Waiting For Superman: Part II

Well, I didn't make it to see the movie last Thursday.  The rain that shut down school early also flooded enough of downtown Baltimore that I worried about getting stuck there, and starting the next day I had another nonstop week full of students and classes and one glorious but exhausting field trip.

And all of a sudden, yesterday morning, I realized I had nothing to do!  Rob was at an all-day bikeathon, so I called my friend Laura to see if she'd come with me.  It was a perfect day to walk around by the harbor and pretend we actually lived in a high-rise condos and ate at Oceanaire and Charleston every night.  As much as I love my little patch of earth in the suburbs, there's something very attractive about the city lifestyle.  Everything feels more exciting there, more immediate, more colorful and accessible and real.

Does it seem like I'm putting off talking about the movie?  Maybe I am.  It was very difficult to watch.  There were only a handful of people in the theater with us, and each of us, more than once, gasped or groaned or sniffled audibly.  It's not a good date movie, and it's not a good movie for a teacher to watch on a Sunday night. Or, maybe, ever.  I had trouble even telling friends about it without getting choked up.

The sad truth is that America's schools are in trouble, and no one wants to talk about it.  We know this.  We've seen the statistics that place us near the bottom of the literacy pool in developed nations.  The goals we set for No Child Left Behind are far out of reach; around 30% proficiency in math and reading for most states, and the goal is 100% in the next two years.  Despite the fact that we continue to pour money, time and resources into the system, we consistently fail to educate our children even passably.

The film makes it clear that there are two obstacles standing in the way of better education: first, teachers' unions, which refuse to make any distinction between effective and ineffective members, which insist on tenure for all after an average of two years in the classroom, and which will not agree to merit-based pay or removal from the system if the teacher is spectacularly good or awful; second, the bureaucracy that runs the school system, which consists of federal funding, state funding, local funding and independent school boards, each with its own agenda and set of rules.  Between these two behemoths, it's a miracle if any improvement is allowed to occur anywhere; someone like Michelle Rhee is an anomaly, the result of a loophole that can't last long (and, in fact, despite the extent of the positive change she has wrought, her job is now very much in jeopardy.)  Here's Rhee's sound logic:

For too long, we have let teacher hiring and retention be determined by archaic rules involving seniority and academic credentials. The widespread policy of "last in, first out" (the teacher with the least seniority is the first to go when cuts have to be made) makes it harder to hold on to new, enthusiastic educators and ignores the one thing that should matter most: performance.

A 7-year-old girl won't make it to college someday because her teacher has two decades of experience or a master's degree -- she will make it to college if her teacher is effective and engaging and compels her to reach for success. By contrast, a poorly performing teacher can hold back hundreds, maybe thousands, of students over the course of a career. Each day that we ignore this reality is precious time lost for children preparing for the challenges of adulthood.

The glacial process for removing an incompetent teacher -- and our discomfort as a society with criticizing anyone who chooses this noble and difficult profession -- has left our school districts impotent and, worse, has robbed millions of children of a real future.

There isn't a business in America that would survive if it couldn't make personnel decisions based on performance. That is why everything we use in assessing teachers must be linked to their effectiveness in the classroom and focused on increasing student achievement.

The whole article isn't long and is worth reading.  And after a day of being stuck in a major funk, it started to make me feel less depressed and more optimistic.  If people are making movies like this, creating websites like this, and losing their jobs over this, maybe we're on the way to a better system.  For now, I'm going the way of Harriet Ball, who is profiled in the film and on its website as a super-teacher, one of the heroes of the education world:

Q: What can teachers do, right now, to help improve the system?

A: Watch other teachers who are doing well. Give up your planning time and lunchtime and meet up with somebody who's willing to let you observe them. Keep asking until you find answers. Don't give up if that's your dream. If you want to be a teacher -- baby, teaching is a job. Close your door and teach those kids.

Axios!  Amen!

Today is the Last Day

of Banned Books week.  Betcha didn't know that was coming!

I celebrated by buying Rabbit, Run, since I've never read Updike (despite being inspired by his wisdom) and am somewhat ashamed of that fact.  A close second would have been Nabokov; I finally watched Lolita last summer and am intrigued enough to want to read the original.

However, I have my doubts about the criteria used to create the list.  Apparently the Lord of the Rings was burned outside a community church in New Mexico in 2001 for being "Satanic."  Considering it's in every Christian geek's Top 10, I don't think one fringe group's antics merits its placement on a list that implies controversy and edginess.  Aaaand I suppose the only reason Chuck Palahniuk, David Sedaris, et al didn't make the list is that no one is crazy enough to suggest they be studied by adolescents.

For those who are curious, I've read 16 of the 46 books.  17 if you count Ulysses, which I'm pretty sure I'll never get all the way through.  That thing is nuts.

It's Not What You Say

Although I have always believed this, I was still shocked to hear the following statistic at our first faculty meeting of the year.  When you communicate with another person, here is how they interpret your message:

Words: 7 %

Tone and inflections: 38 %

Body language: 55 %

It makes sense, really.  Our principal used this statistic as the basis for our new communication policy at school, and I think it's a good communication policy for just about anyone's school, business or life:

Words: this is e-mail and text messaging.  Since it's just words, it should be relegated to the simple relaying of information: "I'll meet you at 4 PM" or "Here's the outline for the next chapter."  The minute the exchange becomes more complex, it should move to a more personal level.

Tone and inflections: phone calls.  Most minor negotiations and problems can be resolved this way.  "Why did my daughter get a zero for this assignment?"  "How can I get my son to practice more regularly?" "Let's work out a time to get together."  There's something so much more personal about the sound of a spoken voice: it can nip a lot of misunderstandings in the bud.

Body language: face-to-face meetings.  For anything important, whether a job interview (yes, they do take place over the phone, but it's rare) or catching up with an old friend.  Taking the time to sit down with someone shows you care enough to give them your full attention.  This is how we run our classes, and it should be how we run our lives, too.

I take a lot of flack for staying away from Facebook and chat rooms and even my own cell phone, which I would prefer to be without.  But I take pride in knowing that I can give someone my full attention, my full presence, whether it's a client, student, or friend.  I was at a party this week where I saw a man find out his wife was pregnant via text.  Can you imagine?!  No, thank you.  I want my relationships real.

Plagiarism is Understandable?

Stanley Fish says yes (my emphasis added:)

If you’re a student, plagiarism will seem to be an annoying guild imposition without a persuasive rationale  (who cares?); for students, learning the rules of plagiarism is worse than learning the irregular conjugations of a foreign language. It takes years, and while a knowledge of irregular verbs might conceivably come in handy if you travel, knowledge of what is and is not plagiarism in this or that professional practice is not something that will be of very much use to you unless  you end up becoming a member of the profession yourself.  It follows that students who never quite get the concept right are by and large not committing a crime; they are just failing to become acclimated to the conventions of the little insular world they have, often through no choice of their own, wandered into. It’s no big moral deal; which doesn’t mean, I hasten to add, that plagiarism shouldn’t be punished — if you’re in our house, you’ve got to play by our rules — just that what you’re punishing is a breach of disciplinary decorum, not a breach of the moral universe.

Perhaps.  But there's a big difference between incorrectly citing a quotation or idea and brazenly appropriating whole passages, as in the shocking anecdote that opens the article.  Besides, isn't the very act of hanging out in someone's house, without knowing their rules, a moral problem?  If you waltz right by the pile of shoes in the entryway and keep yours on because you think you should be able to do what you're used to doing in your own house, you're probably the same kind of person who asks to see a friend's paper and lifts a few paragraphs because you would be willing to do the same for her.  That's not the right way to live, and boy, does it complicate the life of an English teacher!

I remember my first and most traumatic plagiarism experience as if it were yesterday.  In my first year of teaching, I read two papers that were almost exactly the same (especially absurd for an opinion paper) with only a word changed here and there.  We summoned both students to the vice-principal's office and questioned them separately.  Each broke down in tears.  I felt sorry for them, but still angry, mostly out of pride: how dumb did they think I was?!

Maybe Fish's argument is over my head (it wouldn't be the first time.)  But I have always agreed with Baba, of the Kite Runner, who says:

"There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft . . . When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal a wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness . . . There is no act more wretched than stealing."

Ups and Downs This Week

Maybe it comes from teaching adolescents, but I have had a roller-coaster week from start to, well, middle at this point:

Down: Discovering that only half the school got the latest edition of the paper.  Somehow, I forgot to remind all the students about their assignments.  You know, the assignments that have been on the board since we made up the schedule LAST SEPTEMBER.  Additionally, we'd run out of 11 x 17 paper and no one had ordered more.

Up: Discovering that there was in fact a whole case of 11 x 17 paper, hidden at the bottom of the stack of boxes in the basement office behind the forklift and among six prepositional phrases.  Glad I didn't wear heels that day.

Further Up: Getting excited about the upcoming field trip to the Washington Journalism Center, which I've been planning since January.

Down: Getting two parent phone calls several minutes apart in which mothers told me their daughters couldn't attend for various annoyingly understandable reasons.

Up: This means the entire class can now fit into my car, so I don't have to drive the school van.

Down: The dearth of submissions for the literary magazine, even with the incentive of a contest with cash prizes.

Up: The cheerful willingness of the staff, all volunteers, to make announcements, place flyers and talk about layout design, even if it's all in vain.

Further Up: Most of the computers in the lab finally got layout software installed on them.

Down: I've been requesting this, also, since September.

Further Down: An anonymous negative comment scrawled in blue highlighter over a copy of the newspaper and placed in my mailbox.  Our latest issue, centered around food, was conceived, written and designed by students; it included an article that interviewed the school's physician about eating correctly before sports events, an tour of the Asian market with a Filipino student, polls about favorite Food Network stars and local eateries, and an article about the Culinary Club's philosophy of home cooking.  The comment said, "Whatever happened to writing about the students?"

Up: The support of the vice-principal when I showed her the comment.  "It's not like you would tell them how to design their class," she said.  "They shouldn't tell you how to run yours, and I sure don't see anyone stepping up to take over."

Further Up: Rob suggested I post copies of the anonymous note in the faculty room with the caption, "Whatever happened to writing in ink and signing your name?"

The Freedom to Choose Poorly

It was always a dangerous question: "Would you like some broccoli?"

Dangerous, because it wasn't really a question.  If I said "no," I would incur a Look until such time as I meekly helped myself to a moderate amount and polished it off without complaint.

Believe me, I think parents have the right to do this, and I think they should do it.  I have little sympathy for the mother who complains that her children won't eat anything but macaroni and hot dogs; few children would behave differently, given the choice.  I think my appreciation of healthy and diverse foods stems from this strictly-imposed rule growing up.

But where should we draw the line?  If that mother's behavior is ridiculous, it is equally ridiculous for the government to ban products it deems sufficiently unhealthy, like hydrogenated oils or cigarettes.  Clearly, adults are granted the freedom to choose poorly.  Call it one of the perks of adulthood.

I remember when our school made the switch from junk food to health food.  I went to a private school where there was no hot lunch; we ordered out several times a week for pizza and Chick-Fil-A, but the other days we had to bring our own lunches, supplemented sometimes (or all the time) by the offerings on the table outside the cafeteria.  Doritos, M&Ms, and Coke ruled the afternoons.

When we had a schoolwide Health Day, the cafeteria switched to selling yogurt, granola bars and juice.  Surprise!  They found that when they have no other choice, kids will eat more healthy foods.  Shortly thereafter, they made a permanent switch.  There was grumbling, but the kids who had to have junk food just brought their own from home.  The rest of us enjoyed crackers instead of chips, fruit instead of candy and Spritzers instead of sodas.  It wasn't a big deal.

The question, as always, has to do with degrees. This recent article from the Times hints at it, wondering about how far schools and parents should go to keep their children from eating junk.  What about fundraisers that sell candy bars and lollipops between classes to support the endless stream of new uniforms and sports equipment?  Bake sales that raise money for charities?  Should we draw a line between yogurt and ice cream, or apple juice and soda, when they boast an equal number of empty calories?  And should we give seventeen-year-olds the benefit of the doubt, or treat them just like seven-year-olds?  Once you begin to legislate lifestyle choices, it becomes awfully difficult to pin down where and how the rules should apply.

The Changing Face of College

Everyone seems to be talking about college all of a sudden -- not just me.  The Times reports a very interesting trend: early college programs, in which students take five years to earn both a high school diploma and a two-year college degree.  There have always been schools who will do this for high-achieving students, but now programs are targeting first-generation college attenders:

With a careful sequence of courses, including ninth-grade algebra, and attention to skills like note-taking, the early-college high schools accelerate students so that they arrive in college needing less of the remedial work that stalls so many low-income and first-generation students. “When we put kids on a college campus, we see them change totally, because they’re integrated with college students, and they don’t want to look immature,” said Michael Webb, associate vice president of Jobs for the Future.

The article considers it a given that the last year of high school is a waste -- I guess because students have already made plans for college or a career or both, prime conditions for the ailment known as senioritis.  That was certainly not the case with me; I found my senior year very freeing.  I was finished with most of my course requirements, so I was able to choose courses I knew would bring success and enjoyment, like Yearbook and AP English.  I also experimented a bit, taking Anatomy and AP Civics, neither of which interested me beforehand, but both of which proved useful and fascinating studies.  And I finagled an independent study of classical piano, which basically meant I got to continue studying with my private teacher while practicing for a whole period on the school's sadly neglected 9-foot concert grand.  Someday I'll tell you all about that.  Besides, I got to play Liesl in The Sound of Music, I learned how to swing dance, and I had my first real boyfriend.

So I'm a big proponent of senior year productivity, however it can be achieved, and although I still object to the idea that college is for everyone, I can't take issue with an idea that expects a great deal of students out of whom  no one has ever expected much of anything.  I've never seen a study that didn't prove the link between expectations and achievement, and this is no exception: dropouts plummeted from the 38% state average to zero, and one college president said this performance, from a group of completely average kids, was the most exciting development he's seen "in 27 years."  The kids are pumped, too:

“I didn’t want to do it, because my middle school friends weren’t applying,” Ms. Holt said. “I cried, but my mother made me do it.

“The first year, I didn’t like it, because my friends at the regular high school were having pep rallies and actual fun, while I had all this homework. But when I look back at my middle school friends, I see how many of them got pregnant or do drugs or dropped out. And now I’m excited, because I’m a year ahead.”

Good for her.  Good for her mother.  Good for the school, for trying something different.

The Cheapening of College

In case you don't know the story, or you weren't listening the first time, I think the SAT is a bit of a scam.  It's a very good predictor of success on future standardized tests.  It's not good at measuring creativity, discipline or intellectual curiosity -- three things that are, or should be, necessary for a college education.

Unhappily, we have set our standards too low.  The high school where I teach boasts that 100% of its students are accepted to college.  As much as I love my school and the students who attend there, there are quite a few who should never go to college, either because of low scholarly aptitude or because they just aren't cut out for academia.  (Sometimes these students are actually too smart for college, at least for the "college" they have their hearts set on.)  But they are told they have to attend college to be successful, so they do.  Then they drift off to careers in service industries or retail (both of which are trades that would be far better learned through an apprenticeship program) or get married and raise families and never look back.*

Grad school, I thought, would consist of a thinned crowd -- people who really do love to learn and think.  I've been monumentally disappointed.  Many of the students are fresh out of their undergrad programs without a day of teaching under their belts; they treat it like, well, school, instead of a community of learners.  In my first undergraduate experience, at Cooper Union's School of Architecture, we spent nights in angry debate about the principles of parti and racial violence.  Not because it was assigned, but because we were passionate about it, even at the expense of sleep and partying and sometimes our graded assignments.  After this experience, many people told me it "sounded like grad school," so I assumed it would be similar, but my classmates seem to treat school as more of a business transaction (tuition now for higher pay later) than an opportunity for intellectual enrichment.

And now we've stooped to a new depth of consumerism: pre-approved "fast track" applications that require, in some cases, only a signature -- no essay, no visit.  Sometimes, no joke, the university will throw in a free baseball cap.  All of this is guaranteed to boost the number of applicants, which helps the college look good (they're selective; they don't just admit anyone!) while hurting the students (those who really might want to attend have less of a chance, while those who are shoe-ins and never even intended to apply gum up the works.)

Bad.  On so many levels.  There are fewer and fewer who want to learn.

*I'm not trying to insult parents here . . . just saying that there are people who want to attend college and raise families, and people who want to raise families but attend college because they feel like they're supposed to.  Society would be better served if those in the latter group simply focused on their main goals.

Score One for Efficiency

Picture the middle of the day at a typical elementary school: you get an hour to eat lunch and play.  What do you think kids are going to do?

Eat lunch in five minutes and dash outside?  Check.

Skip lunch altogether and feel sick later?  Check.

Run around on a full stomach and get sick immediately?  Check.

Throw away some or all of the food their parents bought and packed for them?  Check.

Come back to class after recess full of wiggles and energy, and needing a drink of water?  CHECK.

How could this situation possibly be remedied? Well, duh.  As the saying goes, "Life is uncertain; give recess first!"

In the test schools that adopted this practice, kids were overjoyed to be able to burn off their energy straight from class, then "cool down" over a lunch that was more leisurely without the dangling carrots of kickball and the monkey bars.  They paid better attention in class afterward, with fuller bellies and calmer nerves.  Afternoon nurse visits decreased by 40%.

Logic.  Works every time!

All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten

Well, not truly.  All I actually learned in kindergarten was that I couldn't sleep in strange places (I still can't) and that it was a big deal to know how to spell "butterfly."  (My mom taught me how to read at 3.  So sue me.)

But oh, man.  How I wish I had attended this school. It's called Forest Kindergarten, a branch of Waldorf education in which the kids go outside every day for three hours, even in the snow, even in the rain, even if it's below freezing.  They dig, splash, gross each other out, and do all the other things kids do well.  They spend some time indoors reading and writing, but mostly they play outside.

The bad news?  Tuition is $7000 a year.   It's ridiculous -- this program should be instituted in all public schools, even if they have to plant a garden in flowerpots in a parking lot.  Especially if they have to plant a garden in flowerpots in a parking lot; nature will be all the more precious to those children, and they need as much of it as they can get, and they won't get it at desks being crammed full of differentiated knowledge to prepare them for placement tests while they're still young enough to forget to go to the bathroom.

Sorry; that sentence got away from me.  Well, I guess this is why I advocate homeschooling.  It's the only way you can ensure your children have a balanced education at less than $7000 a year.