I've been on a bit of a writing hiatus this month while I charge through the first month of school.  It's been a great year so far, and I'll be writing more about why in subsequent posts.  I first want to shout out two amazing posts by my TLN colleagues.

ONE. If you haven't checked out Jose Vilson's post, How Jay-Z Can Help Us Remix Education, run to Edweek to check it out.  As someone who has followed Jay-Z's music and career since his debut almub, Reasonable Doubt, I too have noticed that, wow, he's the only guy from that era still really in the hiphop game as a current artist.  What has he done to remain current, influential, and a leader in his field? Jose analyzes that, and points out that he has become more than "just" a rapper.  He's become successful and influential in several other arenas, and at the same time, he hasn't stopped being a rap artist.  Jose makes an apt comparison to the concept of the teacherpreneur that the co-authors of Teaching 2030 and I put forth in the book and other places. 

TWO. Education Nation came and went this past Sunday and I was busy grading, planning, and catching my breath.  I did not even tune in at all, partly because of how busy I was, and partly because of what a disappointment it had been for me last year.  I was there in person at Rockefeller Center last year and just left feeling used (blogged about it here and here).  This year, it sounds like NBC put on a more balanced program, with space for more thoughtful contributions by teachers and less dramatics.  But that's not the end of the story.  If you have not read Anthony Cody's post at Living in Dialogue analyzing the circular logic of Melinda Gates' statements about her organization's research, you absolutely must. 

Cody points out that, while Melinda Gates asserts that we need multiple measures of effective teaching, she goes on to explain that her research is looking at only those measures (forms of peer observation and student feedback, to name a few) that correlate to higher test scores at the end of the year.  In other words, what do teachers whose students get high test scores do, and how other than testing, can we measure this same outcome?  The problem is that with this model of "multiple measures" all roads are leading toward a single measure--high scores on a narrow and imperfect test, which may have little to do with success in the world students must navigate as adults. As Cody points out, the notion that standardized tests measure the skills that will matter for students in their adult lives remains unproven. Again, you must read his piece on this and decide for yourself whether we are moving in a good direction.

[image credits: Cody at blogs.edweek.org  Vilson at november-group.com]

It's now official.  Parents are asking me if they can buy their kids Kindles, Nooks, etc, so students can do their reading and their post-it note responses electronically!  On the one hand, I love it!  I am so happy this day is finally here.

Four years ago I discovered the Kindle.  I showed an Amazon promotional video to students and they were stunned.  I asked them to write on the questions, "How would school be different if every student had a Kindle?"  They wrote thougtfully about the effects this invention could have on student's organization and motivation. Although it was a plausible scenario, it presented as a futuristic dream.  It amazed me that year after year I could recycle the assignment and still, it was a pie-in-the-sky vision.  

Last year one or two students read books on their ipod touches. I found it easier to review post-its, because you can view all "notes" at once without having to flip through the pages searching for the notes. You can still refer back to the page the student is commenting on to better understand the student's thinking.  The students who did this were such voracious readers I didn't worry that they'd be on the internet. I passed by their tables a few times to check and never had an issue.   

Now that E-readers are becoming more available and commonplace, I couldn't be happier about it.  I do have to figure out what changes I will need to make to accommodate them in the classroom.  Clearly, E-readers that have internet and games on them such as Ipads and the new Nooks pose new opportunities for distractions.  There may also be organizational changes to the structures around reading I use, which I designed over the years with real-paper books.

Perhaps the changes will make new fertile territory for student writing--no longer a fanciful exercise, I could truly use students' advice on how to make E-readers work in my program!

[image credit: impactlab.net]

Cornel West published an interesting Op Ed in the NY Times called, "Dr. King Weeps From His Grave," provoked by the memorial to Martin Luther King which was originally scheduled to be dedicated today on the National Mall (now postponed due to Hurricane Irene).  West argues that, although the election of Barack Obama is a significant culminating event in the struggle that King embodied, our country is so far from the dream King really fought for that he would surely weep if he could see us now.  

Well worth the read, West outlines the four ills that King feared would send our country "to hell": racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism.  He posits that for the last 30 years, our country has become increasingly entangled in these ills. West suggests that we have taken King's dream far too lightly, celebrating only that which we find convenient.  He concludes,  

"King’s response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a re-evaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens."

When I read these sentences, I can't help thinking about our public education system. Decisions are made and change is enacted in a top down manner. Our hierarchical system holds policy makers, text book and testing companies, and wealthy philanthropists at the highest level. Down the ladder we have school leaders, then teachers...and finally students are on the lowest rung, where they have the least voice and control over their education.  

I'd like to see this flipped on its head. The most important and valuable transactions of our education system happen for students in the classroom, under the leadership of teachers, and in partnership with parents. The individuals directly involved in these transactions should be envisioned at the top of the chart--representing the big idea of education. Supporting these moments daily are school leaders. Further removed from the big idea are district, state and national policy makers and other interested characters who play limited supporting roles in the education of children.  

My point is not to dismiss non-teachers who care about education. But I am saying that the people we currently hold at the ground level--students, teachers, and by association, parents--are the ones who matter most. And our democracy depends on their ability to engage, think for themselves and thrive. Actually listening to these individuals and allowing them some decision-making power, however, is probably nothing short of revolutionary. 

Even flattenning or flipping power dynamics at the classroom level is simpler to talk about than do. Giving students decision-making power in their learning is something I'm very interested in and have been working on a long time, but it goes against the grain of much that we traditionally hold dear in education.  

Consider these daily actions of the teacher:

• setting objectives
• setting the agenda
• creating materials
• deciding on assessment criteria
• deciding on the assessment format
• deciding how much time tasks should take
• deciding who can speak and when
• deciding what is fair & weilding rewards and consequences

These actions are generally considered sound teaching practices (although I'm against most rewards and punishments).  However, if we want to change the power dynamics in classrooms and the experiences students have in their schooling, we have to consider transfering some of our power (which is mostly decision-making power) to students. Some teachers do this, but I think the majority of teachers feel a mix of skepticism and fear about it.

Education policy makers and other players that are removed from the classroom probably feel the same skepticism and fear when they think of granting teachers real decision-making power. It's time to examine these fears and consider the results of the hierarchical structures in education and throughout our country.  We have a democracy where the public is so disengaged that at least 50% of citizens don't even bother to exercise their one obvious tool of power: their vote.  Close to the same number drop out of high school.  

Much is going wrong in our great country, and King called it decades ago.  Cornel West says we will need to put our lives on the line to turn the ship around. Is there anything else that could lead to the dramatic change we need?  And could anyone agree on anything long enough to actually see a "battle" through?   

It sounds like the complaint of a jaded adult: Kids these days are narrow-minded and just not as creative as they used to be...Experts say creativity is innate, so it can't really be lost. But it needs to be nurtured.

via today.msnbc.msn.com

I remember when I was entering my first teaching position, seven years ago, a colleague mentioned that "kids today lack creativity." I totally disagreed and thought she was selling the students short. I did, in fact, find the students to be quite creative--I also made it a priority to build a classroom that fosters creativity and critical thinking and paid the state test little to no mind until the week before.

This article reports that scores on several tests of creativity have been decreasing, while SAT scores have been increasing. The writers conclude that the focus on testing throughout kids' schooling, which teaches kids that there is only one right answer, is suppressing creativity and divergent thinking in Americans.

I'm realizing once again, but in a new light, that it's not enough for teachers to simply strive to be great teachers inside our classrooms.  In fact, I doubt it's even possible anymore in many teaching contexts. There is deep and widespread misunderstanding of what our work is about and what it entails.  This misunderstanding, confounded by other, separate, factors and interests--such as privatization, a failing economy, a widening gap between wealthy and poor--is leading to policies that do not support great teaching and healthy youth. 

My mentor from Bank Street College passed me a recent article called "Targeting Teachers," by Stanford Professor David Labaree, published in Dissent Magazine, which was very helpful to me in breaking down the roots, nature and some of the effects of the misunderstanding of teaching.  Labaree first puts in historical context the current drive to find a "simple and statistically sound" measure for effective teaching (value added measures of test scores being the predominant answer to the quest right now).  While he says it's perfectly understandable, he does believe it is justifiable. Labaree writes,

"The problem with this approach is that teaching is an extraordinarily complex and demanding form of professional practice whose quality is impossible to capture accurately in a simple metric. The push to develop such a metric threatens to reduce good teaching--and good education--to whatever produces higher scores on a standardized test. As a result, the value-added measure of teacher quality may end up promoting both the wrong kind of teaching and the wrong kind of schooling."

He then explains the core characteristics of teaching are that make it so difficult to measure in a way that is rarely heard anywhere.  For that reason, I'm doing a bit of summarizing here, though the entire article is really worth reading.

First, he talks about the fact that students make choices in the classroom--the choice to learn or not to learn.  No one can force a child to do anything.  The teacher's job includes figuring out what motivates large numbers of individuals with their own interests, experiences, thoughts, feelings, and senses every day.  

Then he points out that students are compelled to go to school by various outside pressures, instead of choosing to go.  And if they do choose to go, many do not choose to go based on "a burning desire to learn in the formal classroom."  Teachers have weak disciplinary tools at their disposal and are hugely outnumbered by students.  So, he explains, "Teachers need to develop a teaching persona to manage the relationship with their students." He describes this persona as being "highly personalized and professionally essential" in how it looks and what it needs to accomplish.  He correctly notes that we want kids to look forward to seeing us, also to fear getting on our bad side and our "teacher look", and find our enthusiasm for our subject infectious.

Finally, Labaree argues, "Teachers need to carry out their practices under conditions of high uncertainty."  There are so many different ways to teach that meet basic professional standards, and there are many different outcomes we care about--short term, long terms, fact-based, idea-based, intellectual, interpersonal, creative, physical, etc.  Also uncertain is who is the client for teachers--students, parents, society, or the school board who signs the teacher's contract?  He adds,

"As a society, we are not of one mind about what individual and social ends we want schools to produce. If we can't agree on ends, how can we determine if a teacher was effective or not? Effective at what? One goal running through the history of American schooling is to create good citizens. Another is to create productive workers. A third is to provide individuals with social opportunity. These goals lead schools in conflicting directions, and teachers can't accomplish them all with the same methods."

The article goes on to explain that while teaching is very difficult, it can look easy to the public. Some of his reasons are that it is seen as "an extension of child-rearing" which doesn't require professional training. Also, everyone has been through school, so thinks they know about teaching.  The knowledge and skills K-12 teachers teach are skills all competent adults have, so "the impression of ordinariness is hard for teaching to shake...As a group teachers are too visible to be inscutible and too numerous to be elite...They don;t have the distance, obscurity, and selectivity of the high-status professiona...Everyone is an expert on education, except the educator."  

I could really quote this entire article.  This weekend, the teachers and education advocates who participated in the Save Our Schools March in Washington D.C. responded in an organized way to the policies which grossly misunderstand our students' needs and the nature of our work.  The art installations are particularly telling--one that showed 50 boxes, each with a doll inside it, and covered in multiple choice bubble sheets, and another that showed tombstones of creativity, imagination, and critical thinking, and other capacities that are being suppressed by an across-the-board emphasis on a bottom line of increasing students' scores on standardized, high stakes tests.  

I'm left wondering, can our work be measured at all?  How much of a need is there really to measure teacher effectiveness?  If it is a necessity (or even just a curiosity) why are non-educators crafting these measures?  The level of understanding the public and/or politicians have of the nature and complexity of teaching must increase. OR it could become irrelevant whether those outside the profession truly understand our work if teachers were actually in charge of our own profession.