Revisioning...or reviewing

It amazes me how many of us want structures. We want structures like the set time to be at school and the time we can leave. We want the set period time to our day. We want the canned curriculum so we can just flip the page and see what we have to do for tomorrow.  I would love to interview the teachers of the 1800's in those one room school houses and see if they had the set curriculum and demands we do. Some areas did, but many did not- and they still knew what to teach each day and they moved their students forward. For some of us - these are our grandparents or even parents' generation, and we would never say they were not educated.  What makes an educated person? Does just going to school make you educated?  I know a special man who quit school at 16, lied about his age and went to Vietnam. He survived and now runs his own $100,000/ year business. It can be done and he has worked very hard to get there. But, he will never have a high school diploma listed on his credentials, nor did he get to go to prom. Life was a bit different then. Now it is all about how to move forward and fast. And it still comes back to some hardcore competencies that he learned along the way- how to work hard, dig your heels in and be courteous and respectful to all people; to honor the working man alongside the college graduate; to treat all people with common decency; to expect others to work hard for a good day's wage; to be proud of what you have and who you are; and to be able to lay your head down at the end of the day knowing you've done the best you can at all you attempted that day. I used to sometimes joke with him that most of that works, unless you are a teacher and never really know if it worked that day.  We can talk for hours about where curriculum for schools should come from, where it should lead our students and how to carry it out, but in the end, we want solid, happy, productive citizens that can search out what they need in life when they need it.  Is there a competency or curriculum map for that?

Curriculum musts

After reviewing Ch. 1-4 again in HH Jacobs' book, I see these major components of curriculum coming forth;
- Critical thinking
- Preparations for future work and work situations
- more assessment tools that incorporate technology
- a Global focus
- personal and local perspectives should be considered
- The key questions: What content should be kept? What content should be cut? and What content should be created?
- perspectives on humanity should be a focus of Social Studies
- Sciences in action along with the morale dilemmas of science
- educating the person-in health and fitness
- expanding the genres in contemporary English and literature
- math should be considered another language
- the arts are key to a person's development

So I feel like looking at back at this list, that it says all that I have known to be what makes education good - that we need to focus on the whole child, not just the brain- but the wealth of the the being, the vessel, the creative mind, the inquisitive mind, and the ethical mind.  If we have known this all along, why is it still so hard to achieve? Can schools really not provide all these opportunities for students? What if we called them community centers and let in more options for students to 'meet the standards'? What might happen then? Or, what might happen if we did what we would truly deep in our hearts like to see kids do and THEN looked at the standards? I wonder - and I would bet- that many of the standards would be met without us having to look at them. Good educators know what they would like to see their students do, and with encouragement, without the pressure of the next test, students usually rise to the challenge. At least, that has been my experience! What do you think?

Evernote

In relation to last week's readings around technology, I wanted to share a new application that I learned and already love! Some of you are probably already familiar with it, but it was relatively new to me. I had heard of it before but not really had a chance to play with it. The application is called Evernote. It allows you to take notes, save websites, take screen pics, etc, and save them in one place- on the web. Google Evernote, then set up a free account, and then you can start creating 'notebooks' of information. If you download this to your smartphone, tablet and computer, then anything you save at any of these will be at your fingertips! I am already using it for the many roles I play as teacher, president of my international professional women educators' society and crafter. It is great. If I am not near my computer, and have my phone, then I can check the notes from any meeting I was at and/ or reference any website I save in it!  For those of us with multiple roles and mobile lives, this is a great resource! My friend and colleague at DKG Headquarters that travels for six weeks at a time uses it for all of her travel notes, flight plans, presentations, etc. It is fabulous!   Just had to share! Go to Evernote and explore!

Persistent Curriculum Issue

     My persistent issue is one that has been a part of my teaching career since the beginning. How do you determine the level of a text? How do you decide if a text is complex enough or too complex for a student or a class? When I started teaching I used the Frye Method to determine the approximate grade level of a text. It was one of many readability formulas, but at the time the most widely used. (If you are unfamiliar with that, just google it!) Now we talk in lexile levels, grade levels, or accelerated reader level, Fountas and Pinnell levels or Benchmark levels. Lexile levels have gained popularity due to the NWEA testing many of our schools adopted years ago. It too is simply a readability formula looking at the length of sentences, vocabulary and paragraph length. Thanks to the Common Core we are again refocusing on the complexity of texts used in the classroom or given to students. Many of us have heard and seen that the CCSS raises the bar, and it does; especially when our students are supposed to read at that level 'independently and proficiently'. We all know many students who will struggle with meeting these high levels on their own with any type of understanding.  However, take a closer look at Appendix A of the CCSS and you will see a triangle that truly describes the definition of text complexity. It takes into account the quantitative, qualitative and reader and task dimensions of what makes a text difficult for students. All texts have supports and challenges for readers and all readers have supports and challenges that they bring to the text. I want us all to realize that what makes a text difficult is not just the length of the sentences or the syllables in the longest words. I presented last week at my conference in Portland on just this topic, and how absurd it would be if we just went by the numbers.  How many of you have read The Grapes of Wrath?  Probably not too many, but it used to be a very common text in the high school English cannon. Many an English teacher would tell you that is a difficult text... but oh really? Its lexile score is only a 680! That places it within the 3rd-4th grade text complexity band!! Now, would you give your fourth grader this text to read?  Probably not! The length of the entire text, the background knowledge about the Dust Bowl, the stamina to make it through the long descriptions of the southern climate and land, as well as many other challenges would be reasons you would not use this text typically with a fourth grader or a fourth grade class.  So my issue was that we need to continue to use our heads when it comes to choosing texts for our students. What is your purpose for using the text? How will you use it? With whom? Will it move the reader forward in skills and strategies? All these things that we already consider, need to continue to be on the forefront. We may need to consider how to increase student's stamina in reading so that they will stick with longer and more difficult texts. Allington says that we should have 90 minutes a day of uninterrupted reading time for all of our students in order to get them to meet these reading standards. Could your school do this? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could? It takes more than 10 minutes to really get into a book or a text, yet that is often the minimum schools are willing to give to SSR or DEAR. Think of all you've had to read for this course... granted we could do it at our own pace and in chunks as time allowed, but some of the work really requires a nice chunk of time to truly devour it all. Our students will need this too. It is part of why I think our students struggle so much when they enter college because their stamina for reading has been in short spurts, not long deep breaths. I created a one page document and an hour long powerpoint that explains the triangle of text complexity from the CCSS. If you'd like to see the either,  I'll gladly share at request. What would happen if we started school earlier with a reading time each day? How would that change the focus of our schools and our scores in the long run?

Common Core....

     Marion Brady states in her article, "Eight problems with the Common Core", that "standards shouldn't be attached to school subjects, but to the qualities of mind it's hoped the study of school subjects promotes."  Wouldn't that be wonderful, if only it could be true?! I look at the standards of the core and see that it doesn't matter what subject I teach, many of the standards for literacy would apply to any of the subjects, even including math when students must read a word problem or statistics problem. But in reality with my fellow teachers, they were stumped by the design of the core and my Social Studies men were very frustrated that there were 'no standards for them'.  Well, if you consider that you need to read, write, decipher, analyze and determine the credibility of sources in all areas, particularly Social Studies topics... then don't the standards written for literacy in the CCSS apply to them? One of the biggest hurdles for some subject teachers - especially at the high school level- is that they have to begin to see themselves of teachers of readers and writers of that particular area, not specific subject teachers. This is one reason I like some of the push of the CCSS. I guess, being a literacy trained teacher first, makes me a bit bias in that direction, but if I can't read or write, then how good a historian or scientist or technician or mathematician can I be? At some point, those basic skills will come into play and slow down the progress of a child who might very well have an affinity or love for science or history.
     As with most things in education, the CCSS might have come from good intentions, but unfortunately, how they will be implemented and/ or held over the heads of teachers and schools will most likely not have the best outcome. I believe most teachers want a guideline to know where to start and for what to aim, but these standards seem very daunting at this time. There are still so many unanswered questions about them too that I am curious to see how it will all unfold. Will Science teachers be held to these standards as well as the Next Gen Science Standards? What if I meet the standard in English but not in Science? Does this mean for me as a student that I cannot graduate until I raise my proficiency in all areas? (I do recognize that I am combining two initiatives here- CCSS and Standards based performance standards- but so far, except for a few schools, they have been combined.) How do we intend to deal with the even wider achievement gap that will result from these raised standards from grade 2 on and from the new assessments yet to come?
    My hope is that schools will look at these to guide themselves forward, but not lose what is already working positively within their schools. One of the later articles noted that the CCSS will kill innovation and creativity, which I have heard many times. I hope that the openness of them as well as the lack of connectivity to specific subjects will encourage teachers to be creative and innovative in how students can demonstrate proficiency on these standards. My fear, of course, is that they- or rather the assessments- may box us in even more. The school district I will be starting with in the fall has chosen to go with canned curricula for English and Math for grades 7-12. I will be curious to see how tight we all must keep to this and whether it truly 'works' just because it is 'aligned to the Common core'.  I am hoping it will allow us as teachers to still consider the students in front of us and our own personal expertise to enhance the learning experiences for all students.

Global Education and Technology

"Our national goal should be that all students must graduate from high school college-ready and globally competent, prepared to compete, connect, and cooperate with their peers around the world." (p.101) 

These two chapters made me immediately think of the examples of this type of learning that I know are already occurring right here in our own state. At the Maine Council for English Language Arts conference this past March, I saw two teachers from Belfast Area High School presenting on their creation of a Global Classroom. This course combines World Geography and World Literature and the internet to offer an incredible experience for ninth graders. These two gentlemen could have written these two chapters about how necessary it is for our students of today to have a global mindset and to use the technology in ways to advance their own thinking, growth, and learning. The course combines readings that are all online along with connections of classes within multiple countries.  The students get to Skype with the classes in other countries, have email pen pals, and actual classmates doing similar work in other countries to exchange with feedback. The teachers have both traveled extensively and have been Fulbright Scholars as well as a part of iEARN, a global network of teachers and online projects. If you'd like to take a peek at their work, it is all set up using a moodle at globalclassroom.rsu20.org .  It's well worth a peek and a great example of how to combine global education and technology! 

I also learned about The Telling Room out of Portland that offers a nonprofit writing center to children and young adults. They offer after school and online services to students, not only in writing but in audio production and video production. The two presenters walked us through an activity creating "Vox pops" which are short for vox populi, or "voice of the people"  or  'man on the street' interviews.  They explained how to capture some great impromptu responses, combine and edit them into some wonderful radio shows! You can find them at the tellingroom.org.

Zhao article

I have to say that usually I do not care for interview articles as they do not seem to give much depth of information, but this one most certainly did. Zhao is an extremely eloquent person and there were some statements that he made that I found very profound as we consider how to 'improve' our curriculum and scores in the U.S.

On page 18, he states, "When too much is attached to one single criterion, people will always try to figure out how to appear superior to others.", and "Equity is ensured more by teachers, by the classroom than the standards."   I think these statements say a ton about the educational system in the United States right now and also how we need to return to the power and strength of the teacher. I found it interesting in the Darling-Hammond article that Finland has become number one by putting their money and time into supporting and training their teachers instead of buying a new testing system. If it comes down to how well the teacher can present the curriculum in an equitable way for all the students in his/her care, then doesn't it make sense to focus our efforts as a state and a nation there??!!

His last statement truly summarized this article and the state of our union:

"American education is at a crossroads. We have two choices. We can destroy our strengths in
order to catch up with others on test scores, or we can build on our strengths and remain a leader in innovation and creativity. The current push for more standardization, centralization, high-stakes testing,
and test-based accountability is rushing us down the first path. What will truly keep America strong and
Americans prosperous is the other path because it cherishes individual talents, cultivates creativity, celebrates diversity, and inspires curiosity." (p. 20)

Isn't that what the school models and innovative curriculums we have looked at to date seem to do?! What would happen if we became leaders in our schools to create these types of environments for students?