Andrea Zellner's posterous

Report from Boston: Technology preconference reflection

In case you’ve never been, the Urban Sites conference is a National Writing Project conference that is intended to bring together Urban teachers to share experience and conversations about best practices in Urban education.  The Urban Sites network is one of a few other special focus networks: Rural Sites Network, Technology Liaison Network (TLN) , and the English Language Learner Network are the others.

I have been a member of the Technology Liaison Network for the past year, and had the privilege of thinking through, designing, and implementing a technology focused pre-conference here in Boston on Friday.  The other facilitators, Cliff Lee and Alina Aldonyi, are two amazing colleagues with whom I always treasure working.  Of course, we couldn’t have done any of it without the leadership of Paul Oh and the support of Shannon Boling.

For this preconference, “Tapping Into the Cultural Wealth of Urban Youth’s Technology Know-How”,  we were keen to de-emphasize the “how-to” of the tech and instead focus on the provocative ways that technology can transform student learning and writing, moving students from consumers to empowered creators. We honored and evaluated the myriad strengths of our students, and assessed how best to tap into that wealth to not only help students move forward, but to also celebrate who they are and what they know.  That being said, to get to empowerment, you have to name the factors of disempowerment, and to that end we had frank and honest discussions about racism, on the individual and institutionalized level. We used these uncomfortable conversations to catalyze us to action, ending the day with collaborative time to envision work for our classrooms or our Writing Project sites that might change the world. I was humbled by the risk-taking and honesty in the room, which is no surprise considering how impressive National Writing Project teachers are in general.  The talent, hard work, and intelligence of this network never ceases to amaze me.

If you would like to take a peek at the work we did, the readings we shared, and the resources we highlighted, we have put the agenda on a Google Doc which allowed us to additionally crowdsource the room for the best information on the topics of the day.   A huge thank you to the folks who were in that room. You make me believe that world is changing for the better, knowing that dedicated and innovative teachers like you are out there advocating, caring, and of course, transforming learners all across this country.

 

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First dispatch: Partnership Working Meeting in Portland

It is Saturday night of the Urban Sites conference and the Partnership Institute group has re-convened here in Portland after a rousing end to the conference.  The Partnership Institute had come together originally last July to share important lessons and questions around the notion of partnerships between the National Writing Project and local communities/districts/schools, partnerships which are an important part of our work.  We have come together here to continue those exciting and passionate conversations: an easy task after the critical and inspiring work that was so eloquently showcased at the Urban Sites conference.
After a a working dinner where we caught up with one another's lives, families, and work, we were led by Mary Ann Smith in a reading of two poems: "Thirteen Ways to Look at a Blackbird" and "Hotel Nights with my Mother."  Mary Ann asked us to note lines within the poems that spoke to us and use that as an entry into the work of the evening: to take that line and let it take us somewhere.

Here is what I wrote:

I keep thinking of how literacy has the power to transform.  There is something profound in the way the mind moves through story when we are given the tools, the space, the time.  But it is more than that, it is in the sharing of the stories where the transformation happens.  The movement of that swirling, violent story from the locked cage of the mind, angry beast snarling at the wrong moments, to take that story and let the beast stretch to its full length, look everyone in the eye, (mighty tiger, giant cat) and calmly lick its paws.  To move from the locked cage in which everything has power over you, to owning the power within.  To know when to roar and when to lie in the grass, contented, beyond the constant struggle to free ourselves from those iron bars, however they came to be there.  Let those stories growl truth: that is revolution.  That is when the child can pass through, fortified with gleeful triumph of the tiger freed from the cage of oppression, of violence, of poverty, of the "isms..."
It is in the sharing of the stories that we come to empowerment.

Diane Ravitch: First, Let's Fire All the Teachers!

Imagine that you are a teacher in a high school in a high-poverty district. Many of your students don't speak English. Some don't attend school regularly because they have to earn money or babysit with their siblings while their parents are looking for work. Some come to school unprepared because they didn't do their homework.

But you are idealistic and dedicated, you work with each of the students, you do your best to teach them reading, writing, science, math, history, whatever your subject. But despite your best efforts, many of your students can't read very well (they are struggling to learn English), and many of them don't graduate. If your school eliminated all its standards, you could easily push up the graduation rate.

About 45 minutes away is another high school in a much better neighborhood. Its statistics are far better than yours. The children are almost all born in the U.S., and their parents are almost all college graduates with good jobs. Their kids don't go to school hungry, they have their own room and their own computer, and they have stellar test scores to boot. Their graduation rate is very impressive, and most of their graduates go to college.

What is to be done about the first school? President George W. Bush signed a law called "No Child Left Behind," which required constant improvement. The Obama administration wants to rename the law but they too reject any excuses for low performance and low graduation rates.

Recently, the school committee of Central Falls, Rhode Island, voted to fire all 93 members of the staff in their low-performing high school. Central Falls is the smallest and poorest city in the state, and it has only one high school. Those fired included 74 classroom teachers, plus the school psychologist, guidance counselors, reading specialists, and administrators.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan thought this was wonderful; he said the members of the school committee were "showing courage and doing the right thing for kids." The kids apparently didn't agree because many of them came to the committee meeting to defend their teachers.

President Obama thought it was wonderful that every educator at Central Falls High School was fired. At an appearance before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on March 1, the President applauded the idea of closing the school and getting rid of everyone in it. At the same meeting, President Obama acknowledged Margaret Spellings, who was President George W. Bush's Education Secretary, because she "helped to lead a lot of the improvement that's been taking place and we're building on."

Well, yes, the President is right; his own education reform plans are built right on top of the shaky foundation of President Bush's No Child Left Behind program. The fundamental principle of school reform, in the Age of Bush and Obama, is measure and punish. If students don't get high enough scores, then someone must be punished! If the graduation rate hovers around 50%, then someone must be punished. This is known as "accountability."

President Obama says that Central Falls must close because only 7% of the students are proficient in math, and the graduation rate is only 48%. Sounds bad, right?

But the President has saluted a high school in Providence, Rhode Island, called "The Met" whose scores are no different from the scores at Central Falls High School. At Central Falls, 55% of the kids are classified as "proficient readers," just like 55% at The Met. In math, only 7% of students at Central Falls are proficient in math, but at The Met--which the President lauds--only 4% are proficient in math. Ah, but The Met has one big advantage over Central Falls High Schools: Its graduation rate is 75.6%.

But figure this one out: How can a high school where only 4% of the students are proficient in math and only 55% are proficient readers produce a graduation rate of 75.6%? To this distant observer, it appears that the school with lower graduation standards rates higher in President Obama's eyes.

President Obama has said on several occasions that he wants to see 5,000 low-performing schools closed. So, yes, there will be plenty of teachers and principals looking for new jobs.

The question that neither President Obama nor Secretary Duncan has answered is this: Where will they find 5,000 expert principals to take over the schools that are closed? Where will they find hundreds of thousands of superb teachers to fill the newly vacant positions? Or will everyone play musical chairs to give the illusion of reform?

As it happens, Central Falls High School had seen consistent improvement over the past two years. Only last year, the State Commissioner sent in a team to look at the school and commended its improvements. It noted that the school had been burdened by frequently changing programs and leadership. With more support from the district and the state, this improvement might have continued. Instead, the school was given a death warrant.

Will it be replaced by a better school? Who knows? Will excellent teachers flock to Central Falls to replace their fired colleagues? Or will it be staffed by inexperienced young college graduates who commit to stay at the school for two years? Will non-English-speaking students start speaking English because their teachers were fired? Will children come to school ready to learn because their teachers were fired?

It would be good if our nation's education leaders recognized that teachers are not solely responsible for student test scores. Other influences matter, including the students' effort, the family's encouragement, the effects of popular culture, and the influence of poverty. A blogger called "Mrs. Mimi" wrote the other day that we fire teachers because "we can't fire poverty." Since we can't fire poverty, we can't fire students, and we can't fire families, all that is left is to fire teachers.

This strategy of closing schools and firing the teachers is mean and punitive. And it is ultimately pointless. It solves no problem. It opens up a host of new problems. It satisfies the urge to purge. But it does nothing at all for the students.

Diane Ravitch is the author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books).

via huffingtonpost.com

On becoming a teacher: the power of NWP

When I first heard of the National Writing Project, I was applying to the Red Cedar Writing Project Summer Invitational Institute. At the time, I was in my third-year as a certified English and Biology teacher, coming late to the field after spending a few years in and around education. What I had learned since joining the ranks of public educator was not that we valued the individual needs of the children in our classes, but rather that obedience and standardization was valued above all. I am naturally a rule follower, but I am not obedient. I tend to evaluate each policy, rule, and law for its purpose and function and decide to cooperate from there. I tend to closely adhere to posted speed limits. I will return to a store to give back the extra change they've given me. But I do this out of a sense of ethical responsibility, not out of obedience. That being said, I was not exactly flourishing in the rigid standardization of my teaching assignment. I was criticized for not having students in rows when I didn't even have enough desks. During a passionate group performance of a scene from Romeo and Juliet during an evaluation, I was told that the kids were too loud: despite the fact that years later they still remember nuances of the play. My school's test scores were too low, we weren't making AYP, and we were going to drill those kids in rows until the test scores came up. I was not so good at that. Instead, I learned to keep my head down and do what I knew to be best for the students in my classes. It never occurred to me to admit to it. When I applied to RCWP, I offered as evidence that I "knew" how to teach writing the graphic organizer I had developed in response to pressures in my department to have students write a five-paragraph essay. I did not know to mention that we were also examining propaganda and advertising techniques and comparing Iraqi war coverage with the double-speak in the novel Animal Farm. I did not know to expound on my class' inquiry around propaganda and journalistic bias. I did not know to do advocate for myself in this way because my teaching community valued a blind adherence to formulaic writing. Because of Red Cedar Writing Project, I found my voice. I found my voice and discovered that the teaching community to which I belonged was actually in conversation about these issues, that I had misunderstood the voices in power to be the voice of consensus. And so we started talking. And I started valuing inquiry and free-thinking over standardization and obedience, in both myself and my classroom. I was no longer afraid to advocate for that. That transformation occurred because of what I learned in those four weeks of my Summer Institute. I learned about the power of teachers sharing their practice. I learned that I could impact literacy and student writing by writing myself. I learned how to constructively interrogate my own practice. The brave and intelligent men and women who constantly questioned and tested their own pedagogy modeled for me how to become a teacher and a writer. The support that the National Writing Project provides to communities of teachers is invaluable. This simple model changed me as a teacher and improved my students' writing. I am not convinced that changing the funding model, as is proposed by President Obama and Secretary Duncan, will improve on the current model. Competitive funding, we know, moves money, resources, and power disproportionately into communities that already have access to money, resources, and power. It saddens me that Education Reform as proposed by Secretary Duncan is so couched in principals of business. Our children are not products. In order to equitably continue this transformational work with teachers and students, NWP needs to continue to be funded appropriately. Period. Anything less would be a monumental mistake.

Memorization and roller skates

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The quote is taken from Dave Barry who said, "If the good Lord had intended us to walk, He wouldn't have invented roller skates."
“If your questions are Google-able, then you are not asking the right questions.” This past weekend at the Educon 2.2 conference, I heard this sentiment repeated far and wide.  At first blush, I agree with it.  In a classroom, inquiry is important, and fostering the ability to ask the right questions, in both myself as a teacher and for my students, is imperative.  Being able to ask the right questions is no easy task, and I encourage and support that endeavor.
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/trinity-of-one/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
However, I really want to make the case for Google-able questions.  I want to make the case for rote memorization. The skill of memorizing is not inherently bad, even in the age of information abundance.  For instance, I am much better at math if I have my multiplication tables and key formulas committed to memory.  When I used to work the cash register at various jobs I’ve held, even memorizing common combinations of change came in handy (I’ve found that no matter the place, because of sales tax and prices and human behavior, one finds that certain combinations of change arise more often than others.).   When our registers went down, I always could do the sales tax in my head. Beyond math, I believe that in an age where our communication moves increasingly online, we will come to value the oral storyteller more and more.  As it becomes rarer, we will value the skill.  The Moth and This American Life, both featuring well-honed storytelling skills, rely in live performance on the ability to memorize key facts.  Without the memorization, we cannot ad lib.  Every jazz musician knows this. I remember once being an audience of one for a boy’s moonlight recitation of a certain e.e. cummings poem. It was beyond a powerful moment.  I was completely willing to go out for a second date because of it.  If that isn’t a real world application, I don’t know what is. For me, I love memorizing things.  Scrabble words that begin with Z.  An Educon encienda presentation.  A set of statistics.  Quotes from The Simpsons.  A poem. A phone number.  While there is a whole cognitive science argument to be made, that we should memorize information in order to keep our brains sharp (our brain is like a muscle!), I maintain that there is something remarkable about a person who delivers a well-memorized piece of information.

The View from Sunday: Educon

On Sunday, I think we might be on to something.
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Sunday afternoon @Educon
Educon has been an interesting experience.  It has affirmed my ideas about education, and exposed the many ways where we are in serious need of improvement. Let me begin by noting, as always, the spontaneous conversations in the hallways and in sessions when I was off-task proved to be almost as fruitful as the more structured "conversations" scheduled into the day.  I wonder how conferences can find ways to encourage those informal moments, or if the spontaneity is essential to the quality.  Either way, you can't go wrong when you are in a room with passionate educators all thinking and working and questioning and just trying to figure out how to serve our kids.  Even if we disagree about the specifics, we all agree about that. I sat in on a conversation facilitated by Rodd Lucier (@thecleversheep), “Teaching the At-Risk Brain.”  First let me just say that this was the first session where I felt like both the presenter and the participants were changing the world.  The teachers I met in this session were kind, passionate, smart, and teaching kids in the most dire of circumstances.  It was so uplifting to meet and interact with these individuals that I can honestly say that it was by far the most powerful session I attended at this particular conference. Mr. Lucier invited us to ask questions of two guest presenters that were joining us via Adobe Connect (forgive me: I did not quite get their names).  These two women were psychologists working who outlined for us the impact of trauma on a child and the way that manifests in a child’s brain and behavior.  Understanding the genesis of what is driving the at-risk brain is crucial to designing a learning environment to serve that child.   I captured some of the conversation below: “We have to convince students that they are safe.” “A child in crisis cannot conceive of a future, it is just the moment.  And the moment is terrifying.” “It is as if that child is living in the jungle and tigers are around every corner.” “When kids who are living in a high stress situation act out in school, it is important when responding to inappropriate behavior to make them feel safe. This will help them shift away from the survival reptile brain.” “We must calm the survival brain: music, drumming, repetitive actions.” “Trauma has no language.  In order to access language, we access the emotional brain: expression, art, journal writing to connect with the language of emotion.” “Children in crisis have an inability to self-soothe because they are saturated in fear.” The idea of tolerance for these kids, to allow them the space to move through complex emotions in order to move into a space that encourages learning, is somehow difficult for a great many educators and administrators.  I immediately connected to the idea that so much of schooling is about obedience.  And a child in survival mode often can’t get to obedience.
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YouthVoices session
After that powerful session, the NWP crew gathered to support Paul Allison’s (@paulallison) conversation about his amazing YouthVoices project.  Paul did an amazing job capturing the complexity and richness of this project and at the end, none of us wanted to leave.  Paul invited the participants to go onto the site and comment on a student post.  Then we each shared about our experience interacting with the site.  It was remarkable (but not surprising to anyone familiar with Paul and  YouthVoices) to hear the abundance of interesting content that can be found in a few short minutes on the site.  Paul shared the passion he has for encouraging student voice and, at the end, there was not a single person who was not a convert. As Educon ends and I watch trickles of participants wheel their suitcases out the door to head to all corners of the country and globe, I feel a sense of gratitude (a frequent emotion for this attendee this weekend); gratitude towards SLA for sharing their space, towards the presenters for creating conversations about these important issues,  towards the National Writing Project for providing me access to yet another wonderful experience with amazing colleagues.  Being here, among these people, at this time, I know we are onto something.

Lightning summary: Educon 2.2 Saturday

Up early in order to work out with @poh and @bhsprincipal in the Windsor suites basement gym (seriously, what’s up with all those mirrors? Is that really necessary?) Then off to a quick Starbucks breakfast (parfait!) with the NWP crew: @gailhd, @poh, @paulallison, and @janalon. We hoofed it over to SLA where the place was jammed with people. We successfully found seats and listened to the most amazing speech by Marilyn Perez, the Central Region Superintendent. She espoused the kind of notions of social justice and equality in education that I love to hear. Off to the first session with Ben Wilkoff, a young go-getter looking to describe our innovations as educators. We ended up talking about the ways our desks are arranged in our classrooms (having no classroom myself, I remained largely mum on this topic). The share-out included a bemoaning of standardized testing at which point I discussed that standardized testing is a sonnet, a Paul Allison “enabling constraint” that can be used to inspire creativity in the teacher as we navigate that world. The ensuing wave of nausea indicated that it was time to go to the Encienda Educon session over the lunch break. Seven presenters, each with 20 slides that auto-advanced every 15 seconds to add up to a five-minute presentation. We were each tasked with presenting a big idea in 5 minutes. Random chance determined that I was to go first, and I was still chewing my potato chips when the slides began their awful march to the five minute mark. I rallied, and in the end I got some good feedback. I’ll post the preso later. The others were, of course, amazing. From there it was on to @ChristianLong’s Alice in Wonderland blog project. And my final stop: the Leadership 2.0 conversation, led by Chris Lehmann, the fearless leader of SLA and Educon. We discussed the big questions and came up with more questions. Leadership is tricky and growing communities requires a delicate balance of love, trust, and care. Paul Oh took pity on me since I was starving (I never got more than an handful of potato chips for lunch due to Encienda Educon), and we braved the wind and snow to eat the best Ethiopian food. From there, some schmoozing occurred at Rembrandt’s and we finally ended up piled into Paul Oh’s hotel room to strategize our new world order, or at least which blog sites are best. A good day, all around.