Things I Know 178 of 365: Report cards should be better

Zachary has been a joy to work with this year. I will miss him next fall.

– Mary Cavitt, my kindergarten teacher

From kindergarten forward, the majority of schools get progressively worse at telling students and parents what’s being learned and how well students are learning it.

A few days ago, my mom stumbled upon a folder marked “ZAC – School” while searching for immunization records.

Not the least of the documents in the folder were both my first and my last report cards as a K-12 student.

I found my final high school report card first.

When I saw it, my eyes flashed to class rank, then GPA, then a quick scan to remind me of my final courses and teachers.

A few pieces of paper later, 24 years after it was issued, I found my kindergarten report card.

It required a little more time for consumption. Nowhere did it tell me where I ranked among the other 5 and 6 year olds. I had no idea as to my kindergarten GPA either.

The only real use for the report card was a detailed accounting of my progression as a student throughout the year.

Groan.

I could remember every piece of information from that first year of K-12. I would be hard-pressed to recount half of 1% of anything covered in my senior macroeconomics class. I’d honestly forgotten I’d taken macroeconomics until I saw the report card.

In the comments section for each quarter, Mrs. Cavitt wrote a short message to my mom alerting her to my progress and letting her know I was being seen by my teacher.

In the “Comment Explanation” section of my senior report card – nothing.

As a kindergartener, I had little use for my report card. It was a document for the adults in my life to examine and use as a starting place for conversation.

In my later years, the report card held much value. It was a quarterly mile marker of my progress toward college and beyond. Still a communication between the adults in my life, it raised more questions than answers. I have no idea how I got that B in my first quarter of English IV, nor do I know what improved in the second quarter that led to an A.

I’m certain my parents asked questions on these very topics. I’m sure I stumbled through my answers and took stabs at the multitude of possible reasons for my grades.

I try to imagine, though, what would have transpired were I not as successful as a student.

If I’d been lost in the tall grass of high school with Cs, Ds and the occasional F, this report card would have served no purpose other than to reinforce my failures and dumbfound my parents.

If I’d not had such dedicated parents, the conversations would have stopped there and the frustrations would have continued to mount.

The modern middle and high school report card is an arcane relic made supremely ironic in light of the millions of dollars spent nationally in the name of gathering data.

I’m certainly aware of the systemic impediments in place, but improving communications with students and parents on individual learning need not include standardized tests and computer-generated reports.

At the end of my kindergarten year, in math, I could name the four basic shapes, count to 43, add, subtract, print my numerals and much more.

At the end of my senior year of high school, in math, I got a B.

Which measure focused on the learning?

Things I Know 177 of 365: It’s everyone’s idiot box

All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching?
– Nicholas Johnson

Being back in Illinois has meant an inordinate amount of television viewing. I have been known to marathon view entire runs of television shows from time to time, but those are usually through iTunes or Netflix.

No, being home has meant honest-to-goodness television (though I’m uncertain how much honesty or goodness I’ve been taking in.

Yesterday, this commercial for State Farm Insurance ran during a show I was watching with my mom:


“Why is it only the guys who get the cool stuff,” my mom asked.

“Because the women are out attending and rating the weddings of three strangers,” I explained, referencing the TLC program Four Weddings we were watching at the time.

I wasn’t worried that the men were able to afford the toucans and moose heads as their beleaguered wives looked on, because the husbands of the four brides competing on the show were looking on in a similar manner.


I’ve been away from broadcast television for a while. It’s nice to see were doing a better job of making everyone appear foolish.

Except Flo:

Things I Know 176 of 365: Classrooms must design away from anxiety

Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,

Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not

even the best,

Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

– Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

If I were teaching teachers, I would have them read this Economist article examining a newly published German study showing a strong positive correlation between urban dwellers and high levels of anxiety.

We would discuss the study and its methodology. We’d work our way through a round of “I noticed…” “I wonder…” “What if…” and then someone would hopefully notice the smallish size of the German study. Perhaps a hand would be raised and a “yeahbut” would be voiced.

“What about this,” I would ask, sharing with the assembled teachers this 2009 New York Times Magazine article about Dr. Jerome Kagan’s decades-long research into the origins and possible causes of anxiety.

Kagan has been compiling evidence since the late 80s that shows a connection between anxiety in infants and continued anxiety in those same subjects as they move into childhood, adolescence and eventually adulthood.

These teachers and I would discuss Kagan’s theories regarding those who are “wired to worry.” Again, I would query them on what they noticed, what they wondered and their what ifs.

Using some intertextual analysis, we would then start to make inferred connections between Kagan’s work and that of Dr. Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, the author of the Economist study.

Wanting to learn alongside, I would posit the idea that one who is both wired for worry and raised in an urban environment would seem to have the proverbial deck stacked against him.

To this person, it would seem not only that the world is a highly unstable and difficult place, but that the environ within which he lives is only working to accentuate that instability. Despite his best intentions, this person will worry, doubt and second-guess more than his hypothetical twin separated at birth and raised in a nearby farm town.

Finally, to bring things back home, I would point these teachers to Sylvia Martinez’s reflections on a recent keynote by NYU Associate Professor Joshua Aronson. We would examine Aronson’s definition of the stereotype threat – being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one’s group.

Martinez writes:

Simply putting a box to mark gender, for example, at the front of a math test significantly changed test scores – for both men and women. Compared to a test where gender was not asked for, if gender was asked for at the beginning of a test, boy’s scores went up, girls’ scores went down. If gender was asked at the end, boys’ scores went down, girls’ scores went up.

And then we would discuss the implications of these three assembled pieces on the practice of the teachers in the room.

The idea of urban anxiety makes sense to me. I saw it time and again teaching in Philadelphia. Students became distraught and anxious in the face of seemingly surmountable odds. Students completely capable of completing an assignment or understanding an idea shut down or expressed extreme doubt or anxiety. Whereas I could normally connect with and deescalate similar situations with ease, these moments required a level of effort I found deeply surprising.

For me, this creates a question of practice. Even if the vast majority of students are not “wired for worry,” the possibility students in city and urban environments could be more highly predisposed to anxiety illuminates a barrier to learning many teachers probably sensed, but had no name or schema for until now.

Knowing or almost knowing creates an imperative to change.

If the goal of the assembled teachers is to help all students more fully, if elevated anxiety levels impede that learning, and if environment influences those anxiety levels, then it is incumbent upon teachers to design a learning experience that lowers anxiety levels as much as possible.

How can you build a classroom that works against a natural proclivity for anxiety? What could you stop doing immediately to make life less worrisome for your students? What systems can you build to make your classroom, and then your school, a haven of diminished worry?

I have some ideas. I have many more questions. Mostly, I have burning sense that knowing that the designs and structures of learning spaces could be impeding the health and learning of those we are to care for means an ethical imperative to break down those impediments.

Things I Know 175 of 365: They gave me music

If music be the food of love, play on.

– William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night I.i.1

“I listen to different music now.”

At the end of my first year at SLA, this was the answer from one student to my question of how my students had changed in their freshman year.

She explained she’d come to the school listening to a mix of emo and pop and was leaving her first year with an appreciation of rock, R&B, Hip Hop and oldies. She even admitted to not hating some classical music. (That one was my fault.)

Other students commented on their changes during their first year of high school too. Four years later, only the music comment sticks in the attic of my brain. I’ve packed it away in the box labeled, “Things Will Be Okay.”

I come from a family of musicians. If they don’t play, they appreciate those who can. Music was everywhere as I grew up. From Tomé to Presley to Tears for Fears to Manhattan Transfer – depending on where I was and whom I was with, anyone could have been providing the soundtrack to my day.

It’s what led to the giddiness when Myspace first asked me to include what song I was listening to when writing a blog post. It always seemed silly they asked about the song and asked how I was feeling. To me, they were one and the same.

When I write, I listen to anything by Hans Zimmer, Balmorhea or Rachel’s. Lately, an album called Cocktail Mix: 4 has started to work its way onto that list.

Music is how I feel.

Rather than wading through the murky waters of a Secret Santa this year, SLA teachers had the chance to opt in to a mixtape exchange. Pick a name, compile a mixtape of at least 15 songs for that person and exchange burned CDs at the staff holiday party. It was better than any $5-limit tchotchke I’ve ever received. Try it.

I drove away from Philly yesterday morning.

As I did, I put a CD in my car’s stereo – Mr. Chase, <3 MUD.

On one of the last days of school, two students appeared in my room and presented the disk to me.

“These are songs that remind us of you,” one of the students explained.

Both of my G11 classes collaborated on the project to suggest songs which were then curated. The result was a disc I kept myself from listening to until I was safely alone, in my car, driving away from Philadelphia.

To say I was touched by such thoughtfulness would be an amazing understatement. They were caring for me.

The mix is a collection of songs I played mercilessly in class, songs we connected over and songs I’d never heard but am honored they connect with me.

I am humbled.

This mix has been added to that box in the attic of my brain.

I share it here because I hope it makes you smile the way it made me smile.

Thank you.

Things I Know 174 of 365: This is my last night

Yup. I hung out w/ @mrchase on his last night in Philly befor... on Twitpic
Tomorrow, four years of being a Philadelphian come to a close.
It has been an amazing journey. I have learned much. I have much to learn.
Tonight, I sat with friends on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and watched Rocky.
It was beautiful.
Thanks, Philly.

Things I Know: 173 of 365: What books I would make me read

Laura asked last night at dinner, “What’s is a book that has impacted you?” She was looking for a book that shaped who we are. She was looking for a book that we needed to read for us to have continued on the course to who we are.

I loved the question.

I loved it even more when Christian re-imagined it.

“If you met you, what book would you make sure you read?”

The discussion deck was stacked as three of those around the table were English teachers.

The list, as much of it as I was able to copy down, is below. It’s given me much to add to the Kindle for the summer. And I will be adding as many of these books as I can.

I’m not adding them because the plots sounded interesting (though they did). I’m certainly not at a loss for additions to my reading list. I’m adding these books to the to-read list because they were the answer to a question of what thoughts and ideas people I find interesting and thoughtful consider to be formative and critical to their foundations of self.

I like understanding (or at least working toward understanding) how people come to their ideas and beliefs.

Packing to move, I’ve been sorting through the books on my shelves, the books others bought for me because they thought they were the right fit. Many of them have been a good fit. Many of them have brought me good stories. Still, I am mindful as I read these books that I want to like them because I want those who know me to be right.

The question of what you would make sure you read works better for me. Another person’s assumption of what I’ll like is not nearly as interesting to me as learning what they’ve liked. I read those books with a different eye. I read those books to get to know the person and to get to know the book.

So, here’s the list. Maybe some of these titles will make their way onto your summer reading list. If you’ve got the time, share the book that you would make sure you read.

(I’ve been expanding the list as I collect titles from those I run into at ISTE. I should probably stop before the list becomes too unwieldy. Then again, I’m still curious.)

The Gangster We’re All Looking For by Thi Diem Thuy Le (from John Spencer)

The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler (from Chris Alfano)

Losing My Virginity: How I’ve Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson (from Chris Alfano

Final Rounds: A Father, A Son, The Golf Journey of a Lifetime by James Dodson (from Dean Shareski)

A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss (from Bud Hunt)

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (read all four books) (from Bud Hunt)

A New Culture of Learning – by Douglas Thomas (from Vinnie Vrotny)

Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century – by G. Pascal Zachary (from Vinnie Vrotny)

Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman (from Christian Long)

Griffith and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence by Nick Bantock (from Christian Long)

Trinity by Leon Uris (from Laura Deisley)

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (from Laura Deisley)

The History of Rasselas Prince of Abissinia by Samuel Johnson (from me)

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (from me)

Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins (from me)

I’ll say it again. What book would you make sure you read?

Things I Know 172 of 365: The container matters little if at all

Your essay should be typed, double-spaced on standard-sized paper (8.5″ x 11″) with 1″ margins on all sides.

– Purdue Online Writing Lab

In freshman English, Mrs. Miller would not accept any papers with “the fringies on them.” If we were turning in an essay from a spiral-bound notebook and hadn’t torn along the perforations, we were required to remove the “fringes” before submitting our work.

Not removing said “fringes” would result in the loss of a letter grade for our overall score.

Far beyond writing in a spiral-bound notebook, I find my current classwork governed by the exacting standards of the American Psychological Association. Margins, I have learned, are to be 1” at all times.

The quality of my writing will, of course, begin to degenerate were my margins to shrink or expand beyond the 1” mark.

A few months ago, unthinkingly, irresponsibly, stupidly, I submitted a multi-page document without changing the default margins from their 1.25” measurements.

Luckily, my stalwart instructor was paying attention to what mattered most and dutifully docked three points from 20 for my final score.

Each of these examples serves as a reminder of the standard training at the K-12 and collegiate levels meant to bring about an understanding of the importance of the container.

Sunday, I witnessed another example.

Following the demonstration of the systems and structures his state had worked to put in place to facilitate discussions of professional learning for otherwise isolated or siloed teachers, a presenter opened the floor to questions from the assembled masses.

“Who moderates the discussions?”

“Who hosts all this?”

“What’s the name of the program you’re using?”

“Who’s paying for the installation?”

One after another, the masses queried the fringes.

They wanted to understand the container, not the contents.

They were consumed by the tool, not its purpose.

For nearly half an our, we’d been privy to an explanation of how teachers were working together to share knowledge, build practices and deepen learning for their students. Where a road of conversation had been paved before us, we admired the curb rather than asking where it could lead.

I understand the fascination with the containers of our learning. We’ve been trained from the early years of our educations to believe there was a correct way and an incorrect way to store our learning – be it double spacing or indenting.

What few of us ever heard or were encouraged to learn was that knowledge and skills are not solids with corresponding intellectual tupperware in which we should store them for the correct moments. Instead, these things are the soup of learning. They are fluid and malleable – shifting to fit the shapes and structures of the situations to which we apply them.

While container certainly matters for audience. As it is important when considering the end goals, no situation has a set container. Some fit better than others.

A document margin of 4.5 on all sides would interrupt the transmission of message.

But no iteration of the communication of learning should preclude the next iteration of learning.

Containers, should fit our purposes, allowing thinking we pour into those containers should shift according to need.

Things I Know 171 of 365: Teaching is no slap in the face

I touch the future. I teach.

– Christa McAuliffe

A lady sat across from me today and told me the story of how she came to be in the classroom this year.

She began the year in a role that had her coaching other teachers in her school. Out of the classroom, her goal was to help her colleagues improve their practice.

Not unlike many school districts across the country, this teacher’s school experienced a workforce reduction due to budget constraints.

In October, she was asked to enter the classroom again.

I listened sympathetically as she explained her growth as a teacher had been put on hold this year as she attempted to create order and structure in a classroom that had already seen two other teachers in as many months of school.

As she explained the difficulties of grappling with unexpectedly teaching two separate disciplines, I understood her frustration.

What I could not abide and what has me seething long after our conversation was the way she described the call to return to the classroom.

“It was like a slap in the face.”

No. It wasn’t.

It was a call to return to the classroom. It was the entrusting of the children of others into your care. It was continued employment in the face of layoffs of colleagues.

It was a chance to make an impossible world possible for a child. It was the call to teach.

And, yes, it was difficult and a divergence from the plan at the beginning of the year. Yes, it required growth and stress and sacrifice.

I have and will continue to spend time and energy working against systems so broken that they produce schools and teachers like this.

Today, though, those systems were not sitting across from me.

It is far too difficult to criticize teachers today and receive the title of champion in return for your efforts.

In a moment in time when so very little is expected of teachers, when a teacher is simultaneously the most important factor in the classroom and the least trusted, the profession could do without maligning from within.

Teachers across the country who want nothing more than to build classrooms of caring, learning and inquiry next year are searching desperately for places to teach.

Meanwhile, children are being packed into larger and larger classes, receiving less and less personal attention.

That is the slap in the face.

The fact that this woman has a place to teach, that is a gift.

Things I Know 170 of 365: There are places we haven’t been

As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Star Fleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship, unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moral obligation.

– Star Fleet Command

No contact. No twitter. No Hulu. They wouldn’t even appreciate Netflix’s transition from discs to instant streaming.

Earlier this week, the Brazilian government confirmed the existence of a newly-discovered uncontacted Indian tribe.

The announcement’s been taking up space in my brain since I read the story.

There are still places we haven’t been. Right here, on Earth, there are places we haven’t been.

Deep in the Amazon, the tribe is estimated to consist of approximately 200 people who “live in four large, straw-roofed buildings and grow corn, bananas, peanuts and other crops.” They would have no idea how to select a toothbrush or whether to buy the roll of paper towels that comes in regular sheets or the roll that rips off in smaller pieces.

I envy them.

I’m not saying I want to give up my life for theirs in some sort of Freaky Friday scenario.

What I want is to know the tribe is there, to know we are waiting for them to make contact with us and to know they will remain protected.

Even that sentence seems strange – “to make contact with us.” Us? I don’t at all expect this tribe will someday call me up. I completely realize their first contact won’t be with Americans at all. Still, their existence creates a “them” in my head different than that of the “them” of Canadians or Portuguese.

The people of this tribe are foreign in a way I can think of few people in the world as foreign. They are completely unknown.

Uncontacted.

As much as I enjoy living in a global community, I sometimes think of the possibility of being uncontacted.

Last year, after an intense month working alongside educators in South Africa and directly on the heels of a busy school year, I attempted to go uncontacted. I went camping for a week.

It was only a week and even then I was documenting my trip so that I could have stored up contacts to share once I was able.

My life is continuously defined and refined by the contacts I’ve made. My friends and colleagues are the result of the hard and soft contacts I’ve made over the last decade. What I like is the idea of the ability to pause those contacts from time to time.

It’s the feeling a friend of mine was hoping for when she deactivated her Facebook account to study for an upcoming exam.

Contacts are difficult to break.

My friend learned that when her boyfriend called her the day after her deactivation wondering why Facebook had told him they were no longer dating.

I think that’s what I envy most about this tribe. Being contacted, being in contact means being accountable to those to whom you are connected. Sometimes, that contact can be taxing.

As curious as I am about this uncontacted tribe, I’m perfectly willing to wait for them to pick up the phone (or whatever we’re using when the time comes).

Things I Know 169 of 365: Pages doesn’t auto-save

Dear Mr. Jobs,

I recently learned your company’s Pages software does not include an auto-save feature that one might find in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Open Office and most other word processing programs.

That sucks.

In the future, if you decide to continue to exclude this feature from your products, might I suggest applying a sticker to the product proclaiming:

Attention, while you will most likely enjoy your user experience, know that we’ve decided to buck the trend established by the rest of the industry and failed to install an auto-save function.

We apologize to any of you who might, oh, say type 15 pages of your master’s thesis and then mistakenly click “Don’t Save Changes” thinking it applies only to the top document open and not to both open documents. Or, you know, anything similar to that.

Thank you, Mr. Jobs, for your timely consideration.

Also, I apologize for taking your name in vain and any comments I might have made about you being a smarmy, turtleneck-wearing SOB. Those were hurtful words uttered in the excitement of learning of your product’s features or lack thereof.

Kindly,

Zac Chase