Reading For Treasure: Winter Break Reading

Reading for Treasure is my list of articles (and other readings) that are worth your attention. Click here for an introduction.

I started creating lists of articles because what I really wanted to do was either to email them to my teacher friends or post them on social media – but I didn’t want to be that retired guy who is always sending me articles I don’t have time (or desire) to read. I often do a short description of the article, but today I am trying only providing a quotation to whet your appetite. Let me know if that matters at all. Perhaps all we need is the title? Nonetheless, these are six good education-related articles worth your attention. 

“Trust the Teachers” by David W. Blight, The Atlantic 
 “What American teachers most need is autonomy, community respect, the right to some creativity within their craft, time to read, and, perhaps above all, support for their intellectual lives. Most would not mind a pay raise.” 

“When parents scream at school board meetings, how can I teach their children?” by Jennifer Wolfe, CNN
“My students know that to move forward toward understanding and engagement, we have to be willing to talk about the hard stuff….Our country deserves people willing to have difficult conversations and solve problems together. We need to turn toward each other, not away from each other into spaces where uncomfortable discussions are treated like a crime. Without civil discourse, we risk tumbling toward civil unrest.” 

“Parents slam state board’s proposal to triple number of annual standardized assessments for students: ‘We must keep testing at the absolute minimum’” by Karen Ann Cullotta, Chicago Tribune
“A state plan that could triple the number of federally mandated tests Illinois students must take in the coming years is being slammed by some educators and parents who say after the recent loss of classroom learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, the last thing kids need is more testing.” 

“Voice, Chat and DM: Remote Learning Tools That Make Sense In Person” by Caroline Smith, KQED Mindshift
"But Cohn discovered advantages to her students typing some of their assignments during virtual education. Watching her students’ writing appear on their respective Google Docs in real time meant she could provide simultaneous feedback. The process of editing on the computer — liberated from the messiness of revising on a piece of paper — made the process less burdensome and more enjoyable for her students."

“College Admissions Are Still Unfair” by James S. Murphy, The Atlantic
“There is also an important component of racial justice in dropping legacy preferences. The practice overwhelmingly benefits white applicants and harms first-generation, immigrant, low-income, and nonwhite students. A 2018 lawsuit against Harvard revealed that 77 percent of legacy admits were white, while just 5 percent were Black and 7 percent were Hispanic. At Notre Dame, the class of 2024 had five times as many legacies as Black students.” 

“School Stumbles Upon Chalkboards From 1917 During Renovation, Perfectly Preserved Lessons Provide Rare Look Into Past” Dusty Old Thing
“Construction workers were removing chalkboards– taking them down to replace them with new Smart Boards– when they stumbled upon some older chalkboards underneath. Luckily, they stopped to examine the chalkboards before destroying them, and they quickly realized that the boards were from 1917… Nearly 100 years ago! Stuck underneath layers of other boards, these antique chalkboards had been preserved with the chalk still on them, providing an amazing view of life in a mid-20th-century classroom.”

I am currently rereading The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler  

How to Get Your Children Into the Right Colleges

It is never too early to start the college process. As we all know, the college your children attend will directly create their future success in every way. The right school is important economically, socially, academically, and this is true for the child as well. In fact, if you haven’t started thinking about how to ensure that your children get into a really good school, a school that will be the envy of your friends and the members of your social group, a school that you will be proud to put on your bumper and sweatshirt, you are basically screwed. Too bad, your child is going to some cut-rate Acme college with all the other schlubs.

But that is NOT you! You are in control and on top of this critical and crucial process and all you need is a roadmap.

We know the things you have already done: you moved to a community with really good schools. You started to drill your children even in utero. You went through numbers, letters, taught your children multiple languages and begin computer programing with baby blocks. You spoke to your children in Sanskrit, Latin, and Esperanto.

You enrolled your child in sports as soon as they could walk. Of course, you chose individual sports because one can’t really count on those other parents to support your children. In their free time, your children should take humanitarian trips to exotic locations, start businesses, run political campaigns, and make guest appearances on national talk shows.

A unique musical instrument is a must! Everyone has caught on about the oboe and bassoon. Your children have mastered the theremin and didgeridoo!

You read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal to your children daily. They are political experts ready to lead their debate teams, congressional clubs, and PACs.

Side note here: if your children resist all these activities, don’t like the drills and skills, you have a loser. Sorry. Be strong and make them what they need to be. Don’t take no for answer. Children can be made in their parents’ image – or even better. Even if your children remind you of yourself at their age, there is still hope.

It is never too early to start to work on the ACT, SAT, and SOB. A test a day keeps bad colleges away, I always say. The more familiar the children are with the tests, the closer you are to that perfect score. Have them start taking the test in the second grade. This will qualify them for gifted opportunities galore!

The gifted track in school is key! Do whatever it takes to make sure your child has a gifted label. Sometimes this may mean visits to doctors and other professionals for evidence. Check with your neighbors for the professionals near you who dispense the diagnoses you desire. If the gifted track is not working, then your child needs special accommodations. It is one or the other, of course! Those expensive tests will come in handy again because extended time is great on college entrance exams!

Homework is a family affair. Work with your children to make sure they understand how you do their homework. Simply doing their homework does not ensure good school performance. They must carefully observe and be able to explain what you have done for them.

Summer is not a break! Computer, writing, architecture, science, and countless other academic camps and gifted summer programs are a must! Make sure they are at a college that everyone will recognize. This begins the relationship. They will have gone to the right school even before they finish the eighth grade!

You will need professional help. A college consultant should be engaged no later than sixth grade. Pick someone who brags that they can get their clients admitted to any school! This expert will give you a break by taking over all the uninteresting form filling and writing and hoops that you must jump through. You don’t have time for all that and your children would just do it wrong or not at all. Pay this specialist to do it for you! They fill out the applications, write the essays, and hound the children. You can continue your wonderful parenting!

If your kids say they want a say in the process, remind them that this far too important for children. They just don’t understand. Someday, they will!

Sign up for every honors class your school offers. Make sure your kids are taking AP, IB, or FU as soon as possible. Send the teachers of these classes generous gifts, and train in your student in teacher handling techniques such as complimentary strategies, kissing up, and “I want to be just like you” tactics. Remind them to tell each teacher that “you changed my life” at least once a semester.

Since your hired gun is doing the heavy lifting, you can sit back and enjoy the constant college conversations. Remember, when you tell people where your children attend, the response should always be awe and envy. Fourteen to twenty-five applications are the absolute minimum. Don’t worry about costs! The worth of a good school is priceless! Admittance is its own reward.

By the end of these eighteen years, your children will have become academic, athletic, and artistic superstars who will achieve and earn more than your peers could imagine. Eventually, they will thank you for all your hard work. Once you are done, you can start a business helping younger parents navigate this perilous journey.

Don’t you wish your parents had done this?

Don’t Move Final Exams – Remove Them

When I asked my son how his first final exam went, he shook his head and told me, “I am done with it. I don’t remember anything.” While I hope this is not entirely true; he will have the second semester of that class to deal with, it is true that the trivia on final exams leaves kids’ brains as rapidly as they leave the room.

I just finished reading Most Likely To Succeed, which makes the argument that our content-based educational system is obsolete. The authors, Tony Wager and Ted Dintersmith, describe an experiment run by the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, “When students returned after summer vacation, they were asked to retake the final exam they had completed three months earlier. Actually, it was a simplified version of the final, as the faculty eliminated any detailed questions that students shouldn’t be expected to remember a few months later. The results were stunning. When students took the final in June, the average grade was a B+ (87%); when the simplified test was taken in September, the average grade was an F (58%)” (Wagner and Dintersmith).

If the material in finals often doesn’t stick with students and is often irrelevant to anything they will do in the future, why do we make them memorize this minutia and regurgitate it back?

As I greeted students in the hall after my first final this year, and I asked them how they felt about their first test, many told me that their teacher had already graded it! The finals session had ended less than twenty minutes ago. It would take me a week to finish grading all the writing my students did! If a teacher doesn’t have to think to grade the test, how important can it be?  While there are ways to make multiple-choice tests meaningful, students are studying facts, words, and other bits of information that they could easily look up on the supercomputers in their pockets!

Many teachers finish the quarter with large unit or chapter tests the week before finals and then test on the same content on the final exam. Why test twice? Why beat up a kid with a ton of material on Thursday only to test again for even higher stakes the following Tuesday? How much learning happened in those four days? Did they go over the first test in the meantime? It is double jeopardy.

Many teachers are still using a percentage based grading system which makes the cost of making mistakes high. In our school, almost all finals count for twenty percent of the semester grade. In my experience as a parent and a teacher, finals don’t help students’ grades at all. Either the final simply strengthens what they were already earning, or it hurts their grades – and for kids on the grade bubble, finals frequently push their grades down. One test! One big long test (that will not stick with them) is what makes the difference!  

Should one seventy-five-minute test be equal to four weeks of class experience? Should it count as much? Can we put what is really important, relevant, and meaningful into it and then grade it in five minutes?

My finals are skill based. My freshmen read a story and then write about it. They demonstrate the skills we have been working on all year long. Although I call it a “final,” it doesn’t count for any more than any other assignment. I use a standard based evaluation system in which students’ grades are based on their ability to demonstrate specific skills. I look at their most recent work in each skill area to determine their proficiency and to guide what we need to study together.

Recently, my department chair asked what we thought about moving finals before winter break. Many schools are doing this so kids do not have homework over the vacation. My response was that moving finals solves nothing. It gives the appearance that we are addressing issues of student stress and meaningful assessment, but we are in fact shuffling shells.

We need to change what we teach and how we teach it. We need to make assessment (and school) meaningful and relevant. Finals are an archaic and problematic practice. Simply stating that colleges do them and we must prepare our students is inadequate justification. If colleges are doing something that is not pedagogically sound, that doesn’t mean we should follow. High schools and colleges need to get out of the nineteenth century. The well-being of our children depends on it!  

Math's Need for Speed

Professor Jo Boaler, of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, says, “Mathematics education in the United States is broken.” I can’t get her recent Atlantic Magazine article, “The Stereotypes That Distort How Americans Teach and Learn Math” off my mind. It has been sitting in an open tab on my browser since it was published in mid-November. 

In the article, Professor Boaler goes on to write that math classes have focused too much on “procedure execution” instead of embracing a far broader curriculum including making connections, working visually, and problem-solving. Boaler even challenges the idea that there is such a thing as a “math person.”

However, the part of the article that resonates the most for me is at the end of the article:

“Another problem addressed by the Common Core is the American idea that those who are good at math are those who are fast. Speed is revered in math classes across the U.S., and students as young as five years old are given timed tests—even though these have been shown to create math anxiety in young children. Parents use flash cards and other devices to promote speed, not knowing that they are probably damaging their children’s mathematical development. At the same time mathematicians point out that speed in math is irrelevant. One of the world’s top mathematicians, Laurent Schwartz, reflected in his memoir that he was made to feel unintelligent in school because he was the slowest math thinker in his class. But he points out that what is important in mathematics “is to deeply understand things and their relations to each other. This is where intelligence lies. The fact of being quick or slow isn't really relevant.” It is fortunate for Schwartz, and all of us, that he did not grow up in the speed- and test-driven classrooms of the last decade that have successfully dissuaded any child that thinks deeply or slowly from pursuing mathematics or even thinking of themselves as capable. " 

"The U.S. does not need fast procedure executors anymore. We need people who are confident with mathematics, who can develop mathematical models and predictions, and who can justify, reason, communicate, and problem solve. We need a broad and diverse range of people who are powerful mathematical thinkers and who have not been held back by stereotypical thinking and teaching. Common Core mathematics, imperfect though it may be, can help us reach those goals.”

Why must content-driven high school courses force students to demonstrate what they know quickly? Why do teachers insist on writing tests that challenge students’ ability to complete them? How does a child’s ability to move quickly demonstrate her academic skills?

In all fairness, math is not alone in subjecting students to speed testing. Many disciplines do it. However, it seems to accompany those subject areas that want kids to memorize facts, formulas, or procedures. From a Bloom perspective, it is always the lower level thinking skills of knowing, remembering, and applying that are the focus of these kinds of “objective” tests. What about evaluating, synthesizing, creating, or analyzing? Yeah, those don’t work as well on multiple choice Scantron tests. 

Do you work well when you are forced to move quickly? Do you do your best when the amount of work you have to do will not fit in the amount of time you have to do it? Want to be judged on the tasks you had to rush through? Why make kids do that?

When my children have struggled on tests, it is often not about the material or their preparation that has been the issue. It has been about finishing the test! Is that one of the targets of the course: be able to regurgitate at warp speed?

When a test is so long and difficult that kids must rush to finish, it a set up for failure.  Is it a realistic or reasonable assessment of their learning? What would we lose and what would we gain if students could take as much time as they needed to complete these tests and even had time to double check their responses?

We’d get a much more accurate measure of what they have learned!

Stop Beating Up The Kids!

Students don’t have a choice. They must be in school, and they are required to do what their teachers tell them or face the consequences. Educators have a choice.  Why do so many choose ineffective and outdated strategies that feel like torture? It is no wonder that kids see the rigor of school like rigor mortis: stiff and dead!

Let’s start with the way that many students receive their precious learning: lecture. While I like a good monologue, I usually can’t repeat more than a few lines even after I’ve just heard it. When so many better methods are available to communicate content to kids, why would a teacher drone and on and on? In high schools and colleges alike, there are countless instructors putting kids to sleep, reading their slides, reiterating the textbook, and missing the point. Educational research is clear: the lecture is the least effective way to teach kids. In small amounts, here and there, it can supplement other strategies, but it should never (yes, I wrote never) be the primary method of instruction. Lecture is the first refuge of the weak teacher who has no other teaching tools. It is the favorite of the self-indulgent teacher, who likes to perform and entertain rather than teach, and it is the sure fire way to kill student motivation and engagement. Shut up and teach!

An NPR story looked at how colleges from Maryland to Harvard are finding that the lecture is not effective even in their science classes. The Arizona University study cited in NPR’s story found that, “The traditional lecture-based physics course produces little or no change in most students' fundamental understanding of how the physical world works.”  The study’s author went on to state that, "The classes only seem to be really working for about 10 percent of the students…[a]nd I maintain, I think all the evidence indicates, that these 10 percent are the students that would learn it even without the instructor. They essentially learn it on their own.” So, lecturers, you are preaching to the choir.

And while we are discussing the lecture, why are many teachers obsessed with filling course with massive amounts of material? The lecture is long because the teacher has stuffed it with too much content. One has to wonder if whoever “designed” the curriculum could make choices, understood the subject well enough to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, or was far more enamored with the subject matter than with the idea of teaching it. In an age when almost any factual question can be researched in seconds using a device smaller than a piece of toast, is it so important to list them all on your PowerPoint slide, professor?

Once the kids have been subjected to archaic recitations of long lists of facts, they are then bludgeoned with tests. These tests are frequently so long that they are not only assessing students’ ability to regurgitate the material, but also if they can do so at breakneck speed. Tests at both high school and college level seem designed to trick and confuse even the most prepared students. Most of us don’t do our best work when we are rushing, yet countless students are evaluated this way.

Alfie Kohn, the renowned author of Punished By Rewards, noted in an article in the Washington Post that tests “are typically more about measuring the number of facts that have been crammed into students’ short-term memories than they are about assessing understanding.” Kohn goes on to note, “That’s why it’s so disconcerting to find teachers who are proud of their student-centered approach to instruction, who embrace active and interactive forms of learning, yet continue to rely on tests as the primary, or even sole, form of assessment in their classrooms.”

As I have noted in the past, grades are also used as a way to beat up students. Students who learn and demonstrate their learning throughout the term will get an averaged grade that penalizes them for learning because they were not proficient at the very beginning of class. Shouldn’t education change us? Shouldn’t we grow from the class? Shouldn’t the grade reflect that?

Assistant Professor Paul Thomas of Furman University sends his students an apology letter at the end of the term. He regrets having to give them a final grade, saying, “In my quest to honor the essential dignity of each one of you, then, I have fought the good fight against what I feel is deeply dehumanizing—grading.”

As the semester comes to a close, I examine each student and look at my record of his or her learning. I, too, wish that I did not have to reduce our wonderful process to a single letter. It devalues and diminishes the educational growth that has happened in our classroom. The best I can do is find a way to make the grade an aggregate of students’ proficiency in the skills we have practiced all the semester. How would you like eighteen weeks of your works to be reduced to a single letter? What does that say about what you have accomplished?

Good teachers work hard to foster their students’ learning. Good teachers carefully craft their lessons and assessments to facilitate student success. Lectures, overwhelming content, and dehumanizing and punitive grading are the antithesis of good education. Once upon a time, a long time ago, they were the only tools we had.  The old quotation (attributed to many) says that, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Educators, stop nailing your students. It is time to use brave new tools!

Ten Things I've Learned From Teaching in My Children's School

I missed going to open house this year. I needed to play teacher that evening. I may have the “inside track” on all sorts of things, but being a teacher in the same school as my child has its benefits and challenges. The benefits outweigh the challenges, and I have only had a few difficult or uncomfortable situations.

Sharing school with my children has made me a better teacher. When I have staff members’ children, I try to have a chat with them during the first month of school. I ask them to be candid with me. I tell them that I am a big boy, and if they have feedback, questions, or observations, they should not hesitate to tell me. They have a unique window into my classroom, and I want to know what they see. I don’t treat their children any differently than any other student. However, the truth is, when their children go home and talk about class, their parents have a far more complex understanding of what is going on. Hearing that view would make me a better teacher for all students.

Here a list of ten things I have learned from being on both sides of the desk

1. Be predictable. It creates enormous anxiety if students cannot figure out teacher’s behavior or choices. Sending homework to students via email at the last minute is nerve racking. Not knowing what will happen in class day to day creates anxiety that interferes with learning.

2. It is not a sign of weakness to bend or change. If you are tempted to say to a child, “If I do this for you, I have to do it for everyone,” then DO IT FOR EVERYONE! That may be a lot of work, but such flexibility is critical. Rigid adherence to rules for their own sake is unfair to everyone.

3. Homework needs to be meaningful. Why are we giving it? What does it teach the kids? Do they know this? Do you go over this in class? Can they see its value? Can you?

4. Homework needs to be reasonable. I have been the biggest offender in this regard. I can imagine some of my former students reading this and rolling their eyes. Check with kids and ask them how long the homework takes. If the homework is meaningful, this issue is not as problematic as when it is busy work. I have been struggling with homework load for a very long time. Students must practice skills outside of class to achieve mastery. Different kids need different amounts and types of practice. Finding the balance is worth the struggle.

5. Whenever children are on the grade bubble, give them the benefit of the doubt and give them the higher grade. This is my rule. I don’t do this for minor quarter grades or progress checks. However, at semester time, no one -  I repeat NO ONE – will miss a grade by a small amount. What is the price of NOT doing this? Does this somehow damage a teacher’s credibility or authority? Are we that certain of our evaluations and systems? The reward here is great. The cost is zero.

6. Take the temperature of your class regularly. One of my children came home and said, “I go to this class to feel stupid.” The teacher was not a bad teacher, but he clearly did not know how students were feeling and all he had to do was ask.

7. How much should speed matter? Unless we are engaged in an athletic endeavor, how important is it that students get things done quickly? My children have encountered with frightening regularity tests that are too long. Over and over, it feels like we are not testing skills or knowledge, but the child’s ability to perform at warp speed. Is that what we want? How important is racing through the assessment?

8. Teachers must rethink their use of points and averaged grading. What is it really for? Here are my thoughts on why point based averaged grades are not a good choice.  Look here for more information on grading.

9. Be kind with finals. Help kids with finals – even older ones. Give them information about finals early to reduce anxiety and facilitate planning. We sometimes get confused about what is done for our benefit and what is done for theirs. Giving finals early gives us more time to grade and more free time at the end of the semester. It makes their end of the quarter a stressful nightmare.

10. Minimize lecture. Some kids love lecture because it asks so little of them. Some kids like lecture because it allows them to go to sleep. Most kids will tell you that a more active classroom is not only more engaging, but more productive. The research is clear and indisputable: it is time to replace lecture with countless other ways to deliver content. Reading, research, video, experiences, and countless other options are far better approaches. Like salt in the soup, a little lecture here and there is fine. A diet of all lectures is deadly.

Do I do all of this all of the time? Of course! Well, of course, I do it most of the time. And even after nearly thirty years, I am still experimenting, and I still make mistakes. The key is that teachers must be open to feedback and then reflect, revise, rework, and try again – just like the kids!

You Need To Know About the Big Tests Your Kids Will Take Next Year

Starting next school year, students in many states, including Illinois, are going to have a new standardized achievement test: the PARCC test. PARCC stands for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. This test will be aligned to the Common Core standards in reading, writing and mathematics. Students in grades three to eleven will take these tests. There will also be resources for kindergarten, first and second grades.

The PARCC tests are designed to go far beyond traditional multiple choice testing. Most students will take the test online. Students will be asked to write essays and narratives, create charts and fill in graphic organizers. They will read traditional fiction and non-fiction, but also work with audio and video and other forms of media. PARCC is designed to be a more authentic and skill oriented test.

To make this happen, these tests will take more time. In addition, the PARCC test will be given twice. One test is “performance based” and the second one is focused on “end of the year” components. For third graders, each test will take about eight hours. For fourth and fifth graders, these tests will take about nine hours. Middle and high school tests will take more than nine hours. Schools will have two sets of two to four week windows when they can administer these tests.

As you can imagine, this is going to take some very creative scheduling in many schools. Schools where students have their own devices will have to make certain that their networks can support that much use. Schools with shared computers will have to create ways to move all their kids through their labs. Schools without computer resources can take the tests on paper. Of course, regular classes will be rescheduled to make room for the testing.

These tests are on track to be given for the first time next spring, during the 2014-2015 school year. You can read about more about PARCC at their website. Here is a handy FAQ page that answers many questions.

Of course, PARCC is being delivered through two major educational publishers. Here is an article that explores the costs of PARCC in both time and money. This writer calculates that, for the state of Maryland, PARCC will cost $33,761,216. Pearson and Educational Testing Service are the two companies that have been contracted to provide this test.

Given the challenges of a test like this, some educators are concerned that we have not addressed issues like the increased test length, availability and reliability of technology, ramifications for special needs students, training for teachers, and the impact of the costs. A superintendent in New Jersey wrote this op-ed piece asking that the PARCC test implementation be delayed.

There is also the question of reading on a screen. As recent research has shown, reading on a computer screen is very different from reading on paper. The PARCC tests provide students with multiple texts on the screen. This article from the Washington Post examines the effects of online reading and compares online to conventional reading.

Currently, in Illinois, the Prairie State Achievement Test is a graduation requirement. Students must take it. The PARCC test will replace the PSAE, but it is not yet known how student scores on the PARCC will be used. Educators are concerned about how students will approach the exam, especially after several hours of testing.

It is critically important that parents educate themselves about these new tests in order to be better prepared to help their students, and work with their schools when the tests roll out next spring.

Introducing the iTeacher!

All the problems with education are solved! No need to worry about poor achievement, bad teachers, or lack of funding. The iTeacher has come to our rescue! The iTeacher is a fully automated teachbot. It will do everything a human teacher could do – and more!

Do your teachers drone on and on and on? Are their lectures long and boring? Do students skip the lecture and just read the PowerPoint slides? Are they filling class time with meaningless busy work? Replace your nineteenth century teacher with a twenty-first century educator: the iTeacher!

Why pay expensive teachers who lecture or fill time with worksheets and readings during class? The iTeacher has the entire Internet at its “fingertips” instantly. This teacher can answer every question flawlessly. The curious student need look no further than the iTeacher.

The iTeacher’s lectures are more informative, entertaining, and effective because it has access to not just Kahn Academy, but every recorded teacher lesson online! Students will flip when iTeacher stands before the class. Record your best teachers, fire them, and use iTeacher instead!

And iTeacher’s PowerPoints are perfect! Students can link their laptops, Chromebooks, iPads, smart phones, smart watches, tablets, notebooks, or even their desktops at home to iTeacher and get it all!

iTeacher can evaluate student progress flawlessly and constantly! No one has every made objective tests like iTeacher! How many terms does the student know? Can the student recall all the details from last week’s lectures? iTeacher knows! And iTeacher can then create additional tests for those who need to repeat material or move ahead. Everyday can be test day with iTeacher – and iTeacher can use the resources of College Board, ACT, SAT, and AP to prepare students for more tests! iTeacher is a test-o-matic!

No more waiting for feedback! iTeacher corrects everything instantly and returns it to students before they even finish! Tired of tracking down your child’s teacher? iTeacher returns emails, phone calls, tweets, messages, texts, or high frequency transmissions within twenty-seven seconds!

But what about class management? Can an iTeacher really handle a group of tenth graders? Of course! iTeacher keeps kids busy constantly! iTeacher can generate over two hundred activities in less than five minutes. Students will not have time to goof off!

But if they do, iTeacher has a full array of behavior modification applications! iTeacher can fill out behavioral referrals more completely and properly than any human teacher. iTeacher is even equipped with a low power tazer – just in case! And iTeacher has read all students’ cumulative folders, IEPs, and 504 plans! So if a student needs to be reminded why he flunked fourth grade, or how his father’s rehab failure might be his fault, the iTeacher can put him in his place with personalized and targeted verbal redirection.

Why struggle to align your curriculum to state standards and the Common Core? Everything the iTeacher does is labeled with the appropriate target, goal, objective, skill, and Department of Education skew number! Think of how well your students will score on those all important achievement tests!

iTeacher can work with students of all abilities and backgrounds. iTeacher speaks every language! iTeacher will keep all the support staff up to date. It can interface with iCaseManager, iCounselor, iDean, and iSchoolPsych!

Tired of lectures, worksheets, and scantron tests? Frustrated by lack of feedback and responsiveness? Fed up with teachers who just test and average? Sick of teachers who can’t handle kids?  Wait no more!

It is time for the iTeacher! Your students deserve it!

The Grading Game

I have memorized all of my students’ grades. That’s right. I didn’t need to copy them from the school system on to my spreadsheet. I knew them. I double-checked, of course, but I was correct.

I know my students’ grades because I worked on them for hours. I reviewed each student’s progress for the last five months. I went back to their assignments and my notes. My family thinks I perseverate over these grades. They may be correct.

I am struggling with grades and grading – again. This year I have fully committed to grading by standards. My students’ grades are determined by their proficiency in eleven specific targets. Each assignment focuses on one or more targets and is recorded in my grade book, not by assignment, but by the skill.

So what should be so difficult about assigning an end of the semester grade? A student is proficient in some skills, inconsistently proficient in some, and still developing in others. Great. We know which skills this student needs to focus on next semester.

But is that a B? Is it an A? What is it?

Then there are things that are not easily measurable: passion, engagement, or even growth. Grades must be justified, so most teachers base them solely on things we count, and then we only see those things and something important silently slips away.

Did I mention that I hate grades? I think grades shift focus away from real learning and redirect it to a game of collecting a kind of college currency. Grades plant poison in the teacher-student relationship. I wish we could just look at students’ skill levels and leave it at that. But that is not my world.

I hate grading so much that I’ll write a blog post to avoid doing it. I really should be finishing those grades right now.

I translated my scores into numbers that reflect their degrees of mastery. A 4 is a student who could teach the skill, a 3 is a student who is proficient, a 2 is a student who is developing proficiency, and a 1 is a student who doesn’t demonstrate the skill adequately.

We work on these skills in class. We practice, and they get feedback. We look at models and respond to each other’s work. We conference and revise and review and discuss and do all sorts of activities.

So why can’t I just give them a grade?

I made a chart: a student getting an A should have primarily 4s, 3s and 2.5s. A student getting a B should have 2.5s and an occasional 3 or 2. My son looked at the chart and detected its flaw: “you are weighting all the targets the same,” he said.

We have spent more time on reading. Should it count for more? How much more? We only had one unit using research skills. Some skills are interrelated: writing a paragraph claim is a step toward writing a thesis. And how much should “work completion,” “class participation,” and the other “effort” skills weigh?

I played math games, and tried to add the numbers together. I came up weighted and unweighted scores. I gave some targets a multiplier.

I ended up using everything. I looked at all the systems and scrutinized each student’s grade individually. I stayed up late several nights in a row checking and rechecking.

There has to be a better way. I have resolved to ask my students to help me find it. If you have it, please share. Yes, simply averaging their grades and coming up with an 88% would be easier –but it would be wrong (look here, here, and here if you want to know my thoughts on averaged grades).

I want my students’ grades to accurately and honestly reflect their skills and learning. I want their grades to be fair. And I want to get some sleep!

Strike Out For Reform

A teacher strike is different than most other types of union job actions. Teachers are fundamentally different than most other unionized groups. The teacher strike in Chicago was as much for the benefit of the children as it was for the teachers themselves, maybe more so. And while the breakdown in communication and relations that causes a strike is never a good thing, the fact that teachers have come together to advocate for students and schools is critical to the health of our educational system.

No one goes into teaching for the money. While there may be a misguided few who think that children will worship them, prestige isn’t a perk of the job either. And don’t get me wrong, I love my summer break, but the hours and work the rest of the year more than balance out the time; most teachers are ten-month employees anyway. People don’t become teachers for summer vacation.

Given the state of education and the mistrust of teachers right now, there must be something really wrong with a person who wants to get in the middle of this mess – or that person is really dedicated. Why are we beating up the few who are willing to spend so much time, education, and effort to work with children? Why have they become the national scapegoat? And if we continue down this path, will others be foolish enough to become educators?

In the City of Chicago, class sizes vary between large and way too many. Most schools are not air-conditioned. Teachers are fighting poverty, violence, and a host of social ills. How can kids learn in those conditions?  

And then we are going to evaluate teachers and students based on standardized tests. We started using these types of high stake tests way back in the 1980s after the publication of A Nation at Risk. We have spent more than thirty years testing children and beating up teachers about the scores. And look at the wonderful changes such a policy has brought!

If you were ill and your doctor gave you medicine that didn’t help, would you take more of it? If your doctor kept increasing your dose and you felt even worse, what would you conclude? Of course! The medicine is aggravating the problem and we need a different approach. Why can’t policymakers think that way?

Do we build an entire reform system around the few teachers who are below par? What do we do if mass testing is not the answer? Our politicians have failed us. Charter schools and corporate education have created as many problems as they have solved. That is why teacher unions may be our best chance at real educational reform. That is why the Chicago teacher strike was so important.

As a teacher in the only non-union high school district in Illinois, I am not likely to strike. I work at one of the highest achieving and most affluent schools in the country. So I can sit back and let the politicians do what they want and it won’t affect my children or my school. Right?

Wrong. The way we treat teachers is wrong. The way we are using testing is wrong. The way we are approaching educational reform is more than flawed, it has become as much a problem as any of the social ills plaguing Chicago schools.

I salute the unions and hope that this strike will help turn our educational ship on a better heading. If not, education in the United States will continue to develop into a two-tiered system: one for those who can afford better and one for those lost in the tests. And who is going to want to teach or learn in the second system?