Pedagogical Time Loop Hell

June 12, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

One of my personal goals for this blog and this website is that I offset my various rants and carryings on that no one cares about with positive thoughts and potentially useful resources that no one cares about. I like to think of this as “being balanced.”

That balance will not be helped by this post.

BUT PLEASE: Stop telling us to quit doing stuff we’re not doing, and stop acting like it’s the first time anyone even thought to mention it.

I realize not every teacher in every district of every state is in the same place pedagogically. I get that we collectively have far to go before we can claim to have moved public education – particularly in the social sciences – much past the 19th Century. But I swear to Horace Mann, if I read one more article encouraging me to ditch my mimeographed fill-in-the-blank worksheets and Ferris Bueller-style lectures for some cutting edge “interaction” with students, I’m going to hurl my McGuffey’s reader through someone’s chalk slate.

In the military this is known as “always fighting the last war.” In the movies, it’s something far worse – the notorious plot device known as the “Time Loop.”

Most of you remember Groundhog Day, a movie I felt like I’d seen a dozen times before I was even through my first box of Milk Duds. The basic premise – that something is causing a person, group, or starship, to repeatedly jump back in time to relive a set of experiences with only minor variations – was sci-fi trope long before Bill Murray had those extra pancakes.

The thing is, whether you’re in sci-fi or romantic comedy, it sucks to be the character gradually becoming aware you’re stuck in this season’s time loop.

Don’t misunderstand – there’s nothing wrong with revisiting the fundamentals of effective teaching. It’s when we repeatedly present the same few platitudes as epiphanies and brave new truths that I get a bit… hostile.

(1) Worksheets aren’t exciting kids about learning.

Make sure Watson writes that one down. “The worksheet did nothing in third period – that was the curious incident!”

Workshop leaders or edu-bloggers rarely “open” with this grand bit of modern wisdom – it’s saved for the ‘impact’ moment of the autobiographical anecdote demonstrating both connection with the audience and touching vulnerability – the kind that makes you trust someone enough to buy their book.

It’s always the same anecdote – “I taught for 72 years and couldn’t figure out why my kids didn’t love history [or literature, or math, etc.] as much as I did, although I lectured every day and assigned thousands of vocabulary words and only used one book – the textbook – for everything. One day, I had [insert epiphany experience] and suddenly I understood! This crap was boring! Who knew? Now I’m on the lecture circuit pointing very serious, passionate-for-the-children fingers at any of you who don’t applaud or at least nod enthusiastically when I reveal this magnificent bromide.

No one who needs to be told that worksheets are boring and largely useless is going to read your book, Cassandra. No one uses the damn things believing they’re good for anything other than shutting the kids up for a period or filling some of the required number of grades to be given each week. It’s far more likely they just don’t care – in which case we have a problem, but a very different problem than you’ve assumed. We may be lazy, bitter, and apathetic, but we’re not stupid. You should move on to a more current, relevant problem in public ed, like kids staying home once planting season starts, or cholera.

(2) Lectures are obsolete, boring, and destroying the future.

I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb and tell the PD world and the “Education”-tagged section of the Blogosphere that, while amusing in the occasional sitcom or 80’s movie, NO ONE DOES THIS ANYMORE, so you can STOP TELLING US NOT TO DO THIS.

I’m sorry you had that one boring teacher in high school all those years ago, I really am. I got sick on chocolate chip pancakes when I was 17 and projectile-vomited all over the hall bathroom, but I’m 47 now and don’t carefully construct each week’s menu around the dangers of Bisquick. Get over it.

Yes, too much lecture can lose its effectiveness, and some people suck at it all the time. I feel the same way about foldables, but no one’s damning them with impunity every time two or more are gathered. My students love most of my lectures, and this is true of more history teachers than not. They remember the stuff we cover that way, and ask me to do it more often.

I’ve dialed back the straightforward ‘teaching’ stuff in recent years because of my department’s focus on skills and transitioning students into being able to learn on their own. As a result they learn less history over the course of my year and have less excitement about it, because they’ve heard fewer stories and I’m far less Sesame-Street-On-Crack than I was a decade ago. I don’t regret pushing them to wear their big-student panties, but I do miss the joys of so much content flowing freely and without guilt.

It’s a trade-off between good and better, not repentance from a life of sin and direct instruction.

(3) Names, dates, places, and other facts don’t matter anymore – kids can Google that stuff.

Like lecture, this is a special favorite of non-history people explaining to us simple social studies folks about how things work here in the post-moon-landing world. They don’t seem as quick to tell the math people that kids don’t need to know numbers or what those funny signs (+ ÷ ≥ ¾ ≠) are because math is about the process and they can look up this ‘pi’ so often discussed by those trapped in the dark times. And we actually encourage building vocabulary in English class in order to help kids become better readers, rather than casting ‘words’ aside as quaint relics of days past.

The funny thing about history is that most of it cannot, in fact, be effectively understood without some knowledge of specifics. Yeah, it’s the big picture stuff that often matters most, and connects us to the past, and teaches us those grand lessons and such, but it’s all built out of particulars. History generally happens to people in places at certain times.

You can Google just about anything, but the important answers are often long and complicated and assume you have a precursory body of knowledge for them to make any sense. Eventually in order to learn anything of value you have to know something on which to build.

Give our teachers a little credit for knowing what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. And if there are a smattering stuck in the 19th century and unwilling to at least throw on some elbow patches and join us in the 1970’s, the problem is most likely something OTHER than not having read your blog.

Ms. Bullen’s Data-Rich Year

April 25, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

You ever across something while browsing online, and wish you hadn’t? I believe it was Tosh.0 that did a segment called “Things You Can’t Unsee.” Sometimes they just gross you out, or cause emotional distress, and sometimes they’re just inappropriately violent or pornographic or just plain wrong.

This one is none of those, except perhaps ‘just plain wrong.’ It’s from the OKSDE website, and of course it’s about Data-Tracking, and Value Added Measurement, and all sorts of other bureaucratic verbiage designed to disguise a much simpler phrase, “blame everything on teachers whatever it takes.” It’s also the death knell of my efforts to focus on the positives in education.

Here is what the State of Oklahoma – and the State Department of Education in particular – thinks of you, the teacher, represented here by dear Ms. Bullen:

I know you can’t read the small print yet, but already a few things are clear:

(1) VAM / TLE / State Data in General is designed to consciously require a giant graphic full of small print to even begin to understand.

(2) The OK SDE / State Legislature is glad you’re not married and thus presumably lack any sort of a family, otherwise you’d never be able to put in the kind of time outside the school day we’re expecting. So much for a pay scale based on having a spouse with a real job! [Confused Reader: “But, married women can use the ‘Ms.’ – it’s marital status neutral, that’s the whole point.” Me: “Clearly you’ve never been to Oklahoma.”]

(3) The OK SDE / State Legislature is under the impression you are approximately nine years old. (In which case I suppose it’s just as well you’re not married.) On the other hand, if you can find Waldo in this picture, you may get a sticker!

Let’s take a closer look at a few parts of this wonderful chart:

(4) On zooming in, I think we have a much better idea why Ms. Bullen is not married. Elective cosmetic surgery is such a risky venture – just ask Kenny Rogers, Bruce Jenner, or Ms. Bullen. Yikes!

(5) How wonderful that Ms. Bullen is able to use one of those pesky PD days before school begins for something so unlikely to develop her as a professional. Instead, she can spend her time labeling, tracking, and otherwise pre-judging her students based on how they did last year. Given that she’ll have approximately 170 of them, this might take several days, comfortably cut off from her department, administration, or other professionals. But all the best educational studies show, of course, that the ideal way to tap into a child’s full potential is to form judgments about their abilities and potential before you’ve even met them!

(6) It seems I’ve been a little unfair in assuming this will all be on Ms. Bullen, as Joey apparently comes from a very involved two-parent family. Plus, Ms. Bullen’s principal has nothing but time to help design IEPs for all 1,246 students in the building, so that’s not really a problem – unless he or she also wishes to complete all 73 levels of the required Teacher Leader Evaluation System for every adult in the building as well. But, some of the burden can be shared by the many Tutors and Trainers in the building.

Hey, you know what would be fun? Let’s each stop for a moment and see if we can remember the name(s) of the Tutor(s) and Trainer(s) in our buildings who will help us with all of this when it’s our turn…

How did you do? If you came up with “none of these positions even exist,” you get another sticker, just like they do in Tennessee!

(7) You are expected to create an IEP for each and every one of your students before school even begins! (Step Two) Setting aside the fact that this is insane, it’s still nine full steps before Step Eleven, where an ‘early warning system’ (which appears to be an iPad app) will send an alert to a strange man in the room that Joey is off-track, or failing. Presumably the strange man will tell Ms. Bullen, who can call Joey’s very involved parents in to look at the full-sized mural she’s devoted to the Chutes & Ladders version of Joey’s educational journey. Thank god there’s finally a way to know when students are failing – other than the fact that they’re, for example, failing.

(8) You are expected to immediately discard the approximately 170 IEP’s you’ve spent weeks creating so you can “adjust instruction on the fly” (Step Three) based solely and exclusively on the perceived reactions of Joey. We can only hope the 34 other students in the room are not offended at the impact this must have on their individualized learning experience. At the same time, this is a great moment – it’s the only point in All 18 Steps that assumes for even an instant that you (represented here by Ms. Bullen) have any idea what you’re doing without consulting a few dozen spreadsheets of data. But don’t worry – you won’t be stuck teaching ‘on the fly’ for long!

(9) You will have plenty of time to meet one on one with each of your students (Step Six) to discuss their behavior, attendance data (which is different from attendance… how?), and performance, as well as what Joey’s parents want for him – during the one moment in which is overly involved parents are conspicuously absent. You’ll set some individualized goals for the year to replace that IEP you developed before you met him, then threw out in Step Three.

Assuming you have approximately 168 students, and that each of these meetings take about 10 minutes, that’s only about… 28 hours each week. Or is it each month? I’m not sure how often this one is supposed to happen. Let’s assume it’s just once – it’s not like Joey’s performance, behavior, goals, or attendance are likely to change throughout the year. So we’ll just use that extra 28 hours floating around during, say… October. Nothing that important happens in October anyway.

(10) I’m not sure what “Data Coaches” are (Step Seven), although each school apparently has several (they must share office space with all the Tutors and Trainers – no wonder Oklahoma schools are so darned inefficient with how they spend district money!) Apparently while teachers celebrate their one collective decent idea, the Data Coaches do some sort of ceremonial handshake – or perhaps it’s a dance. I’m not familiar with that culture, but I’d really like to see that. There simply aren’t enough dances based on hard educational data.

(11) The Building Principal, on the other hand, reviews “performance data” with Ms. Bullen, but don’t worry – he does it to “support and empower,” not “admonish” (Step Eight). You have to remember that Ms. Bullen is nine years old and unlikely to marry due to a botched elective cosmetic procedure – she cannot be treated like an adult and simply discuss how things are going with her class. Wait! I mean… with Joey. Just how things are going with Joey.

(12) We’ll skip ahead a few steps to where you can’t leave for the summer until you make sure Joey and each of your other 167 students are properly tracked and categorized for the next school year (Step Sixteen). It’s important Joey not have any input on what he might be interested in or challenge himself by taking advanced coursework. We don’t want to risk student engagement in a way that might threaten the data! It would actually be more efficient to simply divide the classes by socio-economic status, race, or educational level of whatever parental units happen to be in the picture, but we might miss a few outliers that way. So, we stick to DATA.

(13) Because you haven’t spent nearly enough time in data meetings for Steps One through Sixteen, and are assumed to have no idea how the year went based on the formal and informal assessments you give throughout the year, your relationship with each student, or anything else that might indicate you have a pulse, you’ll meet with your principal some more and work on your own Value Added Measurement numbers (Step Seventeen).

(14) This would be a great time for Ms. Bullen to lower than neckline a bit and talk to that building principal about making sure she doesn’t have any ELL, Integrated, or otherwise low-performing classes next year. Although she has a heart for struggling students like Joey, they’re totally killing her VAM scores. As Roster Verification and Teacher Linkage become dominant, she’s growing rather resentful of any little turd that hurts her scores and means she’s not getting the merit pay those Pre-AP teachers probably will. I suggest some aggressive accessorizing to distract from those rectangular lips.

(15) You and the other district teachers will spend your summers looking at data on your own time (Step Eighteen), although you’re barely paid for the required 180 days you’ve already spent at school. Only when you pass through the gate painted to look like that trip to Six Flags you can never afford are you free to begin tracking and prejudging next year’s students based on their test scores.

Of course, you’re not in this profession for the summers, or the money, or the remnants of hope you had only a few years ago – that’s not what teaching is about. You have something better than a sense of purpose to what you do, or remnants of self-respect, or even the resources to take your family on even a modest trip – you have data.

Congrats Ms. Bullen! You may have low VAM scores, endless meetings, no summers to yourself, and no money to try to fix that botched surgery, but you’ve had a data-rich year!

All I Need Is This Lamp…

March 27, 2014July 31, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

If you want to completely derail any meeting of three or more educators – teachers, administrators, curriculum coordinators, outside consultants, or whatever – ask what our priorities should be.

You know, as educators – what are our priorities for the kids? It’s hard to make a good plan without a clear target, so what are we trying to accomplish – you know, ideally?

It’s a pretty easy question until you try to limit yourself to a reasonable number.

Love of learning, of course. Critical thinking, which we define as ‘analyzing information effectively.’ Analyzing information effectively, which we define as ‘critical thinking.’ Oh – and reading. Lifelong readers. And independent learners – is that the same as ‘love of learning’? Maybe it is. But that’s it – just those.

Oh! College & Career Ready – that’s on the website, so we need that one. And citizenship. Social skills. Character. Maybe some content – just basic stuff like the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Amendments, the major Court Cases, the most important Elections and Legislation and not just Social Studies, but the Scientific Method and just basic science stuff, you know? I realize it’s Oklahoma, but SOME science wouldn’t be completely out of line…

And of course Shakespeare, the Bible, MLK, which reminds us – primary sources, understanding other cultures and points of view, charts and maps and statistics, and bias, and order of operations in math class, functional grammar and sentence structure, and – OH! Responsibility. That’s more important than all the rest except for all the others that are more important than all the rest.

But we should stop there. Those are the two or three MOST important things.

And who won the Civil War. Then we’re done.

We said ‘Reading,’ right? Oh – RIGHT! Writing – did we say writing? We MUST teach kids to write effectively. To different audiences. About different things. Things they’ve read about.

But just those. That’s not so –

Oh! Oh oh oh oh – can we add ‘media skills’? Is it too late for that? It is? Oh, but, um… it’s really… well, OK.

I can’t resolve this even in my own mind in 2014, but I can offer two rather compelling insights from nearly two centuries ago – and one’s not even directly about public education (but it so totally is). Both are edited excerpts of longer documents, the originals of which are quite Google-able (or you can just email me at [email protected]) if you’re so inclined.

Document #1: Report of the Workingman’s Committee of Philadelphia On the State of Public Instruction in Pennsylvania (1830)
[This committee was appointed September, 1829, to ascertain the state of public instruction in Pennsylvania, and to propose appropriate improvements.]
The original element of despotism is a MONOPOLY OF TALENT, which consigns the multitude to comparative ignorance, and secures the balance of knowledge on the side of the rich and the rulers.
If then the healthy existence of a free government be, as the committee believe, rooted in the WILL of the American people, it follows as a necessary consequence, of a government based upon that will, that this monopoly should be broken up, and that the means of equal knowledge, (the only security for equal liberty) should be rendered, by legal provision, the common property of all classes.
In a republic, the people constitute the government, and… [they] frame the laws and create the institutions, that promote their happiness or produce their destruction. If they be wise and intelligent, no laws but what are just and equal will receive their [approval], or be sustained by their [votes]. If they be ignorant… they will be deceived by mistaken or designing rulers, into the support of laws that are unequal and unjust.
It appears, therefore, to the committee that there can be no real liberty without a wide diffusion of real intelligence; that the members of a republic, should all be alike instructed in the nature and character of their equal rights and duties, as human beings, and as citizens…
Document #2: Horace Mann Advocates for Public Libraries (1840)
[Mann was the most influential educational reformer of his day. His influence radiated out from Massachusetts, where he did much to improve the common schools by securing better buildings, higher salaries, and superior teaching methods through teachers’ institutes and normal schools.]
A library will produce one effect upon school children, and upon the neighborhood generally, before they have read one of the books, and even if they should never read one of them.
It is in this way: The most ignorant are the most conceited. Unless a man knows that there is something more to be known, his inference is, of course, that he knows everything. Such a man always usurps the throne of universal knowledge, and assumes the right of deciding all possible questions. We all know that a conceited dunce will decide questions extemporaneously which would puzzle a college of philosophers or a bench of judges. Ignorant and shallow-minded men do not see far enough to see the difficulty.
Now those children who are reared without any advantages of intelligent company, or of travel, or of books—which are both company and travel—naturally fall into the error of supposing that they live in the center of the world, that all society is like their society, or, if different from theirs, that it must be wrong. They come, at length, to regard any part of this vast system of the works of man, and of the wisdom of God, which conflicts with their homebred notions, as baneful, or contemptible, or non-existent…
Now, when this class of persons go out into the world and mingle with their fellow men, they are found to be alike useless on account of their ignorance, and odious for their presumption…
A library, even before it is read, will teach people that there is something more to be known.

What Are We FOR?

March 25, 2014July 31, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

This was the post that prompted me to set up an actual blog, shortly before the #OKEdRally in OKC on March 31st, 2014. It was also the first thing to get a response I liked better than my actual post. Both are reproduced in full here:

What exactly are we for?

I think this is worth considering anyway, but particularly so for Oklahoma educators planning on storming the Capitol in a few weeks. You never know, after all, who might ask.

History shows clearly how much easier it is to unite against things than to agree on the best alternatives. Anyone keeping up with events in Egypt, Syria, or dozens of other places in recent years knows this is still so. Even my students are quick to rally in opposition to my periodic efforts to play a little Coltrane or even Cannonball Adderley in class, but have yet to reach a convincing plurality regarding other musical options.

Browse Facebook or Twitter or the popular blogs, and the things we are against quickly become evident. Common Core is clearly the devil, as is standardized testing in general. Charter schools are the devil, usually hanging out with Vouchers – also the devil. Arne Duncan is the devil, along with Bill Gates, Jeb Bush, and occasionally even President Obama. Teach For America is the devil (this is one I particularly do not fathom, but that’s a discussion for another day), the new SAT is the devil, college admittance offices are the devil, and the two combined mean the College Board and that new fella in charge are the super extra devil. Pearson actually IS the devil, but nevertheless still clutters the list, and Janet Barresi, while NOT the devil, acts as a sort of PR agent on his behalf, showing a loathing of public schools and public school teachers you’d not automatically expect from a State Superintendent – although it does somehow illuminate this childhood favorite:

But were all these swept away tomorrow, what would we wish in their stead? What are we FOR?

Yes, yes – I know we’re for ‘the children’ and ‘the future’ and world peace and curing the common cold. I know the intangibles, but what SPECIFICALLY do we support? Do we sincerely trust a sort of “local control laissez-faire” approach to our schools? To everyone else’s schools? Is there a system of accountability or assessment we could live with? Or even design? A strategy we’d be willing to implement? Even a philosophy or set of priorities on which we generally agree?

We’re marching against many things, I assume, but the only one I’m aware we’re marching FOR is money. This is completely valid and important. We cannot starve ourselves into pedagogical and academic success. But I worry about the messaging – an unpleasant consideration, but a critical reality nonetheless.

If we rally and chant and hold up our signs (let’s watch our speling pleaze!) solely to kill accountability and demand money, maybe throwing in some cheap personal attacks on state leadership, I fear we will have difficulty persuading the average Oklahoma voter we bring something worth supporting… something worth paying for when no one seems to have much, and something that offers a digestible but optimistic direction we’d like to take their kids, their state, and their pocketbooks. Worse, I fear we perpetuate a rather unpleasant stereotype of teachers and our priorities – an image which, however unfair, has perhaps largely contributed to the presence and power of all those horrible things we’re against.

So before loading up the busses, finishing the signs, or even forwarding that next link, consider pondering what it is we want TO happen at least as vigorously as what it is we’re trying so intently to prevent or overthrow. Just in case anyone asks.

UPDATE: The best response that came to this post when it was on the other site came from Lisa Witcher. Lisa is a long-time educator and involved parent whose bio I suppose you can Google – or simply ask her about – if you simply must know more. In the meantime, follow her on Twitter – @MzWitch11

Recently, I read a blog that asked what is our education rally on March 31st for… Here are some thoughts –
Let’s fund education in the same spirit, philosophy or economic logic that permits tax breaks to the very wealthy and to the businesses that would drill here anyway. Let’s be for spending a ridiculous amount of money on our children and on our children’s children. Let’s be for funding education so that no principal has to decide between paper or a teacher’s aide.
Government officials have asked how much is enough. Enough occurs when there are not 38 kids in my son’s history class, when every computer can be updated, when every leak can be fixed, and when every teacher can raise two kids on his/her salary without applying for free/reduced lunch.
While I will refrain every day from littering Facebook with what I am against, I can banter for days about what I am for. I am for an educational system that reaches for the top of the bar instead of relinquishing its ambitions to being 49th. I am for a state that treats its teachers more like royalty and whose elected officials act more like servant leaders than members of an archaic feudal system. I am for your kid, your neighbor’s kid, my kid and every kid – because they are worth it. What am I for? I am for learning; I am for letting students and teachers discover how learning happens. When they are able to discover that scientific, artful moment together, the students’ pathways are infinite, spectacular, and life-promising. What am I for? I am for putting children at the center of every decision instead of politics. Those decisions do require funding – but they require so much more than just money.
There are those that will reduce the plight of public education to sound bites – but until you have heard a child emote because he/she finally understands – all you have heard is noise. Those that are trying to destroy public education see it as a billion dollar industry capitalism has yet to tap – they do not see the faces of four year olds who only need an equitable chance to learn and change our world.
What is March 31st for? It is for [insert your favorite child’s name here]. My favorite children deserve the best Oklahoma has to offer. Heaven help us if we settle for just the sound bites.