Transforming the Fire

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming:

As a quick intro/aside, I wanted to mention that, due to unforeseen circumstances I was very far behind in my grading this past month.  With the end of the quarter coming up, I needed to go into crazy grading mode and make some sacrifices.  This was the main one.  I just couldn’t justify writing here when I had so much to do for at work.  It’s been a long while since I’ve written anything of substance here, so I figured I would start with this topic.

In the past three and a half years of teaching I’ve learned an important lesson.  The TEST is all-important.  In high school, everything is done to get students to pass the state test.  We are fast approaching the year where No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandates 100% passing rate on proficiency tests.  Think about that.  100%.  Without that there’s a decrease in funding.  Now, I could go on a long rant about the actual reasoning behind NCLB and how implausible it actually is.  I may do that soon.  For now I wanted to highlight a book review that a friend sent to me from the Education Policy Blog.  The book in question is called Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality by Gerald W. Bracey.

The blog post starts off with this excerpt:

When teachers are forced, against their better judgment, to focus on teaching test content to the exclusion of almost everything else, I can only conclude that the high-stakes testing movement nourishes totalitarian regimes.

It’s that quote I want to focus on.  The review goes more into Bracey, with another link to a more traditional book review.

Teachers are forced. It’s true.  Teaching is all about getting kids to pass the end-of-year test.  Luckily for me, there is not currently a physics test.  I am (sort-of) exempt.  But for other classes (bio, chem, etc.) they spend a ton of time teaching the topics most likely to show up.  They spend a good month on test review in April.  School basically shuts down.  Teachers are forced to follow a strict pacing guide to fit everything in before the test.  What if students are confused on a certain point?  Come after school!  There’s no real time to go back over anything.  This occurs parallel to the idea that we should be checking for understanding constantly.  They should understand the material.  Let them go back and revisit the assignments until they truly get it.  But, don’t spend too much time because they need to pass the test.  And there’s a lot of material on that test.

I have students, good students, who don’t know how to multiply or divide by ten in their heads.  They know how to push buttons on their calculators but don’t know what the buttons mean.  The teachers don’t have time for that.  As long as the kid can punch it into the calculator and get the right answer, they will pass the test.  And that supposedly makes them successful.  An army of kids who can problem-solve but can’t solve problems.

The US is one of very few countries world-wide that offer education to EVERYBODY up through high school.  That’s a success in itself.  Why don’t we stack up statistically to other countries?  What if we cut out the bottom half of our students for the comparison.  Our top 50% vs. other countries.  We’d look pretty strong.  That’s what happens in other countries.  Only the top students move on to higher levels of education, leaving the rest for vocational training.  Many American students who would go into vocational training stick with high school and our test scores suffer as a result.  Is that a bad thing?

When President Obama says that it’s unacceptable to be less than #1 in education, that’s fine.  As long as the approach to that ideal is a smart one and not based on more and more standardized tests.  Otherwise we groom a generation of students who are great at taking tests, but not great at much else.

Let me end by returning to the beginning, to the introduction. Bracey refers to Fareed Zakharia, who asked the Singapore Minister of Education why the test aces in that small nation faded as they moved into real life while the Americans who trailed them badly outperformed them in almost all aspects of life.

The Singapore Minister of Education responded that there are some parts of the intellect that you cannot test very well. This is where America excels, said the minister. Most of all, he said, American students are willing to challenge the conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority. . .

Where Is It All Going?

Summer book list:

Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil

Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk

1776 by David McCullough

I’m about halfway done with 1776 – a book I picked up after reading a biography of George Washington.  Pygmy was pretty funny and interesting…until the end.  Usually Chuck Palahniuk books end with a splash, a surprise, a wow.  This one, not so much.

Age of Spiritual Machines.  I admit, I had heard of this book only because of the Our Lady Peace album (Spiritual Machines) which I love so much.  I knew it was based on this book, so I had to buy it when I saw it.  (Just an aside, I have a terrible habit of buying books and having them sit on my book shelf for many months or years before reading it.)  This book blew my mind.  Anybody interested in one man’s predictions on where our world is going should read this book.  Think of it as Terminator, but without the nuclear war.

2029: There is a growing discussion about the legal rights of computers and what constitutes being “human.”  Machines claim to be conscious.  These claims are largely accepted.

By the year 2099: There is a strong trend towards a merger of human thinking with the world of machine intelligence that the human species initially created.  There is no longer any clear distinction between humans and computers.  Most conscious entities do not have a permanent physical presence.  Because most information is published using standard assimilated knowledge protocols, information can be instantly understood.  The goal of education, and of intelligent beings, is discovering new knowledge to learn. [emphasis mine]

That’s some pretty heavy stuff.  Before we get all sci-fi horror movie, let’s consider some current technological trends.

• Computers can interact with our voices, almost well enough not to annoy us.  I know we all hate those customer service menus (I said SPEAK TO A REPRESENTATIVE!) but companies obviously think the computers do the job well enough to handle most calls.  Newer cars have lots of voice command.  Soon we should be interacting with computers all the time.  They now have phones that can instantly translate language.
• Body and brain implants present an interesting combination of human and machine, don’t they?  Right now, electrical implants can help with brains with deteriorating diseases, implants help deaf people hear, and artificial limbs are becoming an awful lot like Luke Skywalker’s new hand.  American’s place a ton of importance on physical enhancements (face-lifts, botox, boob jobs, etc.) how long until somebody wants to pay for a cochlear implant to improve their hearing.  Want contact lenses that give you hi-def vision?
• Right now you can swallow a camera that allows doctors to see into your body.  Scientists are working on tiny robots that not only detect abnormalities, but can fix them.  Two cancer cells?  Destroyed before you knew they existed.

We are continually meshing with machines.  They continually get smaller and smaller, and they are placed everywhere.  Look around you.  How many objects in your room have computer chips.  Right now I count my computer, my iPod, my digital camera, my alarm clock, my TV, my TV remote, my cell phone, my DVD player, my internet router and my exercise heart-rate monitor.  I’m sure I missed some.  My point is that, no very slowly, we are being surrounded by and are becoming dependent on computers.  The book makes a good point.  Ten to fifteen years ago, if all the computers went out, we could still function as a society.  Now?  Geez, look what happened when Twitter went out last week.  Imagine a day without using a computer system.  No internet, no phone, no car, no ATM, no TV, no lights, nothing.  What would you do?  Read?!

So where am I going with this?  I believe that I may be in the last age group of teachers who will be able to teach until retirement.  I believe that 30 years from now computers will take over education.  That isn’t to say that there won’t be humans involved, just that they won’t be teaching like you and I are used to.  Even this summer, had I kept the summer school job, I would have been moderating and assisting more than teaching.  The kids get the text book, the learning module and the problem sets.  I help them out with things they don’t understand and then grade their work.  If automated technology shows to be as effective as regular teachers, look for school systems to push this as much as possible.  Teachers are the most expensive part of education.  Think of all the cool stuff schools could buy with 30 teacher salaries.  In the near future, every desk will be an interactive station (kind of like your touch-screen cell phones, only larger and better).  I think in 20 years, students will be coming to school more for social interaction than learning.

This is my prediction.  Anybody have a prediction of their own?

(Note: all of the current and future technologies I touched on come from either my own reading or from Age of Spiritual Machines.  None of it was made up.)

Homework Grades and Teachers-as-Entertainers

A few things on my mind today after reading the student newspaper:

Our school newspaper is one of the most unprofessional and terrible ones I’ve read.  Every article serves to voice the authors’ opinion, even factual articles, and there are numerous grammatical mistakes in ever edition.  On top of that, the “reporters” make up quotes, attribute them to wrong people or tell you want they want you to say.  And, I save this for last, the teacher is just a horrendous [insert bad word].  If she doesn’t like you, and she doesn’t like me for whatever reason, she will openly talk badly about you to her students.  Now that’s a professional!

Anyway, there was an article about the rules on cell phone use in school.  The student is trying to make the case that cell phone use should be allowed in school (even though the article is about cell phone laws) and here is one pertinent quote (emphasis mine): “While the long, drawn-out days go by, students have to find some source of entertainment to keep them awake in classes.”  They have to find sources of entertainment?  I’m sorry, I didn’t realize my job was to entertain teenagers.  I’m pretty sure I get paid to teach them.  What did all us poor students do prior to 2002?  Sure, we doodled, we daydreamed, we tried to sleep, but mostly we took notes and did the work we were asked to do.  Why?  Because that’s what school is there for.
I completely agree that teachers should find creative and interesting ways to convey their subject to the students.  But sometimes you just have to get through some material.  Or sometimes you have to learn the mirror equation and practice it.  School, like work and life, can’t always been fun.  I’m also of the mind that the reason these kids have such short attention spans is because they’ve been fed snipets of information their whole lives and have never needed to concentrate for more than five minutes at a time.  That needs to change!

Second topic:

There is a new trend in education (I don’t know if it’s in the area or the whole country) that says teachers should not grade anything that isn’t done in the classroom.  No graded homework.  Also, no zeroes if a kid doesn’t hand in an assignment because that doesn’t reflect what he/she knows.  So no effort grades.  What a bunch of crap!  I’m sorry, but there’s really no good way to get a good grade in most classes if you don’t do your homework.  I know some kids pull it off.  But ALL of my kids who get C’s and below skip the homework.  Or they copy the homework from a friend so they get the credit.  I’m happy to give those kids small HW grades, because they invariably BOMB the tests and quizzes.  Now they want to take away those HW grades.  Fine.  So all those C and D students will be F students.  What world do we live in that HW is too much work.  I’ve tried ungraded homework…all of last year in fact.  Maybe 3 students in each class did their homework.  The rest did not.  Then they wonder why they fail tests.  What a disaster.  This is the reason that American students don’t compare to other countries.  We are actively trying to remove their work ethic.

Let’s end on a good note:

I was showing my honors students how to make an image with a curved mirror, in the process creating a reflection of the outside on a piece of paper.  “Mr. _______, tell us again why this class is called ‘physics’ and not ‘magic’?”

Music: “New Slang” by The Shins on Oh, Inverted World

One of Few Forwarded E-mails I Ever Liked

This e-mail was forwarded to me from a friend.  I’ll add my own comments in italics.

HIGH SCHOOL — 1957 vs. 2009

Scenario 1: Jack goes quail hunting before school and then pulls into the school parking lot with his shotgun in his truck’s gun rack.

1957 – Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack’s shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.

2009 – School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.

Don’t know if bringing a shotgun to school in the 50′s would’ve been ok, but school definitely would go into lock down and the kid would be expelled.  My first year, a kid got in big trouble for receiving a birthday present that contained an (obviously) toy gun in a cops ‘n robbers set.

Scenario 2: Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school.

1957 – Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.

2009- Police called and SWAT team arrives — they arrest both Johnny and Mark. They are both charged them with assault and both expelled even though Johnny started it.

Back in the day, my high school used to set up supervised boxing matches between kids who didn’t get along.  Now, they probably wouldn’t get expelled, but definitely suspended, no matter who started it.

Scenario 3: Jeffrey will not be still in class, he disrupts other students.

1957 – Jeffrey sent to the Principal’s office and given a good paddling by the Principal. He then returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.

2009 – Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. He becomes a zombie. He is then tested for ADD. The school gets extra money from the state because Jeffrey has a disability.

While I believe that some students have ADD, it’s curious that 75% seem to have it now.  Also, we are told to keep new material in short bursts, because their poor little minds with their 30 second attention span can’t handle too much.

Scenario 4: Billy breaks a window in his neighbor’s car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.

1957 – Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college and becomes a successful businessman.

2009 – Billy’s dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang. The state psychologist is told by Billy’s sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy’s mom has an affair with the psychologist.

A little hyperbolic but I could see some outrage over a kid getting whipped by a belt.

Scenario 5: Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.

1957 – Mark shares his aspirin with the Principal out on the smoking dock.

2009 – The police are called and Mark is expelled from school for drug violations. His car is then searched for drugs and weapons.

No joke, students are not allowed to have any medication in school.  The nurse cannot give aspirin or tylenol.  They would get their lockers searched as well as their bags.

Scenario 6: Pedro fails high school English.

1957 – Pedro goes to summer school, passes English and goes to college.

2009 – Pedro’s cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against the state school system and Pedro’s English teacher. English is then banned from core curriculum. Pedro is given his diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

Again hyperbolic, but more likely the kid is placed in ESL, pushed through English class as well as all other classes because the principal and counselors are pressured to have high graduation rates.  The kid would get straight D’s, get a diploma, and that’s seen as a success.

Scenario 7: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the Fourth of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle and blows up a red ant bed.

1957 – Ants die.

2009 – ATF, Homeland Security and the FBI are all called. Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism. The FBI investigates his parents — and all siblings are removed from their home and all computers are confiscated. Johnny’s dad is placed on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this has actually happened.

Scenario 8: Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.

1957 – In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.

2009 – Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.

They forgot the part about the parents suing the school for negligence, winning $4 million, and forcing the school to get rid of recess because it’s a liability.  This part is, again, sadly true.  It’s amazing what children are not allowed to do because schools fear law suits.

Sunday Confessional

I think the first mistake I made this morning was clicking on the online newspaper poll: Should teachers get paid based on performance in the classroom?  My second mistake was reading the comments underneath the results.  I don’t want to write about my opinions on teacher pay, as I’ve done that already.  But right now, I feel as angry as I’m going to feel about being a teacher.  What it boils down to is that a majority of people have no clue what it’s like to be a teacher.  I read comments like, “of course teachers pay should be tied to performance, just like any other job,” and “teachers are letting their students down and if they teach to the test they should be fired.”  Again, no idea what it’s like to be in charge of teaching 150 kids.

First, every job has incompetent employees.  Why is teaching any different?  Especially since teachers don’t get paid as much as other professions.  What’s drawing the cream of the crop to teaching?  Yeah, yeah, it’s a “calling”.  So what?  People having callings in all sorts of professions.  There are incompetent and lazy doctors, lawyers, policemen, professors, baseball players, etc.  Teaching is no different.  People get into teaching for many reasons, but nobody gets into teaching because they can make a decent living.  Intelligent people are drawn to higher paying jobs because they are qualified for them.  If teacher pay was increased, more people would want to teach and some of them would be great teachers.  Some would be ok teachers.  The total loser teachers would go away because now there’d be replacements.  It’s not rocket science, it’s basic economics.  You wouldn’t have situations where administrations hire the first person through the door because they need somebody to throw up in front of a class.

Teacher’s shouldn’t teach to the test?  Really, they have no choice.  Yeah, I wish standardized testing would go away.  It’s absolutely evil and is killing US education.  Why?  Because administrations would rather have everybody pass the test at a low level than develop bright young minds with the bottom kids not passing.  A teacher will be left alone if everybody barely passes, but will have issues if 90% of the class passes with extremely high scores and the other 10% fail.  Think about your job for a second.  If the boss was going to be happy with you getting through a ton of work with mediocre results but be down your throat if you do mostly excellent work, what would you do?  You’d go the route so that your boss leaves you alone and you get to do your work.

People have no idea what it’s like to face a class full of students who don’t listen.  Where you have to repeat instructions 10 times and then repeat them again.  Where students stare at their cell phones and text each other when you write notes on the board.  Where they say they are paying attention because they’ve copied down what you wrote but have no idea what it means, and don’t see anything wrong with that.  Students that do as little as possible to pass by.  A situation where your only ammo against them is a bad grade, but you’ll get in trouble if too many of them do poorly (by “do poorly” I mean get D’s and F’s).  A school or classroom where we’re encouraged to just pass them because it’s easier.  An administration that only pays attention to you if you are in trouble, otherwise you never even see them.  A job where good students do well because they are smart but bad students do poorly because the teacher is bad.  A job in which parents yell at you because their kids don’t pay attention or do their homework and they want to know why I am not a better teacher.

I think the biggest change in education is the attitude of parents and not much else.  If anything, most teachers are much better than they used to be.  Better educated, better trained, more at their disposal.  Except, in the past, parents trusted teachers.  If a student was failing, the student was held accountable.  Why aren’t they working harder?  Going for extra help?  Paying more attention?  Sorry, teacher, my child will work harder or else they will be grounded.  And they will fail.  And that will be a good lesson for them.  Now?  If a student is failing, the teacher is held accountable.  I take their phone away because they are using it in class and the parent gives it right back.  Parents tell me, “I can’t make my child do work.”  “They have too much on their plate.  Can you modify assignments for them to make it easier?  It isn’t fair that they don’t get enough sleep…of course they can’t pay attention!”

How am I supposed to help people like that?

Music:  Accoustic version of “Zombie” by The Cranberries

What Makes A Good Teacher?

A friend sent me this blog post about spotting good teachers and the importance of having great teachers.  He pulls an article from the New Yorker about how hard it is to find good teachers.  Part of the author’s argument is based on calculations in which he states that, “You’d have to cut the average class almost in half to get the same boost that you’d get if you switched from an average teacher to a teacher in the eighty-fifth percentile.”  Along the same calculations, he says the U.S. has a big education gap to make up and that, “the U.S. could close that gap simply by replacing the bottom six per cent to ten per cent of public-school teachers with teachers of average quality.”

Let’s take this one at a time.  First, I believe it is true that having great teachers leaves students much better off than average teachers, and that great teachers can make up for bad schools.  But that isn’t the whole story.  There’s been a ton of research that shows how the school environment affects student achievement.  Even if one grade has a great teacher, that doesn’t not offset the years of schooling in a bad environment with bad socioeconomic conditions, etc.  If we were somehow able to staff all schools with amazing teachers, that would help, but social and home issues also play a big role in childhood development and education.

Second, I have a strong problem with the notion that the U.S. education system is average and compares poorly to other countries.  There are so many confounding variables to deal with when making this claim.  First, how are we supposed to compare students from other countries?  As far as I know, there is no international standardized test.  Second, the student bodies are different.  In many countries, the lower portion of students are not allowed in high schools.  Instead, they are sent to trade schools or go get a job.  Our high schools would be just as good if we expelled the bottom 20%.  Third, the “U.S. education system is behind other countries” argument is a relic from the Cold War designed to scare people into increased education funding.  Would we all agree to give more and more money to education if our leaders told us the truth:  the U.S. education system is one of the most available and successful in the world?

Third, how do you measure a “great teacher” compared to an average one or even a poor one?  We get evaluations, but there’s really no objective way to measure the standards.  Plus, there’s no incentive to go above and beyond.  I’ll talk about pay for performance some other time, but why do I need a stellar evaluation when all I need is “meets expectations”?  All teachers are different.  Some relate to students, some run classrooms like the military, and some use PowerPoint presentations exclusively.  Is there one way to teach?  Obviously not, so how do you say what works and what doesn’t?  Any given year, some students will really understand what you teach and others will struggle.  This is simply because all students are different.  I feel way more successful this year compared to last year.  I don’t think I’ve become a better teacher in one year, but I do think more of my students learn the way I teach.  If you have a bad class, there may be nothing you can do to get them to the same level as another class one year prior.  It’s the luck of the draw.

All this is to say that having good teachers is important, but there’s no real way to measure great teachers vs. average teachers.  However, I know one way to increase the level of teacher quality.  Raise teacher salaries so that they are comprable to other vocations.  That will increase the number of qualified applicants and flush out the poor teachers who can’t cut it.  Do you know how many terrible, terrible teachers stay because they can’t find a replacement?  It’s more than you wish to believe.