Expectations and Responsibility

I am a regular Facebook user, I must confess – not that using social media is a sin, but like any other avocation, it can be abused or over-used. It’s a way I can keep up to date with my children – either texting or Facebook is their medium of choice. It is also a great way to stay in touch with old friends who I do not get to see very often.

As you would expect, being a retired public-school administrator, many of those Facebook friends are educators. Recently, one of them posted an analogy in an attempt to trivialize the new mandate that student test scores be part of every teacher’s evaluation. Is a dentist responsible for the patient who comes to him or her with a mouthful of cavities? Well, of course not, but he certainly is held accountable for when that same person leaves his office – either with several expensive fillings or a new set of teeth. Either way, the cavities should be gone!

Many of those who oppose using test scores claim that they cannot be held responsible for students who arrive at the schoolhouse door with all kind of degrees of academic exposure and carrying varying levels of emotional baggage. This is the argument that really bothers me, because if one does not accept responsibility for educating all the students sitting in class, then we have given ourselves permission to fail with some of them. Alan Blankenstein and Pedro Noguera call this “the ‘normalization of failure, in which there is a belief that the problem is that ‘our’ students simply can’t achieve.”

In my assessment classes, I have my students discuss the expectation issues at Frankford Elementary School in Delaware, before Sharon Brittingham became principal, where the excuse du jour was that “you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.”  There is no wonder it was a low-performing school; you get what you expect! When Brittingham retired after eight years at the school, 100 percent of the students met state reading standards and 95 percent met the math standards.

As a neophyte high school principal, I had a building level planning team (BLPT) that took on the task of gathering data to create a school improvement plan. Because our school population was very heterogeneous, we decided to aggregate our teacher’s grades by gender. What we found was that boys in English were being graded significantly lower than girls. Very similar to the rationale for using test scores to evaluate teachers, the English department reacted with anger and accused the committee of using grades to evaluate them. They responded to the data by claiming they were not responsible for boys being poor readers and writers. The BLPT just wanted to start a discussion!

According to a recent study that looked at the value added (VA) of a teacher, or the impact a specific teacher had on test scores, the effect was significant. Good teachers produced higher test scores and over the long term, even had an impact on future earning potential. Yet even despite these findings, the authors of the study cautioned readers in its use as a rationale for teacher evaluation - that it may lead to “teaching to the test” or even worse, cheating.

A “big idea” of my assessment course is that no educational decision should be made on the basis of one test and neither should teacher evaluation. My vision of a fair evaluation would be one that uses value added assessment as a percentage, with student and parent surveys, as well as administrative observations based on a proven model. Eventually, assessment will be embedded in every classroom, computerized so students test out as they master material rather than wait until the “dreaded” two-hour testing day for a one-shot summative assessment.

But please don’t use the argument that we are not responsible for what comes through the classroom door. Let us control what we can and that’s the value a good teacher can add to achievement. You can’t control how the students come to you, but you can control how they leave! We can make chicken salad out of chicken shit!

Cat Killed the Curiosity

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reasons for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.” – Albert Einstein

Recently, I have found items in the NY Times that have stimulated me to write – that is a good thing, because I need to write. It makes me feel whole – much like singing was to Mr. Tanner in the Harry Chapin song.

In the Education Life section of this weekend’s paper, I happened upon an interview of David Helfan, a Columbia professor who is on leave and is now serving as the president of Quest University Canada. He mentions that while in New York, he went to speak to a group of 4^th graders about the universe and was amazed at their unbridled enthusiasm and curiosity. Of course, this was the Dalton School, not your average NYC public school. Regardless of the fact that these were pretty high-functioning students, it made him return to his Ivy League classroom and ask “what happened to you guys?” to his current students. The answers were what you would expect, highlighted by the chap who proclaimed, “I’m paying for a degree, not an education.”

So what happens between the time the infant starts exploring his surroundings, watched over by protective parents, to when that same child finishes high-school with a street-smart sense of navigating through the educational landscape. If we all agree that curiosity is the conception of any new discovery, then we in turn should wonder what kind of disease has infected our children to bring about this common malady. It reminds me of the warning issued by the 1983 report, A Nation at Risk. “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

If someone was messing with your child’s brain, one that Carl Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan claim is hardwired for discovery, would you want to know what causes this slow degeneration? Would you want to take action to stop it? Or maybe the process is so gradual, that most of us don’t notice. I call it the “when I was a kid” syndrome. If it was good enough for me, then it is good enough for my kid.

As a high-school administrator, I encountered a good deal of this process in action. None was worse than the time I observed a first-year biology teacher, someone who was a scientist and became a teacher. When the students discovered I was going to observe the class, they gave me a heads up to look out for one of their classmates who, they bragged, could sleep with his eyes open. They were right – I was truly impressed, especially when the teacher praised the class for doing a good job as the bell for passing rang. What transpired up to that point was what I believe is killing the curiosity.

The instructor stood at the head of the class straddling an overhead projector with her writing arm. For 45 minutes, she proceeded to write in outline form: phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species, of some semi-important biological kingdom. There was no break, few questions, and a deadening silence from the peanut gallery. When I questioned the teacher as to why she chose this method to teach the wonders of biology, she stated that she had to “cover” the material for the Regents exam.

But that was high school, where many teachers are plagued with the “teach as I was taught” pedagogical methodology. Now I am a college professor training a new wave of teachers. So it was with dismay that I sat and watched a pre-kindergarten lesson on sinking and floating where the teacher demonstrated the concept while the students sat in a circle watching. One child, who desperately wanted to touch, was restrained by the head teacher – he was trouble, I was told. So it begins, the deadening of curiosity.

In my elementary math and science methods course, one of the “big ideas” is that inquiry is the basis for teaching science. First pique their curiosity, let them ask questions (which you have to model for them first), provide them resources and then let them act like scientists. Most of my students agree that this sounds nice, but how can one do that and still teach the curriculum? How can one insure that what’s on the test has been covered in class? The resistance seems to be hardwired – it has replaced curiosity.

As a teacher of teachers, I have vowed to try to rewire this “cat killed the curiosity” mentality. I can’t do it alone, but I am going to try!

Honoring the Introvert

In the early seventies, when the country was emerging from burning bras and draft cards, I was a neophyte educator with a limited pedagogical toolkit. I was thrust into a teaching environment where the students enrolled were unmotivated, disenfranchised, and as anti-school as one could get. Intuitively, I knew that that I could not teach them all the same way - their reading levels ranged from pre-K to 12th grade even though most were of high-school age. I knew nothing of differentiating instruction, research-based interventions, or accommodating varying learning styles. I did the only kind of individualized instruction I knew; giving each student a folder and letting them proceed at their own speed. To some degree, I was differentiating their readiness level.

Since that time, I feel somewhat like that outdated Virginia Slims slogan, “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby!” As a professor of education, I now know how to differentiate instruction and that students arrive at the schoolhouse door with a plethora of learning preferences as well as readiness levels and interests. Therefore, I pay particular interest when I find an author who, in promoting a particular theory or concept, suggests how it could be used in education. Susan Cain has done that, to a degree, in her recent article in the New York Times Sunday Review section, entitled, “The Rise of the New Groupthink.”

Susan is a self-proclaimed introvert and she has written a book about that psychological trait and how it is a necessity for creative thinking. I believe it is a good thing that she is shining a spotlight on the need of some individuals to work alone and I strongly agree with her statement, “Solitude has long been associated with creativity and transcendence.” But her inference that all of us have to have solitude to be creative makes me a tad nervous.

I am also concerned about her team and group bashing, especially her comment regarding the visit she made to a fourth-grade classroom. She claims that students working in groups “were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question.” Her use of the word forbidden reminds me a bit of the way Alfie Kohn writes. The classroom she describes sounds rigid and controlling. If the sentence was rewritten to say “students were encouraged to ask their group mates before deferring to the teacher,” a much different picture is conjured up. Considering larger class size, especially in New York City Schools, this group processing strategy not only trains students to seek answers from each other, but it is an utter necessity for efficient use of managing learning time.

There are many benefits to using cooperative learning in the classroom, but it has to be done correctly or as Ms. Cain puts it, “People in groups tend to sit back and let others do the work.” Structuring positive interdependence takes thoughtful planning, but is the only way to avoid what one of my former students stated as his bias toward cooperative learning; “I do all the work and others get all the credit!”

The author also bashes brainstorming, a technique I use in my class to generate lists of information – students feed off of each other’s ideas and what I get is much more extensive than if I asked students to do it alone. So brainstorming has a purpose and its use has to be aligned with educational goals.

I commend Ms. Cain for bringing attention to the plight of the introvert or rather to the advantages of “some” people working alone in order to foster creativity. Yet, I know from years of learning styles research, that there are many sociological preferences. Some prefer working alone (that was me as a student), while others prefer working in pairs, a team, or with an authority figure. We need to honor all sociological preferences – working alone being just one.

Settling for Mediocrity

Hello former students and those others who may have found your way to my site. I have decided to attempt to enter the realm of blogging, because this seems to be a popular and familiar way for web-savvy individuals to stay on top of what's happening. I plan to offer commentary and advice in the field of education, specifically teaching and learning.

As you can tell from the title, I have decided to proselytize about a subject that is near and dear to me; the acceptance of mediocrity in the teaching field. I will begin with a story about myself as a young and pedagogically challenged teacher.

I began my career as a permanent substitute; someone who came into school everyday whether any one was absent or not. I spent a lot of time in the teacher's room and received an indoctrination into the profession that I would not recommend for prospective teachers. I was subject to the grumbling, complaining, and administrator-bashing that was common fare for faculty rooms in the early seventies. The core value seemed to be one of "take care of your self and avoid interactions with the administrative team - they have no clue what they are talking about."

My strength was in my ability to form relationships with kids - they liked me, because I obviously liked them - not a quality I learned in the faculty lounge. I soon became a full-time teacher in an alternative school for students who could not make it in a traditional school environment. My personal-relationship skills came in handy and my lack of pedagogical know-how was overshadowed by the depth of the emotional issues of the students. I was a mediocre teacher with strong student-skills - enough to get me by and dangerously believing I was a highly skilled teacher. I was mediocre and did not know it.

It was not until I became a high school administrator and had to evaluate teachers, that I realized I knew very little about teaching and learning. And after years spent observing high-school teachers and dealing with their disciplinary issues, I realized that many of them were mediocre at best. How did they get that way? Why were they allowed to remain that way?

The answers to these two questions are complex and do not have easy solutions to remedy the malady. However, when I became a teacher-trainer, I knew I had to take responsibility for doing what I could to eliminate mediocrity in schools. I could no longer pass along the blame to the institutions that train prospective teachers. I was that person.

I do not believe I have to take time to describe what mediocre teaching looks like. In my classes, I use a short article entitled "The Term Paper Assignment" where Marisa has to complete a writing assignment about which she has very little information of the teacher's expectations. In the discussions that ensue after reading the story of no feedback, zero exemplars, and a final grade that meant nothing, my students connect to the experience readily. They all knew what mediocrity meant, because they lived it at some point in their educational career. For the unfortunate ones, their tale was more the rule than the exception.

The answer to this teaching dilemma lies in the individual. The great teachers not only have good personal relationship building skills (which requires them to leave their ego at the schoolhouse door), but they are also hungry. I can tell when they are in my class. They cannot get enough of what I have to offer them. They are the reason I created this website - they keep in touch long after the class has ended asking me to share my resources.

One will never learn all there is to know about teaching and learning. I plan to keep at it until my wife has me cremated and spreads my ashes in our garden. (She feels that I have been so full of fertilizer all my life that I can't help but be beneficial to our vegetables). How will you stay sharp? Will you count on your school district? Your instructional coaches, if you are lucky to have one? I wouldn't!! Make a pledge to keep growing; a movement to end mediocrity in the classroom. Take Gandhi's advice - "You must be the change you want to see in the world."