Blogush

Everything will be okay in the end.
If it’s not ok, then it’s not the end.
Paulo Coelho

I am a huge advocate of teachers just sitting and talking with kids without an agenda.  Yes, most teachers would tell you that it important to understand what is going on inside a kids head to better meet their academic needs.  What I usually find…and please correct me if I am wrong…is that most of the time the teachers assume they know what kids are thinking and going through and they bring their assumptions to their lesson plans.

Assumptions are not good enough.

What percentage of time do you think you should commit to getting to know your kids as people, and not as academic beings?

For most teachers, if they sat in the back of my room they would probably say that I spend too much time talking with the kids.  I decided to run the numbers and I would guesstimate that I spend 12% of our time together “talking” before we start “working.”  I wish I could spend more without feeling guilty about it.  I know from my own empirical evidence that I get more out of the kids each class if we talk first.

At the end of last year I recorded a conversation with ex-students who were graduating from high school(I teach 8th grade), and this year I had the opportunity to turn the microphones around on our podcast team and interview several members.  If you often talk with your kids their answers might be interesting to you, but probably not surprising.  I am going to list the questions below and it would be interesting to have people write down what they think the kids would say…what they assume the kids would say before listening.  I have included the audio of the 20 minute interview below the questions, or you can visit their website.  Please take a listen!

1.      What is the most important thing we have ever learned in school?
2.      How did you acquire the “shell” many of you are trying to break out of?
3.      Who has been the most influential adult in your life?
4.      What is one thing that we could teach adults?
5.      What are the struggles that kids experience that adults don’t understand?
6.      If schools were voluntary would you attend?
7.      What skills and abilities do teachers need in the 21st Century?
8.      What advice do we have for teachers and parents?

I originally had a big ol’ post written about why I am going to ask you to answer a question in the comment section…but I deleted it because I did not want to influence your thought process.

So without any explanation, please read the scenario below and answer the question in the comments.  You don’t have to be a teacher to answer.

A teenager walks up to you and asks:

“Should I become a teacher?”

What is your response?   I really need to hear what you would say.

This is a video that I made to introduce parents to my class when we have a meeting the first week of school.  I would recommend watching it on youtube, go to full screen, up it to HD, and turn the volume up A big thanks to Aimee Bogush for all of her help!  The song in the second half of the video came to me in this email. It was written by written by Brian Asselin and Eric Disero who have it posted with the words here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwsKWi…

Direct link to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr4vee4d-6c&

Here’s the deal…this post is long.  So if you have time, please read from beginning to end.  If you don’t have time…skip to #10.  If you read #10 and then read the last paragraph after #10, you’ll have to read #2 in order for the last sentence and the blog title to make sense.  Got it?

Here are some things that I was thinking about this week:

#1-I was reading a critique of the US Soccer team written before the World Cup started. The author wrote about the USA team’s lack of creativity because unlike many of the world’s other players they are coached from the beginning of their life and taught the same very specific drills that tell them what to do and how to react in certain situations. They simply have never had to think about what to do, just always rely on their training.

And I coincidentally read a book about baseball after the article in which the author wrote something eerily connected to the soccer article…

#2-He was writing about the influx of highly talented Latin American players into the Major Leagues. He told stories about the players not being to get into “proper” leagues and buy “proper” equipment when they were kids so they had to invent, play pretend games, throw various objects for practice, and sometimes the best they could do was to bounce a rubber ball against an alley wall and catch it with their bare hand. They had to learn to react to unpredictable events, and figure out how to do things on their own. No one came to them and gave them the perfect equipment or proper coaching and methods. No one taught them how to catch–what mattered was that they caught the ball. They learned different ways for different types of hit balls and did not rely on one coached method.  Again, what mattered is not how they caught the ball, what mattered is that they did catch the ball. They react and make plays, they don’t “follow the directions” and rely on training and sequential steps to make plays.  They can adjust to an odd bounce, because that’s what happens when you throw a rubber ball against a wall–it opens you up to making many mistakes, exposes your weaknesses, makes you vulnerable to errors and forces you to overcome them with your body and mind…not equipment.

Maybe you can predict where my mind started to wander next …

#3-I started to make a connection to the training my student teachers received. When they do something that they were trained to do that does not work they don’t react and make changes. They look for a formulaic, proven method that they can get from someone else–or they keep going with it…or they don’t even notice something is going wrong. They don’t react, invent, and survive unpredictable moments. It becomes more about trying to make the formulaic steps they were taught work, instead of inventing something new.

That led me to think about my kids…

#4-When my kids come into my class in September they are programmed little machines. They have been coached how to learn since at least 4 years old, and many of them even before that. They are also taught to rely on the “coach” to tell them what to do. They might be able to “run a play” but don’t know when, why, or how to do it unless it is done for the specific situation they have been trained for. They act like those people that got stuck on the escalators

Then I started to think about the teachers who teach their kids into zombie states…and where did they get their classroom ideas from…who told them it was ok?

#5-Colleges spend a lot of time teaching folks “how to teach.”  But only let them teach for one semester, and obviously how much they get to “teach” depends on the cooperating teacher.  Kind of like joining the football team freshman year and only being able to play in the fall of your senior year…4 years after joining.  Yes, some take a class that gets them into a room to observe, and maybe they get to teach one or two classes.  Again, imagine trying to be a football player by only watching, and getting into two plays before you have to play for real.
Or…would you want to have surgery performed on you by a doctor who only observed and had a couple practice tries before taking over the room you were having your surgery in.

That led me to think about the type of advice we give these new teachers, or any teacher with any kind of question…

#6-Much of the advice I hear and see being given is procedural.  Do this, try this, change that.  One thing that I realized this year with both of my student teachers is that no one can be as successful as I am with my lesson plans.  I cannot be as successful as you with your lesson plans.  Each lesson and activity I do with my kids is deeply personal…or the way I get them to choose their own path is deeply personal.  I cannot give you my list of “procedures” and expect you to have the same success.   This year I did a unit that was awesome.  If someone tried to use my lesson plans they would have flopped.  I wrote it specifically for me and my kids.

As I was listening to a baseball game that led me to think about…

#7-Of all the sports, baseball might be the most like teaching.  It is highly skill based, and there are so many different skills that you have to put together to be successful.  You can go from college to the pros in football and basketball.  You can’t in baseball (don’t go and name the few exceptions).  Even the very best prospect in baseball often spends years in the minors.  When they are in the minors great players soak up the knowledge from those around them–they practice, practice, practice when they are not playing.  Even when they get called up to the majors, they spend more time practicing, practicing, practicing and absorbing information from those around them…and from those that have retired.  I see too many teachers come out of college thinking they know everything and never ask a question.  I think in twenty years I might have only been asked a question twice by another teacher…and they were both respected veterans.   Remember, most teachers have had less than  10 weeks of “playing experience (student teaching)” before they reach the “major leagues.”  They should be banging down doors of other teachers to connect and absorb what they know. Why has my door NEVER been banged on by a beginning teacher…or any teacher for that matter.

After thinking about all the previous seven points, I wondered what others would say if I shared them.  I know that many others would blame the system.

#8-It’s the system that created these teachers?  We should show some pity?  Oh poor teachers?  Does a minor league player who doesn’t make it to the majors or a soccer player who gets cut from the team blame the system?  How does the system (including social networks) help folks starting out, or those who want to start.  Do we provide answers? or Do we make statements and questions that allow teachers to come to their own personal understanding of how to invent, overcome, imagine, and create solutions to their problems.

That all somehow led to:

#9-Is it me? I have been using the various biggie social networks a lot less recently. I have been trying to figure out why (besides the fact that I am totally enjoying the extra time with my family . I think that I have noticed a trend…please call me on it if I am wrong. I have noticed many fewer original thoughts. There seem to be many more links being shared, and simple observations about sports, shopping and hobbies. I thoroughly enjoy reading them, and I share the same…but, I am wondering if there has been a decline of original ideas and questions being posed throughout the day, and if we have moved into a recycling stage, or building a better mouse trap era. I think I have also noticed the trend in educational blogs…again, please call me on it if I am totally wrong or if it is just the blog posts that I tend to follow and pick-up from twitter. It just seems as though there is more people writing about what they have found instead of what they are their original thoughts and what they have done. So I wonder…I wonder if people share what is popular…what will be “popular” at the risk of not sharing their “deeper” thoughts. Maybe not to overexpose themselves…feeling too vulnerable??

So yes…#10 is…

#10 Is the root of all problems in education and the stagnant nature or reform in education due to people not wanting to feel vulnerable? I have noticed a trend that when people reflect on their classes they tend to reflect on procedural items and create coercive measures to fix the procedural problems instead of getting to the root of the problem–the core, the trigger, name it what you’d like.  I know that whenever I have a problem in class the ultimate problem is never the procedures I have in place or the kids–the problem is always me.  How can we start to solve problems until we start to deal with ourselves first?

I have been doing this teaching thing for twenty years.  My first ten in the toughest school imaginable, and the second twenty in an average suburban district.  Every year I have gotten better.  My first 10 years I got better because each year my procedures grew stronger and tighter.  Lesson plans, assessments, grading system, classroom management, class discussion, etc. In my last ten years I have improved because each year I become more vulnerable.  First it was in private, finally with the kids.  I haven’t focused on looking for better lessons or procedures, I have focused on how to improve myself.  As I have become a better a more vulnerable person, my classes have become increasingly better places to live for 186 days each year.  It is hard to be vulnerable, especially in a culture in which we are always suppose to look like we have it together.  We want dearly to appear as though we are successful in every way.  But does this bring us closer? or does it separate us more.   Who do you feel the need to always show you have it together?  What kind of relationship do you have with them?

It is a vicious cycle.  We want to appear as though we have it together…we pass that on to our kids.  We complain about kids in school not wanting to make mistakes, not wanting to be wrong…we try to push them and give them support about how it’s ok to be wrong…it’s ok to make mistakes.  Stop and examine what you are talking about next time you do that.  They are almost always simple procedural things.   Not about who the person is, but what they do.  Training them to be able to make mistakes is as easy as it is to train them that it is not ok to make them.   Changing what they do is easy through procedures and coercive management systems with rewards and punishments.  Changing who they are…well that is very difficult.

If teaching was just about what we do, it would be easy to fix. Unfortunately it is not about what we do…but who we are.  In order to change who we are, we all need to be more vulnerable.

I play with with a rubber ball…do you?

I just received this email:

Hi Paul, I got your email address from your blog site.

My name is Brian Asselin and I am a recent graduate from the teachers college program at the University of Ottawa. Towards the end of school we, the students, are reminded how fortunate we are to have principles, administration, and teachers who help inspire students everyday. While in teachers college I realized how fortunate I have been to have had such great teachers in my life that have helped shape the person I am today. I wanted to say thank you to all those who go beyond the daily job requirements so I co-wrote a song entitled “You Have Made A Difference”. I would really appreciate it if you would take a couple minutes to listen to the song and if you felt so, share it with your staff.

Thanks so much in advance

Brian Asselin

Click here to listen to the song on youtube

This is difficult to admit…
I want schools to embrace more standardized testing. Standardized testing has slowly been moving into schools, and creeping closer to my subject area–social studies. I wish someone had the guts to simply admit that we need to test each kid, each year, in each subject. Every year for the past twenty years I have had to experience an administrator introducing a small component of testing. Each time it is met with resistance from the staff who half-heartedly accepts it, so of course it takes years to fully feel it’s effect and implement it, and in the end results in nothing but resentment against testing. Nothing will be successful unless the staff fully embraces it and utilizes all the materials that come along with it. With each test there is professional development that follows that allows teachers to pick-up techniques and strategies to increase test score. Do teachers embrace the methods? No. There are workbooks and sample tests that are offered to teachers. Do all teachers use them like they are suppose to? No. So what happens? The administration and professional development teams have to year after year offer up the same sessions in an attempt to get the teachers to embrace the methods and strategies. They wouldn’t have to do this if teachers would just stop being so resistant. There is one particular type of question on the tests in Connecticut that we have had training on for almost five years in a row! I know this sounds sarcastic, but think about it…If five years ago teachers just used the methods and strategies to improve that one type of question, scores would have gone up, and we could have moved on to a…wait for it…a second type of question!!! Arghhh! Come on people this is not rocket science! I for one, am tired of being hammered for test scores that are only rising slightly each year, and for only having 80% of our kids reach mastery. Teachers are always complaining about lack of time–just use all the lesson plans that are offered by the various companies and school system. During the two weeks of standardized testing in my school I have no lessons to prepare, and no student work to analyze. Using the test prep worksheets and lesson plans before and after the test would allow teachers to increase their free-time by at least 90% each day, have ample time to spend on hobbies and with family, and open a second twitter account. Schools should fully embrace standardized test taking strategies, standardized quarterly tests, standardized graduation exams, small group pull-out for kids scoring poorly on tests, expect every kid of the same age to know the same exact thing at the same exact time, offer monthly early dismissals for professional development to improve test scores, have test rallies to boost scores, and have forced standardized testing test prep which includes writing prompts and practice tests weekly if not daily. It schools did this they would quickly fill the communities with students who will be doomed to fail in future. Why stretch out the pain? Why stretch out generations of kids who are slowly losing the skills needed to be successful?!! I am sure many readers of this blog are to blame for stretching out the full embracing standardized testing. Stop fighting standardized testing, you are slowing down a process that is doomed to fail. Think about it this way. You can whine and fight standardized testing and have it stretch out for maybe the next thirty years and never get to teach like you always dreamed about. Or, you can embrace standardized testing and let it into every corner of the school, allow the system to collapse after ten years, and then start teaching like you always dreamed. The quickest way to end standardized testing is to love it to death.

Major food companies will run tests of their products to see how much cheaper they can make their product but still have people buy it. So famous cookie company will have testers eat cookies that are inferior to the original, and the one that people grade closest to the original they start producing(needs more of an explanation on the actual process but…). Yes, ingredients are cheaper and there is an ever so slight decrease in flavor, but it is hardly noticed. When they do this over the course of decades, eventually the cookie in production is just a shadow of it’s original self. No company can expect the public to make the shift from the original recipe, to the cheapest one overnight…it must be phased in slowly otherwise there would be rebellion by consumers. If the change stretched long enough, there is no one left to remember what the original cookie tasted like and the company never has to worry about backlash. They can continue making the cookie without anyone pointing out what once was.

Standardized testing is the same. In schools, after 30 years of a movement there is really no one left who remembers what it was like before it. Slowly moving it into schools will eventually result in a population of students and teachers who will have never known anything other than standardized testing. It will be the norm, you don’t fight or resist things that are normal. Fighting it now improves it’s chances of survival. Love them to death, while there are still people around who remember what it was like to be in a school without them.

By the way, I also have a way to fix some environmental problems. Stop recycling.

There will be no change at my daughters’ school.

There will be no education revolution.

Sorry…this post might be depressing, and will probably reflect my current emotional state, but not a permanent one…I hope.  And I apologize before you start reading, because I do not intend this post to be a reflection of all schools, just the ones that I am most familiar with.

For the last couple of months my wife and I (much more my wife than I) have been working diligently to prevent a ticket based reward system from coming to Bethany Community School. There have been blogs, Facebook pages, and many face-to-face conversations and emails.  After reading about how it is used in other schools we thought there was no way the administrators could push this by the Board of Education without them examining it closely—this would be the first they heard of it even though the school had bought the program and had been training a select group of teachers.  After the Board of Education meeting last night I have learned that there is little or no hope for change…no hope for a revolution.  There were six people who attended the meeting and spoke out against the ticket system…three were from our family.  My daughter wrote a wonderful speech and at 11 years old stood with much more courage than her father or mother, and told of stories of how ticket systems damaged her at school.  Afterwards an administrator implied she was lying by saying those things do not happen in 6^th grade…I guess my daughter needed to specifically say they happened in 4^th and 5^th grade to be seen as telling the truth.

Here is what I leaned from the experience of trying to change a school program:

Teachers cannot make system changes from within because they fear repercussions from administrators and from fellow teachers.

Administrators will do their best to squash any opposing viewpoints from parents, teachers, or children.

Board of Education members simply rubber stamp anything that the administration gives them.  They will not ask any probing questions.  They obviously see anyone speaking(so few do) at meetings as crazy and their opinions should be disregarded.

Children are seen as non-compliant and whiny when they try to voice their opinions.  They are not valued — for the human beings they are, or as future adults, but should remain obedient children

A Parent who speaks up is seen as the crazy person.  So much so that speaking up might hasten a change in the opposite direction of what they are trying to do!

I have learned that parents simply don’t care about what happens in a school. Yes, everyone says that you have to build a groundswell of support and then things can change.  Unfortunately I feel as though any parent group going up against the school system would be like an army with bayonets, going up against an army with machine guns.  Yes, the parents could win, but you would need hundreds that would be willing to get shot down, so that eventually some could make it into the “fort.” (Ever see the movie Glory?)  And so they will not speak up.  They will not attend meetings.  They will not take on the system that has worked so hard to teach them that they are suppose to stay in compliance.  Once parents walk into a school they revert to being children and just sit-up, and shut their mouths.  I have done it so many times myself.

The reality is, that each year we think “don’t fight this year” or “there are only a couple of months left and things will get better next year.”  And then after a couple years of that…”don’t bother fighting because she only has one year left in the school.”  It is so much easier to avoid getting shot and not battle.  Unfortunately, that leaves the kids in the crosshairs of the school to take all the bullets.  When our kids come home riddled with bullets we brush it off as friendly fire.  The reality is their hearts and minds are getting murdered, and the people that are supposed to be lovingly guiding my child into adulthood are the ones who are doing the shooting.

Schools should come with warning labels.

What would the label on your school say? (positive labels encouraged)