Tag: #oklaed

Blue Serials (11/8/15)

~ Blue Cereal

Xmas Too Early

HARK HOW THE BELLS! SWEET SILVER BELLS! ALL SEEM TO SAY! THROW CARES AWAY! CHRISTMAS IS – 

I know, I know – we complain about it every year, but that doesn’t stop the machine from cranking this baby up as early as they think might squeeze a few more half-pennies from the masses. And it IS coming… sooner than you think. We’re past Fall Break, the new has worn off, the time has changed, and things just seem to get busier and busier. Sure, we MEANT to keep up with our online teacher friends and we bookmarked those edu-blogs to read, but…

No worries. I got you. It’s what I do. Here are the “Shouldn’t Miss” posts from #oklaed and beyond this past week or two…

Never Give Up Hope – Regular readers and vintage #11FF might not expect me to be quite so hooked on Jon Harper, aka Bailey & Derek’s Daddy, given his penchant for emotional, inspirational, warm and toasty caring kinda things. That’s not really my comfort zone. But it works for him, and underneath it runs a current not of sugar and fairy dust, but of risk – and gut checks – and breaking the $%&@ rules if it might be best for kids. In this short piece he rolls the dice on a troubled kid and seeks his help mediating between two younger boys. Then he walks away. Follow Harper on the Twitters at @jonharper70bd – really. Go, now – do it. 

Clutch / Breakthrough – As long as we’re full of hope and acknowledging the moments of healing light, here’s a double shot of Rebecka Peterson on OneGoodThing this past week. My daughter – who’s as sharp as a gar, but scathingly merciless regarding any teacher she deems unworthy (where do kids GET these attitudes?) – still loves Mrs. Peterson best of anyone she had in high school, including me. That’s OK, though – I do too. Bask in the mathematical and pedagogical wisdom of Peterson at @RebeckaMozdeh on the Twitters.  #oklaed 

#OurSchool – Seth Meier of Excellence In Mediocrity shares his take on this year’s release of the infamous Oklahoma Public Schools A-F Report Cards. **Spoiler Alert** He’s not impressed. It’s probably sour grapes, though – sounds like #HisSchool wastes all their time and resources on serving kids, growing their potential, and developing the sorts of relationships that lead to a lifetime love of learning and a belief in what’s possible when we apply ourselves to greatness. Pshaw! That crap is SO not on the high stakes state standardized tests. Follow Meier and his Twittering at @SethMeier.  #oklaed

Nothing {New} To See Here… – Mindy Dennison at This Teacher Sings drops a ‘DUH’ on those bewildered as to why treating people badly and paying them poorly makes them not want to teach. In other “Who Knew?’ news, politicians just want to get elected and pro wrestling is almost as fake as a Kardashians episode. Trigger Warning: I’m pretty sure I detect traces of snark and sarcasm from Dennison as she ponders HOW any of this remains so COMPLICATED for state leggies. What’s NOT complicated is following Dennison when she’s Twitterizing as @MrsDSings, so let’s go do that now, kay?  #oklaed 

On Slow Readers And What It Means for Student Reading Identity / Then It Just Doesn’t Matter – A pair from Pernille Ripp on Blogging Through the Fourth Dimension – both richer and truer than ought to be possible in such brevity. From the first: “Since when did taking your time as you read become something to be ashamed of?” and from the other: “So when they hate reading we must attack that first.  Not the strategies, not the skills, but the emotion that is attached to everything we are trying to do.  We must dig and dig and dig to find out why.  And we must ask, and we must talk, and we must give them a chance to change their mind, if even just in the slightest way, as we create classrooms that are run on a culture of love for our subject, rather than a need to cover curriculum.” Ripp excites me because she says things I would want to say if I’d realized how strongly I thought and felt them, then crushes me with how simply she pleads with us to please try to take care of our children in ways which should be so obvious. It’s like crying in church. Read her. Follow her. Buy her books. @PernilleRipp 

Finally, In Honor Of NaNoWriMo2015, A Post (and an Idea) Well Worth Another Look…

Detachment: An Object Lesson (November 2014)– Dan Tricarico, aka The Zen Teacher, shares a writing assignment I would have found bizarre and possibly pointless several years ago. Now I realize he was just a bit ahead of me on the ‘getting a clue’ curve (I can admit this because he’s too Zen to ever throw it back at me, but he knows it’s true), and I love Love LOVE this one. I’m going to find some pretense for doing this in my AmGovt class this month, because… defiance. And tenure. Oh – and it’s good for the children, too. Be good for your children by being in the moment with Dan on the Twitters at @TheZenTeacher and buying his book. At least add it to your wish list – I hear there’s a holiday of some sort coming up soon, and who knows what might turn up? 

Go, my #11FF Darlings – go be amazing, no matter what that looks like for you this week. I’ll leave you with a trifecta tribute to National Novel Writing Month, beginning with one of the strangest, wrongest things ever done to a Beatles song…

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Gonna write you a letter… gonna write you a book…

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It’s amazing what words can do…

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What was in that letter that calls to me, to me, to me? What was in that letter – straight to the very heart of me? What was in that letter that haunts me from this distance? What was in that letter – so sure, so persistent…? 

Yeah, I know – but I don’t think he means just a literal letter. Go write your book, in whatever form that means for you. Straight to the very heart. 

Inconceivable Conversations

~ Blue Cereal ~ 2 Comments

BananaPhone

I Do Not Think That Word Means…

We should put children on trial. 

What?

On trial. Kids should be required to go on trial to graduate. 

You mean, like… if they’ve done something wrong or fallen sho-

No. All of them. Innocent or guilty. Graduation or death. Maybe incarceration. 

*pause*

Why?

*impatientsigh* 

We all go through trials in life. High school is to prepare us for these trials. So they should be put on trial. 

Those two uses of the words are largely unrelated.

Clearly I believe in children and you don’t. 

What You Think It Means…

We MUST test children with state-created tests. All children should have to reach a certain cut score – to be determined long after they’ve made the attempt – on standardized exams in randomly chosen subjects, regardless of their backgrounds, interests, abilities, or circumstances. 

But that’s insane. Kids aren’t all the same. And our choice of ‘important’ subjects is wildly subjective. The standards change annually, and the tests aren’t even that g- 

Life is full of tests. 

Full of tests? 

Yes. 

Multiple choice, single-day, high stakes tests, during which you cannot have so much as a bottle of water and large periods of which involve mandatory staring at the wall because you’re not allowed to read or nap or look around and are being held captive solely at the whims of the testing companies and little Billy who takes forever on everything? Those sorts of tests? Life is full of those?

Yes. 

*pause* 

That’s not even close to true. 

Pilots take tests to become pilots. Ha! SCORE! *doesvictorydance* 

Pilots want to be pilots – they’re intrinsically driven to do well. They’re paying for it, they want it so bad.

They’re not being required to become pilots by some distant entity who’s decided piloting is more important than, say, plumbing. 

Pilots take the most important part of the test in a plane. Flying. They learn by doing and test by showing they can do, along with whatever pen and paper stuff is required.

Plumbers, on the other hand, don’t have to take the pilot test; they have to do something involving plumbing and the format isn’t even the same. They don’t sit at a computer for six hours, their entire success or failure resting on a cut score which hasn’t even been set yet based on this week’s ever-changing standards which themselves have nothing to do with plumbing but everything to do with weak-minded leaders who want to sound tough on edu- er… tough on plumbing and get themselves re-elected by constituents barely able to unclog their own toilets, let alone fix actual pipes in this particular allegory.  

*pause* 

So you’re saying that plumbers don’t need to know what an airplane is? That plumbers will never need to fly anywhere? 

That’s not even remotely what I’m saying.

*playsinspirationalsongaboutbelievingyoucanfly*

I Am Looking For A Six-Fingered Student…

All children can learn. 

Yes. 

I believe in the potential of all children. 

Yes, so do I. 

No you don’t. You said plumbers can never learn to fly. 

No, I – actually, never mind. You go ahead. 

Kids need a rich background in a variety of subjects to be well-rounded citizens and fulfilled individuals, and because we’re training them for jobs which don’t even exist yet! 

Yes. 

So every kid regardless of ability, interest, or circumstances, should be required to read-to-learn by 3rd grade and pass certain benchmark tests at 5th, 8th, and 10th grade or be held back. 

No. 

You need to make up your mind.

Those aren’t the same claims. The first celebrates the general potential of young people, and the second is a rather dogmatic and specific set of punative, limiting, unnecessary checkpoints. 

So you don’t think kids need to know how to read? 

I think they’d become better readers if they were offered a purpose other than being tested over books. I think they’d become better readers if we focused on helping them become better readers instead of on helping them become better test-takers over reading passages. Is that the same thing? 

I think that math is good for everyone, and history is good for everyone, but I also believe with equal-if-not-greater conviction that team sports are good for everyone, and the arts are good for everyone, and learning how to present yourself professionally online and hold a decent conversation is good for everyone, and knowing how to fix your own toilet or make other minor repairs around the house is good for everyone, and first aid is good for everyone, and spending time outdoors alone in quiet contemplation is good for everyone and knowing that you’re beautiful and strong and more than you’ve been told by the corporate-driven world around you is good for everyone.  

It’s not a question of whether or not this or that is ‘good for everyone’. It’s a question of whether or not we select a few specific things to draw hard, punitive lines over, at the expense of all the others. If we could teach them all everything at all levels all the time, that would be ideal. But if we want to teach them how to learn and grow as best we can with minimal time and resources, the Biology EOI is not a ditch in which I wish to die – not for all kids in all circumstances of all varieties. Especially when it means taking so many kids down with us. 

And remediation by repeating grades has a horrible success rate – lower than Oklahoma marriages or tax policies. Most kids who are held back don’t get better at whatever’s giving them difficulty, they just learn that they’re ‘slow’, or ‘stupid’. We’re teaching the strong students to hate learning while they beat the system, and weak students to hate learning while it beats them. We’re going to teacher hell for that kind of thing. Kids who are held back or placed in unending remediation don’t magically bloom the ninth time through; usually they become discipline problems or simply drop out. 

At which point our scores go up. 

Well, yes – I suppose… 

Meaning more kids are learning and that high standards help all children. 

*stunnedsilence* 

Our Schools Are Only MOSTLY Dead

We’re training them to compete in a global economy. 

Are we? 

Yes. There’s a globe, and an economy – they are therefore competing within that economy. 

The number of Oklahoma graduates going up against kids from China, Germany, or Russia for a specific position is pretty small… 

Our number one goal should be to produce Finnish children without doing anything Finland is doing to get there. If we can’t do that, we’ll make them Chinese, or Russian. Wait, no – how’s Estonia doing these days? Do we even TEACH Estonian in high school…? 

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Blue Serials (11/1/15) **Special Edition**

~ Blue Cereal

Well, I’ll Be Darned! – #OklaEd Legend Rob Miller hit something like a zillion page views this past week…

And – being the way he is – used the occasion to credit and thank others for all they’ve done instead. Rather than sing his praises even more (why ruin him by letting it all go to his head?), I’ll simply share a few of my favorites from recently and not-so-recently, so that if you’re new, you can see why he’s such a big friggin’ deal to the rest of us. But first… “Celebration”:

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“Celebration – You’re a little bit better and ready for some celebration… Some time to get louder and not by yourself.” Indeed, Mr. Miller – indeed.

Way Too Little, Seven Years Too Late – How nice of the White House and Arne Duncan to tell us there’s simply TOO MUCH TESTING and we’ve got to dial it back! If only this weren’t the same thing they’ve said several times before without it making any difference at all. Pay no attention to that man behind the cut score. 

Just Do What They Did? Really, Jay Cronley?! – Tulsa World columnist Jay Cronley suggests Tulsa teachers stop making excuses for poor marks on the completely discredited punitive bullsh*t state report card system, and encourages more public schools to simply screen out minorities, poor kids, immigrants, or ugly fat chicks in order to improve their rankings. Miller – one of those excuse-driven labor union shills, apparently – takes exception.

Who Exactly Does A-F Help? – Before Cronley proposed his ‘Night of Broken Class’ solution to the faux ‘problem’ misidentified by A-F, the Tulsa World – normally a fairly reasonable voice in this madness – went all Yellow #2 Pencil Journalism with their soft condemnation of Tulsa area schools and teachers. ‘FAILURE’ the ginormous headline read, because presumably ‘STOP TRYING TO SERVE ALL CHILDREN INSTEAD OF THE CHOSEN FEW’ wouldn’t fit above the fold. This is really where Rob’s week took a turn for the outraged. I’d like to say I’m sorry it did, but… come on… it’s so much fun to read. 

The Hard Tyranny of Ridiculous Expectations! – Parents know, and Teachers learn, the futility and danger of making broad, extreme threats on which you cannot possibly follow through. Political leaders and #edreform voices, however… not so much. 

The New World of Teaching! – “At your school, every child is required to play football, so you coach them all—the athletic and talented ones, as well as the small, awkward, uncoordinated ones… Now imagine that your team is scheduled for only one game this year. While you have numerous team practices and scrimmages, the success of your entire season will rest on how your athletes perform in only ONE game. A game in which you, the coach, will not be allowed to watch or participate. In fact, you are not allowed to call any of the plays or provide any guidance to players during the contest. The players are completely on their own…” This was one of the first posts of Rob’s that made me realize I might be able to write like me but I’d never be able to write like this. It took me weeks to get over that simple truth. 

It’s Not Complicated – In July 2013, Rob wrote in a tone of amazement at the audacity of those labeling our teacher schools failures without talking to a single person there or setting foot on campus. Even better, their solution was so obvious – ONLY LET THE TOP 10% OF PEOPLE BECOME TEACHERS. Well duh! Why DIDN’T we THINK of that? Of course, this was a long, long time ago, and Oklahoma has learned SO much since then. JUST KIDDING! We still think if we just demand that Ts be the besterly best on an absurdly meaningless scale for no money and statewide disdain, the problem is solved. I wonder how Miller retains such a professional tone. I want to cuss and throw things.

Good Luck To The Graduates of Waldo High School – If #EdReformers get their way, soon all kids will be the exact same child. “In the future, all restaurants are Taco Bell.” Good luck with that, kids. At least their class song (I assume every graduating class everywhere will be required to use the same one) will be an easy pick:

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Next week we’ll double up on some of the other edu-blogs from #OklaEd and beyond. In the meantime, send some love to Rob Miller on the Twitters at @edgeblogger and subscribe to his blog at www.viewfromtheedge.net. 

I Agree With Jay – Whiny, Lazy, Teachers

~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

Cronley HeadingA few days ago, Jay Cronley of the Tulsa World wrote an editorial which sent legendary #oklaed blogger Rob Miller a bit over that edge from which he otherwise enjoys the view.  

In it, Cronley suggests that schools receiving poor marks on the state’s vague, insulting, widely discredited A-F report card stop their whining and simply do what schools getting high grades do.  

I’m all for that. It’s embarrassingly obvious, in retrospect – if you want a better football team, publicly degrade the coach, sure. But just as critically, only accept good players on your team. That’s how the so-called “real world” works, yes?  

You only blame the coach when it’s clear there’s sufficient talent on the roster, but not enough points on the board. (Right, Bruce Boudreau?) Otherwise you need to get busy making trades and securing draft picks. Cut the dead weight from that locker room!  

The schools not doing well are thus either lazy or stupid. Despite the best efforts of the state to push them into the light, they’re still letting pretty much every little loser turd-child walk in the door several days a week and play school with them. Seriously, TPS and others so inclined? This is why the Dallas Cowboys keep losing – no quality control at all.  

Forget remediation. If those little parasites can’t read-to-learn by the end of 3rd grade, kick their little asses OUT. Go hang with the Factionless, Billy. Oh, wait – you won’t get that allusion BECAUSE YOU CAN’T $#&@ING READ.  

What else are we supposed to do to them?  

Teacher ECardNo, seriously – I get that school-shaming and teacher-blaming are supposed to motivate excellence (thanks, Stalin), but once the schools and teachers are done whining and complaining and are finally ready to step up, what exactly would you like us to do to force these little failures to learn gooder?  

Surely you don’t believe that scribbling a few letters and numbers on a piece of paper and mailing it it to their fake address drives the average 11-year old to excellence, do you? Grades are horrible motivators unless the kid already carries an unhealthy fixation on them derived from whatever her parents have indoctrinated her to believe about herself.  

But those aren’t the kids getting us in the damn newspaper. So what else could we try?  

I suppose a good talk with the average 8th grader about his college and career prospects might motivate him to give up the Xbox and plow through that 17th Century sonnet one more time.  

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh, that was rich. I needed a break from all this serious talk.  

The maximum reach of “future planning” among freshmen is about eleven minutes. It’s delusional to expect teenagers to have better self-control and long-term focus than most adults when asked if they want bacon on that. 

Giving Teacher the FingerWe’re not actually allowed to hit them anymore, so that’s off the table. Based on a handful of classic rock albums from the 70s, that may not have worked well anyway.  

Let’s see… No lunch until you solve for ‘X’ more efficiently? Also not allowed. The Liberals keep acting like none of the dumb kids eat enough to begin with, so forget that.  

Torturing pets got a bad rep back in the 80s when we were trying to prove that every child everywhere was being molested by every adult everywhere, so that won’t get board approval. And torturing the actual children is sadly inadequate – hence the entire discussion over test scores to begin with (EYES FRONT NO TALKING NO READING NO SLEEPING JUST STARE AND KEEP STARING UNTIL TIME IS CALLED RELAX AND DO YOUR BEST OR FAIL FAIL FAIL!!!)  

Other suggestions?  

I’m a little surprised we don’t rank their parents and publish the results. There’s simply no healthy competition when it comes to child-rearing. I say we give kids vouchers and let them leave their $#% parents to join those who’ve already proven they can bring up children properly. The tax breaks are for kid-raising, not kid-having, right?  

What’s that? The best families won’t all gladly open their hearts and homes in massive efforts to turn around years of less-than-ideal upbringing and reverse several varieties of cultural dissonance which have been in place for centuries? Surely you jest. They need only do what the good parents do… 

It’s probably a moot point. Any kid with the gumption to take advantage isn’t the one getting us on the ‘F’ list anyway.  

Bad Teacher

So we’re back to faulting teachers for not sufficiently inspiring them. If police would police better, there’d be no crime. If columnists would just write better, everyone would still read the newspaper. Seems only reasonable that if teachers to would teach harder…  

The penalty for doing poorly in school is to keep repeating the parts you hate until you hate them even more. If that doesn’t work, we’ll begin taking away the few things in our control which you DO care about or value in yourself (in those few instances we’ve somehow connected with those to begin with) until you drop out or change districts and our scores improve that way.  

Other than that, what is it that Cronley and the populace at large think we should be doing? I’m 100% serious here – what is it you believe all of these stupid, lazy, sucky teachers COULD be doing but aren’t?  

Better yet, why don’t you come show them? Bring your little platitudes and patronization and take over their classes for a month or two?  

I know, I know – who would POSSIBLY fill the critical life-altering role of writing a few columns a week taking potshots from the sidelines?  

Oh wait – that’s my $&#@ing SPECIALTY! Got you covered!  

WalMart BoySo go coach those kids into excellence. If they pass whatever random set of politicized and poorly framed expectations we’re swearing by THIS year, they’re practically guaranteed a fulfilling lifelong career, food, housing, health care, and access to a multitude of other services. If they DON’T, they’ll be stuck at home smoking weed and playing Xbox while guaranteed food, housing, health care, and access to a multitude if other services.  

The main difference in the latter scenario, of course, is that NEITHER of you will be working as a result. If that doesn’t inspire them, I can’t imagine what will.  

As to to merit pay, if the teachers with the best scores are the most talented, it stands to reason that James Patterson is the world’s most profound writer and Kim Kardashian the finest thespian of her generation. Now if only Donald Trump would run for President based on his impressive outcomes, all of our problems would be solved!  

Cronley and the rest might oughta start making those lesson plans. Between the open hostility of our state legislature towards knowledge in general and ongoing abuse from the press, those stupid lazy teachers dumb enough to work with those bottom-feeder kids tend to bail after not-very-long-at-all.  

They leave the state, sometimes even the profession, or they compete with one another for a handful of slots at those “good schools” – the ones smart enough not to try to win high stakes games with undesirable players. The ones with better demographics, or stronger magnets, or more stable populations.  

The ones doing what the good schools do.  

These Grades

RELATED POST: #OKSDE & The A – F Report Card (from 2014)

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Blue Serials (10/25/15)

~ Blue Cereal

Batman FailI’m pretty sure the appropriate thing for a blog like mine to do this time of year is to adapt a Halloween theme in some unnecessary way and dress it up with trite visuals. I am, of course, SO above that.

It’s pure coincidence that everything you should have read this past week involves something scary. Stop judging me. 

Grades Are Scary. Being Asked To Justify How We Grade Is Scarier.

Grading Process A Mystery For Many Students And Families – My newest #educrush, Ali Collins, aka SF Public School Mom, joins those questioning ‘traditional’ grading methods – especially that part where we assign various letters without coherent justification. She even has the audacity to suggest that students deserve actual feedback on the specifics of their work and pathways to *gasp* improve! Typical West Coast radicalism if you ask me. Follow @AliMCollins on the Twitters, but be sure to wear some flowers in your profile. 

Frankenstein Is Scary. Old Books With Themes And Stuff Are Scarier.

The Creature Speaks: Why I Still Teach Frankenstein – We all knew JennWillTeach was sassy and irreverent, but apparently she kinda really teaches and knows about books and stuff also. This is the second time reading her literary commentary has made me feel smarter. I thought that was the exact opposite of what literary analysis was supposed to do! “Every chance I get, I will continue teaching Frankenstein because it can still speak to a modern audience… He represents every person society pushes to the fringes; he represents every child seen as not good enough by society; he represents every human made to feel ugly and unlovable. As Mary Shelley quotes in her book, “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay/To mould me man?” (Paradise Lost, X, 743-744). The creature did not ask to be molded, but it lay in Victor’s hands to help him on a path to creativity or a path to destruction.”  

Forget that trick-or-treat nonsense – it’s gettin’ all human condition up in here. Tweet your pitchforks and torches to @JennWillTeach on the Twitters and maybe she’ll do “Puttin’ On The Ritz” for you later. #oklaed

Business Types Wanting To ‘Help’ Education Is Scary. The Government Wanting to ‘Help’ You ‘Teach Correctly’ Is Scarier.

Gates Support – Between Rob Miller and myself, we’ve said far too many nice things about Peter Greene at Curmudgucation lately. Despite that deluge, this was one up on which I could not pass. In this post, Greene ponders the many uses of the term ‘support’ by money people in reference to educators. 

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Perhaps he’s being unfair. Hitler supported the Sudetenland, Dumbledore supported Harry Potter, and Ronan supported Gamora, right? The key is not to get too hung up on insisting that language maintain a tether to reality. Find a much more orthodox type of ‘support’ from @palan57 on the Twitters. 

The Unknown Is Scary. The Unknown That Smells Funny Is Scarier.

This Lesson Stinks, Literally. Teaching Sensory Details in Narrative Writing – You know those brilliant ideas that seem so obvious once you’ve been exposed to them, but you’d have never thought of them yourself? No? That’s just… um… that’s just me? Well, OK then – but if you had known what I was talking about, this would be one of those. Follow @JackieCatcher on the Twitters and as one of the four regular contributors to Three Teachers Talk. (Look, it’s not a math blog – they’re English types. It’s probably a metaphor or gerund or something. )

Sticking Stuff In Your Ears Is Scary. Sticking Stuff In Your Ears 200 Years Ago Is Scarier.

18th Century Hearing Aids – OK, OK… All Things Georgian isn’t normally the sort of thing which makes the weekly highlight reel, nor are they #oklaed. But… I’m so thankful for this site. It’s just so… how it is. Read this. It’s short. You’ll want to marry it and have its babies, I promise. Follow @joannemajor3 and @sarahmurden on the Twitters. You’ll feel so cultured in specialized miscellany as a result, and gladly lose yourself there time and again.

Finally, Here’s a Golden Moment From Days Gone By (about 75 of them) & Worth A Revisit. It’s Not Scary, But Involves People In Costumes, so…

Teach Like an X-Man – Josh Flores at the inexplicably titled JoshFlores.net draws one of my favorite analogies between teenagers and fictional mutants. I never read the comics, but I love me some X-movies. What if we could help each of our darlings master essential curriculum, sure, but do so while becoming comfortable with their wings, their ability to walk through walls, or the strange way the weather adapts to whatever mood they’re in? The line between annoying misfit and superhero is flimsy at best, woulnd’t you say? I love this one. Watch Flores mutate on the Twitters at @MrJoshFlores.  #oklaed 

Happy Halloween (almost), if you’re into that sort of thing. Be one of the good guys. This life is daunting enough without bad guys. 

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