Math and Science Teachers Should be Paid More II

When I first read Susan Ohanian’s What Happened to Recess and Why Are Our Children Struggling in Kindergarten? in 2002, I was shocked at how creativity and physical activity were being systematically removed from the classroom with the goal of improving test scores. Seven years later, I still remember one anecdote about entire districts abolishing recess and others going so far as to take away the children’s break if their test scores dropped. I also remember checking Ohanian’s sources because I couldn’t believe her seemingly-outlandish claims. Unfortunately, she was right.

Up until last year, I hadn’t seen first hand the outrageous removal of such vital education. However, this past year when our district attempted to close a $9.4 million gap in its budget, some of the first to receive pink slips were all elementary and middle school physical education teachers, and their counterparts in music. Here it was, in my own backyard. Backwards thinking.

Fortunately, researchers such as Daniel Pink (A Whole New Mind) understand that linguistic and computational intelligence are not the only “important” intelligences. He takes Gardner’s multiple intelligences one step further and focuses on our society’s changing and pressing need for right-brained thinkers. Note, he doesn’t argue for the insignificance of left-brainers, but rather the crucial addition of right-brainers, or “R-Directed Thinkers” as he calls them, in order to compete in the global market. Pink asserts that due to cheap labor (Asia), access to anything we desire (Abundance), and better, faster and stronger computers (Automation), there is now virtually no difference in products purchased from different companies, so the reliance on marketing (design) has become radically important.

He claims that American workers will need to command a new set of aptitudes. Because workers elsewhere can do the same work for much less money, our workforce will need “. . . R-Directed abilities such as forging relationships rather than executing transactions, tackling novel challenges instead of solving routine problems, and synthesizing the big picture rather than analyzing a single component.”

Improving our test scores will not help us realize this goal.

Thankfully, in our district, the physical education, music and art teachers will continue their jobs and our kindergartners will not be missing recess to prepare for THE TEST. At least for this year. However, if we continue to wait for “somebody else” to set our priorities, legislators instead of educators, I fear our educational system will continue down the wrong road. A road with inept and ill-prepared travelers.

Post repeat. Just seeing if anybody's reading this anymore.

What Do You Love?

What Do You Love? is a children's book that has a small dog answering his mother's repeated question, "What do you love?" His answers are just what a mother would like to hear. He loves "Mud pies and Mommy's eyes," "Jumping puddles and Mommy's cuddles," "Read-alouds and sunset clouds," "Silly tunes and full moons," "Long walks and quiet talks," etc.

After reading this story to my sons at bedtime, I asked them what they loved. Eli, my compliant, eager-to-please, sensitive son replied, "I love you and Mommy. I love swimming and Esther (our daughter). I love watching the flowers grow and the sea monkeys too. I love Jesus." And then there's Abe, our wild, zany, marching-to-the-beat-of-his-own-drummer son. Abe says, "I love My Lucky Day (the next book we were going to read). I love Superman and Batman and Spiderman and Star Wars and Star Wars Legos and I love chocolate and cookies and race cars and legos and I love Star Wars Legos and I love Jesus too. He says this so fast I find myself wondering how he could string such an impressive list together and spit it out in one breath.

As I was about to prompt him to dig a little deeper, I realized he didn't need to. These were all things that he loved. A good reminder for me that each of my students brings something special to the class; each brings a "valid" answer to such an open-ended question. Sometimes it's difficult not to value and praise the answer I'm expecting more than others.

Nothing earth-shattering, but a valuable reminder.

Math and Science Teachers Should be Paid More

 When I first read Susan Ohanian’s What Happened to Recess and Why Are Our Children Struggling in Kindergarten? in 2002, I was shocked at how creativity and physical activity were being systematically removed from the classroom with the goal of improving test scores.  Seven years later, I still remember one anecdote about entire districts abolishing recess and others going so far as to take away the children’s break if their test scores dropped.  I also remember checking Ohanian’s sources because I couldn’t believe her seemingly-outlandish claims.  Unfortunately, she was right. 

 

Up until last year, I hadn’t seen first hand the outrageous removal of such vital education.  However, this past year when our district attempted to close a $9.4 million gap in its budget, some of the first to receive pink slips were all elementary and middle school physical education teachers, and their counterparts in music.  Here it was, in my own backyard.  Backwards thinking. 

 

Fortunately, researchers such as Daniel Pink (A Whole New Mind) understand that linguistic and computational intelligence are not the only “important” intelligences.  He takes Gardner’s multiple intelligences one step further and focuses on our society’s changing and pressing need for right-brained thinkers.  Note, he doesn’t argue for the insignificance of left-brainers, but rather the crucial addition of right-brainers, or “R-Directed Thinkers” as he calls them, in order to compete in the global market.  Pink asserts that due to cheap labor (Asia), access to anything we desire (Abundance), and better, faster and stronger computers (Automation), there is now virtually no difference in products purchased from different companies, so the reliance on marketing (design) has become radically important. 

 

He claims that American workers will need to command a new set of aptitudes.  Because workers elsewhere can do the same work for much less money, our workforce will need “. . . R-Directed abilities such as forging relationships rather than executing transactions, tackling novel challenges instead of solving routine problems, and synthesizing the big picture rather than analyzing a single component.”

 

Improving our test scores will not help us realize this goal. 

 

Thankfully, in our district, the physical education, music and art teachers will continue their jobs and our kindergartners will not be missing recess to prepare for THE TEST.  At least for this year.  However, if we continue to wait for “somebody else” to set our priorities, legislators instead of educators, I fear our educational system will continue down the wrong road. A road with inept and ill-prepared travelers.  

web 2.0

Just received and read this book yesterday (along with these: Classroom Blogging, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, The Brain That Changes Itself, A whole New Mind).  

As usual, I found myself vacillating between my appreciation of seemingly different ideas.

Example: Two country's approaches to changing precollegiate education systems.

China is refocusing history textbooks from "wars, dynasties and revolutions to economics, technology, social customs and globalization" (Kahn, 2006).  One author of the new textbooks says that the alterations "reflect a sea of change in thinking about what students need to know . . . The goal of our work . . . is to make the study of history more mainstream and prepare our students for a new era."

If you've been following my blog, you'll recall my appreciation of and fascination with the approach of Classical Education.  With a focus on the classics (and one's ability to logically formulate and clearly present an argument), it's difficult to reconcile the supplanting of "wars, dynasties and revolutions" with "economics, technology. . . and globalization."  That difficulty would be predicated on the assumption that the study of economics was not being taught beginning with Aristotle's examination of the "'art' of wealth acquisition" and questioning of "whether property is best left in private or public hands." Or if technology were not being taught by period and geography, beginning with the stone age.  Chances are the technology and economic focus would be on the "flattening" of our world a la Friedman.  

Conversely, Japan is "remaking its vaunted education system to foster greater creativity, artistry, and play.  The Education Ministry has been pushing students to reflect on the meaning and mission of their lives, encouraging what it calls 'education of the heart' (Pink, 2006).  Pink claims that the future belongs to "designers, inventors, teachers, storytellers - creative and empathetic 'right-brain' thinkers."   

I guess the approaches aren't mutually exclusive.  The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL; 2003) has identified the following categories of skills required for success in today's world: Digital-Age Literacy; Inventive Thinking; Effective Communication; High Productivity.  A couple skills which would be helpful to effective communicators  or inventive thinkers would be teaching and storytelling, both from Pink's list.  

Ultimately, it boils down to using 21st century technology (web 2.0) to find people from whom we can learn, ask questions of them, comment on their thoughts, and have them do the same for us.  We are still a learning community, collaborating now with blogs and podcasts along with book clubs and the traditional classroom.  

Check out  Sir Ken Robinson's ideas on education at Ted.com.

Thoughts?  Anyone?  Anyone?

Odds 'N Ends and The Meaning of Life

Not sure if I've ever seen Odd 'n Ends juxtaposed to The Meaning of Life, but here goes. . . 

Yesterday I played around with Edubolgs a little more and appreciated the many options the site offers. I spent some time beginning a Classroom 42 Blog (for those in the know, that happens to be the meaning of life).  The posting was easy, similar to Blogger, but I found the "Pages" to be more difficult to edit.  When you take a look at "Mr. Newman" under Pages, you'll see the spacing issues I was unable to fix despite 20 minutes of tinkering.  

Feedback needed

I sat down with our new administration yesterday and discussed some potential changes to our Language Dept.  I won't offer my thoughts as I'm interested in your unbiased opinion.  We're making the change from heterogeneously grouped classes to ability grouped classes.  Please share your thoughts and experiences with either or both, including pros and cons.  I look forward to some feedback and dialogue. 

Oh, if you're wondering about the pic at the top, it's a little cookie store in Cayucos that brought many smiles to my wife, mother and children last week.   The chocolate chippers weren't great, but the others were amazing.  

Return to Blogging

Nicenet


While reading Read’s “Tapping into Students’ Motivation: Lessons from Young Adolescents’ Blogs,” I came across a list of possible Blogs that wouldn’t be blocked by our school’s amazingly effective filter. While I have a facebook account, I’m not comfortable accepting the many “freind” requests from students, because it would limit what I share with my other “friends.” However, this site allows us to create blogs designed specifically for our students, allowing me to share with them classroom assignments, upcoming activities, samples of my writing, appropriate pics of my activities, etc.

It's free with no advertising, open only to participants to whom you've given the access code, and content can be edited or deleted by the teacher.

Classmates can post responses in a threaded fashion so that all of the individual comments follow the piece to which they are responded.

I won't have to teach them how to use the site as many (most?) are quite comfortable in digital environments.


edublogs


Yet another option for blogging in the classroom. Edublogs boasts "Blogging for teachers and students, made easy."

Effortlessly create and manage students blogs
Packed with useful features and customizable themes
Ready made for podcasting, videos, photos and more
Step by step support with our helpful video tutorials


I toyed around with the site a little and found it to be user friendly with tutorials for dummies like me. Oh, and the header pic on my sample is of my three kids at the beach because I had to find a way to include my little ones.

P.S. While creating this post, I had to call my wife, who's been blogging for a few years now, for a little support.

Our conversation:

Me: Hello is this blog support?
Joy: Ha ha, yes what do you need.
Me: I uploaded a second pic after some text and it automatically moved it to the top.
Joy: Oh yeah, you have to upload all pics first, then include your text.
Me: Thanks Babe. As always appreciate your help.
Joy: (With an Indian accent) Thank you for calling Blog Support and have a nice day.

Intelligent, beautiful and funny. Love that gal.

Old School

Unbeknownst (I love that word) to many, Joy and I sent our 5-yr-old son, Eli, to the SLO Classical Academy this past year.  We did so for many reasons, but suffice it to say that the 12 to 1 ratio was reason enough.  Before Eli attended his first day of school, his father, a public school teacher, was torn.  How would I defend myself?  Why would I have to defend myself? 

The questions would come and I needed an answer.  

I love everything about the classical model, and would love to teach in such an institution, yet also love my current job, with the joys and challenges that it brings.

When I first began thinking about a project/theses, I thought I'd research how to incorporate components of  a classical education into my classroom.  I quickly realized my limitations as part of a larger (public) beast.  I cannot simply transform my 8th grade curriculum. Aside from the obvious obstacles of district, state and federal accountability standards, my (diverse) students would not have been exposed to the grammar stage of a classical education.  There is, however, much crossover, such as teaching critical thinking, interdisciplinary units, and the heterogenous makeup of classes.   

After much research and myriad discussions with my amazing wife, I've come to the conclusion that I'm currently working where I need to be.  I've always had a heart for struggling readers.  

Now that the stage has been set. . . speaking of struggling readers. . . 

According to Alverman's "Literacy on the Edge," because many struggling readers find their own reasons for becoming literate. . . "it is important to offer them a variety of reading materials." She suggests everything from graphic novels to comic books and, while she doesn't propose that these supplant any "accepted" curriculum, she insists that taping into students' multiple literacies "can sometimes turn students around in terms of their perceptions of self-efficacy and motivation to read."  

Susan Wise Bauer, in Well-Educated Mind, differentiates between being informed and being enlightened.  "When you read," she says, "you develop wisdom - or in Mortimer Adler's words, "become enlightened." "To be informed," Adler writes in How to Read a Book, "is to know simply that something is the case.  To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about."  To be informed is to collect facts; to be enlightened is to understand an idea (justice, or charity, or human freedom) and use it to make sense of the facts you've gathered.

It is Bauer's assertion that we become informed by studying the Classics.  She rails against the futurists' claim that "we are a postliterate culture (where) books are outdated forms of communication" and multimedia will replace "boring print."

I don't see these ideas as mutually exclusive.  I fall somewhere in the "radical middle."  Why can't we tap into students' multiple literacies to help them become "enlightened"?  

So, here's my suggestion.  We hire enough public teachers to lower the class size to 12 to 1 instead of the recently increased 33 to 1.  We can do this one of three ways: paying teachers significantly less than they deserve (not a new idea); coupling smaller schools with corporations, institutions of higher learning, or NPOs in a mutually beneficial arrangement; waiting for nuclear holocaust where there will be significantly fewer children to educate.  

I'm thinking option number two has the most promise.

Thoughts?

It's All Greek to Me!

I'm currently reading Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!, about the experiences of a Nobel Prize winning physicist.  Last night I read about his teaching experiences at a university in Brazil.  I'll include a LONG excerpt here and then pose a couple of questions for discussion.

When he was done with his teaching at the university, he was asked to deliver a speech to the students, profs, dean, etc.  

Towards the end, he said "The main purpose of my talk is to demonstrate to you that no science is being taught in Brazil!" 

I can see them stir, thinking, "What?  No science?  This is absolutely crazy!  We have all these classes."

So I tell them that one of the first things to strike me when I came to Brazil was to see elementary school kids in bookstores, buying physics books.  There are so many kids learning physics in Brazil, beginning much earlier than kids do in the United States, that it's amazing you don't find many physicists in Brazil - why is that?  So many kids are working so hard, and nothing comes of it.

Then I gave the analogy of a Greek scholar who loves the Greek language, who knows that in his own country there aren't any children studying Greek.  But he comes to another country, where he is delighted to find everybody studying Greek - even the smaller kids in the elementary schools.  He goes to the examination of a student who is coming to get his degree in Greek, and asks him, "What were Socrates' ideas on the relationship between Truth and Beauty?" - and the student can't answer.  Then he asks the student, "What did Socrates say to Plato in the Third Symposium?"  The student lights up and goes, "Brrrrrrrrrrr-up" - he tells you everything , word for word, that Socrates said, in beautiful Greek.

But what Socrates was talking about in the Third Symposium was the relationship between Truth and Beauty!

What this Greek scholar discovers is the students in another country learn Greek by first learning to pronounce the letters, then the words, and then sentences and paragraphs.  They can recite, word for word, what Socrates said, without realizing that those Greek words actually mean something. To the student they are all artificial sounds.  Nobody has ever translated them into words the students can understand.

I said, "That's how it looks to me, when I see you teaching the kids 'science' here in Brazil."

. . . Finally, I said that I couldn't see how anyone could be educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything. . . . One student who had done well in class stood up and said, "I was educated here in Brazil during the war, when, fortunately, all of the professors had left the university, so I learned everything by reading alone.  Therefore I was not really educated under the Brazilian system."

Observations/Questions 

1) Tests may tell us if students can answer a few questions, but not if they can raise them.  While we as language arts teachers are charged with the responsibility for helping kids learn to read and write, that task isn't simply a matter of teaching decoding and subject-verb agreement.  It is the more important - and more difficult - matter of teaching thoughtful reading, questioning, reasoning (Probst). 

2) We have all dealt with students for whom the A was much more important than the understanding or competence it was supposed to represent.  For the past few years, I've tried to convince our administration that time in the day for SSR (sustained silent reading) would be beneficial.  Students enjoy a self-selected book and read it because it's meaningful, pertinent, challenging, real, etc.  Not because I assigned it to them.  The pressure we teachers and students face to do well on standardized testing has become so intense that our ability to teach and students' ability (and desire) to pursue knowledge and learn how to think critically have taken a back seat.  *How can we meld the demands of our administration, district, state and federal mandates with what we know is best for our students?  Mustn't we build upon our students existing strengths and not search for holes to plug so that they might score "Proficient" on the STAR?

3) The Brazilian student who claimed that he learned because his professor was not there to teach, but by reading alone poses an interesting question.  Can a great book alone serve as a great teacher?  Is a mentor a necessary component in learning from that great book?  

Frustration

After I read all the books Dr. Herter loaned me, and conducted all the "research" I could without access to Poly's database, I had a dilemma.  My classroom computer, which has served as my office for the summer, is great for searching Google News or checking my stocks. However, if I want to access any of the databases from Poly, they're all blocked.   Love that filter, tech services. The backdoor approaches I learned from my students didn't even allow me access beyond the first page.  So, I could try to work at home with my three small children underfoot, or drive to Poly daily.  I didn't like either choice as my classroom is directly around the corner and has thus far been ideal. Solution: Save articles as PDFs, and email them to my school where I can view or print them.  [Click on image to view screen capture with 15 emails above]  

How must our students feel when they are asked to research a project and, at every turn, are blocked due to "inappropriate" content.  And teachers who wish to blog with students?  Or students who wish to add to their own blogs on their own time (lunch, after school, etc.).  I understand the necessity of a filter (avoiding litigation :)), yet, for the first time, side with my students as they constantly complain about their lack of access and are told that school computers are for "educational purposes only."  Interesting that our IT dept. determines what is "educational."  

Maybe the twelfth message down, Technology Toolkit, will have some helpful ideas.  

Or maybe you do.  Anybody?  Anybody?