Tag: #oklaed

Blue Serials (10/18/2015)

~ Blue Cereal

Role ConfusionI made the mistake last weekend of suggesting that we should consider the possibility that there’s more to a fulfilled, meaningful life than that which is measured by the state tests required to graduate high school. You’d think I’d declared all math an abysmal waste of time, all science a fraud, and recommended the ideal path to a diploma would consist primarly of smoking a little weed and lying around in a pile naked. 

I am a product of my presumptions, to be sure. I see the world through the filters of my experience and my convictions – we all do, I suppose. For those of us swimming in a reality defined by data-based such-and-such or assessment-driven so-and-so, the line between ‘higher scores’ and ‘happy future’ quickly blurs. It’s the only way to explain how otherwise sensible people working within the bureaucracy of public school systems in the heart of the midwest can insist with conviction that they are doing so despite global competition for their position – and only holding their own because of their ability to answer grammar trivia on a computer screen under tightly controlled conditions.

There are, nevertheless, plenty of successful people who could not currently pass OK EOI exams – and far more whose success is built on things we clearly don’t consider priorities, judging by what’s mandated and tested. While I didn’t realize what a controversial statement I was making by suggesting such things, I still insist that – if this particularly limited, distorted, and obsessive body of knowledge is SO ESSENTIAL to anyone getting a job, finding love, or deciding between Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime – the legislators mandating the exams should gladly take the tests themselves to establish their own worthiness to hold the very positions from which they issue such dictates. 

Can you imagine testing day at the Capitoll?

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There are some people with the credibility to talk to us about school, however – and in case you missed it, here’s some of the best of what they had to say this past week…

Scott is a Wannabe Innovator – Scott Haselwood on Teaching From Here is pretty sure we all need to get a bit more serious about #edtech. He shares some of his experiences leading into this, and issues a challenge to the rest of us to step up our risk game a bit. I was so startled I nearly dropped my chalk into the mimeograph machine! I may not always understand Haselwood when he gets all post-20th Century on us, but he’s Charter #11FF and therefore absolutely correct about everything he suggests. Find Scott on this very modern ‘Twitter’ thing using one of your ‘computers’ or ‘smart phones’ at @TeachFromHere.  #oklaed 

So What Are We Doing Here? – I don’t know if Haselwood and Link Lowe of Donuts In The Lounge are besties or not, but they do seem to be on the same screen when it comes to tech. Lowe challenges us to look at available tech “just as we do any other tool in our #edutoolbox. If it is the best tool for the job, let’s absolutely use it but if it’s not, then you’re using a screwdriver to saw wood.” Use your tool to find Lowe doing the Twitters with great effectiveness at @MrLoweOfficial.  #oklaed 

Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much With Us” – Like Haselwood, JennWillTeach is flagship #11FF and wisdom therefore flows from her loins like honey from a comb. (See? Anyone can be poetic if they try. I was hoping it wouldn’t end up quite so laden with innuendo, of course – but who am I to question the Muse?) On her JennWillTeach blog, she shares what I hope will be the first of many insights into favorite content pieces and how she helps break them down for students. As someone born with a bad case of Poem Illiteracy, I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to read something like this and feel both smart and challenged at the same time. If Jenn had been my teacher in high school (despite her being about eight years old at the time)… well, I’d probably still have been in trouble all the time and failed that unit. But it would have been much more fun along the way. Follow @JennWillTeach on the Twitters.  #oklaed 

We should check in and see how that core curriculum assessment is going with our legislators…

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Huh. Well, that does explain the whole ‘tax cuts for prosperity’ approach, I guess.

Carrying Each Other – On a bit heavier note, Rebecka Peterson on One Good Thing reminds us of something none of us like to admit – we can’t fix it all. All the struggles, all the people, all the nightmares… we’re just teaching a little school and hoping it’s enough. Peterson suggests, though, that it’s not always about the fixing so much as the mourning with those who mourn. Yeah, I know – serious stuff. But well worth the read. Rebecka is on Twitter at @RebeckaMozdeh.  #oklaed

And When This Is Done… – To wrap things up, Sherri Spelic at The Edified Listener looks at her plate, and decides that maybe she has more control over what goes on it and how she frames those things than perhaps any of us generally admit. I’m not so good at the thoughtful-wise-sharing thing myself, so I’m glad a treasured few others are. She’s one of them. Think back at her on the Twitters at @edifiedlistener. 

Surely things are going better in OKC by now. One last look at the powers-that-be and their no-doubt-ample-success with the required curriculum…

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Huh. Oh well.

Go be amazing, my darlings! You are a big friggin’ deal this week, and every week thereafter! Reward yourself with a hot, fluffy biscuit. 

 

 

Blue Serials (October 11th, 2005)

~ Blue Cereal

Fall Leaves

I Love Fall.

 

Hockey has started again, the weather is occasionally tolerable, and I sorta kinda know my kids. 

Not everyone is as thrilled with shorter days and cooler weather. I will now adjust this bizarre attitude by inserting a rather awkward music video for a very nifty song.  

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Many of us are swept along in the spiraling essentials of the day – which is awesome. It’s what we do. Nevertheless, there are a few things this past week it’d be a shame to miss. I gather them here, for thee.

Game Strategy – Anthony Purcell on Random Teacher Thoughts shares a tale of his students gaming a classroom, um… game… in order to increase their odds of winning. He didn’t plan it, but he had to love it. Even when it’s not what we had in mind, it’s so cool when kids are thinky. Find Purcell and his very serious dog on the Twitters at @MrP_tchr.  #oklaed

The Great Data Chase – Dad Gone Wild talks about his love of running, and then measuring the running, and then really seriously measuring every odd aspect of or element involved in running, until (a) it’s become quite difficult to run, and (b) it’s become even more difficult to love the actual running. I totally believe his face value sincerity, but fortunately for us, it turns out this is a nice little metaphor for education as well. Follow TC Weber – the wildly gone dad in question – on the Twitters at @norinrad10. 

When Discipline Yins, Compassion Must Yang – Dan Tricarico, certified #11FF and The Zen Teacher, reflects on calling down ‘Robert’ on the VERY FIRST DAY of school. Don’t you hate it when you’re pretty sure you’re doing the teachy stuff wrong? On the other hand, those moments you kinda don’t stink are pretty sweet. You simply MUST follow Dan on the Twitters at @TheZenTeacher. 

On a less-inspirational note, while #CommonCore standards may have been the Devil’s Petroleum Jelly, it’s apparently not as easy as OK Leggies figured to throw a couple people in a room and bust out the GREATEST PEDAGOGICARY STANDARDS OF HIGHNESS LEARNARIFFIC MATHPLOSION TRUTHSPLAINED OHMYGODOKLAROCKS in the known universe. Who knew, other than everyone? Nate Robson of Oklahoma Watch shares the rather brutal assessments of some amusing experts. Follow Nate on the serious side of the Twitters at @OKWnate.  #oklaed 

Finally, A Piece Definitely Worth A Revisit…

Symbolically Speaking – David Burton of Idealistically Realistic offers this thoughtful – but concise – history of flags and symbolic expression in response to recent debates over the Confederate flag. I love Burton’s stuff and only wish I had the power and influence to persuade him to write more often. Help me peer pressure him into doing things he doesn’t want to do; you can start by following him on the Twitters at @APTeacherBurton.  #oklaed

Go be amazing this week! I’m proud of most of you. You may not be doing everything right, or feeling it all of the time, or even certain exactly what we’re trying to accomplish in this odd little calling. But you’re here, and doing it, and dedicated enough to follow this blog on top of all that. 

I can’t help but love you for that. Drinking juice from mason jars.

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What’s Next, #EdReform?

~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

Wile E. CoyoteAccountability. Standards. Highly Qualified. Our Children Deserve… {insert platitude here}.

It really doesn’t sound so unreasonable, does it? Why is it that teachers – and let’s be honest, their LABOR UNIONS – are so afraid of a little accountability? They’re paid by our tax dollars, after all. Entrusted with our children. We try to be supportive, of course, but sometimes…

Well, sometimes it really does seem like they just don’t want to be held to any expectations or standards at all. I’m sorry they don’t make a lot of money, but is that any reason to let the lazy ones slide, or the stupid ones stay? I’m sure most of them are very hardworking and caring and educated people – but they’re not the ones who should be worried, right? So why so much whining every time the state or some other interested party tries to figure out who’s doing their job and who’s not?

That’s more or less the narrative inculcated by most “education reformers”. It’s usually laid on top of lofty rhetoric and trite faux-speration, but these are the basic questions planted in the minds of legislators, business leaders, parents, and – perhaps most importantly – the ethereal ‘public at large’. 

I’ll spare you the reasons so many of my peeps distrust the instruments generally used to measure teacher effectiveness. They’ve been well-covered elsewhere, by people much smarter than myself. But… I’m not sure their arguments resonate with many outside the world of public ed.  

Don’t misunderstand – I think their refutations are absolutely correct. Accurate and insightful. I’m just not sure they’re convincing to the folks who most need to be convinced. 

Knowledge LaunchSo I’d like to add a question of my own to the edu-pile. It’s a biggie, but one reformers somehow manage to avoid repeatedly. There are enough proverbial elephants in the #edreform room to keep one’s attention scrambled, but this one is larger than the rest. And neon orange. With eleven legs. And it’s making dolphin noises.

Let’s assume our state leggies get themselves all a-spinnin’ and finally implement VAM and TLE and OOPS and OMYGOD and whatever else is on the table. They may even throw some form of underfunded ‘merit pay’ into the mix so they can spin it as an actual ‘raise’ for the ‘good’ teachers. 

There’ll be formulas no one understands – including the people applying them to determine the success or failure of various teachers, buildings, and districts – and rhetoric aplenty declaring we once again have the higherest highness of high standards in education. Oklahoma will yet again reign as the undisputed leader in academic standards and overeducated pedagogues!  

Heck, we may even get some Gates money thrown our way – wouldn’t that be nifty?

Let’s even assume the various formulas and measurements and standards somehow DO begin to identify the ‘good’ teachers and the ‘bad’. Let’s grant the remote possibility that as the kinks are worked out, districts are able to apply these expectations in a meaningful way and the state is able to weed out the real bozos, the slackers, or even well-intentioned idiots. 

Maybe it’s 10% of the total teaching force of the state. Maybe 20%. Or maybe it turns out we’re not all such morons after all and it’s only 3% or 4%. Whatever the numbers, the weeds are pulled and the flowers showered with 2% stipends for teaching white middle class Methodist kids from two-parent –

Coyote Sails

My apologies – I was supposed to be speaking hypothetically. 

The flowers are showered with 2% stipends for strong improvement among all levels of students from all sorts of backgrounds. 

My question is… Now what? 

That’s the thing no one beating the #edreform drum seems to even consider. 

If there are crappy educators hiding all ‘round us, who need to be identified and repaired or removed, as part of an overall plan to improve public education, what do we do when we’ve removed the bad ones?

The answer is not so obvious.

If you said “replace them with good ones,” you lose. Even under the current system of supposedly no standards or accountability, we’re unable to fill something like a billion teaching positions in Oklahoma alone. Texas is begging for warm bodies with any degree at all. Maybe California is packed with highly qualified professionals desperate for a tenured position in South L.A.’s inner cities, but ‘round here, we’re short on teacher-types.

Coyote Rocket

Any teacher-types.

Any at all. 

It’s possible the major voices in #edreform simply haven’t planned that far ahead. Maybe they’re really smart at figuring out the initial stages but it hasn’t occurred to them it might actually work – and we’d have to know what to do next. Of course, if that’s true, they really have no business suggesting or being in charge of anything at all. If that’s true, they’re appallingly short-sighted. 

Or maybe they’ve never seriously addressed the question because they knew it wasn’t important. Maybe they’ve never worried about it because that’s not how things are intended to unfold. 

If you’re moving out of your current apartment, you at least consider where you hope to live next, yes? If you’re going out to eat with friends and don’t like their choice of restaurants, you pick somewhere better. Or cheaper. Or you order pizza. Or suggest making something at home.

Reformers haven’t done any of that. It’s like they believe it’s enough to simply settle on where we’re NOT living. Where we WON’T eat. As if starving outside on the sidewalk is a pretty impressive solution. Just look at our standards!

Or, perhaps they know no one will like their choices, so they keep them a ‘surprise’. 

They do offer a few scattered scenarios – most involving privatizing education in some way, or making it easier for well-off families to get their kids into elite institutions so that it doesn’t really matter how bad the public schools are. 

Snow Machine

Regular readers know I’m not particularly aghast at the right charters, vouchers, private schools, or homeschooling consortiums. I’m a very open-minded guy.

Even with all that, though, one can’t help but wonder at the dearth of interest in how in the world we’re to replace these ne’er-do-wells we’ve eradicated. What resources or innovations are on the table to help locate and lure in all the fabulous teachers hiding just outside the realm of reality?

Is there some unperceived benefit to purging enough of the workforce that instead of a thousand unfilled positions we’ll have two thousand? Help me understand.

I suppose the most certain way to eliminate weeds from your garden is to simply plow the entire thing under and douse it with generous quantities of defoliants. If your primary concern is with these supposed ‘weeds’, that should definitely solve your problem. It’s just that you don’t have a garden when you’re done. 

So is a better garden – or an improved public school system – even really a goal? Or were the intentions all along something not requiring that level of subtlety or care? Is it possible that ‘reformers’ know exactly what they’d like in that area that used to be the garden, but have their own reasons for keeping it a ‘surprise’?

I fear there’s a very good reason no one’s saying what’s next. 

Wile E. Coyote Falls

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Blue Serials (October 4th, 2015)

~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

Fall is falling, teachers keep teaching, life keeps doing whatever life does, and even though bloggers are bloggering, you may have missed something good this week.

No worries, my Eleven Faithful Followers (#11FF) – I’m here with essential highlights and thoughtful framings. I do this to serve you, the reader – and… it helps reduce the amount of new content I actually have to create myself to keep this blog active.

What, you think I got nothin’ better to do than sit around blogging all day? Some of us WORK for a living over here!

Part One: Painful Realities

“On Standardized Testing” by Olivia Fantini – if you don’t know @ButtonPoetry, you should fix that immediately. Oh such speakifying!

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School District Size; School District Spending – Rick Cobb’s OkEducationTruths is required reading in #oklaed. Here he breaks down the latest babble-slander from the idealogues against public education, analyzing them with such clarity even I mostly understand. My personal favorite moment: “I’m no economist. I’m just an administrator who wrote his dissertation over Oklahoma school district expenditures, with a focus on economies of scale and diseconomies of scale. If you were one of the 12 people who read it, you would’ve been dazzled with passages such as this:  …….    Ok, none of it was really exciting. It’s a dissertation.” If you don’t follow @okeducation on the Twitters, you’re a big stinky doo-doo head who doesn’t care about the children. 

Will The Real Ms. Smith Please Stand Up? – Mindy D of This Teacher Sings continues her reality-sharing regarding #oklaed teacher pay by sharing some of the reactions and feedback prompted by her previous post on the subject. It’s not whining if it truly hurts; we’re losing teachers who want to be in the classroom for all the best reasons, but end up in either other states or other professions over selfish things like protein, or not getting their kids’ entire wardrobes from Goodwill. Best quote: “‘Teachers aren’t in it for the money,’ they say. They’re right. We aren’t… But we didn’t take a vow of poverty.” Follow @MrsDSings on the Twitters. Play nice and she might even follow you back.

The EdReformers Stratagem – Rob Miller at A View From The Edge may be giving in to the dark side. One of the most positive, reasonable voices of #oklaed, it’s almost disorienting how bluntly he calls out pseudo-#edreform, mis-funding, and faux accountability from high places. Is the bizarre clusterfoolery of recent years merely laying the groundwork for a larger narrative of public school failure and teacher apathy in order to justify a new edu-order? Surely not… it’s inconceivable in this day and age that we’d allow our economic or political leaders to manufacture or distort crises in order to justify their self-interested maleficence! Follow @edgeblogger on the Twitters for more crazy conspiracy theories which oh-my-god-are-probably-true. 

Part Two: It’s All About The *sniff* CHILDREN…

5 Ways To Make Homework Meaningful and Manageable – Angela Stockman on Brilliant or Insane does such a nice job of ‘slap you around’ attention-getting without becoming that annoying lady from out-of-state who led that horrible PD day in your district awhile back and you all made fun of at lunch. Here she challenges the value of some types of homework without making me roll my eyes. I’m still so totally edu-crushing on her. Follow Stockman (“May I Call You ‘Angie’?”) on the Twitters at @AngelaStockman and ask her if she likes me back – check ‘yes’ or ‘no’. 

The Energy Cost and the Power of Empathy – P.L. Thomas, aka The Becoming Radical, can be mighty insightful for someone with so many degrees. He makes a very accessible case for introvert awareness – it’s not being ‘soft’ on kids to recognize when more volume, more people, more activity, isn’t the yee-haw for some of us it might be for the majority. As a long-time shunner-of-groups myself, I very much appreciate his message. Follow @plthomaEdD on the Twitters – but don’t take it personally if he slides away to recharge from time to time.

Students Should Be Able To Show What They Know (?) – “There is a huge difference between ‘How do I figure out if this student understands?’ and ‘How do I make this student prove to me he gets it?’ The first is a valuable approach; the second is the first step on the road toward wasting everybody’s time… The more we demand that students put on a show to prove to us that they Know Stuff, the more we will design artificial tasks that demand a set of skills and knowledge entirely different from the skills and knowledge we really want to measure.” Pith, thy name is Peter Greene of Curmudgucation. No wonder he can publish a blog anyone can read for free anytime, and still I gladly bought several hard copies of his book – Curmudgucation: What Fresh Hell. So should you. At the very least, follow @palan57 on the Twitters. You’ll be a better person for it. 

Worth Revisiting…

We opened with @ButtonPoetry, and we’ll finish there as well. I never get tired of this one. I say with no irony and only minimal humor that if I could help my students become pelicans, I could die knowing we won. That they won. That it worked. 

Justin Lamb – “The Pelicans” (*language warning*)

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Blue Serials (September 27th, 2015)

~ Blue Cereal

What A Week! The Teaching, the Learning, the Changing, the Kicking! No wonder some of us missed edu-bloggery which should NOT be missed!

Last week’s Blue Serials was largely devoted to reactions and responses to unpleasant comments by some Okla-legi-someone or other who I’ve decided to ignore for the moment. It was not our happiest weekly highlights.

This week, however, is almost entirely focused on bloggery regarding the important stuff – the fulfilly stuff – the good stuff, even when it’s not fun or easy all the time. I didn’t even have to try to make this happen – I just follow the bestest people. And, if you’re reading this right now, so do you – apparently. 

And what better way to introduce the inspirational-but-sometimes-difficult stuff than with a song I love, and which keeps popping up in the oddest places. I’m pretty sure it’s motivational… I mean, I always find it so. But maybe it’s not – maybe it’s just… sobering and dark. I can’t always tell. 

Kinda like teaching!

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Power – Rebecka Peterson ponders the power of ‘just a teacher’ on One Good Thing. This is a blog maintained entirely by math teachers committed to identifying ‘one good thing’ (see? it’s the title!) a day that happens in their professional worlds. I didn’t even know math people could be… you know… inspirational and stuff! First Haselwood, then Horn, and now and entire cadre of them refuting my silly stereotypes with style. I love being wrong. Good thing, actually – it happening so often and all. Follow Rebecka on the Twitters at @RebeckaMozdeh. #oklaed 

Leadership and What They Do When I’m Not There – Meghan Loyd on her blog For The Love celebrates her students’ willingness AND ability to step up and take care of business when she’s gone or occupied. Warning – unicorns and rainbows here. But… I mean… they’re pretty cool unicorns. Chase the rainbow with Meghan on the Twitters at @MeghanLoyd. #oklaed 

Teaching & Thinking: Episodes – Honorary #oklaed Sherri Spelic on her very own Edified Listener has been all about the reflection lately. I think this started before she started tweet-hanging w/ The Zen Teacher, but it’s certainly deepened since then. This works out GREAT for those who benefit from such deep thinking and feeling, but prefer not to do so much of either on our own – like myself, for example. As she suggests in this post, it all starts with self-awareness, and awareness of those in our care. There are NO good reasons to NOT follow @edifiedlistener on the Twitters.

Why We Should Challenge Our Students… And Ourselves – Shana Karnes on Three Teachers Talk gets naked in a poetry workshop – metaphorically, at least. In this post, she celebrates the chance to feel clueless and awkward, in a room where everyone seems to know what’s going on except her. Student experience, much? It’s powerful the way she shares the risk and the vulnerability here – and what better place to get naked than the internet? Wait, that didn’t come out as literary-ish as I’d hoped… Um… Follow a very thoughtful and fully-dressed Karnes on the Twitters at @litreader. 

Time To Breathe – Peter Greene’s Curmudgucation is pretty much essential reading for anyone valuing education, good writing, snarky humor, periodic outrage, or hot buttered toast. I don’t link to him often in these weekly roundups because it should be a given that anyone paying any attention to anything is reading him regularly already. But just in case you missed this one, you should rectify that now. Greene wrestles with ‘teachable moments’ and student connections which always seem to come up when you’re trying to get through something… “really important.” As if anything else is really important compared to those moments. Obviously you should be following Greene on the Twitters at @palan57. 

Worth Revisiting…

Maybe We Should Make Him A Gift – Jon Harper writing as Bailey & Derek’s Daddy shares a story. I. Love. This. Story. 

I close with the wisdom of Monty Python’s Flying Circus for those days you think maybe you’re not where you’re supposed to be. You are, my #11FF – you so totally are. You are shapers of men and women and lighters of candles in the darkness. You tame lions and endure dragons while cleaning your own whiteboards and buying store brands. 

Go forth and kick more pedagogical ***! I adore you. 

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