Month: April 2011

Things I Know 95 of 365: Aaron has more followers than I do

Aaron has 2,489 followers on twitter.

When he started following me March 13, it felt a little strange. He was only following 65 people at the time. Now he’s up to 69.

Normally, I’d have a strange tinge of embellished pride if someone so discerning started following the brain lint I put out on twitter.

This was a different matter.

Aaron is one of my students. In the eleventh grade, he has over 1,000 more followers than I and has a little more than 1300 fewer tweets.

The whole thing made clear to me the fact that social structure and hierarchy are subjective in online environments.

Add to that the possible number of empty accounts I’m following or who are following me and then apply that same reasoning to Aaron’s account and the perceived prestige connected to higher or lower numbers in the physical world crumbles.

My human drive is to make meaning, but the schema I’m equipped with doesn’t apply.

All these tweets in and I’m still trying to decide what makes someone worthwhile on twitter. I’d like to think it’s more than virtual speed dating, but I’m not sure.

Beyond all of this, I was curious about Aaron’s relationship to twitter. Easily, I could have written him off as another teen statistic engrossed in his social media like all the kids these days. But I’ve sat through that argument and read that study.

Today, I sat down with Aaron to talk about twitter. Our conversation is posted below.
Aaron and Twitter by MrChase

If you have any follow-up questions, feel free to post them in the comments, and I’ll make sure Aaron sees them. Then again, you could just hit him up on twitter – like 2,500 other people.

Classy: A student’s vignette

As I wrote before, my G11 students are writing their autobiographies of their reading lives as vignettes. Semaj turned in the rough draft below and said I could share it. It’s a lovely thing.

My First Love

I can remember the first time I fell in love. His cover was smooth and smelled like the words had been freshly printed onto the page, the bind was crisp and hadn’t been broken. “The Pinballs” was neatly and evenly typed across the cover in big yellow letters. I knew I had to get used to the image of those words for that would be all I would see for the next couple of days. I learned to love his flaws, the way he randomly stopped starting a new chapter breaking the flow of our connection, or the way he told me just enough to leave me hanging but not enough to give me what I wanted in that moment. But I loved him. I stayed up with him every night and held him close to me everywhere I went.

We were inseparable – me and him.

I stayed up past curfew for him, hiding my face under the blankets using the light from my phone to illuminate up the words on the page. We were only together for 3 days. Three days is all it took for him to steal my heart. Three days is all it took for me to fall in love with him. When our time together had come to an end, I shed my first and last tear in honor of him and the characters we had met and had become a part of over those 3 days.

I will never forget my first love. I will never love another the way I loved him, because he was my first. He made me realize, although I may never love another the way I loved him, there are other out there worth loving . I will always love my first book.

Things I Know 94 of 365: The difference between inside and outside voice

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

– Hermann Hesse

The school psychologist sitting two stools down from me at the coffee shop making calls to teachers and parents about students on her case load wasn’t the part that upset me the most this afternoon.

It should have been.

The moment she started talking about the student she evaluated earlier today and the outcomes, that moment should have been the moment that took the cake.

If not that, then when she started talking to a colleague who happened by and asked, “The level of incompetence is nowhere near as bad as it is in Philadelphia, right?” or commented, “I was there an hour and there was no instruction. It was just an hour of poor management.”

That public destruction of our profession should have been my lowest moment.

It wasn’t.

As I assumed was a common core standard in elementary school before such things became sheik,   a difference exists between inside and outside voices.

It’s what we talk about to people we know, but no better than to speak of to anyone who’s not us.

I learned the lesson well as my mother scrubbed shampoo into my hair for the eighth time when I was 7 and got head lice the day before my aunt and uncle’s wedding.

“Zac, tomorrow, you tell NO ONE about this. Do you understand me?”

I understood perfectly.

The teachers at the end of the counter never reached proficiency.

At first, all I knew was that they were teachers by the few words of jargon I caught as I attempted to get my work done.

It was more than that.

They were grading – aloud.

One teacher was reading her students’ answers to her friend with a voice that at once belied her consternation that they were getting things wrong while mocking them as well.

“I let them draw pictures here of their answers and then had them write to explain,” she said.

Then, they marveled at the poor grammar, syntax and quality of the responses.

I can understand frustration. I know we’re at the long home stretch of the school year in a district where March featured not a single day off.

I get all that, and I know the tired that can come when you feel as though you’ve taught a concept in every conceivable way to no avail. I do.

Still, we are teachers. We are entrusted with our students’ and their learning. We would have taken an oath to do our best by our students, but there was too much to get done, so we work by an unspoken oath.

In a time when the profession is fighting for credence from the society we serve, openly mocking those in our charge who are most in need does nothing good, nothing nurturing and nothing to show the true potential of the classroom.

When we should be building sanctuaries, these two were building cliches.

And then the conversation turned.

They started to plan their next careers – their logical progressions.

“I kinda want to run a school?”

She didn’t mean it as a question, but she said it as one.

I know the answer.

Things I Know 94 of 365: My reading has an epicenter

The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

– Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

Yesterday, I wrote about the first vignette I wrote in a serious to make up my reading autobiography. I’m completing my G11 students’ benchmark project along with them. I went back to the vignette today and revised and edited. It’s close to where I want it. I’m sure it will be made stronger in the soft places when we take it to writer’s workshop. For today, though, it is what I know.

Where I Started

The chair’s gone.

I’m not sure when it left us. My grandparents have never had a garage sale and my uncles were all well beyond the age when they lived in college housing collecting furniture when the chair departed.

All I know is it’s gone.

My last memories are of the shiny brown leather beginning to crack on the recliner’s arms.

Decidedly thrifty, but never one to appear the pauper, my grandmother must have decided the advent of these cracks heralded the chair’s demise.

It was a recliner stationed in the corner of the living room or family room (I’ve never learned the difference).

Though I was read to frequently and in many places as a child, this chair was the geographic center of my literacy.

Before bedtime, my grandfather would say, “How about a book, Zac ole pal?”

Footy-pajamaed, I would crawl into his lap as we read about the elephant in the bathtub, the poky little puppy or the monster at the end of the book.

I knew my grandmother would be reading to me again once I got to bed, but that didn’t stop me for pleading for “one more book.”

Grampa knew Gramma would be reading too, but acquiesced, “Alright, bud. I suppose we have time for one more.”

“Oh, Ted,” Gramma would say in that tone that let me know Grampa and I had gotten away with something.

In the echo of memory, propped up by family myth, I remember when my Grampa asked if I was following along with him as he read.

Though not new (books, like the Lincoln Logs and Light Bright were hand-me-downs from my dad and uncles), the book we were reading was one new to the chair’s regular rotation.

“Are you reading along?” he said.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Well, what’s that word?” he asked.

I read it.

“Well, I’ll be. Jean! Jean, Zachary’s reading.”

Perennially drying her hands with a dish towel, my grandmother entered the room.

“Good for him.”

I had no knowledge that that moment would signal the end of the chair and Grampa and me reading before bedtime.

Sometimes, I’ll be visiting and my Grampa will be reading with my cousins or my little brother. In those moments, I want to warn them to stay quiet, not to let on that they’re following along.

But that would be mean.

Instead, I leave them to the elephant in the bathtub, the poky little puppy and the monster at the end of the book.

Things I Know 93 of 365: I should do as I ask students to do

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.

– Oscar Wilde

I laid across a bean bag chair in my room today trying to conjure up a memory.

My G11 students are writing reader autobiographies as their quarter three benchmark projects. The assignment calls for them to write from 7 to 15 vignettes inspired by moments of their readerly lives.

As it’s been a while since I’ve written a vignette, I committed to completing the assignment as well.

Thus, I was sprawled on a red pleather bean bag at the end of the day.

My first vignette was about the brown leather recliner in my grandparents’ living room. It was the chair where my grandfather would read to me before bedtime when I was little.

I tried to pull that memory to me through the years and carefully mold it back together on the screen. I attempted to make it something someone would want to read.

As I was typing, one of my students, Luna, was in the multi-colored bean bag opposite me. Having difficulty framing her first vignette as a single literary photograph because it took place over a stretch of time, Luna kept asking me to look over what she was writing.

Her vignette detailed a span of her middle school years and I offered suggestions and feedback a few times as she was composing.

After each piece of feedback, I returned to my writing, attempting to convey the image of footy-pajamaed me learning to sight read as my grampa read “just one more book.”

Finally, toward the end of the class period, I got it where I wanted it. Well, I got it as close to where I wanted it as I could hope of a first draft.

I had that feeling of one who has created – that need to share.

And so, I turned to Luna and handed her my laptop. I didn’t say anything or preface her reading with any comments. I handed her my laptop and asked her to read.

I’ve had students read pieces of my writing before. I’ve shared journal entries. This was different. I’d written a memory in all its first-draft roughness and turned and shared it with my student.

If I had to guess, I’d say the vulnerability in that moment is close to the vulnerability my students feel each time they submit a piece of work in class. For that reason, I’m glad I’ll be writing my remaining vignettes and submitting them to my students.

I should be doing more of that. While grading, planning and the rest of being a teacher often prevents me from completing every assignment I ask of my students, crafting these moments and embracing the vulnerability of sharing them with my students is a stiff reminder of the openness I ask of my students each time I ask them to write or share in class. It’s a reminder I’ll use next time I’m tempted to breeze through a stack of assignments for grading.

If I’m going to ask them to share their ideas with me, I need to remember (and experience) all the rawness inherent in that sharing.

Things I Know 92 of 365: Bringing equity to schools will take more than an Act of Congress

A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy.

– George Soros

In my first year of teaching, my friend and colleague Darlene explained to a class of eighth grade students the difference between something being equal and something being fair. “Equal means we all get the same thing,” she said, “Fair means we all get what we need.”

Writing for the Huffington Post Thursday, Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA) announced he would be introducing the Fiscal Fairness Act and the Student Bill of Rights Act to the House as a means of taking steps to provide more equitable educations to the nation’s children.

Perhaps because of that lesson from Darlene, The Fiscal Fairness Act (FFA) caught my attention.

According to Fatah, the FFA would strengthen Title I by “requiring districts (1) spend at least as much per student from state and local funds in Title I schools as non-Title I schools before receiving federal dollars, (2) count and report all school-level expenditures, including actual teacher salaries, and (3) report per-pupil expenditures and make the information available to educators, parents and community members.

According to the good folks at Ed Week, the FFA also limits the school-to-school difference in state and local funding from 10 to 3 percent.

This sounds great – on the surface.

Yes, ensuring state and local resources are being distributed equitably to all schools within a district is ensures greater access to resources for historically disadvantaged populations.

It also ensures the schools now receiving greater resources will see those resources diminished and then be asked to do as well or better by students while working with fewer resources.

Do more with less.

The spirit of Fattah’s bill, offered as an amendment to the reauthorization to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), is well-meaning. In practice, I worry it will mean robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I’m not criticizing Fattah. State and local governments should have equalized spending in Title I and non-Title I schools when the ESEA was signed. Instead, many governments looked for loopholes and made Title I a way to continue spending where they were already spending and use Title I to fill in the gaps – poorly.

It was a risky decision going against the spirit of the law if following the letter.

Fattah’s proposed amendments also bring teacher pay into the equation. Historically, resource-poor schools have had high student-to-teacher ratios and failed to attract higher paid veteran teachers. The FFA would require districts to take teacher salary (approximately four-fifths of a school’s budget) into consideration when accounting for how state and local dollars are spent. Currently, salaries aren’t part of the equation when districts report how they’re allocating funds among Title I and non-Title I schools.

The best consequence of this idea would be that districts incentivize the move of veteran teachers from resource-rich to resource-poor schools within a district. This, combined with the hiring of more teachers in resource-poor schools to reduce class sizes would result in more experienced teachers and smaller student-to-teacher ratios in historically disadvantaged schools.

In considering an idea, we must also ask its worst consequence.

It is highly doubtful state and local governments will allocate funding equivalent to what is necessary to fund the teachers that would bring all districts receiving Title I funds into compliance.

In order to equalize state and local spending, districts would more likely begin to terminate the employment of the least experienced teachers within resource-rich schools. This would increase student-to-teacher ratios to levels comparable to resource-poor schools.

Not only that, it would prevent collaboration between experienced veteran teachers who have spent years amassing wisdom in the classroom and younger teachers who have often been most recently trained in new teaching practices as well.

Fattah’s proposed bill (along with Sens. Michael Bennett (D-CO) and Thad Cochran’s (R-MS) companion bill in the Senate) must be measured so as not to become an unfolding mandate that weakens educational quality.

American education requires a system that brings equity to funding and improves the education and learning of all students. The Fiscal Fairness Act may make things equal, but it doesn’t make them fair.

Sidenote: Published with Diana Laufenberg in the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy

I suppose the title of the post says it all. Diana Laufenberg and I wrote column published in the latest issue of the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy about the inherent squishiness of digital literacy. Here’s the abstract:

The thing about digital literacy is its inherent squishiness. Educators argue whether the tool or the purpose matters most. They debate whether something being “electronic” constitutes “digital.” Does it need a screen? A keyboard? More than that, teachers must decide what it means to read and write digitally and how to assess those skills. Just as teachers were working to conclusively define literacy, digital literacy arrived on the scene and the discussion started again. In fact, the most solid of ground to be found in the debate surrounding digital literacy is the agreement that, whatever it is, it is important to the success of our students. Even then, not everyone is in agreement.

Abstract from Chase, Z., & Laufenberg, D. (2011, April). Embracing the Squishiness of Digital Literacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(7), 535–537. doi: 10.1598/JAAL.54.7.7

Things I Know 91 of 365: I should be simpler

We have spent too much money we don’t have on stuff we don’t truly value and it has left us a huge mess. Call it the three-legged stool of American-style consumerism: debt, dissatisfaction, and debris.

– Dave Bruno

I’ve been thinking a lot about less lately.

Three weeks ago, I was in Barnes & Noble waiting for a friend when I saw Dave Bruno’s book The 100 Things Challenge. Briefly scanning the book, it struck me as interesting. Thinking that buying the physical object felt contrary to the spirit of the Challenge as I understood it from the book cover, I pulled my Kindle out of my bag and ordered the book on Amazon.

The short version is that Bruno spent the better part of a year pairing down his possessions to under 100 things and then spent a full year never owning more than 100 things.

I struggled as I read the book. Over and over I sneaked into the back room of my brain to ask myself if buying the book meant I too needed to undertake such a challenge. That felt like the case. Why spend the time a reflective how-to manual on minimalist living if I had no intent of living minimally myself?

It started to feel like literary voyeurism.

Because I have a basement that houses a portion of my possessions, I know I own more than I should.

While I consider myself globally aware of what Bruno calls American-style consumerism, that awareness doesn’t always stop me from consuming, only feeling guilty later.

A quick scan of my latest bank statement shows the purchase of only two tangible non-food items in the last month – a pack of ink pens and a new set of headphones for running. So, while I might not be down for the buying of stuff lately, I need only look around my house to realize the too much of the stuff I have.

I love the T-Shirts of threadless.com. When the good folks a the Chicago-based company send me an e-mail alerting me to their latest sale, I often find myself browsing their inventory and confirming my purchase unthinkingly. No one should own as many T-Shirts as I.

That gets me to the other idea with which I wrestled whilst reading.

This is all an intensely First World Problem.

I’m angry and ashamed that I live a life that prompted me to buy a book (even electronically) about how to own less stuff.

I’m out of town this weekend. Throughout the next few weeks, via donations, eBay and craigslist, I’ll be minimizing.

I’ll be asking myself what I need, what I don’t and what I didn’t remember I had.

I’ll also be reading more about minimalism. It’s an idea that makes sense to me. I’m not sure whether this makes sense, but having less stuff makes me think I’ll have more to give.

Who wants a T-Shirt?

Things I Know 90 of 365: My brain is fried

I am thrilled yet overwhelmed.

– Nancy Green

I know two things at the moment:

1. My brain is fried.

2. This is where I want to be.

For number two, I don’t mean the couch in the house my cousin shares with 4 other undergrads in Boston. It smells like stale cigarette smoke and post-modern angst.

No, #2 refers to the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Until today, the only time I’d spent on Harvard’s campus was the admissions meeting I scheduled early last August when applying was a nascent idea.

Today was the open house for a chunk of those newly admitted to Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

For an indication of the day’s activities, see #1 above.

I should have known what I was in for as soon as Maria Curcio, Director of Admissions, listed the demographic info of the accepted class:

  • 44 states represented (28 present today)
  • 72 percent female (do the math on the male)
  • 29 percent students of color (as they self identified)
  • 4.3 years of professional work experience

That last one stuck with me for a while.

By the end of this school year, I’ll have 8 years of classroom experience.

I still remember the deal I made with myself before I started my first year of teaching, “You wen’t to school for this, you might as well give it a year and then decide what you want to do.”

Throughout the day, when I’d introduce myself and we’d exchange biographical pleasantries, whoever I met would respond with some variation of “whoa” when I told them how long I’ve been in the classroom.

I can’t decide if I feel wizened or just plain old.

For now, I’m going with wizened.

Speaking of, I’m wiser now as to my intended sequence of study for next year. It’s amazing how that becomes clear when you’ve got someone to explain the requirements to you.

The Ed Policy and Management program requires 8 courses. Interestingly, it has no core or required courses.

What is required, though, is one class each in policy, management, and research. Additionally, students must choose one A and one S course. A courses refer to those courses specific to the program. S courses refer to those courses offered school-wide.

That leaves three courses of choice .

Those three courses are a considerable draw for the EPM program. Students are allowed to cross-register in courses at Harvard Law, The Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Business School and the Harvard School of Public Health.

As a sizable portion of my personal statement was dedicated to the idea that those responsible for education should learn cross-disciplinarily if they’re to tackle the most complex of issues, the ability to cross-register provides just that.

I’m not entirely certain what courses I’ll find myself in or in which school; that will be decided by need.

Luckily, as I learned today, the Career Services office has a program in the summer called the gap assessment which helps students work through their resumé while mindful of their employment goals and then aids students in their selection of courses to fill those resumé gaps.

More than a brain BBQ, that was what I got from today – it filled the gaps.

I can see next year. It’s not crystal clear yet, but it’s starting to come in to focus.

Things I Know 89 of 365: It’s the testing holidays

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

– Albert Einstein

Used to be it took a proclamation from Congress to create a holiday. Though education reform initiatives over the last decade haven’t exactly been proclamations, they’ve certainly created a holiday. A month-long holiday.

For SLA, the holiday season started last week with the advent of Pennsylvania’s standardized tests, the PSSA’s.

Math and reading were last week, writing finished this week and we’re looking forward to the science test in two weeks as a break from teaching.

When I met with one of my G11 classes today, we actually took a couple of minutes to greet each other and catch up as the testing schedule has kept us apart over the last few weeks.

We took separate vacations.

And while the tests have meant a break from the meaningful and authentic learning our G11 students engage in at SLA, some schools treat the testing holidays as though they are the time of year when their students do any real work.

Phone calls are made home to remind students to show up to school. Some schools cater breakfasts for students.

Students know they will be rewarded with the educational equivalent of Christmas bonuses if they’re shown to have made top gains when the testing results come in.

And while G9, 10 and 12 students at SLA attended classes as usual (with some room switches), in other schools the testing holiday looked like a real holiday for those students not being proctored.

Oh, the proctoring.

Again, treating the holiday season as though its more important than when actual learning is taking place, proctors face rooms of testees with attitudes that are, well, testy.

Looks of scorn and dictatorial attitudes are assumed in an effort I can only assume to frighten the smarts out of the students.

I guess I missed the study showing stressed students preform better.

On the other hand, there’s a way to treat students like people – even during the testing holidays.

Talking to kids as they enter the room, providing them with peppermints, smiling, treating to them the same way you treated them before the break and the same way you will treat them when classes resume.

If we must test (and for now we must), let’s treat it like school.

I know it’s not – not the best versions of school, anyway.

Still, let’s pretend so we can avoid those humanity gaps that we know can occur over breaks in learning.