Tag: education

14 Jan 21 – I’ll Let You Know When We Get to the Opportunity

It has been suggested by several folx in education – most working outside the classroom – that we may be missing an opportunity to dramatically re-think, re-imagine, re-design, re-create learning, schools, and public education during the pandemic. We are not missing this opportunity, and hearing people say this makes me want to box their ears.

In a conversation with some teachers a couple days ago, one commented prepping for yet another return of students felt like she was in her fourth September this school year. Imagine, had I suggested in that moment that she was missing the opportunity to dramatically re-think her teaching practice.

It would not only have been tone deaf, it would have been uncaring.

We will get to the opportunity phase of all this, but we are not there yet. Right now, we are still in the survival, compassion, and empathy stage of this. We are in the place where everyone who is going to work is showing up with the knowledge they could unwittingly become infected by those in their care and pass that contagion on to those they love.

In one of the most deeply human professions, people are still required to be physically distanced and masked when interacting.

My attempt to re-imagine public education right now would start and end with me imagining it without the fear of catching a plague.

It does seem, as we settle into a very strange sense of routine, that we have gotten past the limitations of only solving those problems directly in front of us. Room is opening up for us to begin to think about the After Times. These will be the times of re-imagining.

I would posit, before we get there, we can carve out time for pausing and reflecting. Not time for planning, but time for asking as faculties and school communities, what we are learning and what’s working or not. Our schools and school systems have been in literal survival mode for nearly a year. One would hope school and district leaders are starting to hold space in meetings to return to listening to the people in the room.

Learning cannot happen unless people feel a sense of pyschosocial and physical safety. With all that has transpired this past year, we must build those senses of safety before we can hope to re-build learning and teaching.

The opportunity now is to listen. If we miss that opportunity now, when we arrive at the opportunity to re-create, we will miss it as well.

7 Jan 21 – Have Them Write

Whatever other tools and resources and lesson plans we are using right now, we must have students write. Before class conversations. Before pretending we can just move back to in-person learning or beyond watching white supremacists parade the Confederate flag through the U.S. Capitol, have them write.

There will be time for biology, calculus, Spanish II, world history and the lot. Yes, we’ve already lost so much time, so it won’t make much difference to give 10 minutes to providing space for students to pause and put whatever they’ve been holding down on paper.

And, while they’re writing, let’s write with them. Use the time to put down some pieces of the load we’ve been carrying.

It doesn’t need to be graded, shared, discussed, or edited. It needs to be written. Each word put to the page is a brick removed from the walls we and our students have built to keep the world out and ourselves safe this past year.

We are foolish to think they or we will be able to do school until we’ve laid down what we’re carrying.

And, yes, we can have morning meetings, advisory, crew, and whatever other support mechanisms we’ve built. They will be a salve as we return to communities of learning and teaching. Even then, have them write first. Have them take the time to unjumble their thoughts and emotions in a way that doesn’t require sharing with anyone.

And then, tomorrow, have them write some more.

1 Jan 21 – The Year Ahead

I’ve been silent here. I’ve been silent a lot places this last year. Everyone has, right?

So, when I thought about whether I wanted to commit to a post a day here again in the way I have in years past, I was hesitant. Then, I recognized that hesitancy as a need to commit. To be sure, the pandemic has meant silence in a lot of places I’m used to using my voice.

Parenting, though, has been the bigger silencer. My mom has asked me a few times if I’m journaling. It’s the tool she’s used as a parent to help her check in and see how she feels. At the beginning, I didn’t quite understand it. Now, more than a year in, I understand how single dad-ing can mean I get to the end of the day and find I’m carrying the feelings of an 11 and 9 yo, but might not know what I’m feeling, thinking, doing.

And, thus, I’m here, typing, again. Committing to finding out where my voice is and how it sounds as an educator and single parent.

I’m doing it here because I’m thirsty for conversation, community, and gut checks. Inspired by the near-constant uncertainty of parenting, I’m more doubtful than before that anyone’s on the other side. It’s all new territory.

Let’s go.

Dispatch from Pakistan #1 – Hitting the Ground

empty tea cupI arrived in Lahore, Pakistan 3:30 AM local time April 13. I’ll be here through April 23. I’m trying to capture my thoughts and experiences in this series of posts. They will be imperfect and fail to convey all the complex truths of this place. Think of this only as a container for my thoughts.

Initial perceptions. When I first traveled to South Africa and Kenya to work with teachers through Education Beyond Borders, all I had as a comparison were neighborhoods evoked by what I saw in those countries. Such is my similar experience here in Pakistan.

An unfair comparison, to be sure, my mind looks for what is similar to other places I’ve been in the world and then tries to puzzle those comparisons together to make sense of the foreign.

It doesn’t do the place justice, and it’s all I have. The more I’m here, the more I can reject the false comparisons in favor of the truths I’ve see here on the ground.

I’m staying with six teachers here to attend the weeklong workshop. Two are from Malaysian schools in the Beaconhouse network. Four are from schools and district offices in Karachi.

All of them are extremely dedicated to doing right by children. They are studying technology. They are enthused about project-based learning, they have been reading up on inquiry-based learning. It’s the same as you would expect from any group of teachers trying to get the mix right in American schools.

And yet it’s a bit different. When we talk about the issue of security in Karachi, the tone changes slightly. The people setting off bombs, the people kidnapping, the people who make fences and checkpoints necessary. “These people are not representative of Pakistan,” everyone I meet here is quick to point out.

From what I’m seeing (and it’s myopically limited based on only 10 days in-country), this is a country much different from what we see on the news. It turns out, only the bad news makes it out of Pakistan to the American media. No one has reported on the peacefulness I’ve seen here. Nor are they interested in the eggs, toast and jam on the table each morning when I come down to breakfast.

These are the pieces of ordinary daily life. The comings and goings of a people that aren’t worthy of report in papers and on the news networks.

It’s a mix of this. It’s the ordinary with the extraordinary. Daily life lives alongside a subtle shadow of actual insecurity. As a visitor, I’m trying to get my mind around it.

Leading from the Back

This piece from Ed Batista has me thinking about the kinds if leaders we need in the classroom. Batista’s point is well taken. Those who rise to leadership roles in organizations where their former contributions were aligned to separate skill sets n-ed to put those skills to the side to contemplate their role as leaders in the organization. They don’t need to be the craftsmen of the shop any longer. They are crafting new things.

Something similar can be said in the classroom. When I was teaching English to middle and high school students, my role shifted. I was no longer primarily to be learning about literature, writing, and reading the way I had been in K-12 or during my time in university.

Instead, I needed to understand what it took to help my students surpass me in learning about words and their uses and powers. My job, like the leaders xxx describes, was to step off the shop floor and start thinking about setting a vision for the space toward which all my students could work and in which they could all see their success.

This is not to say I stopped reading, writing, speaking and listening. I did those things, but they were not my primary roles.

In the math classroom, math teachers should still be curious about math, but the goal should be to make way for their students to surpass them as students of mathematics while they, the teachers, learn the new leadership skills key to teaching and fostering high-quality learning environments.

It might be easy to read the above as a suggestion that teachers relinquish the content areas they claim as specialties. This is not my intent anymore than I would suggest organizational leaders outside of education begin to neglect whatever domains in which their organizations specialize.

We must remain historians, musicians, scientists, etc. We must focus, though, on making way for our students to be better learners of any and all of those subjects than we are.

Image via Leo Reynolds

142/365 Teachers Know What They’re Doing, and We Shouldn’t be Surprised

EdNews Colorado has this piece up today reporting on the results of the pilot of Colorado’s new teacher evaluation system. For those outside the state, CO’s legislature passed Senate Bill 10-191 which structured evaluations around professional practices for 50% and the other half based on student scores.

We could go ’round and ’round on the weight of scores. (And, I’m happy to do that.) What struck me about the article was a tone I’m sure we’ll be seeing as this new initiative and others like it across the country come online.

“More than nine out of 10 of Colorado teachers evaluated during a pilot test of the state’s educator effectiveness were rated proficient or higher on the system’s five-step rating scale,” the reporter Todd Engdahl writes.

What follows is a general tone of incredulity that this could be true. It includes a not so subtle subtext of “surely more of our teachers have to be crappier than that.”

This is worrisome.

Statistically, it’s perhaps improbable that the pilot study is fine-tuned enough to determine what the final product will show.

This, though, is more a conversation of expectations. We should be expecting our teachers to be proficient. We should expect their professional practices to show our teachers are qualified to be working with our children.

Each time we imply differently, we do harm to education. We lower the status of teaching. We send a message of lowered expectations to teachers in the classroom. And, we say to those considering becoming teachers that the bar is low and they probably couldn’t do any worse than what is expected of those already in the classroom.

Such a tone also keeps the focus on the wrong elements of the work of our schools. Instead of altering assessment so that it “reveals” more teachers to lack proficiency in their practices, perhaps we could agree that the majority of teachers have the proficiency we should expect and start looking to other factors – health care, poverty, hunger – as contributing to lower-than-hoped-for student achievement.

I’m not surprised by findings that show teachers to be capable of doing their jobs. Sadly, I’m not surprised by those who are dedicated to believing the opposite to be true.

129/365 Poverty is a Thing and We’re Getting Worse at Fighting it

From a recent Bill Moyers post:

Most people in poverty do not receive cash assistance. In 1996, for every 100 families with children in poverty, there were 68 families who accessed cash assistance. In 2011, for every 100 families with children in poverty, 27 accessed cash assistance.

With the Farm Bill’s faltering in Congress putting food assistance for children in poverty in a dangerous limbo, maybe it’s time we agreed poverty as the most important issue in education. Anyone who thinks differently can remove themselves from the line of helpful voices.

119/365 Remembering the Third Way

In a conversation pre-Morsi resignation/soft military coup, I mentioned my frustration with the perceived dichotomy of the situation – military takeover or Morsi’s continued abuse of powers as seen by many Egyptian citizens.

“It’s as if the world has forgotten to look for the third way,” I said, and it is a thought that has been hanging around my brain ever since.

It was augmented when a friend shared a link to this NYT story on Oregon’s agreement to pilot a new way of funding higher education. It is a third way.

When I suggest the third way, I don’t mean to limit things to three possibilities, but to work against the idea that, when two options have presented themselves, we stop looking for others.

It’s akin to the lessons I tried to help my eighth grade students learn when they were starting to write persuasive essays. After deciding to write in response to a given prompt, the students would talk out their thinking regarding their stances on the issue. “Well,” someone would say, “I think I’m for it,” while another student across the room would announce that she was against whatever topic was up for debate. Then, they decided they were ready to start their planning of their argument.

I stood back.

A few minutes passed.

“Mr. Chase,” said one voice or another, “I’m trying to plan my argument, and I keep coming up with reasons why this is a good idea, but I’m arguing that it’s not.” The student would look over to me chagrinned, sure that the only option would be to switch sides, since the evidence was mounting over there.

“What if you acknowledged that the idea isn’t all bad?” I’d ask, “And, make the argument that your side is the better of the two.”

Usually with some coaxing, the student would agree to attempt this line of reasoning.

The best moments, though, were the students who sat confounded for several minutes, notes scratched all over their papers. “I keep thinking about it,” they would say, “and I don’t think either of these sides is the right way to go.”

“Do you have a better idea,” I’d ask.

“I think so.”

“Then, write that.”

These are the students I wish we were looking to more as models of the debates we wage over the important issues of our time. They are the ones who give themselves the space to lean back in their chairs, consider the information in front of them and decide they’d like to try to find a path different than those laid out for them by others.

Robert Frost may have seen two roads diverging in the woods, and that’s largely the basis for much of our contemporary policy decisions. What’s necessary though, is re-writing Frost and choosing the road not yet seen.

That will make all the difference.

Learning Grounds Ep. 15: Darren Hudgins and Bud Hunt Talk Learning Design Challenges

In this episode of Zac talks with Darren Hudgins and Bud Hunt about design challenges for learning with a focus on teacher development. The guys also talk risk aversion in education and where it might start.

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61/365 Investigating Ch. 13 of ‘Losing Ground’ by Charles A. Murray

This week’s reading takes us back to Losing Ground by Charles Murray. While the opening chapters bordered on the ridiculous in their cherry picking of facts, avoidance of sources and generally fallacious arguments, these final chapters were particularly frustrating. Surely conservative thinkers have a stronger argument to make than Murray’s. I’ve decided to think of this series of posts as “Reading, so you don’t have to.”

Graph 1It is unlikely one will find a graph axis label that gives the appearance of saying much while, in reality, saying so little as the vertical label Murray includes on page 168, “Odds of Going Unarrested for 5 Crimes.” It acts as a suitable metaphor for the contents of the chapter.

Graph 2

The second graph on page 169 presents readers with an even more confusing story. Within the text, Murray points to the span between 1961 and 1969 as particularly unsettling because the number of incarcerated citizens fell so sharply. He fails to mention or find any problem with the soaring incarceration rates beginning in the early 70s.[1]

Murray implies throughout the opening of this chapter that police stopped arresting criminals and that crime rates were skyrocketing. In looking closely, his only mention of actual crime rates comes not from national statistics, but within Cook County, IL. Even then, Murray is making mention not of an actual increase in number of crimes, but concerns himself with juvenile crime (in this one county) “entering its highest rate of increase” (p.170). His conclusion that no reason existed not to commit delinquent acts in the 1970s is a strange one. Murray needed only look at his own graph to see the youth he mentions standing on the street corner had a fairly likely chance of knowing someone who had been arrested and imprisoned for committing a crime.

When turning his attention to education, Murray continues his focus on punishments and sanctions. His description of the frustrations inherent in working in schools with students from varied backgrounds was not incorrect. Students with little support from home present special challenges for learning. These are challenges that often require new approaches to teaching. Murray, once again assumes an external locus of control. This is not surprising, considering his application of such a theory to people living in poverty, those considering criminal activity, and Harold & Phyllis’ decision of whether or not to go on welfare. Children, like the adults Murray considers, are to be considered as driven solely by external forces.

Suspensions and expulsions, Murray reasons were key tools in helping students learn. Those who found themselves suspended had made their choice, and rejected the opportunity to learn. In defending these tools, Murray again ignores race and shows no signs of awareness of or interest in the school-to-prison pipeline[2] that was developing in America at the time. Further, in his dismissal of African American efforts to shift schooling for their children, Murray shows an ahistorical understanding of the goals and work of those schools as we discussed in class.

Murray’s main argument about education (that the inclusion of disinterested students who would otherwise have found themselves suspended or expelled destroyed the learning of interested students and lowered the standards of teachers) comes not surprisingly without evidence to support his claims. More frustrating is Murray’s lack of interest in changing what was going on inside of schools rather than kicking students out of them. He appears to be making a “business as usual” argument that education would have been fine if we could have kept the bad kids out. Again, this shows a lack of consideration of the ways in which the world was changing during the 60s and 70s. Murray would have done well to consider the idea that the misalignment of the world within the classroom with the world outside the classroom might have had more to do with a lack of student interest than the removal of the “bad” students.

One final note about this chapter, on page 177, Murray writes, “For blacks, the uncertainty and distance of the incentive have been compounded by discrimination that makes it harder to get and hold jobs.” Here, the emotional baggage of race in America moves to support his purpose and is picked up again. It raises the question of whether Murray ignored race in the previous chapter because it could muddy the clarity he found in his argument about welfare incentives.

[1] This is to say nothing of the abhorrent design of the graph.

[2] As documented by the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana – http://jjpl.org/suspensions-matter/