Monday, September 26, 2011

The National Teacher Initiative from StoryCorps

Neurosurgeon Gives Thanks To His Science Teacher is the first in a new monthly series on NPR from StoryCorps, the American oral history project. The National Teacher Initiative will "feature conversations with teachers across the country - teachers talking to each other, students interviewing the teachers who changed their lives, and more." StoryCorps founder Dave Isay told Weekend Edition Sunday host Audie Cornish:

I think there is no higher calling than being a public school teacher in this country. Teachers are feeling under attack and underappreciated. We want to do our part over the next year to turn that around.

The initial story of neurosurgeon Lee Buono calling his middle school science teacher, Al Siedlecki, to say thanks for the inspiration to become a surgeon is heartwarming.

Non-Certified Layoffs Hurting LAUSD

Los Angeles Times' columnist Steve Lopez writes in Time to stop cutting at L.A. Unified:

When the school bell rings tomorrow, everyone will pay a price. Principals will be further stressed, trying to make sure phones get answered and information gets disseminated. Teachers won't have the staff support they need. An additional 500 people will be looking for work in a horrible economy. And roughly 300 L.A. Unified libraries will have no one left to staff them.

We're no longer at the edge of the cliff. This is free-fall.

Lopez suggests that the time has come "to tap emergency funds, cut state redevelopment agencies and discuss raising businesses' property taxes" to ameliorate the drastic cuts going on in California schools.

School on the Edge

Robert King writes in School on edge about a middle school in Indianapolis that is going to be turned over to a for-profit charter operator next year. The announcement of the takeover by Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett, has left teachers and students in a difficult situation.

Arizona's School Accent Police Out of Business

Marc Lacey tells of how a federal investigation has slowed or stopped Arizona's efforts to discriminate against teachers with strong Spanish accents. He writes in In Arizona, Complaints That an Accent Can Hinder a Teacher’s Career that "the state agreed to alter its policies" once the feds began to take a look at what was going on.

Odds 'n' Ends

I didn't see Michael Winerip's The Secrets of a Principal Who Makes Things Work until after midnight, but it's a good read about the kind of principal most of us would like to work for.

I've borrowed the section title, Odds 'n' Ends, for the title of a new column series I'm launching today. The first column in the series is a rant that got started when our local Walmart replaced my favorite shaving soap with a more expensive brand. I started keeping track and found that they were systematically replacing lower cost items with more expensive brands that may not be any better than the cheaper brand. Can Walmart Make Their Aisles Any Narrower obviously isn't educationally related. That's why it needs a new column title. Other ideas and column starts include the lack of progress in electronic flashes over the last 40 years, and my quest to find American made garden hose nozzles and toasters.

And today's Educators' News is brought to you by...Williams Mug Shaving Soap!

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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Richard Rothstein and Diane Ravitch

Richard Rothstein says he owes Diane Ravitch a dinner at the River Café in A bet over No Child Left Behind (Alternate link). They actually are in agreement on "the damage being done to American education by NCLB:"

• conversion of struggling elementary schools into test-prep factories;
• narrowing of curriculum so that disadvantaged children who most need enrichment would be denied lessons in social studies, the sciences, the arts and music, even recess and exercise, so that every available minute of the school day could be devoted to drill for tests of basic skills in math and reading;
• demoralization of the best teachers, now prohibited from engaging children in discovery and instead required to follow pre-set instructional scripts aligned with low-quality tests;
• and the boredom and terror of young children who no longer looked forward to school but instead anticipated another day of rote exercises and practice testing designed to increase scores by a point or two.

The bet was over what would happen with reauthorization of NCLB once the damage was apparent to all. It's an interesting read.

Diane weighs in this week on the Bridging Differences blog with an excellent article about "the use of value-added assessment for teacher evaluation" and Why Naming Names Is Wrong.

Good Comments About Education Nation

Anthony Cody's Circular Reasoning at the Gates: Education Nation off to a Confusing Start (Alternate link) gives NBC some credit this year for making "an effort to be a bit more balanced and inclusive of teachers' voices." But Cody finds "there is something deeply disturbing about the way the issues have been framed" this time around.

Also see:

• Fair Blog: Critics - and Questionable Sponsors - at NBC's Education Nation by Peter Hart
• Huffington Post: Education Nation Kicks Off With Questionable Sponsor, New Teacher Survey by Joy Resmovits

About Those Waivers

Monty Neill takes a good look at the potential downside of the Obama/Duncan NCLB waiver offer in a guest posting on Valerie Strauss's The Answer Sheet blog, Obama’s NCLB waivers: Do flaws outweigh benefits? He concludes:

There are no indications that the administration intends to turn away from schooling that serves tests and test makers more than children. The pests will be very hard to put back into the box, and Duncan’s waivers help that not at all.

On the Blogs

One Sunflower comments in Roses and Thorns, "It feels crummy when my relationship with just one student - ( a child) - ( a 3 year old child) - (only on this planet for 36 months) - is in trouble."

Praying for Alice on NYC Educator brings home the damage done in the classroom and to people with massive layoffs of non-certified personnel.

And Mrs. Chili's Grammar Wednesday, from last Wednesday, has a hilarious graphic she can't use in the classroom illustrating the need for the "Oxford comma." She also links to a great article on the subject from NPR, Going, Going, And Gone?: No, The Oxford Comma Is Safe ... For Now.

Odds 'n' Ends

Valerie Strauss's How to fix the mess we call middle school has some interesting ideas in it.

I ran into most of the stuff posted above early yesterday morning. Unfortunately, I spent most of the rest of the day trying to scrape, wash, and paint part of our back porch. After getting really frustrated trying without success to position a large stepladder over some evergreens I let get out of hand, I ended up "pruning" the bushes with the chainsaw! Once up on the eight foot stepladder, I hung on for dear life as repeated wind gusts tried to turn me into an airfoil. By the time I was done, the above posting was about all I had the energy for.

Friday, September 30, 2011

Looking Ahead

Hey! It's almost October, every teachers favorite month! And actually, the sugar hangovers come in November, so maybe October's not so bad. (Or so he writes, conveniently forgetting Halloween room parties and Halloween treats smuggled into the classroom for days and weeks before the holiday. )

The Teachers' Corner October Calendar may jog your memory for a teachable special day during the month. It also reminds us of Yom Kippur (7-8, begins at sundown on the 7^th), Columbus Day (10), also Thanksgiving Day in Canada, the "Hallmark Holidays" of Sweetest Day (15) and Mother-in-Law's Day (23), and of course, Halloween (31).

My favorite part of all of the Halloween hoopla that went on at school while I was still teaching was the annual parade of kindergartners in costume through the classrooms of our school. It probably didn't have any educational significance, but my students certainly enjoyed seeing the outfits and waving to their younger siblings, neighbors, and friends.

Correction (10/5/2011): Yom Kippur was initially left off our Looking Ahead section. My sincere apologies for the oversight.

Rerun Alert

I rarely rerun an item here on Educators' News, and quoting oneself sounds dangerously close to being an exercise in arrogance. But it's a slow news Friday, and the following piece from the November 2, 2010 edition of Educators' News goes pretty well with the mention above of Halloween treats.

A Time to Say "Screw the Research"

Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia and author of Why Don't Students Like School, is a frequent contributor on Valerie Strauss's The Answer Sheet blog. I generally agree with Dr. Willingham's point of view and opinions on education and avidly read his guest posts on Valerie's excellent blog. But I'm afraid he's simply full of shit with his recent guest blog, How sugar really affects kids.

Dr. Willingham relates the results of a number of studies on the effects of sugar on kids' behavior (thankfully, in layman's terms) in his post-Halloween posting. It's the kind of stuff we've all seen, heard, and read before. It simply states that sugar does not contribute to hyperactivity or poor behavior by children and/or students.

And parents and teachers everywhere remark, "That's bullshit!" (If you're offended by the language, think of it as Kate Hudson playing the Bullshit game in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Or, just go somewhere else... )

Studies come and studies go. Dr. Willingham is conscientiously reporting what he believes to be true at this time according to the research available.

And parents and teachers continue to emphatically say, "Bullshit!"

While studies at this time may exonerate sugar from increasing negative or hyperactive behaviors in children, folks in the classroom (and parents) do, as Willingham acknowledges, frequently experience sharp increases in kids "bouncing off the walls" after consumption of sugary treats. Whether the cause is caffeine in the treats, room mothers circulating with goodies topped with an inch of sugary icing, or the more relaxed atmosphere of a room party, Willingham and others choose to give sugar an easy out.

I taught a special education "pull out" class the last ten years of my career. We rarely had room parties, as our kids returned to their homerooms for most such events. Edible treats earned in our classroom were most commonly for 100% spelling papers at the end of the week. (We had an incredibly successful, roll-your-own spelling program for our kids.) We rarely had parents in the room at such times, and our system was simply one of when your spelling paper was graded and returned, you got to choose a reward (some edible, some tangible items such as toys from a fast food joint contributed by a parent). Since our students were tested in small, leveled groups, not everyone got their reward at the same time.

Every time we deviated from our no sugary treats policy, we paid dearly in student unrest. Pushy parents with boxes of birthday cupcakes were only accommodated late in the day. (Let the bus drivers and parents suffer. Of course, Dr. Willingham would disagree based on research.)

And yeah, we made mistakes. Two stand out in my memory.

Once, when the IGA was inexplicably out of white milk, I got chocolate flavored milk for a classroom event. Oh my god, what a disaster.

Another time I brought in Dole Golden Pineapple(s) for spelling treats. We peeled, cored, and cut the pineapples as a classroom activity with each child getting a taste. We talked about and read about how and where pineapples grow. Then paper plates of golden pineapple chunks were available as treats after our spelling tests. We've offered oranges, apples, plums, bananas (the kids' absolute favorite), grapes, and probably other fruit I can't remember (oh yeah, we even did kiwi once), but I've never seen kids bounce off the walls as they did with the golden pineapple. While I'm sure the "research" doesn't support it, my everyday experience tells me the sugar in pineapple (specifically the golden pineapple) is different from the natural sugars in other fruits and not to offer it to sugar-reactive kids (which the research apparently says don't exist).

Dr. Willingham's guest blog illustrates something to which most career teachers can relate. "Things," initiatives, reforms, all supposedly based on research, best practices, or some other recommendation, come around in education regularly. There are some we may tentatively embrace until we feel confident in adopting or rejecting them, or just hold them at an arm's length until reason in the education community returns. There are others that our individual and collective experience tells us are just plain wrong...or full of shit.

Giving kids sugary treats is one of those things that while research says is not a factor in student unrest and misbehavior, teachers (and parents) collective knowledge and experience says is a bad idea.

We're currently in a time of education "reform" where new practices such as teacher ratings based on student test scores, promotion of often for-profit charter schools, and the nasty mantra of ed "deformers" (Thanks to Norm Scott for that one.) of "bad teachers" permeates the discussion of how to improve education. We're told we should give up our hard won "permanent teacher" or tenure status when we've seen it protect us when we were working in our kids' and parents' best interests. (My personal favorite was when a superintendent suggested I become a "team player" in denying our students' educational rights. As Tom Cruise said in the movie, A Few Good Men, "F*ck you, Harold." Harold was later let go because of multiple charges of sexual harassment. I stayed only because tenure/due process protected me, not because I was an excellent teacher doing the right thing.)

To Dr. Willingham:

I'm just an ex-dockworker who got lucky, dusted off, cleaned up and spent an extremely rewarding and successful career teaching elementary students. I'm not much into reading research articles, although I do when I think I've found something I must read to help teachers and kids. And yes, I still talk (and occasionally write) like a dockworker, but then I also ask God's forgiveness later for my profanities. I'm also almost, no, acutely anti-academic, possibly from the abuse I suffered when trying to work with other K-12 teachers at a prestigious institution of higher education for engineering.

I don't want to sound like a tea bagger (tea party advocate), which I'm not, but sometimes the common sense of "the people" tells us to wait a bit before rendering a judgment that might hurt our kids. Our President and Secretary of Education certainly don't subscribe to my unsolicited advice on education, as they continue to promote their unproven, divisive, and fallacious education "reforms" to the country. I've tried to counsel them (as if they would listen to an ex-dockworker). But I would hope you might hold off recommending sugaring down the kids in America's classrooms, or even publishing a guest blog that might lead teachers to do so at the possible peril of their students.

The research certainly doesn't support my position, but common sense and experience does. We can all smell bullshit when we come upon it.

Odds 'n' Ends

• The Washington Post: Middle school survey: sex, fear and suicide attempts by Bill Turque
• The Washington Post: School closings not a question of "if" but "how big" by Bill Turque
• Library of Congress: Finding Treasures in an Archive of Historical Newspapers: Chronicling America by Cheryl Lederle
• Bridging Differences blog on Education Week: Forward to the Past by Deborah Meier

Have a great weekend!

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