will be helpful in certain graduate programs (and in understanding what the heck Bruce Baker is talking about), I resent having to take the test and I resent the time I have to spend reviewing for it. I feel like once you reach a certain age, you should be excused from the GREs, like age out of it or something. To be honest, I think about it (or actively avoid thinking about it) every day: I need to to study. I'm going to bomb it. The admissions folks are going to think I'm an idiot. I can't believe I missed that question. I feel so stupid. I wonder if there are any pickles left. And then when I start to resent it: Isn't there a lot more than these test scores that would show I'd be a good graduate student? I mean, I practically am a graduate student. I read and write all of the time and make no money! What a waste of time! 

And then I start to understand how so many American children must feel during every testing season, or even every school day.

Think Educationally, Act Locally

Since last fall, I have spent significantly less time writing and blogging. For one, I started a part-time teaching job. Also, as I wrote about here, in light of recent destructive parent trigger-type actions, I wanted to get more meaningfully and positively involved as a parent. Finally, as you may recall, I had decided to make a concerted effort to act less from behind a computer screen and more locally and face-to-face. So, mostly my writing has been in the form of PTA meeting minutes and e-mails, letters, and public statements to my local decision makers.

Besides the school-level work, during winter break I got (unfortunately) the perfect opportunity to be more active in local education matters. We're in year five of devastating budget cuts in my county. Some of this is due to budget constraints as a result of the economic downturn but it's also due to ideology which has taken a hold of our local governing body which says that 1) no matter how small or efficient already, government is too big and 2) all services belong on a magical free market. Paradoxically, many people who seem to support this ideology also want roads and services, like education, and a decent quality of life. It seems they just don't want to pay for it and they certainly don't want to pay for them for anyone else--see here for a good example of what I'm talking about.

Besides serving on the boards of two PTAs, I joined up with a group called Friends of Hanover Schools which is dedicated to advocating for enough funding (but coupled with smart budgeting) for our schools to be great and to electing pro-public education local and state decisions makers.

Volunteering and being an active part of our schools' PTA has given me humbling insights into how much work it is to run a school. On the one hand there are little tasks that can get big rewards and on the other hand there are big tasks that take lots of work which pay off only so much. It's also given me a new perspective into how schools and systems are run and what role parents can play (hint: It's VERY different from being a teacher). I've learned it's better to ask and listen to what is needed first and then see if it maybe ties into what I'd like to get done, rather than the inverse. Sometimes, for example, helping with something as mundane as making copies can make a big difference.

Being active in a local public education advocacy group has also been very educational. For one,  I have learned to put aside, without prejudice, goals that are important to me (elected school boards, rich and meaningful curriculum, and reducing the emphasis on high-stakes testing) in the interest of furthering the mission of our particular organization. I will still work on the other goals, but adequate funding was an issue around which this non-partisan group could rally.

If I compare my work on national education policy versus local/state education policy, it's been very different. It takes a lot more courage and also diplomacy to have conversations face-to-face and about every day, practical matters, than it does to have them on-line about theoretical matters. Things get far more complicated from the former perspective and much more rhetorical from the later.

That's not to say that being active at the national level was a waste of time. That was an education, too. For one, it prepared me to face people who disagree with me and who might say not-so-nice things. But I also learned the hard way the first time around that shaming helps no one, and that it's a mistake to assume that I'm a better person for valuing some things over others than someone who values others things over what I value. That doesn't mean I am not fairly confident that what I value will make our society a better place, but I realize that folks with another POV think that what they value will make society a better place, too. Lastly, at both levels, in the face of short-term defeat or disappointment, I have learned to not take disagreements personally, to plug along, and to keep my mind on the bigger picture.

So, what did I actually do as a citizen to take action? My first act was to write a letter to our Board of Supervisors (our local governing body). I sent a version of this letter to every member of the Board of Supervisors and of the School Board, I read a version of it out loud as a comment during citizens' time at the Board of Supervisors meeting, and I submitted it as a letter to the editor to our local newspapers. Second, I gave a presentation at an FOHS forum about how to be a more active citizen. Finally, despite our Board of Supervisors' failing to do anything to raise revenues and correct tax rates to 2007 levels, my fellow activists and I are not giving up. Their failure was a disappointment but was not surprising. And I am in this for the long haul.

When I was free to try to not write for free

As I have been busy with a new job, new projects (more on this soon), and parenting, I have not, as I said wouldn't, posted or, as I said I would, written :( very much in the past several months.

This time last year, however, I was writing up a storm. I posted and tweeted relatively frequently and I had recently finished applying for a writing fellowship. By now the details are fuzzy, but for the second round of the application process, I had to write four blog posts over the course of a week and I had to indicate which day and what time of day I would have posted them (but submit them all at once).

Certain events in the news recently have reminded me of these posts and since I have not written much lately, I have decided not to leave these hard-wrought posts to rot in the hard drive of my senile laptop. So, if any of you dear readers are interested, I will post these four posts over the course of this next week including the story that reminded me of each one.

What a different place I am in now. Not a bad place, mind you, but a different one, one that reflects a re-examination of my passions and aspirations and where they fit in the context of, well, reality.

And in case you want to know, the whole Atlantic-Nate Thayer dust up is what re-ignited this existential conflict, this trip down memory lane, in the first place.

What's With the Lack of Blogging

I have been a lame blogger the past couple of months. By way of explanation:

1) I've been applying for jobs. By "jobs" I mean work that I care about and like and that is paying. When I decided to take a break from the classroom to write, I gave myself a few years to study and be an apprentice of sorts. That time is up and, shockingly, I have received no offers to come be a master writer. I will certainly remain a writer and that will mean being a perpetual student of writing, but the apprenticeship is done. Unless I am doing it for my own edification or for someone or a publication that also does not make any money, I will not work for free or near-free. It just doesn't feel good and won't help sustain the profession for anyone.

Anyhoo, this all means I've been tweaking resumes, getting people who barely remember or know me to write me recommendations (sounds like a winning strategy, no?), struggling to write professional but not boring cover letters, and filling out the same information over and over again. This all takes time, especially when the process is punctured by rejections. Then I have to get through those and resolve to just work harder and to shut down the discouraged voice in my head. 

2) For both my husband, and our families, education is akin to religion. This past school year, we navigated as parents for the first time high-stakes testing. I hope to write more eloquently and in more detail about this at a later time but for now I'll say we felt powerless, helpless, and angry as we watched our children feel angry, anxious, and wiped out from the testing experience (despite everything their school and teachers did to make it as humane and positive an experience as possible), for the first time counting the days until the end of school. It's worse than what I remember experiencing as a teacher, though this may be because I have taught mostly high school and high school students are more equipped to deal with the long, boring, stressful tests than are eight-year-olds. Needless to say, I am more convinced than ever that high-stakes testing must go. I'm done with being nuanced here. High stakes testing is awful and it stinks and it's making my kids hate school. It's awful for the teachers, it's awful for the students, and it's awful for students' parents. The only people it's not awful for are those in the testing industry, those in the testing-as-education-reform industry, and those politicians who rely upon one or both of those industries . My husband and I both see great value in assessment and testing and tell our children that part of life is being bored and anxious sometimes and doing things you'd rather not. We believe that for the right reasons, that anxiety and stress can be productive. But McTests are not one of those reasons. Our children are smarter than those tests, are more curious than those tests, love knowledge more than those tests, and they deserve better than those tests, and so does every other child who is having their education ruined because of them. 

3) People close to you die, they get hurt, they end relationships, they move, they have celebrations. In light of those, your little old education blog and happenings that seem unrelated to your life become much less important.

4) Victoria Young once made the comment on a post of mine that: 

To have a conversation about how to "fix" what is broken with the education system, we actually have to put ourselves in position to have real dialogue. That doesn't happen when it takes place online only.....

I don't think she meant for me to, but I really took that personally, and it helped give me a good kick in the direction of re-prioritizing.

I took me a few months but I realize that I have grown tired of hearing myself talk and talk about the same things over and over again. I feel like I need to read more and to listen more and absorb more and think more and to do more. At a certain point all of this talk about education and education reform gets too meta, like I'm just talking above all of what's actually happening while it's happening without really knowing what's actually happening. Deep thoughts, I know. I love to think, talk, write education, but I'm not sure what or how much I'm helping any more. I'm trying to do a lot more reading and reflecting.

This is not to say I will not be blogging any longer. I have at least few more things to say, which I am working on, but I want to spend more time being useful, doing education rather than just talking education, and also perhaps find some time to focus on a bit more again on some of this writing and some of that writing.

Parent Jiggernaut

As a parent who used to be in the classroom, I sometimes struggle with which perspective to think from: from that of a parent or from that of a teacher. Becoming a parent made me a much better and more understanding teacher. Conversely, strategies I used in teaching and things I learned there about human nature and interacting with children have proven invaluable to me as a parent. Interacting with other people's children, of course, is not the same thing as interacting with my own. My own children can tick me off in ways my students never could; I can have a hard time getting to that calm, clinical space with my own kids, even as I know I'd make fewer mistakes if I could get there.

So sometimes I feel conflicted when it comes to advocacy and opinions. Watching my own children develop has taught me a lot about how people learn and has challenged some of my old (teacher's) thinking. On the one hand, I have much less tolerance, for example, for constructivist approaches and for the teaching of reading strategies and skills. On the other hand, I appreciate that constructivists envision schools as meaningful, joyful, and relevant places. It breaks my heart whenever my children are driven to tears, overwhelmed by the tedium and stress they sometimes feel at school, which is in contrast to the how they joyfully think and engage in learning outside of school. I understand that reading strategies are emphasized out of a desire to equip students with the tools to be successful learners. My children enjoy their reading block even if it's unclear how much they are actually learning from it when there is not much curricular coherence to it.

So, to get to the point of this post, especially as the topic has been popular in edu-news lately, I have been thinking a lot about parent trigger laws and actions. Also, my own daughter will be starting kindergarten next year and the topic of school quality and parent activism has come up on the playground at her preschool, especially since many of her classmates also will be starting kindergarten, though unlike her, many don't have older siblings who have already been through it.

The situation in Desert Trails in Southern California, especially struck me. Some parents organized to pull a parent trigger on their neighborhood school because they felt their kids weren't learning what they were supposed to, though it sounds as if the parents were really trying to work with the district. I'm not going to get into the process there or discuss the ins and outs of what may or may not have happened there. What really struck me was what the parents wanted, why they were organizing a a parent trigger: They want smaller classes, more art, music, and other subjects beyond reading and math. The parents refer to these as "reforms" but most educators would call them essentials; most public schools and educators want these things as well.  It seems, to me at least, that it is the state that isn't providing what they want. Surely, there are other problems and I don't blame these parents for being upset. I'd be upset. But it sounds like they want the school to provide what the state doesn't have the will or means to provide.

So, if we grant parents more choice or power to turn their schools into charters, for example, is the charter going to provide what they want? Will parents be more engaged or involved? My sense is that perhaps in the short run they will be, but I'm not sure about the long run. I tend to agree with Diane Ravitch and other detractors that public schools or public spaces do not belong only to the group of people currently using them; they belong to the community, including future community members. Furthermore, once the school is turned over to private or unaccountable hands and is detached from any democratic process, the parents will have even less say. Parents Across America explained this in their statement in opposition to parent trigger-type solutions, saying that they won't ultimately result in meaningful parent engagement or voice (also relevant is their position on real parent empowerment). It does seem like parents get hooked in and then used to make a change that ultimately leaves them with little role in the new or parent-trigger-changed school. But that's ultimately what parents should be after: more of a role and more of a voice.

In my own (older) children's school, we are navigating excessive and unhealthy high-stakes testing. I am not opposed to testing but to developmentally inappropriate and high-stakes testing. It is corrupting what and how my children learn and what and how they are taught. I want my children to learn more science, social studies, the arts, PE, foreign languages, and practical skills. If I organize a group of parents to take over the school, will this change? I don't see how, not as long as the current policies stay in place. This is where we as parents need to go to central administrations, school boards, elected officials, legislators, and other decision makers. It is their policies and legislation that are eroding the quality of education my children receive; it is not the teachers or their principals. So, here I am in a tricky position. I support the school and teachers (my children have yet to have a "bad" teacher) in my community but I feel I must contest the bad practices they are forced to implement.

In my own conversations with other parents, I often hear them talk about school ratings. At the same time, they bemoan the state of the curriculum--the lack of art, music, science, social studies, unstructured play. I try, diplomatically, to remind them that school ratings (such as those in Great Schools) tend to be based on test scores. If we as parents use or value those ratings to judge schools, then that is what our schools are going to aspire to. If we rate or value a school based on the curriculum they offer (such as more art and music) and their pedagogy or instructional practices, then that is what they will aspire to (and that's what I'd argue we want them to aspire to). It's not that I don't look at the test scores because I do, but it's a matter of the context I consider them in and the judgments I make based on them.

It seems like what we need is more democracy, not less; to build sustainable, long-term parent engagement. Even though I am a relatively well-informed parent, sometimes even I don't know what parent engagement looks like or should look like. I started parenting simply thinking of all the things my struggling students were missing and built from there. Everything I knew would have helped my students do better academically and learn more, I made sure to do as a parent. That often seems to me like the greatest gift I can give my children, their teachers, and their peers. But then being involved in their schooling is another step, but how much involvement is appropriate? When help or feedback is requested from school, I do my best to answer the call. I express my displeasure at all of the high-stakes testing, I state clearly that I won't be doing any test prep at home and then I support as much as I can in a positive way what I'd like to see more of in schools. I am trying to help the art teacher get an award in the form of a big grant so that she'll bring back resources to classroom teachers. I participate and volunteer in book swaps. My husband taught an after school chess club. When surveys are sent out, I complete them. I offer to serve on long-term planning committees. I volunteer in classrooms. Are we doing too much? Too little?

While I recognize the expertise of my children's teachers and having been a teacher and given the current climate, I acknowledge the limitations and stresses they are under, I try to subvert the high-stakes testing, test prep, and narrowing of the curriculum in a positive way. But there's only so far this goes because for now none of that changes the continued unhealthy emphasis on standardized testing. It doesn't change the amount of data collection that takes place via developmentally inappropriate and misery-inducing standardized tests. It doesn't change the current realities that my children are learning in and that their teachers are teaching in. That's why I have real sympathy for people like me who choose to home school (and there are a lot where I live). I cheered Dana Goldstein's defense of public schooling versus home schooling, but I also know that it's an easy thing to defend when you don't have a child who melts down at home in tears and anger and questions of Why?!?! every time there's a benchmark, practice, or high-stakes test. (And my children do quite well on them!) Sometimes I want to give them what I see my homeschooling neighbors giving their children. What's so frustrating is that there's no good reason why public schools can't offer many of those same things.

So far, my children are high achievers and performers. Besides contributing positively, perhaps I can lead by example. If my own kids, who are are among the youngest in their class, come to school ready to learn, excel academically, and rarely miss questions on these tests; if I'm not doing test prep and I am making sure my kids have a knowledge-rich home life and I'm opposed to high stakes testing, maybe I'm on to something. If policy makers, legislators, and education reformers really wanted to empower parents, at the very least they'd they'd stop simply trying make it easier to hand over to schools to outside parties who can only pretend they know better. At the very most, they'd start listening to and acting upon what it is exactly that parents and communities envision for their children's education.

We parents must resolve to make them.

To read my follow-up post to this one, see here.

It's the substance & the stress (not the salary), stupid.

As some of you know, I am starting to look for, ahem, a job, including positions that would put me back in the classroom. The position of "unpaid writer" isn't exactly putting food on the table and I'm starting to feel antsy writing so much about education without actually doing much about education. Reading over and updating my teaching resume, I am reminded of former students, colleagues, schools, and yes, curriculum. I am reminded of how much I enjoy teaching, for teaching itself but also for the content I got to ponder. I graduated at the top of my class in high school and went to an elite college. I'm "the type" many education reformers talk of attracting to teaching and, initially, attracted I was, but given what teaching has become in many cases, I am somewhat reluctant to go back.

The first reason is the working conditions. While I agree teachers are underpaid and I appreciate Secretary Duncan's strident acknowledgement of this, I would do the work at the current salaries if the working conditions made the job more manageable: if I knew classes would be reasonably and appropriately sized; if I were given adequate time for planning, development, collaboration, and frankly, bathroom breaks; and if I knew the school where I might work would be fully staffed with content teachers, a librarian, a nurse, a social worker, enough administrators, etc. If I knew I could do an adequate job in a 40-hour week (obviously, it would be more some weeks and a bit less during others and yes, the work would always be on my mind), I might never have taken the break I did in the first place. I can't work the punishing hours because I have my own children to raise. And I'm in favor to the idea of changing compensation systems to reflect the different roles and demands of different teaching jobs. If there are teachers out there who have the space in their life and desire to take on more work and responsibilities than I can, I think they should be paid more. I would be happy to take on a lesser teaching position for less money than a harder working colleague if it meant I could be in the classroom again and still be the parent I want to be. Unfortunately, it became clear to me that I had to choose.

Second of all, I was attracted to teaching because it's intellectual, interesting, stimulating, creative, and socially useful. Well, at least it should be. As Diana Senechal put it in this comment:

The McKinsey researchers examined teacher recruitment and retention in Singapore, Finland, and South Korea. They found many factors that make teaching an attractive profession in those countries: salary, job security, autonomy and trust, cultural respect, and more. Given their own findings, it’s odd that they or anyone would conclude that financial incentives should reign supreme. And there were things they should have investigated but didn’t–for instance, the intellectual and spiritual appeal of the profession.  

Look at the talented people in professions where the pay is decent but not stellar–the arts, humanities, teaching, scholarship, nonprofits, journalism, and more. What brings people to these professions? Not incompetence, but interest. The work has substance.  

But when the substance is driven out, when the work turns into busywork, people turn to professions that offer the combination of qualities that they seek.

Yes, the work has substance. Or it did. Or it should. Of course teaching is going to have some busy work--all jobs do. Sometimes I even look forward to the busy work as it gives me a break from the harder tasks of thinking, evaluating, planning. Of course, there are going to be some tasks I enjoy more than others. Reading up on the Bubonic Plague, planning how my students will learn about it for a world history class, and then assessing what the students have learned counts as enjoyable. Figuring out how to teach the standardized reading test to my world history students and doing a technocratic version of reading tea leaves, i.e., charting who got the "main idea" and "context clues" questions wrong on said standardized tests is not. And when the job starts to become mostly useless, fruitless busy work and mostly teaching vapid curriculum, that's when I'd rather work as a self-employed, unpaid writer and blogger or work at something less demanding that would still save time and energy for writing.

As Nancy Flanagan put it in her typically thoughtful way,

Good teaching is not about classroom rules, cute videos, raising test scores, cool field experiences or unions. It's about relationships, mastery, analysis, persistence, diagnosis and continuous reflection. It's complex, layered intellectual work. And it happens in hundreds of thousands of "regular" classrooms, every day.

Yes, it's complex, layered, challenging, and intellectual work with so many decisions to make at almost every turn. This is primarily why I want to do it. Okay, so the pay isn't great, but when you take away the substance of it, I no longer even enjoy the work and I don't want to do it. I'd rather do something mindless (wait tables, bar tend, or be someone's personal assistant) where I won't have to go against my principles.

As teacher James Boutin describes here (and again here), at some point in my teaching career, I began to feel like a bureaucrat:

During a visit I made to a private school in Denver last November, one of the teachers there confided in me that he moved out of public education because he didn't want to be a bureaucrat. The comment struck me. I'd never thought of myself as a bureaucrat before, but he's right - I am.

Yes, there's certainly more room for me to be more data-informed and consider the values of a technocratic approach. But if that's what I wanted to do, I'd go be a bureaucrat or a technocrat. If I wanted to teach test prep, I'd go work for Kaplan. That's not what I see as the primary role of a classroom teacher. As James further demonstrates in this must-read series, the data-driven dimension of teaching has gotten out of hand and has become a huge waste of time and resources for educators and students alike. Moreover, as I was engaged in it and was forced to make ill-advised curricular choices, I realized that such tasks weren't helping my students learn or improving my teaching, but were fueling political point-scoring and sustaining the education reform industry.

So thanks, Arne Duncan, for saying teachers should be paid more and thanks for your attempts at debunking flawed research that states otherwise. For a next step, consider advocating against acceptance of the "new normal" that translates to terrible working conditions for teachers and principals and terrible learning conditions for students. And then consider how you're going to attract more serious college and graduate school students to the profession if the work you're asking them to do lacks substance and insults their intelligence and, eventually, expertise. Finally, consider that if the most educated among us don't want to do to the work because it's bankrupt of creativity, intellectual exercise, meaning, and substance, then the education our students are going to be getting will hardly be rich, meaningful, and relevant. Think about how many of our best and brightest would rather get paid poverty wages working as adjunct professors and journalists than teach in the classrooms your and your predecessors' policies are molding.

Perhaps this isn't the best post to put out there as I apply for teaching jobs, but then again, I'm not going to lie or pretend. I'm going to do my best to be a team player and to be open to the advantages of a more quantitatively- or data-based approach to teaching. But I'm not going to give up my principles or knowingly engage in educational malpractice. Frankly, I'd rather scrub floors.

In Defense of Flipping the Classroom & the Lecture

There's been a lot lately about "flipping the classroom," a teaching method where students are to view a lecture at home --ostensibly on-line--of their teacher presenting key concepts while saving doing harder and trickier homework-type assignments for in class. This idea appeals to me and I've been somewhat surprised that so many other education peeps out there whom I follow don't seem as enamored. Not only are they disparaging of the idea, but they seem to think "lecture" is synonymous with torture.

Before I begin I want to offer two caveats. First, the access problem is no small one and if not satisfactorily solved, could easily be a deal breaker. Second, I am envisioning this for older students, not necessarily for younger ones. As I've written about before, considerations of grade, age, and subject are very important in any conversation about teaching and learning.

Now, I wouldn't flip the classroom all of the time (getting stuck in one practice or approach is never a good idea) or get rid of outside-of-class readings and I wouldn't say it's going to "transform education" (puh-lease), nor would I call it a silver bullet method (don't believe in silver bullets), but, again, access issues aside, what's not to like?

As a teacher, and this was partly because I generally taught students who didn't have a lot of support at home (though these same students would lack access to technology, as well), when I assigned more challenging reading, projects, papers, and essays, I had them do a lot of the work in class anyway because that's when they needed guidance the most. I saved easier reading assignments and exercises that involved practicing or analyzing what students had already learned for homework.

Other aspects of flipping the classroom that excite me: Teachers can record their lectures a few times until they get it just right and then maintain a video library, if you will, of these presentations. Teachers can share and exchange video clips with one another. Students can have access to the library of them and can view each presentation as many times as they need to. They can access the library anywhere, without having to lug a textbook with them, and unlike a textbook, it's a living source of information. The teacher can get feedback on it and alter it easily if necessary without having to send it back to the publisher; students can leave comments or questions beneath the video. For someone who can't even upload digital photos from camera to laptop without assistance, I sound pretty excited about this, don't I?

During discussions of "flipping the classroom" I have been disturbed (and this has long bothered me) by how many of my fellow educators, bloggers, and commentators use "lecture" as if it's a bad word, dismissing it as an instructional technique almost out of hand. Flipping the classroom is just another form of lecturing! Lecture?!? You can't lecture the children! Heaven forbid. Lecturing is baaaaad. Well, I disagree.

To me, the problem isn't giving lectures per se, but rather with how and when they're done. Lectures come in all shapes and sizes. Certainly, lectures can be monotonous and boring, but they can also be lively, creative, interactive. So, there are good lectures and bad lectures, and there are times, places, and audiences for lecturing. Some audiences and topics require shorter lectures and some longer. When you go to hear Alfie Kohn, Diane Ravitch, Deb Meier, or Jonathan Kozol speak, you're listening to a lecture. Listening to a news report? That's a lecture. TED talk? Lecture. Author reading? That, too, is a lecture.

When I was in ed school (to read some of my thoughts on ed schools, read this post and this comment I made on the same post), I learned that the lecture was one way to present information, or teaching methodology, but lecturing was definitely frowned upon. (As you can imagine, I especially loved being lectured on how it was bad to lecture.) When I was student teaching high school US Government, I did everything but lecture. Finally, as I was gathering feedback, which I did often (come to think of it, much more often than I did as a regular classroom teacher. Why was that? Adding that to my list of things to change when I go back to the classroom) the students were growing frustrated and unresponsive. So we stopped to talk about it. One student hesitated but then said, "Look, Ms. Levy, you're asking us to work together and put together presentations on topics we don't really know anything about. We need you to teach us about them first, to tell us about them. You're the teacher--you're supposed to know about these things." I looked around and saw the rest of the class nodding in agreement. So, for the rest of my time, I lectured more, not all of the time, but more often than I had been. On the day when my university adviser and supervisor came to observe me, I happened to have a lecture planned. In our debriefing, she asked me, and I knew this was coming, what I could have done differently besides, "you know, just standing up there and lecturing." I explained to her that I had been doing all of the other stuff but that the students had told me to lecture more. She raised her eyebrows and said, "Huh. Interesting." To her credit, she didn't evaluate me negatively on this (she actually was a fantastic teacher and adviser).

The following summer, when I started my first teaching job (and I wrote about this particular class before here) I taught tenth grade English. If I recall correctly, we spent about one quarter of the class explicitly on writing. On one piece I decided to have students do peer editing. This, I had been told, was a great thing to do, but it was a disaster. The students really got into it and tried their damndest but it wasn't working; they weren't properly editing one another's work. The straw that broke the camel's back was when as I was circulating, I overheard two students arguing heatedly about a rule of punctuation (awesome!) But they were both wrong (arrgghh!) Nobody was learning anything and worse, the students were reinforcing bad habits and giving one another terrible advice.

Since then, I've learned to assess what students already know or have been successfully taught before expecting them to "teach one another" or "learn cooperatively." For example, after teaching lessons on how to give constructive and diplomatic feedback, I have students give one another feedback on what they take away from or hear in another student's piece or suggest questions they think might be left unanswered. However, I avoid peer editing or advice that involves peers giving advice on how to write or explain rules of grammar when they don't know them themselves. That, ahem, is my job.

Which leads me to another problem I have with privileging group work or cooperative learning over direct instruction or lecturing. I've seen it as an excuse to be lazy and I've seen it done wrong. Here kids, you do this. You're responsible for your own learning now. Go forth and teach yourselves. I'll sit back and do nothing. Of course, students should certainly be responsible for their work and learning but they need some help and guidance along the way. Of course, instruction beyond direct presentation or lecturing has its place, but it's not an anti-dote to poor lecturing.

I will end this with some much more articulate and organized thoughts on the subject of group work from Diana Senechal. As usual, she says exactly what I'd like to say myself.

It's My Blogiversary and I'll Cry if I Want to

One year ago today I started All Things Education. Happy Blogiversary to me! Unfortunately, so far I have spent my blogiversary at a dentist's appointment (but no cavities :) and reading depressing tweets from Rupert Murdoch's big speech about education racketeering, I mean, reform. So now it's time for some reflection.

I'd always enjoyed writing, but I started writing more seriously during my last year of college. For my senior project, I translated a series of short stories from French to English and that hooked me. After graduating, I continued writing, but then fell in love with teaching which I did for about ten years before deciding to take a break to spend more time with my children and more time writing. I took several writing workshops and got some of my creative work published. If you're interested, you can find links to them on my other blog, which I initially started to share my writing and get some feedback. I started writing more and more about education and decided to dedicate an entire blog to it. Then, I started tweeting. . .

This time last year, I had maybe 1,000 hits on my (other) blog which was a couple of years old. My education blog has earned close to 32,000 hits in just one year. I now have a couple hundred subscribers when I used to have maybe 5. Last fall and winter I had 60 - 70 followers on twitter. Now I have between 730 - 740. I have gotten a few pieces published in larger publications, which, again, I link to in my other blog.

As a writer, this is all very, very affirming and I want to thank all of my readers, followers, and mentors. To those who support me, you give me confidence and courage. To those who question, critique, and push back, it is from you that I learn and grow. To all of the writers, bloggers, tweeters, and activists who influence me, you inspire me, teach me, and make me think (for a sampling of my influences, see "What I Read" on the right). To the editors and authors of bigger blogs and publications who have featured or linked to my work, thank you for giving my ideas and work a chance. Finally, to my husband, thank you so much for encouraging me to take on all of this and for helping me ( successfully, most of the time :) to keep my pettier instincts in check.

For the coming year,"I will continue to blog and to solicit guest posts, but I also want to return some to my creative writing as I've neglected it in the past year. I also need to, um, GET A JOB. If I have treated the past three as apprenticeship years, now I must find a way to move up to employee status. Besides the reasons stated above, I took a break from teaching because I didn't like the direction the system was going in; the corrosive effects on good practice and rich and meaningful curriculum of high-stakes testing and standardization all ran contrary to what I had been taught and what I knew to be high quality education. The idea of improving our education system using anti-intellectual reforms, under anti-intellectual leadership seems antithetical. That being said, I have felt more and more, although I am involved as a public school parent, that the longer I am out of the classroom, the longer I am not working in schools, the less what I have to say is valid or relevant and also the less useful my work is. So besides pursuing writing gigs, I am also going to pursue teaching ones. I've learned so much as a parent and reading, writing, and blogging about education; at the very least what I've learned will make me a better and more informed teacher (too bad one of it counts towards renewing my license!)

This is not to say that I am feeling certain or confident about any of this. It scares me to the point that I wake up anxiety-striken in the wee hours almost every morning. I worry that I won't be able to find a job. I worry that I'll have to take a job that I don't like, that I'll be forced to be a McTeacher teaching McEducation in a McSchool. I worry that I'll get a job I like but that I'll be overwhelmed with it and my parenting responsibilities and will fail miserably at both. I worry that no one will want to hire me because I'm too old and my skills too rusty.

However this all turns out, I'll certainly let you know. And, hey, thanks for reading. It has meant the world to me, really.

Education Films Series IV: The Class

This post is dedicated to all of my mentors and co-workers. Thank you for all you've taught me (and all you will teach me :)


Another education film I've seen recently (well, in the past year ) is The Class featuring Francois Begaudeau as high school English teacher, Mr. Marin. The film is based on his memoir which chronicles his experience teaching in inner-city Paris. It wasn't a documentary, but it almost could have been; I felt like a fly on the wall in Mr. Marin's classroom. It was so real, in fact, that I had a hard time watching it. It's not that the students were so tough (not at all--as a side thought, I wonder if the experience would have been different in the Paris banlieues or suburbs--some are comparable to U.S. inner city neighborhoods and more recently some inner-loop suburbs). Rather, I had a hard time because although according to the movie he was a three-year veteran, he seemed to be making some rookie mistakes. Some are the same mistakes I made as a rookie, mistakes which were thankfully pointed out to me by veteran mentors.

For one, Mr. Marin seemed to argue excessively with his students. The same summer I completed my master's degree in education, I taught a summer school course at the inner city high school where I would continue to work for the following two years. One student in the class was particularly difficult and I made the rookie mistake of letting him engage me in pointless arguments and of taking his behavior personally. In an attempt to help sort things out, the director of the summer program observed the class and then met with the two of us. After, she told me, among other things, that my and the student's discussions sounded as if they were between peers. "This sounds like a peer interaction. I'm not comfortable with that. You're not his peer," she reminded me pointedly.

It was too late for me to go back and change how I had interacted with him, but given her insights, I changed course. The student was still difficult, but not as much as he had been, and I was able to manage our interactions much more professionally and appropriately. What I learned then has helped me for years to come, and it liberated me. As long as it didn't disrupt the learning of others, I could make sure students felt heard and like their concerns were taken seriously, but in such cases students didn't have to concede I was "right" for me to remain confident in my role. I was their teacher, not their peer; I was the adult in the room.

But in The Class, it seemed like Mr Marin was caught up in the struggle of "I'm the teacher, you're the student" instead of just simply being the teacher. Perhaps this is a cultural difference.When I lived in and studied in France, I noticed that there wasn't as much the tradition of questioning the teacher as we have in the US, and perhaps the film reflected a change in their school culture. Perhaps engaging with his students on this level was his way of being open to that, but his sarcasm, his attempts to out-smart and out-embarrass his students seemed counter-productive, unprofessional, and a waste of time. Instead of trying to embarrass them before they embarrassed him, he should have just gone for setting the standard of no embarrassing of anyone by anyone.

Back to Ms. Levy. . . during the school year that followed summer school I had another mentor teacher. He observed a few of my classes and then went over his observations with me. (I also didn't have my own classroom that year and so I was fortunate to have the eyes on me of the teachers in whose rooms I taught.) One of the things I most remember being critiqued on was that I told students when they walked in late, "You're late." I'd say. My mentor told me, "Rachel, you know they're late, they know they're late, why stop class to point it out? Why put them on the defensive?" Although this was a small point, it was a key one. I found I could apply it to many other interactions with and generally giving feedback to students. I learned there's a time, a place, and a way to give feedback; publicly, sarcastically and in a way that's likely to humiliate students, as I saw Mr. Marin do some in The Class, is the wrong way. Mark the students late, of course, and hold them accountable for their trespasses like tardiness but do so in a way that's proactive, private, and appropriate.

Of course, while I think my criticisms of Mr. Marin (and I have positive feedback as well) are valid, I don't know that much about his school or what's expected of him or how France educates its teachers. I'd really have to ask and hear him explain why he reacted the way he did. Furthermore, I appreciated how Begaudeau let all of us viewers into his "classroom." As a new teacher, it was hard for me to be vulnerable to my mentors and their criticisms. Not only were many of the students I taught challenging, but I felt like I was doing a horrible job.

Around the time that I watched this film, there was a lot being written about video-taping teachers in order to evaluate them. As I got to watch (and then critique) Mr. Marin's teaching and as I recalled my own experiences, I was reminded of the value of mentoring, coaching, and evaluation.

Luckily, my observation of Mr. Begaudeau is not high stakes, especially given that I've never stepped foot in his school, nor do I know much about the training teachers get in France. This seems to be at least one of the shortcomings of the Gates Foundation initiative to video tape teachers. The teachers don't get the feedback quickly enough for it to be useful and the feedback is given by people far removed from the particular school and classrooms. Furthermore, one of the Gates-funded academics involved in the project seems to be looking at it as an opportunity to develop "cottage industries." Are we trying to improve teaching and learning here or are we trying to create even more unnecessary education-related "cottage industries" to waste precious dollars on?  On the contrary, the video-taping experience that California ESOL teacher Larry Ferlazzo describes here is a cost-effective and valuable way to use video-tape evaluations to improve teaching.

As for mentoring, luckily the observations my mentors did of my teaching were not high stakes. They were designed to help me improve my practice, not to see if I should be fired. Observations and evaluations are valuable and necessary. Evaluation and improvement shouldn't be mutually exclusive, but unfortunately, they're largely coming to be. Just like I learned that giving feedback to students is all in the how, so is giving feedback to teachers. The goal should be to make our students better students, and to make us better teachers. When your mentor is your boss, and the feedback can get you fired, people will be much less open to the feedback and to giving an honest presentation of their teaching and philosophy of teaching. It makes an evaluation something to be gamed, rather than a tool to develop, improve, and build.

Want to read my full remarks to CNN regarding the SOS March?

Today, my perspective (as well as those of Sabrina Stevens Shupe and Amy Valens) on the SOS March & National Call to Action was featured in a CNN.com article by Sam Chaltain. I'm famous! (hahaha)

I was honored when he told me about the project and asked if I would answer some questions. Of course, he couldn't possibly include my responses in their entirety, especially since as you've probably noticed, brevity isn't exactly one of my talents.

Sam did a fantastic job of editing and consolidating my remarks, but in case anyone's interested in any elaboration, I wanted to share here my remarks in their entirety:

1.  What were the main reasons that brought you to DC?

As a former (and hopefully future) public school teacher and current public school parent, I am disillusioned with most of the education policies that are part of NCLB and RTTT. These policies encourage and incentivize poor practice and they narrow curricula. These policies have failed to improve the quality of education, to meaningfully reform systems in need of reform. Dysfunction and inconsistent practice in schools and systems targeted by these policies has been replaced by dysfunctional and ideological rigidity and consistency of poor practice (or what I like to call a McDonald’s-alization of public education)—that’s not progress, it’s just another version of bad.

I grew up in DC proper with activist parents who were both civil rights lawyers. We regularly went to marches, parades, and protests and talked about politics and social justice issues. My mother spent her law career involved in civil rights as it relates to public education. My parents both attended public schools and universities. My sister and I attended the DC Public Schools.  Both of my parents have intellectual leanings. I guess you could say I was born into a religion of civic activism and public education.

As such, I also deeply value our American public democratic institutions and don’t see evidence right now that President Obama and Arne Duncan share that. I believe that right now we have a real crisis, perhaps the largest issue of this era, of democracy. A healthy, vibrant American democracy cannot exist alongside the plutocracy that is rapidly developing in our country. In order to maintain our democracy, we have an obligation to participate in it. A patriotic citizen is a critical, informed, and active citizen who holds their political leaders accountable and pushes them to be responsive to the people they represent and lead. I was marching because I care about our country and I care about our public institutions, especially about public schools. (In case you didn’t guess, I was a Social Studies teacher.)

2.  Did the march fulfill your expectations?

I thought it was a powerful, inspiring event. I was glad to hear of the SOS protests and events in state capitols, but I would have liked to have seen more people at the main event in DC, especially from nearby states. I live relatively close to DC and close to my state capitol. That means I have an obligation as a citizen to take advantage of my proximity to political power and to decision makers. Why were there not more public education stakeholders there from DC, Maryland, and Virginia? This goes back to the concept that a strong American democracy requires an informed, active, and critical citizenry (I’d also add educated!).

3. What needs to happen next?

I think we all need to look at the SOS March & National Call to Action’s “Guiding Principles” and then think about how we can work to maintain and promote those principles given the educational systems and political realities that exist in our individual states and local communities. Some of us may even find we need to re-consider or add to some of those principles. We’re all affected by NCLB, but beyond that we need to act locally and partner with our local decision makers, educators, and community members.  Quality public education isn’t an ideological concept; it’s an American and democratic concept.

While continuing the political activism, we also really need to focus on policy critiques and on advocating for concrete and viable policy alternatives--I can't stress enough the importance of this.

4. Based on your experiences, what does the ideal learning environment look like—and require?

Honestly, I try to avoid thinking in terms of “ideal” worlds, as there’s a thin line between ideal and fantasy, but I’ll take a stab at talking about what I think are the important aspects of a healthy but realistic learning environment. 

I think we have to start with what we value in education, what we think the goals of education should be.  What does it mean to be an educated American? I define an educated American as: having a broad and meaningful base of content knowledge, including currently neglected subjects of social studies, science, the arts, and foreign language; having competency in basic skills, complemented eventually by the beginnings of mastery in some chosen subjects; and as having a curiosity and a love of learning.

How do we design our learning environments to reflect those goals? First, encourage rich and broad curricula. Second, encourage dedicated practice. Third, give teachers enough freedom and independence to cultivate curiosity and love of learning in their own classrooms. Fourth, optimize or improve teaching and learning conditions for teachers and students.

Such an environment should be knowledge-based, pedagogically sound and appropriate, as well as evidence-based. This means having a varied, content-rich curriculum, using the best but also the most appropriate teaching practices, and at least considering the social-emotional development of children as well as their intellectual development. The environment should be orderly and ethical, but completely free of rigidity.

A fruitful learning environment also depends on strong and caring, but professional and appropriate, relationships between educators and students. A good teacher-student relationship can fit many molds, but there should be a connection and the student should be able to trust and respect their teachers and vice-versa. Furthermore, knowledge of students' educational background, aspirations, and family situation (without, of course, overstepping boundaries or violating students' privacy) can really help to inform teaching. In turn, educators should be well-educated, supported, and trusted by their colleagues and their supervisors. While I did mention “evidence-based” before, I also think that both teachers and students need some room to experiment, to make mistakes, to fail, even. It is from mistakes and failure as well as from successes that we learn and grow. 

I think some education leaders have done a real disservice to the improvement of teaching and learning by trying to quantify it to the extent they have. At the same time, I don’t agree that teaching is entirely an art. Rather, it’s a craft that one gets better at with practice, consideration of evidence, further learning, and experience. A healthy learning environment is led by such practitioners.

Finally, while standardized tests can give us useful information, a fertile leaning environment is one that does not equate quality teaching and student achievement with standardized test scores. When people do that, they set the bar way too low for too many of our students. In focusing on standardized-test expressed “achievement” our decision and policy makers have forgotten the significance of curiosity and have forgotten the human drive to explore, build, create, and interrogate. Certainly, most knowledge is not innate and must be taught, but curiosity, creativity, and inquiry are all part of the human spirit. Such qualities are key to learning and teaching. Unfortunately, our current education policies and education reform strategies do little to promote acquisition of meaningful knowledge or to nurture those qualities and arguably do much to hamper them.

5. Why did you leave teaching?

I wouldn't say I left teaching, but I did take a break from K-12 public school teaching for two reasons: 

1) I was wasting far too much of my and my students' time trying to please the testing and data collection gods rather than providing the education I describe above. 

2) I had young children and eventually felt I wasn't being the teacher or parent I wanted or needed to be.