Category Archives: Education

On Writing

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It is late. I am tired.  It has been a long but fun day of sharing and learning with educational leaders. But I made a commitment to blog every day and blog I will.  So, I’m going to write about writing.

As part of a recognition of National Day on Writing, on October 19, Steve J. Moore at Edutopia writes about why he writes with his students and the role writing plays in his own life:

Beginning to see myself as a writer, and coming to understand that this wasn’t some magical and unreachable status, was a crucial step on my journey in teaching. I encourage you to start writing for yourself and share what you do with your students. You won’t be disappointed.

Like many ideas, this idea is not new. As a young teacher, I read Nancie Atwell and was completely hooked on the idea of reading and writing workshops and loved spending time writing with my students. Ini 1985, Tom Gillespie suggested that writing himself makes him a better writing teacher:

Thus, as a writer paying attention to my own work, I learn to be more keenly attentive to my students’ work. My careful observation and listening to them is enriched by my careful observation and listening to myself as I write.

I don’t mind that a younger generation is adopting an old idea.  It’s a good one a worth refreshing in this era of online publishing.

And I was reminded of one of my favorite leadership writers: Warren Bennis.  In his classic, On Becoming a Leader, he describes the importance of writing to leaders:

Writing is the most profound way of codifying your thoughts, the best way of learning from yourself who you are and what you believe.

And here’s a short video interview of Bennis talking about writing his memoir.  He encourages others to do as, starting at an earlier age than he does.

Why Zero Tolerance Policies Don’t Work

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One of the lessons I remember from the principalship class I took was that zero tolerance policies simply don’t work because at some point, some nice kid breaks the policy for a well meaning reason and you end up with egg all over your face.  Here’s a perfect example: the student who was unable to attend homecoming because of an overdue book. Here’s the policy:

The school’s July newsletter did tell parents that “students must have a zero balance for all fees and fines to participate in some special extracurricular activities or privileges.”

Here’s how it played out:

Dominique’s mother went to the high school to complain. She says the principal, Tracy Perkins, was unwilling to work with her.

“She did not care one bit,” said Dominique’s Mom, Danielle Olmstead. “She asked me what grade she’s in, I said freshman; she said ‘Oh there’s always next year.'”

Dominique is in the accelerated reading program at the high school. Two or three weeks ago she checked out a murder mystery that was overdue when she went to buy the ticket.

She offered to bring the book back that day but the school wouldn’t budge.

“She’s not being punished because she got into a fight or anything like that,” said Olmstead. “She’s getting punished because she had an overdue library book for reading. It’s ridiculous.”

Maybe what’s worse than a zero tolerance policy is continuing to enforce it even when you realize how ridiculous it is.

A Plea for Big Bird

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I live in a television desert. We use an antennae to get what, until the advent of cable, everyone got: free TV. We rely on the networks and public broadcasting for our television connection to the world.  It’s mostly where we get local and national news.  Public broadcasting is the oasis in that desert of black and white Gidget reruns and prime time pop: we regularly consume the News Hour and other public affairs programming including Need to Know, which did a powerful segment on the diversity of what is known as “the Hispanic vote.” It featured an intelligent and lengthy interview with a Republican Latina about how Romney and Hispanic voters share conservative values when it comes to family and marriage. (Hmmm..I thought PBS was liberally biased.) It is also a connection to alternative music and arts media including Austin City Limits, which is on right now featuring Bon Iver*, and documentaries like Precious Knowledge, the documentary about the Arizona ethnic studies controversy that I wrote about in an earlier post.

My radio station of choice is NPR for similar reasons.  WHRO is my local station for both television and radio.   And, I support them with a contribution each year, only wishing I could give them more as funding in the state was cut by 25% under Governor McDonnell.  Eleven employees of the Richmond, Virginia, affiliate lost their jobs.  They were mostly part of the educational services department, which means that local schools were also affected:

Monk said six of the 11 positions are from the educational services department; the stations will stop technology training for teachers, engineering support for schools and the statewide EdTech Conference, a seminar for educators on using technology in teaching.

I realize that government has to get serious about spending and sometimes that means things we think are important cannot be funded, but it seems like such a small amount of money for something that, if you can’t afford or don’t want to pay for television, makes a huge difference in your quality of life with the kind of programming that just won’t be developed commercially.  I mean, just look at what passes for “history” on cable: the History Channel features shows like Pawn Stars and Swamp People.  At least in the former show, people bring in historical artifacts.  The latter is about a family that lives in the swamps of Louisiana.  Here’s the history piece: “Through the Swamp People, we learn the stories of Cajun style survival rich with language, food, music, and generations of shared family experiences.” Try typing “cajun” into the search box at PBS and you get a long list of intelligent, in depth programs.

I encourage you to support your local stations. It’s easier for legislators to get away with cuts when they can point out that many of the viewers won’t pay to support it.  How important can it be?  If it’s important to you, I encourage you to make some kind of contribution.  You’ll be supporting much more than just the next season of Downton Abbey.  PBS does work in schools and the community, work that, like their programming, will not be replaced by the private sector.

*Justin Vernon, lead singer, just said that Austin City Limits was the only real music show he knew about in the United States.

 

 

What Really Matters

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It’s been an interesting week for conversations about women in the United States.  Mitt Romney’s binders full of women quote during the debate became an instant meme.

Upon returning from a conference, a psychobiologist posted a snarky status to Facebook describing his disappointment with the large percentage of unattractive women he encountered and wondering where the supermodels were. His post quickly became public and the subject of outrage by women. The comment thread on the Drugmonkey blog that reposted the original remarks puts the state of Venus and Mars in the US in stark contrast.

How fortunate we are here in the United States to be able to have these kinds of conversations.  

In Pakistan on Tuesday (the same day as the binders quote), a 14-year-old was shot and severely wounded when the Taliban opened fire on the van in which she was riding with some schoolmates. Her crime? Blogging about her fears of the Taliban and her desire for education, something banned by the extremist group.  CNN commentator Frida Ghitis calls it “a brutally anti-woman ideology.”

In a world of constant conversation, the really important things can get drowned out.

 

The Voices of Teachers

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Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody encouraged teachers to write letters to President Obama relating their experiences of Race to the Top and high stakes testing. They are amazing: the voices of people who work so hard for kids every day only to be treated as though they are the ones standing in the way, demonized as union cronies or second rate hacks. They have been publishing some of them to their respective blogs and I would encourage you to read them.  Here’s the one I tweeted out this morning. Shelley Barker from Washington State thinks about the differences between her honors kids and her not-so-honors kids and comes to this wrenching conclusion:

Obviously, the variable is the vast differences in my students’ lives. We cannot ignore the fact that some kids come to us programmed to learn. They’ve had amazing experiences in their short lives. They have parents who support their endeavors, be they academic, artistic, or athletic. They do not come to school hungry and they do not go to bed scared. They travel during school breaks. Their houses are warm and their many pairs of shoes fit. My students who live in poverty do not have their basic needs met. In addition to lacking food, shelter, water, and clothing, many live in chaos. Violence, missing parents, low wages, drug use, loss of employment…the list goes on. How can a child focus on crafting a good title or writing an engaging lead when so many forces, out of her control, take center stage in her brain and her psyche? I’m positive you studied Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in your academic years. NOTHING that propels growth can happen in a person’s life until those very basic needs are met.

The letter is eloquent and raw at the same time as you feel her anguish over these students. No five point plan or extra testing or charter school or voucher program is going to solve this.  Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty and many of the programs like food stamps and Medicaid that are now under fire were put into place in his administration.

Yet, poverty wasn’t mentioned once in any of the debates, and one of the candidates famously said that he didn’t really worry about the very poor since they were taken care of, as though we had somehow solved the issue of poverty in this country.  We can talk all we want about having a first class education in this country but until we figure out how to reduce the 15% poverty rate, we’ll never succeed.

Grand Challenge Felled by Cold

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My ambition to blog every day for 30 days came to an end yesterday.  I battled a cold for a couple days and yesterday had to attend an all day meeting despite being in the worst of it.  I know, I know, I should have stayed home but this is a once-a-year meeting and it was somewhat essential that I be there in person. (For those of you who might have been with me, I apologize for the hacking and sneezing and only hope I did not infect you.) Once home, blogging, education and technology were the furthest things from my mind.  I cuddled up in comfortable pajamas and fell asleep before 8 PM.

I’m going to blog twice today to make up for it…does that count? This first one is something of a follow up to the last blog post about the VCU blogging community.  There are a few other blogs that I read on a regular basis and I thought I would share one of them with you:

For five years, Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier wrote thoughtful letters back and forth as part of the Bridging Differences blog at EdWeek, exploring issues related to education. They began at different ends of the spectrum with Ravitch representing a more conservative viewpoint and Meier a more liberal.  In the end, though, they seemed to have met on the bridge, with Ravitch moving perhaps further along towards Meier’s side as her discomfort with reforms she once espoused like charters and vouchers grew. It was a pleasure to get a peek into the minds of these two women.  Ravitch has moved on to her own blog where she is posting 10-20 items per day (talk about a grand challenge)! And she has become an outspoken advocate for public education.  In her closing post for the Bridging Differences blog, she points out that failing public education is a myth:

Here is something to reflect on: the NAEP scores of students who are black, white, Hispanic, or Asian are at their highest point in history. The proportion of young people between 18-24 who have graduated high school is close to 90 percent, another historical high point. Those who rail about the decline and failure of American education are either misinformed or they obfuscate or prevaricate.

Now, Meier has been joined by Pedro Noguera, sociologist at New York University who studies urban education.  About the same time he came on board, he posted an article in The Nation in which he took issue with the Chicago teachers who were on strike that sparked a response from Diane Ravitch. In his first post for Bridging Differences, he asked Meier to respond as well and she did.

While much of Education Week is behind a pay wall, this blog is freely available.  It provides a chance to get beyond slogans and agendas and think deeply about education.  The commenters also rise about the average and help expand the conversation.

Friday Favorites

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One of my online students wondered what a NETS school would look like.  I immediately thought of two of my favorite case studies from Edutopia.

The first profiles Newsome Park Elementary School, a science magnet school in Newport News, Virginia.

The second describes Eva LaMar’s 3rd graders who are engaging with local history in powerful ways.

Both these videos are old and so you’ll see bulky digital cameras and Alphasmart keyboards. But, it isn’t the technology that makes the difference here. It’s what the students and teachers are doing with that technology to support their learning. The pedagogical ideas are important.

Wisdom from the Dalai Lama

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I had the privilege of attending a talk by the Dalai Lama at the College of William and Mary today.  He was delightful with an infectious laugh and a simple message: the way to happiness lies in compassion and love. He encouraged and understanding that below what he called the secondary level of race, religion and gender, we are all human beings who deserve the same respect. He used education as an example: students are students with a yearning to learn no matter where they live or what they look like.

Another lesson important to educators was that people will always do things we don’t like but we should not judge the actor by the actions. He admitted to liking George W. Bush despite not approving of his policies of force and aggression.  Additionally, he warned about painting a whole group of people as evil or bad based on the actions of a few of them, using the 911 tragedy as an example. Muslims committed the acts but that does not lead us to condemn all Muslims. I wonder how many of us lump our students into certain categories based on past experiences, making it hard to see the student below the label.

A student-submitted question asked about technology and spirituality. He felt as though an enlightened soul could learn from all experiences and certainly technology could be used to further spirituality.  But he worried about looking to technology for all the answers and encouraged the audience to use their own intellect.

I purposely did not take any electronics with me so took handwritten notes rather than tweeting.  I wanted to concentrate on the message itself rather than communicating it to the larger world.  It has been a long time since I attended an event without the mediation of technology and I’m not sure I had any major revelation. I suppose I did concentrate more as I wasn’t multi-tasking by tweeting one major point while trying to keep up with the next one.

Appreciating Passion

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Thanks to Neil Young, music lovers will soon have a new way to listen to digital music. According to Rolling Stone:

Beginning next year, Pono will release a line of portable players, a music-download service and digital-to-analog conversion technology intended to present songs as they first sound during studio recording sessions.

Young writes about his passion for how music should sound in this excerpt from his new autobiography Waging Heavy Peace.

Making good music is not the only area of interest for Young. He is involved in an alternative fuel project called Lincvolt in which his 1959 Lincoln was converted to an electric car.

When he learned that Lionel Trains was struggling financially, he helped with support.  But he has also gone beyond just being a backer: he has developed a new sound system and, in order to share his love of trains with his severely disabled son, created special devices that allow him to operate the trains.

Each year, he sponsors a special benefit concert for The Bridge School, founded by his wife to serve children with severe speech and physical impairments.

Young’s passion is inspirational. He is not content to just make music; he wants to make the world a better place.

The Danger of Data: A Charter School Update

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Interesting follow up to yesterday’s post about charter schools.  The Commonwealth Foundation points to evidence that more charter schools made Adequate Yearly Progress than traditional schools. It turns out that this positive trend was manufactured by the state’s Secretary of  Education by turning charter schools into districts so they have a lower standard to meet for AYP.

Diane Ravitch covered the story on her blog this morning, concluding, “This is the intersection of politics and education, where the data are adjusted for political ends.”

With a simple definition change, failing schools were now successful schools.  Their traditional counterparts did not have that same luxury so they continue to struggle to meet the increasingly stringent demands of the law. I’m reminded of a Pennsylvania school superintendent I interviewed several years ago.  He assured me that he knew his school would never reach the 100% pass rate but that he and his faculty was going to continue to work hard to help all their student succeed as long as they were allowed to do so. The deck is stacked against these educators in so many ways that the most amazing part is that they keep working every day.