Rant on Hollywood Misrepresentation (not techno related)

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Earlier this week, we had a superintendent conference day. For the second time in three months, the district superintendent made us sit through the video attached below, as well as another collection of samples of teaching as shown in various movies.

I have a serious, serious problem with comparing real-life teachers to Hollywood's depiction of teaching. It's unrealistic of the people making the comparisons, and unfair to the teachers who are being measured against these fictitious examples.

Case in point: the video attached below, is from Man On Fire. When you watch it, you will see a man instructing a swimmer on how to improve her start time off of the block. 

It is, yes, inspirational. But here is where it differs from reality:

1. The student is motivated. Swimming is what she wants to do. She is competitive and craves the idea of beating another swimmer's time. In the clip she does not once whine, complain, or ask why she has to do this thing. Compare this to students who attend mandatory core classes in which they have no intrinsic interest, but which they must pass in order to get out of school eventually. Their goal is to Get Out...they don't have an interest in continuing to swim to an even higher level of achievement.

2. The instructor in the clip uses drill as a method of instruction. He starts and stops the swimmer over and over and over. This is ABSOLUTELY what is necessary to instill basic skills...not higher-level thinking, but basic skills...and one must have basic skills before one can engage in meaningful higher-level thinking. However, in the video clip, the drill is shown as a montage (as such things often are). That's because drills, by their very nature, become monotonous as the information becomes closer to getting ingrained into the student's mind and habits. Drills are necessary, but they're not always fun, they are frequently frustrating, and real life doesn't come with a "montage" setting. (Please note that the other clip of Hollywood educators shown by the superintendent the same day included the Latin teacher from Dead Poets' Society drilling students on conjugation as an example of what NOT to do.)

3. Nowhere in the clip do we see any neighbors coming up and berating the trainer for speaking firmly to this little girl, scaring her, or pushing her to continue. Nobody is yelling at him and telling him he doesn't know what he's doing. Nobody is getting in his way, and nobody is getting in the little girl's way. In fact, there is a collection of neighbors at the end who are cheering this little girl on, giving her tons of external validation to support her internal sense of achievement. Do I even need to begin to explain how this is different from the environment of judgement, suspicion, and opposition in which public school teachers operate? Do I need to describe the experience of being called names by a parent when I call home to explain that the student is failing because he has been cutting class and not doing the work?

It is absolutely unrealistic to compare real-life teachers to these pretty and inspirational Hollywood conceptions. I would even say it is emotionally abusive. And I'm tired of being on the receiving end of that crap.
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Equity over Equality

Yesterday I had one of those "driveway moments" while listening to an NPR report on rethinking educational priorities.  Actually, it was more of a "parking lot moment" as I was on my way in to work, and as a result I couldn't wait and listen to the whole thing.  I tracked it down:

http://www.npr.org/2013/02/22/172674083/commissions-report-outlines-education-priorities

A key element of the findings is that all public schools need greater support, but that will mean different things in different districts.  For example, the needs in Oakland are going to be different than the needs in Beverly Hills, especially when it comes to ESL students and students starting with educational deficits due to having poorly-educated parents.  Community resources also vary widely, and there needs to be recognition of the different realities of different districts.  Equality is not relevant in this context, but equity is..

The report references the 1983 report "A Nation at Risk" commissioned during the Reagan era, which was the beginning of enormous educational reforms.  No Child Left Behind is an intellectual descendant of this report, and any educator can tell you what a disaster this has become.  I need to delve into "A Nation at Risk" and see what happened.  1983 was the year I graduated high school, so whatever reforms  were put into place immediately after that missed me completely.  I know that "whole language" (one of my chief nemeses) started before that, but I expect that it was reinforced by the findings of the report.

More on this later.

Little too late

On Wednesday I attended a webinar titled Pearson Common Core Institute: Creating Rich Instructional Tasks: The Common Core in Grades 6 - 12.  Since my in-house training in CCSS has been pretty thorough, much of this was stuff I already know.  However, the presenters did emphasize an interesting point.  They noted that many districts had gone into a flurry and rewritten their curricula from the ground up as a response to CCSS, and they said that that was absolutely the WRONG approach.  They recommended, instead, that districts should keep their old curricula, but tweak them for alignment with standards.

And I can't help thinking that this is great advice, but way too late to help me.  Our district went full-steam into throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and the bathtub for good measure.  My best-loved curriculum units vanished, and much of what we teach now is well-aligned but feels hollow.

Ah, well.  It is what it is.  Can't go backwards, but maybe the road twists back around to get to a good place.

Observation Day

Today was my APPR observation, and I decided to take a risk with it.  Rather than doing a nice, safe lesson plan, I decided to implement some technology bells and whistles.

This is part of the Banned Book project that my honors students are doing.  They've been working in small groups.  Each group chose a book and started reading it last week.  They also agreed with their groups about how many pages they would have read by the reading deadlines, and today was the first deadline.

Here's the way I planned it:

1. Open the class by distributing laptops and have students log in to PupilPath (the online gradebook and assignment calendar), and log in to Socrative.com in a separate window.
2. Have students respond to a short-answer question in Socrative.
3. Have students read and follow the assignment instructions in PupilPath.
4. Finish the class by having students log in to Socrative and do the Exit Ticket exercise.  Preview the homework and the open-note quiz for tomorrow.

The assignment instructions were as follows:

STEP 1:  Go to the appropriate document for your book (I had created a separate Google doc for each group, and inserted the links to the Google docs in these PupilPath instructions).

STEP 2:  In a new window, open the Poughkeepsie City School District webpage:  http://www.poughkeepsieschools.org/

STEP 3:  Using the Remote Library Databases (available through the school webpage) and the American Library Association website (http://www.ala.org/), find information on the following topics:

• Reasons why books are often banned
• Biography of your author
• Banning history for your particular book
• Controversial issues found in your book, discussed in an online format.

STEP 4:  Copy-and-paste the information you find into the Google document.  Provide the source information (MLA format), and then give your own comments.

Each member of the group must complete at least two entries during class time.  You may add to this document as you wish outside of class.  Your group will use this document in creating your Banned Books Project Presentation.

This is challenging work, but it means every student is working and the work is visible to other group members.  It means students are doing research, are collaborating, and are adding their own interpretation of the information they find to the group document.  Additionally, the Socrative exit ticket lets me take a pulse of how students are feeling about their progress.

Okay.  That was the plan.  As to how it really went....

I am SO glad I used my 2nd period students as guinea pigs on the Socrative site.  It turned out to be blocked by the district.  Tech Central is notoriously difficult to reach, but miraculously I got hold of Techie Chris and got him to expedite the unblocking.  So that much, at least, was helpful and resolved before 4th period class.

Ms. Mayone, the admin who was observing me, was very impressed with the short-answer aspect of Socrative, especially as students' responses started popping up on the SmartBoard.  However, several students were having connectivity issues, so I had to spend a lot of time rebooting their internet connections.

When we finally got around to doing the main task, some students attacked it with enthusiasm.  Some waffled around and stalled.  Then there were those who were completely overwhelmed and gave up.  I tried to manage everybody's issues, but between the connectivity issues and the complexity of the task, many did not finish it.  I informed them that that was okay, that they should continue to do their research from home and add to the shared document throughout the week in preparation for next Thursday's work.

A good example of work on one document:

Quotation	Source	My response
Banned, but later reinstated after community protests at the Windsor Forest High School in Savannah, GA (2000). The controversy began in early 1999 when a parent complained about sex, violence, and profanity in the book that was part of an Advanced Placement English Class.	Doyle, Robert P. "Banned And/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century." American Library Association. N.p., 2010. Web. 20 Feb. 2013.	Students from an Advanced Placement Class should be mature enough to view such content for an educational purpose.
A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group.  A banning is the removal of those materials.Books usually are challenged with the best intentions—to protect others, frequently children, from difficult ideas and information.	"About Banned & Challenged Books." American Library Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Feb. 2013."About Banned & Challenged Books." American Library Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Feb. 2013.	The information in challenged books could either be helpful or harmful, depending on how you present it.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote was banned in Savannah, Georgia after a parent complained that it contained sex, violence, and profanity. Yes, there is evidence of all of this throughout the novel but written in a sense in which one is simply meant to understand what these men went through. What they felt and the intensity  of their emotions. I believe this novel can be very intimidating to readers, especially to those that are not prepared for the intensity and reality of the crimes committed.	“Personal Position on the Banning of In Cold Blood”Np.Nd.  Web.Febuary 21,2013	I believe that certain students are mature enough to read books and that some honestly are not. The book should not be banned.

However, more than one group never made it that far.  Some documents are mostly blank.

The exit ticket at the end of class went much better, and Ms. Mayone was eager to see the document that results from all the students' responses.

Sadly...I'm not thrilled with the responses, which went like this:

How well did you understand today's material?	What did you learn today?	Have you met the reading goal agreed upon by your group for this date?
Totally get it!	I learned the difference between a challenged book and a banned one.	100/2
Pretty well.	I learned how to use Google Chrome.	Yes.
Pretty well.	Banning books is often done to protect children, although children are tougher than we think. Its unjust to not allow them to read whatever they want.	No, I did not meet my reading obligation.
Pretty well.	I learned that challenging a book is an attempt  to remove or restrict materials.	Yess  i did.
Not very well.	That I need to do the assignment that was supposed to be classwork, on my own computer because I wasn't able to do anything today.	No
Pretty well.	How to use the student library databases other than google	No,i have not but i am catching up
Not at all, need help.	I was confused the entire work period because I had technical issues.	I have not been able to meet the reading goal for my reading group.
Not very well.	I learned that I didn't get anything done today.	I only read up to 37 pages.
Pretty well.	That the internet is slow :) and why in cold blood was banned.	I did not meet my reading obligation for my group page 35
Pretty well.	I learned more about why books are banned/challenged.	I am sorry to say I did not meet my reading obligation for my group, but I will next time.
Not very well.	Nothing.	I was kinda a few pages behind.
Pretty well.	The reasons why Of Mice and Men got banned.	No, so far I am on page 5 in the book.
Pretty well.	I learned about this new website called Socrative.com !!	Nope not yet, almost there though. Just have to pick up my own slack.
Pretty well.	I learned that this school has horrible internet and that there are too many people that think that if they don't like something no one can have it.	I did meet the reading obligation.
Pretty well.	Not much cause the ala.org site wasn't giving me much information.	Cant exactly remember around 30 40
Pretty well.	Nothing	Sort of
Pretty well.	I learned that the Poughkeepsie High School computers are very slow and need to be upgraded.	No, I'm 34 pages short. :)
Pretty well.	To use google docs.	I did meet the reading obligation
Not at all, need help.	that the schools computer does not work and i did not get to do my classwork and this class makes me mad	No

I suppose, really, that having most students respond that they understood the day's work "Pretty well" is okay -- it means that they feel challenged.  However, the number responding "Not very well" and "Not at all, need help" is discouraging.

I don't know what Ms. Mayone will make of this experience, and we don't have our post-observation meeting until next week.  I'm hoping she sees it as innovative -- not as a chaotic mess.

The School Year Ate My Blog

I'm applying the electrodes to this thing -- let's see if I manage to revive it.

Very short post for now.  Just want to enumerate two things:

1. Tonight I watched a recorded webinar on "An Introduction to the Common Core State Standards: Focus on ELA at the Secondary Level" and am very intimidated by the amount of scaffolding my students still need to do work several grade levels lower.
2. Getting ready to use Socrative.com and DropBox as key elements of my APPR observation on Thursday, with the department's new laptop cart.  Crossing fingers that all the relevant servers stay up and running.

The Cell Phone Issue

In yesterday's staff meeting there was an extended conversation about cell phones.  This is not a new issue, but the problem that gets brought up every year is that it's hard to enforce a rule that is not practiced consistently.  Some teachers don't allow students do use their cell phones in class (in accordance with the school rules); others do, on a situational basis; still others let students text as much as they want as long as the work is getting done; other teachers have been known to answer their own phones or text in the middle of class.  There were also archly-oblique comments about the security staff, some of whom spend extensive time on their phones in the hallways.

The end of the discussion was a blanket statement:  no cell phone use by students.  Students may not even charge their cell phones in class, because if another student steals the cell phone, the teacher will be held accountable.  "If we walk into a classroom and there are cell phones charging, we're going to have a problem," is the principal's quote.

Okay.  So.  In this environment, how does a teacher move forward with integrating the use of communication technology into class?  Am I thwarted?  Is all lost?

Well, it helps to have an ace in the hole.  I'm fortunate to have a co-conspirator among the administrators, and he has already confirmed that, should there be a complaint about me allowing students to use cell phones for academic purposes, he'll back me up.  Students will still be prohibited from using cell phones for non-academic purposes in my class.

We'll see how that works in practice.  Meanwhile, I'm getting my Socrative quiz banks ready!

Use of Paper when "Digital" is the Buzzword

Yesterday during training on our on-line gradebook/attendance program, I asked a question of the developers: why isn't the "mock bubble sheet" page (which is essentially just a table with the students names at left) a printable document?

The administrator who was running the show jumped up and grabbed the microphone from the developer (who was in the process of saying, "Sure, we can do that.") and went into a brief...well, really I feel I have to call it a tirade...about how we're not supposed to be working on paper at all, and people should be avoiding printing out ANYTHING if they can help it, and none of our records should be being kept on paper, etc. etc. etc.

I think I managed to keep my temper once I regained the microphone, and firmly pointed out that I need to be able to keep records as I'm walking around the classroom -- a check mark here for a student being on-task, a note that so-and-so had dozed off and needed to be woken -- which I will input into the computer during my prep.  I simply can't teach from behind the computer screen, I don't want to forget what behaviors I'm seeing, I want to award participation bonuses appropriate -- and, no, not everybody has an iPad.

Even in the digital age, some things are just easier with pen and paper, and easier still if I can just get an already existing form to be printable.

*grumble*