Peabloggy

Rochelle Gutierrez, PhD, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign visited our Learning Sciences Institute recently to present her work on pedagogy and student math teachers. Her presentation draws on Latina/Latino studies to offer a potential framework for reconceptualizing knowledge and for engaging teacher candidates in a process that acknowledges the complex identities of students.

It’s an interesting perspective in identity, power, and shape-shifting which addresses the unique student-teacher relationship of knowing/not-knowing and learning about each other while engaging in learning math.

Watch the video.

What qualifies someone to be president? Historically, its seems to be a combination of Military Career, MBA or JD plus prior political experience. Add some winning charm, charisma, a bit of machismo and you’re in. I realize that not everyone is completely dissatisfied with our current president to the degree which I am, but my opinion of the value placed on a Harvard MBA has taken a severe beating in the last seven years. Not that I blame the Ivy Leagues for the personal shortcomings of the students they graduate (my older brother recently graduated from grad school at Harvard). I am simply questioning the notion that a knowledge of business and economic machinations, or our country’s legal and governmental system are, in and of themselves, accurate predictors of whether someone is qualified to be president.

For the record: Hillary Clinton has her B.A from Wellesley and her J.D. from Yale. Barack Obama has his B.A. from Columbia University and his J.D. from Harvard. John McCain graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis (894 of 899 in his class…for the record).

While I believe that all three have qualifications to act effectively as president, to varying degrees, I want to know when we will have a president who lists an M.Ed or Ed.D. on their vitae? Various researchers have estimated that the average teacher makes between 1000 and 1500 decisions a day that take into account dozens of complex variables. Excellent teachers have to be familiar with the intricacies of all the different cultural variables present within their classrooms, and how those variables affect teacher-student interaction, student-student interaction, and the most effective teaching strategies to employ to attain the desired goals for each student. Teachers need to be able to manage all the skills and personalities of the students in their room as well as those of other teachers and administrators. Teachers have to learn to accomplish a lot with relatively little in the way of resources, support, or cooperation. Teachers have to evolve a complex set of legal and diplomatic skills in dealing with different portions of the school-going population and their families.

This is the worst thinly veiled metaphor, ever. Can I stop now? Have I made a point?

A highly educated, very successful teacher with the right personality and perhaps some political experience is just as, if not a more viable presidential candidate than most (see Ross Perot and his %19 percent of the popular vote in 1992). Consider the remarkable percentage of work and decision making that presidents delegate to others anyway. How many decisions has our current administration made that the President seems to be completely unaware of? A superintendent or principal spend their entire day delegating work and reserving the decisions that are made public for themselves.

Most importantly, though, the quality that we admire most in our best teachers is a genuine sense of compassion and caring for each and every student. A teacher has to want every student to succeed by meeting their full potential. I need a lawyer who can protect my rights. I need an economist who can monitor and regulate our capitalist markets wisely. I need an army that is intelligently and effectively led. But more than any of those things, I want someone guided by a sincerity and compassion that informs their decisions; and the intelligence to delegate those other jobs based upon that larger understanding of striving for ideals both fair and just.

–Luke Webb

I am by no means an expert on charter schools, so I hesitate to post on this topic. But, as I look for teaching jobs for next year, I’ve been thinking about unconventional approaches to education and the possibilities they hold. I spent eight weeks in a comprehensive high school student teaching with 12th graders, and I learned firsthand about many of the limitations involved with teaching 130+ students in 55 minute class periods every day. So, when I heard about Big Picture High School, I was intrigued.

The Big Picture Company, based on a school model based on The Met Center in Rhode Island. The Met model, which is being replicated at Big Picture Schools around the country - including one here in Nashville - focuses on tailored curricula with a vastly smaller number of students than typical students. Teachers are assigned 14-15 students, and they work with those students over the course of four years to develop projects and secure internships that address each student’s unique interests. Teachers have time and opportunity to invest in students’ lives - “one student at a time” - and students see a direct correlation between school and the things that are truly important to them in life.

I’m sure there are drawbacks to the approach Big Picture schools take, but I am intrigued enough to find out more. Eliot Levine’s book, One Kid at a Time, catalogues the Big Picture model as it originated at the Met School, and is worth a read.

- Rachel Bowers

Today, I had my first experience with Tennessee’s annual state mandated assessment, the TCAP. I proctored the Language Arts section of the test for a seventh grade class of 27 students, and I watched them diligently read and bubble. Most of the students seemed to fare well - this school has historically positive TCAP results. And while I have often questioned the validity of tests such as these, I am surprised (in spite of myself) to find that a school can teach to the test and also ensure a good deal of useful learning for students. After the test, the kids were incredibly fidgety for the rest of the day (and I would argue that TCAP week should come with an abbreviated schedule of half-days), and they certainly did not enjoy the test, but it seems like the opportunity for this kind of assessment provides a sense of accomplishment for students and teachers alike.

I don’t think test scores should be used to punish teachers or schools or blame anyone in particular for the ills of a school or district, but I am coming to the conclusion that standardized tests aren’t all bad. I may yet change my mind, though. I still have three more days of testing to proctor.

- Rachel Bowers

As I write this post, my eyes wander to the stack of 90 student essays that have just been graded. I feel that I have performed one of my first true feats of strength as an aspiring English teacher. Next week, my students will begin rewriting sections of these essays (I can already hear the groaning!). What weighs most heavily on my mind, however, is how little students appear to be reading the novel their papers address. For the crafty student who listens in class and skims his Spark Notes, it could be easy to make all A’s and yet never crack open a book.

Educational researcher Tovani (2000) calls this phenomenon “fake reading,” and she has experienced it first-hand. She claims that she read the first and last page of assigned books, found the Cliff notes, and managed to write high scoring essays without every actually reading and interpreting a text on her own. It was not until she began attending an adult book discussion group that she found she could no longer get by with faking it. The other book club members were relating personal experiences to the novel in a way that only true readers can. As I continue to tweak assignments and projects during my current teaching unit, I keep Tovani’s book club in mind. How can I push students to become personally invested in their readings?

–Katie Harris

I was reading the Village Voice (I will warn the reader here that some content in the Voice is not child friendly) today because the cover story caught my eye. I like to read the Voice because I think the Social and Political writing is usually very good. The honesty of the voice and the transparency of the research involved generally make for an interesting read. That said, I started reading because the article was about home-schooling in New York City in the African-American community.  I was a little disappointed, though, that the article didn’t really delve into complexities of home-schooling, both in terms of its affect on the students and the commentary on the public school system.  Draw your own conclusions.

Yes, parents home school their kids because of religious views, concerns about quality and safety, and personal convictions about how their children are to be raised, I’m well aware.  Home schooling is not a solution, though.  It may work well for educated parents with time and resources to provide their students with a base of learning that will prepare them for the professional and social world outside their doors.  But, to be honest, I don’t trust any parent I don’t personally know to be able to do that, and I don’t trust a lot of them that I do know to be able to do it. Sorry friends.  The one thing I’ve learned at Peabody is that teaching is a complex profession, and doing it well is hard for the professionals.  To teach my own future children everything I think they should know about everything would require more time than I could ever give them.

As an M.Ed student I can understand how I might seem probably somewhat biased in my views.  I do want to be a teacher at an evil, corrupting Public School (wringing hands maniacally).  Let me explain away why I’m not.  I’ve had a lot of terrible teachers in my life.  Terrible.  Lots of them.  I was bullied in school.  I consider myself Christian (and I hope others do too). I think there is a lot wrong with public schools.  Yet, here I am, with a bachelor’s degree and honors from a major university and getting a master’s degree from a prestigious ed. program.  I have four brothers and sisters who would all be excellent poster children for surviving in spite of the system.  I attribute all that success to our parents and our upbringing.  All five of us have been in school since we were old enough to be sent to daycare/pre-school because my parent’s were relatively young and working long hours to support us.  Home schooling was never an option, and even when they had the resources to offer my youngest brother private school he turned the offer down, much to their consternation.

Why all the rambling, I hear those of you still reading asking yourselves?  I believe public schools are dying for the very same reason our politicians rush into things like wars or the open arms of lobbyists, because we are letting them.   What is the largest factor determining a student’s success and the improvement of neighborhood schools?  Parental and community involvement.   Everything else like funding, spending, and environment depend on what the taxpayers and voters of our democracy demand.  Lacking the funds to chose the best schools for my siblings and I, my parents taught us to love knowledge and be responsible independent people.  Lacking the parents to guide and raise their children with all the money in the world we get citizens like the Spears family or the Jacksons (of Michael, Latoya, Jermaine etc…).  There are exceptions. There are shades of gray.  There are no rules.  There is only motivation, understanding, and kindness.

Teach your own children if you want, that’s your prerogative. I don’t think there are enough lifeboats for all of us.  Maybe we should fix the whole instead.

–Luke Webb

“Where is the country of Taliban located?” a high school girl asked me in class one day, after watching part of the movie Osama (which, incidentally, is about a girl living in Afghanistan during the Taliban’s reign in the ’90’s).

I quickly realized that this student (and many others) were confused by the historical events in Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, which we are reading right now. I devised activities on Afghanistan’s history; I brought in movie clips of more moderate madrassas; I explained the different forms that Islam can take. Tomorrow, however, my students have a chance to learn about these things first-hand.

One of the strengths of a large school district like Nashville Metro lies in its diversity. Yes, it can lead to racial and ethnic tension in school, but it also enables classroom discussion to be that much richer. Four older students will be visiting tomorrow to participate in a panel on being female, Muslim, and Middle Eastern. They come from Iran, Iraq, and even Afghanistan itself.  My classes have prepared questions to ask, and I have as well.  I hope that my students’ horizons, as well as my own, will be stretched out just a little further after tomorrow.

–Katie Harris

I recently saw the mockumentary Chalk, produced by Mike Akel. Perhaps best described as K-12’s version of The Office, this film prodded a few laughs out of me (especially the slang spelling bee), but left me wanting more, a lot more, out of the characters.  Despite my previous complaints about unrealistic education movies, I wanted to see a profound moment between student and teacher.  I wanted to hear the choirs of angels serenading the movie audience as an educator liberates his students from institutional oppression.  I wanted those classic montages in which students create a dazzling project or improve the neighborhood to the chorus of a catchy tune.

Instead, I got a pretty close rendering of the day-to-day reality of a new teacher with little support, no experience, and mediocre passion.  This description may not appeal to most audiences, but to the urban educator, this movie may resonate deeply.  Before I began teaching, I never realized that there will be bad days, no matter how well you teach or how much you planned or how effectively you connect with students.  I never considered the lifelessness that can skulk about the hallways of comprehensive high schools.  But I also agree with the assistant principal in Chalk when she says that it is those shared moments with students, however brief, that make teaching worthwhile.

–Katie Harris

Wednesday was parent-teacher conference day in Williamson County, and I lost count of the number of times I heard something along these lines from parents of seventh graders:

“So and so does his homework, but he’s always trying to do the least amount of work possible so that he can hurry up and go play video games. I don’t know what to do besides take the computer away during the week.”

I was shocked. I know that kids often want to avoid or quickly finish homework in order to move on to more appealing activities like games or sports, but it was striking to hear from parents about the sense of urgency their kids feel to get to the computer screen - an urgency not unlike the sometimes neurotic email-checking that I, and so many other adults, engage in every day.

We live in what researchers and theorists have named an “attention economy” (Lankshear, Knobel) - and in this economy, the demands on our time and attention exceed the amount of attention we have to give. After Wednesday, I realized how important it is for teachers to discuss this overtly with students, and other adults. How do we prioritize and sort through the demands effectively? And how do we teach (and learn) habits that can help us focus on a task for half an hour without clicking on “Send and Receive Email” about fifteen times? I’m still trying to figure that one out.

- Rachel Bowers

“The five-paragraph essay does not exist in the wild,” writes Barry Gilmore in Is it Done Yet?: Teaching Adolescents the Art of Revision. But as early as the wild days of seventh grade, we teach our students the form of five-paragraphs and assess them on their ability to perform it. As a writing tutor at Vanderbilt’s Writing Studio and a preservice teacher, I struggle to make sense of the conflicting messages we send to students about how to write well:

• Expository writing omits the first-person article, but authorial voice is one of the most essential components of effective writing.

• Revision is where a writer truly exercises her craft, but you must learn to write a cogent essay in a limited time frame for important state assessments. You will never see this essay again.

• Writing is a truly collaborative act between a writer and her audience, but you must demonstrate an ability to construct an argument or expository piece without a deep understanding of your reader.

• Good writing has authentic purpose - to convince, explain, or move an audience - but you must learn to write an essay for the purposes of a timed test.

I wonder: What do we truly want to teach students about writing, and how can we best communicate that message? What kinds of writing do we find most valuable in our own work and lives? What are the priorities of good writing for us, and do our assessments communicate those priorities to our students?

As Literacy Education Advocacy Month approaches and mandatory writing assessments continue to impact Language Arts instruction in profound ways, we must consider our answers to these questions.

- Rachel Bowers