Wealth of Resources
I have an RSS feed that delivers me more material to read and consume on a daily basis than I can really take in. As with all things in life, I've developed some favorites in my feedreader and am legitimately excited to see what FlowingData, Information Is Beautiful, and Infosthetics have to share whenever their link shows new material. We teach in an era where the information comes at us a fever pitch, but with that these 'masters of information' are also working to make sense of it all in condensed and coherent fashion. This is how it finds its way into my teaching.Example.Yesterday I discovered this resource from the Guardian.
Today a student shared this resource with me from Slate.
From a design and presentation standpoint - these are two very different approaches to representing largely similar information. Possible classroom discussions can circle around the manner in which the information is presented, which is better, what each version accomplishes differently with its design choices, etc.From a knowledge and analysis standpoint - you can have the students look for patterns, trends, geographical relevance, investigate sourcing and the like.When the class has looked at the range of events and revolutions, one could challenge the students to investigate the American Revolution (or any other revolution for that matter) and develop a visualization that communicates a similar level of information. Students would be asked to consider the knowledge and analysis portions of their investigation while taking into account the design and presentation discussion that happened as a result of the comparison of the two data visualizations. From here they can draw connections, locate moments of similarity and difference, predict outcome (for the Middle East), create new graphics for explanation, etc. The options for meaningful curricular engagement are endless.Explaining the recent events in a text based format would take days and days and days of reading. Using this type of information communication we can get at the big ideas. Then we can further investigate. This allows not just for knowledge acquisition, but for analysis to occur. This wealth of resources at our fingertips can allow for the classroom to get beyond just the 'knowing' of the information and venture out into the deeper analysis and creation of information as well. This is just too much fun.
LucidChart
(cross posted on Tech for Teachers on teachinghistory.org)
Many links and hints and tips and tricks find their way past my screen on a daily basis care of Google Reader, Twitter, and email exchanges with teachers. One day last fall, this video featuring LucidChart came to my attention. I played the video for my students as an example of storytelling, useful in both my American History and American Government classes as they created stories to accompany the research they were conducting. The simplicity with which the tool was used to create organization of ideas to tell a story resonated with them as an option for communicating complex ideas in a visual manner.LucidChart identifies itself as “the missing link in online productivity suites.” The web-based, clean interface allows for the collaborative creation of diagrams and flowcharts for publishing. I recommend this tool as fast, easy to learn, collaborative, and functional on any browser.Getting Started Registering is a breeze, needing only a valid email address. I created a flowchart in LucidChart to detail the steps for getting started with the tool. Many of the boxes are hotlinked—run your mouse over the textbox, and if a hand appears there is a link to explore. (Make sure you have popups unblocked to view the included links.) The tour, examples, forums, and tutorials are appropriately helpful and clear.If you believe that this is a tool that would suit your educational pursuits, there is an educational version that is available free of charge to K–12 teachers and students. For the more tech-savvy, there is also an integrated function between Google Apps and LucidChart. In an email exchange with David Grow of LucidChart he stated,“For K–12, we are committed to always providing LucidChart free of charge so there is no expiration. Also, an educational account is essentially the equivalent of a paid Team account which has all of the premium features! We are eager for more teachers and students to be using LucidChart.”I cannot stress enough that with a tool like this, it will take you a bit of time to feel as though you are a “master,” but you can feel functional almost immediately. The drag-and-drop-style features make it quite intuitive. I created the Getting Started flowchart to demonstrate my own willingness to create and play a bit in the pursuit of encouraging more teachers to do the same.Examples 
Quite traditionally, my American Government classes work through the three branches of government in their investigation of the American political scene. For the study of the Executive Branch, we look intently at the complex bureaucratic structures developed over time at various levels of government. I find that students often think that the Executive Branch is just the president or governor or mayor, but fail to consider the elaborate web of bureaucracy that the Executive Branch oversees.The end-of-unit project is based on the understanding of a selected bureaucratic “task.” The goal of the project is for the students to actually pursue the task by assembling and filling out paperwork, making phone calls, reading . . . reading . . . reading, and asking questions. At the end of all of it, the partnerships present the body of evidence with the paperwork, but also with a flowchart that details the process by which the average citizen would complete the task. They are to add in links, tips, tricks, hints, and such.At the completion of the project the students had to not only analyze the complex structures of government bureaucracy, but also produce a “deliverable.” LucidChart was one of the best choices of tool for this task because of its simple, web-based, collaborative functions. Being able to investigate, research, create, and then present/publish their findings meant that the learning was not just a creation for in-class sharing, but could be shared digitally and hence more broadly. One of the most functional tasks chosen by the students was completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). As seniors, they are all in the midst of applying for college and now for financial aid. The students that worked on FAFSA were able to share their flowchart with their peers in order to demystify the process a bit.Much of students’ reflection commented on the complicated nature of the processes and the struggle they had to attempt to simplify the procedures down to a flowchart. As a teacher I was able to see the level of research and clarity of understanding in the graphics they produced on LucidChart.Student Examples:* Green Card Flowchart and Student Reflection* FAFSA Flowchart and Student Reflection* Filing Income Taxes Flowchart and Student Reflection
Election Day
For the past three years I have required all of my students to visit the polls on Election Day in November. For each of the years, I tweaked the assignment to stay relevant and meaningful for the different years and types of elections. Today I decided to organize the information into one place that held the unit plan that I use to engage the students in the concept of Political Participation and the work that resulted.The process of having students visit their local polling place and engage with the voting public on Election Day is one of my favorite activities. I call it their Citizenship Homework. The act of crossing the threshold of the polling place, see it in action dramatically increases their likelihood of venturing out later in life when they are of age to vote. I believe in encouraging students to vote but more so, I do not want them to 'not vote' because they are unaware or unsure or uninformed. For some students this activity is one of their favorites and for others it is quite mundane, but at the end of it all, they are learning in real spaces where the real world is functioning. For me... that is #sogood.
The Hurt.
There are moments in the classroom when students allow you to see the most wonderful events and occasions in their life. Those are extremely common in my day to day life and for that I am perpetually grateful.But there are also those days when you see a student so visibly wear their pain. Today I looked straight into the face of one of my most energetic and engaged students and only pain and hurt was looking back at me. This happens, it isn't a rare thing in the teaching profession. But today, seeing that pain was harder than usual. It is still with me as I sit here on a Friday night, packing for a long weekend away.I had to hold onto that student today while they sobbed over the extremely hurtful words yelled at them by an adult that is supposed to love and protect, damaging soul-crushing words. In doing so, some of that pain stuck to me. That is also not new and part of the job. I get that. But for whatever reason, this time, I need this to live somewhere other than just in my mind. As I suggested to the student, sometimes we just need to write those feelings down somewhere so it doesn't bounce around in our heads, continuing the hurt. So here is where I choose to let this live. For now at least, this hurt lives here.
2010 SLA Debate Team
I joined the SLA staff in August of 2008. One of the first things that Chris Lehmann asked me to do, in addition to my teaching job, was coach the debate team. Now, I had been a coach. I coached volleyball, basketball and even two seasons of wrestling (that is a whole 'nother blog post) for the previous 15 years. My first team was a group of 6th grade girls at a Catholic school near my college. They were awesome. I was hooked and coached ever since.When I arrived at SLA there were no coaching jobs left open... or so I thought! I knew nothing about debate except for the informal bickering I've engaged in with everyone I've ever met. That first year was a challenge. The students were young, the league in Philadelphia was new and we were certainly in a building year. The 2009-2010 school year started to see some building momentum and by the end of the year we were competing at the top of the league in the city.We were good, but if we were going to get better we needed a more consistent and solid meeting time to research and build cases. I went to Lehmann at the end of the school year and proposed a Debate class. In my mind, if we were going to raise the level of competition the very busy student athletes balancing the academic rigor of debate along with the demands of their normal SLA classes and jobs. We needed time; Lehmann agreed.
Two consistent hours a week for the first semester had an unbelievably positive impact on the performance of the debate team. At the Penn Youth For Debate tournament in early December, we brought a crushingly large team - 9 Debate partnerships went to work for the day debating the December Cyberbullying topic. When the day was over we won 1st - Andre Serrano and Chris Cassise, 3rd - Domnique Miller and Rumman Haq, 5th - Dennis Mawson and Kabbour Riqz and 6th places - Elisa Hyder and Mike Dea. One of SLA's newest debaters, Elisa Hyder, won the award for best speaker overall. No other team came anywhere near placing two teams at the top. I could not have been more proud. Or so I thought.Our winning ways continued with the conclusion of the Philadelphia City League last week. The Serrano/Cassise team (undefeated in 8 weeks of competition) and the Miller/Haq team placed 1st and 3rd again, Andre was one of the top overall speakers and SLA was the top team in the city. Our four top debaters will be getting out of school one day next semester to shadow an Assistant District Attorney and will be honored by the Philadelphia School Reform Commission (the Philly version of a school board) on January 12th.Debate is tough and awesome and frustrating and exhilarating. The 22 debaters that competed on behalf of SLA this past semester performed impressively. I am humbled to get to work with such a dynamic, fun-loving and tenacious bunch. Here's hoping the second semester holds as much fun as the first. Well done, team - well done.
Summertime
I've been a voracious reader since I was quite young. Living in a really small town, on a farm, with only 3 TV channels and no internet left me with some time on my hands. I read. All the time. But in the summer, I really read. I would sit in the hammock in the backyard and read for hours. It seemed to be the one place no one else in the family wanted to be. The summer between my junior and senior year of high school, I read every book that John Steinbeck wrote, all of them. I don't even remember how I came to acquire them all, but I did and read them all ... chain-reading is what I would call it. Read everything the author wrote. I loved it.As the years passed in college there was less and less time for pleasure reading due to the three jobs and full-time classes. Then, I started teaching full-time... 13 years later I find myself back on the farm, back in the hammock and back to chain-reading. I've missed it. Endlessly reading with nowhere to go and nothing better to do.I wish that I was able to find the head space that allowed me to read like this during the school year, but I can't seem to locate it amongst the meetings, planning, events, conferences, etc. I hope to make it a goal next year to find the time to lose myself in a book now and again (that isn't related to education, history, reform, etc)... DURING the school year.I hope you are finding the time to enjoy our teaching 'downtime', I know I am.
Cheer'reading
Mike Rose's Why School? is a quick, but delightful read. Reading this book is in the cheer'reading category, as I knew there would not be much to push my thinking. Rather this book brought new words to the ideas I have held about education my entire life. I'm not sure that I have ever read something I agreed with more, save (maybe) Rothstein's Grading Education.
One of my favorite passages:
To affirm our capacity as a people is not to deny the obvious variability among us. Not is it to retreat to some softhearted notion of mind. We mistake narrowness for rigor, but actually we are not rigorous enough. To acknowledge our collective capacity is to take the concept of variability seriously. Not as a neat binary distinction or as slots along a simplified cognitive continuum, but as a bountiful and layered field, where many processes and domains of knowledge interact. Such a model demands more, not less, from those of us who teach, or organize work, or who develop social policy. To affirm this conception of mind and work is to be vigilant for the intelligence not only in the boardroom but on the shop floor; in the laboratory and alongside the house frame; in the workshop and in the classroom. This is a model of mind that befits the democratic imagination.
I come from a long line of workers, farmers, mostly. The communities that develop around the work of farms, the coordination of schedules, the tenacious work ethic and specific knowledge about the profession is stunning. Rarely would I tell someone to aspire to a life of farming because of the state of the family farm in America today, but the life is something impressive to participate in and reflect upon. What I think I liked most about Mike Rose is that he gets how smart, savvy and focused people need to be in all walks of life. Some of the 'smartest' people I know have callused hands, bad shoulders from logging, and weathered skin.
The sticking point when we try to look at this valuation of variability is when we need to evaluate if the opportunities for those different paths (boardroom, shop floor, labratory, house frame and workshop) are open, equitably to all people. So it begs the question, do we educate everyone as if they are going to college in the attempt to not discriminate in who has the option to proceed? Is that the wisest path? Is there a better way? Is there a way to equitably open paths for students that want to pursue different careers in a way that doesn't limit them based on SES, race/ethnicity or gender? If we think the best way to ensure that everyone gets a 'shot' is to continue with a more standardized curriculum, how can we make sure to foster the work of those people that choose work not typically valued, equally by society?
We live in a time uniquely suited for greater individualization/specialization of instruction and yet we move in a more standardized fashion. hm.
National History Standards
Before I crack into my ideas about standards, let me state a few points of note:• I love social studies, all of it, the facts, the thinking, the philosophical underpinnings, the minutia. But, my loving of it does not mean that I believe everyone should love it like I do. Rather my job is to try and tell a compelling story so as to encourage critical thinking and analysis in the hopes that students become informed and effective citizens.• I have taught social studies in 4 distinct regions of the country, which influences the manner in which I frame and process this issue.• I fought very hard inside the social studies standards debate in Arizona during 2006. It was eye opening.I closely watch the development of the Common Core standards in English/Language Arts and Math. Inevitably, my mind floats to my own discipline, social studies. As I try to parse out the potential ugliness that may ensue, a few issues occur to me. The largest complicating factor, for me, is best summed up by the fact “that there are simply not enough hours in the day to cover everything everyone thinks is important.” The people, the places, the battles, the bills, the court cases, the trivia of history are often the most difficult to assess value, placement and inclusion in standards.E.D. Hirsch and the Core Knowledge advocates have identified what they believe is most important to teach, to learn, to know about being an informed and well-rounded citizen. Each state has also spent copious amounts of time defining standards for Social Studies at the state level, debating and passing those standards. In each state nothing is more sacred than the local stories, the small town heroes, the state lore, as well as the regional sacrifices and the battles fought on their soil. As I have lived in a variety of American regions, I can say, the locale, the quirks of the region, the racial and ethnic composition make them all distinctly unique. These local oral histories and photos and diaries and newspapers and court records all serve to tell different stories in locally interesting and engaging ways. The stories of Oklahoma are fascinating, but may not be as valuable to the people who tell the stories of Alaska or Wisconsin or Maine. We are one country, yes, but are regionally distinct and notable.America’s story is compelling because it is about the national and the state and the local; that the intervening balance and interplay is complicated. Yes. It’s downright messy. It is a fact that certain pieces of history are more valued than others in different parts of the country. Certain interests that control state boards are both politically and religiously motivated to influence the development of such standards. These conflicts, interests and motivations are hard to reconcile at those levels. Imagine the difficulty with a national envisioning of those standards.Deciding how history and social studies is defined and assessed on a national level is poised to be as divisive a conversation education has entered into in recent memory. This is no small issue, as education is mired in a myriad of contentious conversations about reform and renewal and renaissance. Ohio, Texas, North Carolina and a number of states have been in all out verbal brawls over the statewide standards. When we try to combine those ideas into national standards, I anticipate an exponentially gruesome battle.E.D. Hirsch seems to feel confident that he knows what every American child should know about history. I however, after living in a variety of American regions, am almost as certain that flexibility in content is critical, respect and validation for regional identity imperative and we need to temper a desire to turn my content into a national checklist of facts and dates. We can do better than this and the complex informational landscape demands that we do.I would rather not have national standards in any subject area, but I think the impending push for them will be overwhelming to many states that are cash strapped and desperate, as I anticipate the adoption of national standards will be tied to federal dollars. Having the Common Core focus move past ELA/Math and potentially into Social Studies/History worries me, greatly.Part two of this post will outline how I think we could get this right, if pressed into national history standards. I would love to know what you all think about this, what is the right path, how is this best accomplished, assessed, etc. Colorado seems to have some interesting ideas.(open all included links at once)
Evaluating World View
The second semester brought me to the first day of a new course, as in, brand new senior level elective. I've thought about this course a ton, planned some and am hoping it goes off well. The first activity I put in front of the students was an adaptation of World of 100. An activity that asks students to conjure global statistics as they exist in the student's mind. Essentially, they guess a series of demographic categories and then compare with the correct answers.The link above details the steps I undertook in the activity. But, I want to use the space here to reflect a little on why I do activities like this, a pre-test, if you will. (In American History I start with the US Citizenship test)The reason I *torture* the students with this type of activity isn't so much to bring to light their lack of knowledge, but rather to get them to evaluate how they perceive the world they inhabit. These activities do humble the kids (a bit), but also serve as a motivation for them to assess their own view of the world and figure out why it is their version of the world does not jive with reality. One of my favorite classroom moments, was when they immediately wanted to know where the numbers came from, sources, links, etc. They wanted to verify and validate. (yay, them!)Some reactions from the students were:
Filling out the sheet was strange because it forced me to think outside of my environment and what I deem normal.
I, all of a sudden, felt like I knew very little about the world. I thought that I would have been able to do ok with this since I have gotten to travel quite a bit around the country and out. Obviously though I still know very little about the world.
When I was filling it out I kept wanting to fill it out for just America and I had to keep reminding myself that it was supposed to fill it out for the whole world.
I felt confused. I never thought about the world in numbers like that before. It's hard for me to look at the world at such a large point of view.
Filling out the world of 100 worksheet gave me a different perspective on a lot of things. I couldn't remember a time when I had ever thought about the world in that way.
At the end of last semester's class, the goal was for the students to know the function and interplay of the major governmental branches (at all levels) and to understand how those branches and functions and interplay, impact them personally. For the Globalization course, the goal is to have students evaluate world issues from a perspective outside their own, be able to converse about the similarities and differences that exist in different regions of the world and ultimately engage in a more holistic, global conversation about the pressing issues of the day.At least that is the goal, we are off to a good start.
Post EduCon 2.2
First of all, thank you to all the session leaders who led some amazing conversations, thanks to the workforce of SLA students, staff and parents, thanks to the attendees that were willing to brave the brisk, snowy Philadelphia weather to join us for the event.Organizing this event is an undertaking. It literally takes the entire SLA community to step up. I value community in a really specific, necessary way. Working in a place that rallies, pulls together, works hard, and laughs along the way, is necessary (for me) in my workplace. So YAY!The reason I find EduCon personally compelling, is that if I am going to foster and sustain my PLN, I need to see them, in person, face to face... reality. I can limp along throughout the year, trading tweets and IMs and blogs and comments, but I really don't think I would keep up with the whole endeavor if there was not a time to process, converse, share in real time and space. Asynchronous can only get me so far.Today I am tired, as Lehmann would say, "bone weary". There is no good way to recover but with copious amounts of sleep, couch time and fresh air. The effort is so worth it, the benefits/impacts have a long tail for all people involved. It is incredibly fulfilling and humbling to play a role in all this. Thanks for taking part. So good.
Phlagstaff 2010
From May 2nd-May 9th, 2010, ten students and two staff from SLA will venture to the southwest once again for adventure and learning. The inaugural 2009 trip was a smashing success and we are looking forward to new experiences on a new river this trip.We will be visiting:Red Rocks of SedonaCinder Cones of Flagstaffthe "Lava Tubes"Grand Canyon - South RimCoconino High SchoolGrand Canyon - Diamond DownThe students in Philadelphia are partnered with 10 Flagstaff students who attend Coconino High School. This partnership allows for not only for the adventure of the trip, but of a real connection to the people, not just the place.This tradition of exploring far flung places in nature all started with my 7th grade Science teacher and I've never been the same since. I've been trying to pay that kindness forward for the past 15 years as I have taken kids all over Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Southeast Utah, and AZ/Grand Canyon (from Glen Canyon to Diamond Creek). None of this would ever have been possible without the serious support of my family and a robust community committed to providing these special experiences for students.If you would like to support our trip, consider donating to our fundraising efforts!
Serendipity
Last year during the 2008 election cycle I explored a plethora of websites with my students, at times the amount of tabs I had open scared the students (it was amusing). One of the links that we investigated was WhyTuesday? In the heat of the most exciting election of my lifetime, the students were incredibly engaged and interested in all things election. They were curious about the idea of change and how it was manifesting itself on the WhyTuesday? site. It was all about citizen action and moving the people toward more political participation. Good stuff.Fast forward one year to the 2009 election cycle. Night. Day. The students were once again in my class talking about the election, but whatever electricity had existed last year had long faded and we witnessed a lackluster election cycle in Philly. One thing had not changed, though, I still introduced my students to WhyTuesday? and talked about the work that was occurring. They were once again intrigued. This year, however, I shot out a message on twitter that I used the website with students.Enter twitter searching.Jacob Soboroff, contributor at WhyTuesday? reads tweet about use in my classroom, retweets and this is how the story goes...We trade emails, then phone numbers to organize a time when I can get both of my classes in the same room at the same time and when he is awake (we are EST, he is PST). It is a little surreal to have the person iChatting into History class also be interviewing Clint Eastwood in the same 12 hour span of time.While Jacob and I are arranging for times and such, the students are working on a mini-project which asked them to propose a reform to the US voting procedures. They were specifically challenged to look into what change would bring about the largest increase in voter participation in the US. To prepare for this we looked at voter turnout history in the US, investigated other democracies in the world and evaluated current US voting procedures. After all the investigation was complete, the groups came to consensus about a reform they were going to propose and chose a slogan. Then in each group: one person wrote a position paper, one wrote a rebuttal, one recorded a radio ad and one produced a print ad. The goal was to have a consistent theme/slogan and be presented as a package reform proposal. The project portion was essentially completed in two classes, the research spanned about four classes. Some sample final projects can be found on my wiki.Last Tuesday (how fitting), Jacob iChatted in at the end of the school day to 60 juniors all jammed into my classroom. They spent the next 45 minutes trading ideas and questions about voting, civic motivations and US history. It was spectacular. When we debriefed on Thursday, many of the kids felt like this was a wonderful way to 'have class'. A majority of hands went up when I asked if they would like me to try and arrange for other experts to iChat in. When I asked them what they liked about the iChat, they were most impressed that during their conversation with Jacob, he didn't just talk *at* them. They genuinely felt like he was interested in their ideas and the process of sharing thoughts, rather than just hearing himself talk. (so good)From my perspective everything mentioned above was wonderful but, having a real person that uses their life to try and improve civic engagement in the US, iChat into my class to speak with students is superb. The fact that it all went down because of 140 characters on twitter is, well, perfect.
No One is Coming for Us!
One of the largest frustrations that I have with regard to pedagogical reform (involving technology or otherwise), is related to the perspective with which many teachers think about leading the change. Many teachers are looking around wondering where the leaders are, who will ‘allow’ them to implement their big ideas for change. The thing that I have come to realize, people, is that NO ONE IS COMING FOR US.Now I don’t say this to be inflammatory or contentious, but rather to point out one of the basic stumbling blocks that many reform minded teachers trip on in the great march to more/better/faster in pedagogical reform. The leaders in many schools are not reform minded. The leaders in many state houses are not reform minded. Although the word reform is tossed around as though it is a fore gone national policy conclusion, much of the ‘reform’ policies look just like more of the same: testing, standardization, and then more testing. I have to let you in on a little secret, more standardization and testing is not reform. Real reform, that takes into account the shift from an era of information scarcity to one of information surplus, is harder to come by, its nebulous. But, much like the constitutional definition of pornography, I know it when I see it. And I think many teachers also know it when they see it on the faces of their students, in the work they do, and in the words they speak. We know.Hence, when you find yourself saying, “I wonder when (fill in the blank here with your school/workplace/district) is finally going to get it and start adopting more ‘21st century’ friendly pedagogical reform”, my suggestion is to stop asking that question because NO ONE IS COMING FOR US.The leadership that we all crave and seek is really already here. We are it. Those of you trapped in places where the leadership is abysmal/lacking/stultifying, start taking classes to be the principal, or the curriculum director or, IT director, or, or, or….. Build common cause with community groups, universities, and non-profits. Get moving. Lead. We must stop waiting for someone to come and save us all from the big bad bureaucratic machine that crushes innovation and creativity because, well, you know why.
SLA goes to AZ/UT
Backchanneling the (not) State of the Union
Goal:Student engagement with and reflection on the (not) State of the UnionMeans:Moodle Chatroom backchannel for the live broadcast of the addressANDPersonal response to the ideas/issues presented using GCast channel and cellphones*Results:20 students participated in the live backchannel**AND1-2 minute student reflections recorded on GCast*For directions on how to set up a gcast channel to use with multiple users**Kyle Stevens and I are toying around with having a TX/PA joint chatroom next year between his students and my students
Feels like Home.
At some point in the last seven days I finally synthesized my decision making process for picking up from a place I adored to join in the fun at SLA. The days leading up to the EduCon kick off were nothing more than a blur of constant activity and thought focused on organization, doing, cleaning, constructing, moving and every other action verb you can imagine. It was delightful.However, when education professionals started pouring into the school on Friday morning one question kept popping up. It came in different forms and slight variations on a theme, but really people wanted to why SLA works, why I would move across country to join in. When I left Flagstaff last spring, I wrote:
The visit to EduCon2.0 and SLA solidified within me a certainty that I think I had been coming to for quite some time. I needed to work in a place with people that ‘get’ it with regard to students and learning. Although many of my revelations and connections were at tech conferences and online, at the end of the day I need to be in a real space with educators that approach education with a similar philosophy and curricular approach. By walking through the door of the Science Leadership Academy I literally opened a new door on my career path.
All of that is still true, however I realized a more subtle and significant connection in this whole choice to be here and it connects to another theme I find myself returning to time and again. I grew up in the smallest of farming communities in western Wisconsin, in the 80s. Glamorous it was not; hard work, struggle and perseverance were at the top of the list for descriptors. I would not change a bit of it. Nothing. Not one moment.The school I attended was not progressive, traditional in all those really traditional ways. Lincoln High School was phenomenally important to a bunch of farm kids in the Midwest. Our teachers pushed us to be prepared to get out and do more with our lives. The people in the community pushed for it, the students reached for it and the result was a singular effort striving for opportunity that only college offered at that time. The high school held 160 students 9-12, but has cranked out a Ph.D. from Berkeley that works for the National Institutes of Health, a member of the CIA, a top account in a major firm, a vice president of Ericsson and who knows what else. Small farm towns do not tend to have this kind of success rate for their students. What my hometown did was unify behind the success of its young people in the most consistent manner. Communal, unyielding support and expectations for success walked with us everyday.Since I left the cozy security of rural America 16 years ago, I have tried to create that feeling of community I left in the rolling hills of Wisconsin. And on Friday when I was being asked over and over again, why does SLA work, why did you choose this. The answer was the same for both questions: SLA epitomizes all of the good pieces of a community of care I was carefully raised in as a child and after all these years teaching all over the US, I am home again.
Grading Education
During our decadent snow day today, I began reading Richard Rothstein's Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right . If anyone else has read or is reading this particular piece of writing, please let me know as I would like to process some of this as I go. The Economic Policy Institute has the introduction posted.Some introductory ideas/assertions from Rothstein that caught my attention:--In education, “accountability,” as described here, requires schools and other public institutions that prepare our youth to pursue the goals established by the people and their representatives through democratic processes, and to achieve these goals to the extent possible by using the most effective strategies available.--Yet none of these proposals commanded sufficient support because none addressed NCLB’s most fundamental problem – although tests, properly interpreted, can contribute some important information about school quality, testing alone is a poor way to measure whether schools, or their students, perform adequately.--State accountability systems should ensure that schools and supporting institutions promote all these traits in a balanced fashion, because accountability for only some outcomes will create incentives to ignore others.--One reason, perhaps the most important, why No Child Left Behind and similar testing systems in the states got accountability so wrong is that we’ve wanted to do accountability on the cheap.--The chapter describes how an accountability system organized around achieving a fixed proficiency point leads to excessive concentration on students whose performance is slightly below that point and ignores students who are either above or far below it.These are just a few of the quotes from the introduction. I am perpetually intrigued by the idea that standardized testing, as it is currently employed through NCLB, is a false path for a successful educational model. In the attempt to wrap my brain around relevant research, I picked up a few books over the last month to dig into. This is the first one into which I am digging.The last few sentences of the introduction really hit home after this past weekend's conversations.
But first things first. Before detailing this accountability program, we have to ask, “accountable for what?” What are the goals of American public education? Certainly, good test scores are part of the answer, but should schools be accountable for more – say, good citizenship, or good judgment? If so, is it possible to measure these broader school outcomes to know whether educators are performing satisfactorily? It is to these questions that we now turn.
Now onto page 13.
Where I come from...
Anyone who knows me, even a little, knows that I grew up on a farm in west central Wisconsin. Even though I left the farm at 18, it has never left me. There is one thing that stands out to me after all these years away from the farm, that I try to replicate everywhere I can, and that is a sense of community; and not community in the digital, 21st century, ubiquitous kind of way.Today when I called my parents they relayed a story that best epitomizes the sense of community that still exists in small, rural towns. The Hagens, Julie and Jewell, live up the road, and have done so since before I was alive. Their son, Terry, was a year older than I in school. The father and son team run a dairy operation with 150 head of cattle, machinery, etc. The business supports two families and is pulling off what few families have in the last few decades on America's small farms; the family farm.Friday night, just after midnight, my Mom bolted out of bed, unsure of what had woken her, but knew something was wrong. A few minutes later there were sirens coming from all directions down our little road that scarcely sees a vehicle after midnight. My father, hard sleeper extraordinaire, slept through all the commotion. Knowing that my father would want to see what was happening and help if he could, my mother woke him up. As my father turned west out of the driveway, the cause of the commotion was abundantly clear.The Hagen's barn was on fire. This was not a small fire, burning machinery, hay, straw, equipment and worst of all, 44 head of their best milking cows. Four volunteer fire departments responded with probably close to 100 people up and out of bed to help in the middle of the night. My dad buzzed back to the house to pick up the cattle trailer to help get the remaining cows to a nearby pasture. Almost immediately, one of the men present remembers that a local farmer just sold off his cows the previous week and there was a barn still set up for milking, about 15 miles away. The only thing missing was a compressor, as that had been sold off already. A local electrician, and close friend of the family, chimes in with, you get the cattle there and the compressor will be in and ready. Men and women spent the bulk of the night trying to make sure the fire didn't spread to the rest of the buildings and stand in support of the family. No one received a dollar or compensation or anything but the knowledge that if it was their home or barn or livelihood, the same would apply.In the recent political season, the scene is one that I almost can't bear to watch anymore with the spewing of anger and the skewing of fact. But, as I listened to my mom tell me the story, it occurs to me that none of that matters if we don't have communities like the one I grew up in, continuing to help when help is needed and celebrate when the good times come. It may be a little overly simplistic and/or Pollyanna'ish' to say so, but I think that America is really in trouble when we cease to be the kind of place where neighbors help neighbors, let alone know their neighbors. Living in the city is really unreal with fabulous opportunities and wonderful events... but I am not sure that the sense of community that exists in these rural pockets of America translate well in our cities. The loss of that feeling that your neighbor will get out of bed in the middle of a Friday night to help salvage your life's work... is one that America can't stand to lose.It is in my classroom that I try very hard to help students to feel that sense of community, that sense that someone will help you because it is the right thing to do. SLA is an easy place to foster such a feeling because the community is already so strong. But I often think about what it must be like to live a life without the strong sense that your network will support you when you stumble. To have grown up in it makes me a better person, to know that it is still alive and well, gives me hope.
Rebranding History
Rebranding HistoryWoke up this morning and heard 'crackdown' again...this time on NPR.While having a conversation last night during the Olympics Opening Ceremony, a friend expressed disappointment with NBC for the treatment of Tiananmen Square in the historical overview of China. The word NBC employed to describe Tiananmen was: crackdown. Webster's definition of crackdown: as to take positive regulatory or disciplinary action. If that is the correct definition of Tiananmen, I must have watched different video footage when I was 15 years old. If you want a refresher...there are endless videos and readings online. But make no mistake, there is nothing positive about what you will see. Tiananmen was a time when 'democracy was sweeping the globe', the Wall was crumbling, perestroika was working and the people of China were ready to have a voice. As the days clicked by in 1989 and the people began to crowd into Tiananmen Square, I remember thinking that this could be their moment. But all of that came to a halt on June 4th when the tanks rolled down the street.Fast forward fourteen years when I had the extreme privilege of visiting China during the summer of 2003. We traveled to many places in China but I knew that when I got to Beijing, I wanted to see one thing for myself. The city was quiet that morning and I wanted to get there without the crowd I was traveling with, to have a moment before the hawkers and tourists and lines rolled in. I needed to be there, I needed to stand there. At one point I turned around and looked back towards Mao's tomb and my mind flashed to the scene of the military coming down the street. It was unchanged, I could see the tanks in my mind, and I was frozen. This was a place where a generation of people tried to fight against oppression of action and thought, and lost. This was the scene of a massacre, not a crackdown.Possibly most upsetting about the media's word choice in using crackdown is that it adopts the Chinese government perspective of Tiananmen, rather than the perspective from the rest of the world as we watched. When the media starts to adopt the language of the Communist government to describe a catastrophic violent action against free speech and action, we should all take notice and question the re-branding of a staggering human rights nightmare.Words can be incredibly insidious in changing the memory of an event. The use of the word crackdown is one of those moments and, although I wholeheartedly want the Olympics to give the Chinese people their voice, I think much would be lost if the global collective culture began to actually think of Tiananmen as nothing more than a government action to bring order, rather than the massacre that it was. Could be an interesting moment to parse out in the classroom with students about the 'smoothing' of history over time by using vocabulary differently... this unfortunately is not the only example.