Category Archives: Thoughts

Fuzzy research

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“The great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

~ Thomas H. Huxley (1825 – 1895) (From bob@LakesideAdvisors.com)

Eduhonesty: If we want evidence that education is no science, all we have to do is notice the number of administrative hypotheses that cannot be slain by ugly facts. The hypothesis did not pan out? The teacher must have done the experiment badly. The children did not improve? The instruction must have lacked rigor. The scores are stagnant? The teacher must have failed to scaffold and differentiate for the different levels of learning in the classroom.

If the teacher points out that almost no student in the classroom can actually read the book the district purchased, he or she may get a lecture on the need for increasing rigor.

Nowadays when I hear the word “rigor,” my mind silently tacks on “mortis.” (Latin: rigor “stiffness”, mortis “of death”) One of the recognizable signs of pie-in-the-sky curricula: Death of learning caused by inappropriate new strategies that incorporate irrational expectations, eliminating the pedagogical flexibility needed to help many students learn.

(If your students are newly arrived in the U.S. and are unwilling to converse because they are sensitive to their language deficits, obligatory activities that require verbal sharing aren’t the best — or even a particularly rational — demand.)

Googledoctopi Attack!!

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I am sure this is not merely a school issue. This is a Google Docs issue. To quote Wikipedia, Googledocs “is a freeware web-based office suite offered by Google within its Google Drive service. … It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating with other users live.”

Sounds great, right? Often Google Docs is great. I make a PowerPoint presentation. I share it with a group. Presto! Everybody has a copy, right there on their own Google Drive, called My Drive. Interconnectedness takes one more giant leap forward.

Here’s my problem. Teachers share. Oh, do we share. I am buried in helpful files. I am not sure I could teach this many spiffy lessons in four years, let alone the next four months. These new files are obscuring vital administrative files which get lost in the flotsam and jetsam of other people’s desire to be helpful. I try to arrange and organize the files, but how many hours has that taken? And given the number of files I am organizing, how often will I lose files beyond all normal retrieval?

Eduhonesty: I am feeling a little overconnected right now.

English please!

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One of my laughs for the week:

I ran into a former colleague, an excellent science teacher. I asked her how she was doing. She’s fine except her district moved her into a different position. She’s teaching English now.

Ummm… I respect this woman greatly, but English is not her first language.

“How’s that going?” I asked.
“I don’t know how to teach no English,” she answered, laughing.

I hope she was being ironic. I pray she was being ironic. The scary part is that I’m not sure.

Eduhonesty: This woman will do at least an adequate job. She’s a hard-working professional who cares about the kids. But this placement is silly. English teachers should be native speakers of the language who have passed a rigorous qualifying test. I’d take nonnative speakers who can pass that same test. I don’t believe my colleague could pass the test I visualize. The same is true for a fair number of bilingual teachers of my acquaintance. The ability to speak Spanish does not prepare anyone to teach English.

Sigh. She ain’t gonna do much harm, I guess. If she don’t know too much hard English, she does know how to use a textbook and present a lesson. She’s actually very bright. I can’t say the same about the people in her district office who were in charge of placing the professionals within their schools.

A last (for now) phone note

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If I sound like the phones have taken control of the classroom, I’m exaggerating. My current school mostly has control of those phones. Many schools do. I had to give one and only one phone warning last week and the girl in question immediately put her phone away. Fear of having a phone seized is a powerful deterrent to its use.

But I still want the issue out in the open for discussion. For one thing, the phones go home and kids can then spend their whole afternoon — and sometimes night — on their own personal phone. They are endlessly texting, chatting and playing games. They are tweeting, posting selfies to their Facebook accounts, emailing those selfies to friends, and taking random pictures of snacks, dinners and just about anything else. Where does the homework fit in this picture? When will the reading happen?

Eduhonesty: That last question is the real kicker: When will the reading happen?

We learn from reading. We don’t learn from being taught to read. Almost everybody is taught to read. That education has very little benefit, though, if a kid never picks up a book.

Breaks and block schedules

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An hour and half of math is simply too long. We have research that suggests our kids can’t stay focused on math for that long. A few can, of course, but most wander off mentally if the lesson goes on too long.

I like block schedules. I’ve had too many lessons that I could not finish because I needed extra time. I like to finish what I start in the same class period.

Eduhonesty: Nonetheless, I try to work a break into the middle of any block, something physical if possible. I am experimenting with Yoga right now. The kids welcome the break. They are usually much more attentive when we resume class.

Too often nowadays, in the work world as well as the classroom, our sense of urgency seems to lead us to flog the horse until it’s ready to drop. We might do much better with music, carrots and water breaks.

Healthy lunches

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The push toward healthy lunches may be having an unintended effect. I have no research. I cannot document a thing. Still, I may be on to something here.

Here is what I know: I am on a diet. I am trying to lose Christmas weight. I bought the school lunch this week because it was perfect. I got a small piece of baked chicken, some unflavored rice, and a choice of fat-free veggies and fruit. Perfect. The whole thing probably wasn’t 250 calories. I’m not sure it was even 200 calories.

Other menu options for the month look equally suitable for my diet. Lean Cuisine could not do better. A nice fresh apple, raw carrots, a cooked vegetable without oil, butter or even salt, and baked, low-fat something-or-another.

Eduhonesty: That lunch was pretty scary. Can an adolescent function on that little food? Especially since they often throw some or all of it away, I am concerned. You have to be on a diet or a bit of a health nut to eat overcooked, unsalted, fat-free green beans.

Are other districts serving similar lunches? I’m afraid they might be. With the government push toward fresh, healthy food, districts are forced to budget to get that fresh food onto plates. I’m sure it’s more expensive than pepperoni pizza. So the district serves one piece of baked chicken. Or one scoop of low-fat, overcooked, whole-wheat spaghetti in slightly-diluted red sauce. The chicken may get eaten, at least.

When I was 15, I frequently ate 500 or more calories for lunch without a thought. I probably needed 500 calories. Most kids need that much food and athletes may need more.

I wonder if we are underfeeding our students in the name of good nutrition?

Rafael’s hammer

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We’ll call him Rafael. He did not do a single problem on his last assignment. Instead, he drew Thor’s hammer on the back of the sheet, with lightening bolts coming out of the hammer. The Rafaels make many teachers despair, as they pursue their personal agendas, ignoring the math swirling about them.

I love Rafael. He won’t be in my class next semester and I am going to miss him. I know he’ll miss me too. I don’t think too many people in his world are backing up his plan to make superhero movies. As far as I am concerned, we might as well support our Rafaels. They won’t quit drawing hammers because we explain that auto repair is more practical. I recommend double majors to students like Rafael, emphasizing the need to make a living until the big break comes.

Rafael’s grade will be OK. Much of the time I caught his hammer-drawing efforts in time. He did enough to get by, in the tradition of Rafaels everywhere.

Eduhonesty: I enjoy working with this kid because he has a dream. One of the best parts of teaching is supporting the random dreams that somehow grow up between the cracks of the broken sidewalks in our poor neighborhoods. This kid plans to go somewhere. I’m glad to have had the chance to believe in him.

Games!

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We talk to our phones. Our phones talk back. My phone will happily provide me with all kinds of advice and information.

My phone will also allow me to play endless games, timed and untimed, alone and in groups. I gave my advisory a free day and watched as five of them played a game together, each on their own phone, in a mysterious competition with crashing cars. The phones find each other, linking the players together.

Many readers understand this perfectly, of course.

I’m not sure how many readers understand the temptation these games pose, though. I watched as my Jehovah’s Witness, a serious boy who would not accept pagan Halloween candy because of its tainted associations, joined in the game. This boy did homework almost daily. He had been known to read the Bible when he had no work. I watched him smile and laugh as he crashed cars.

I’m pretty sure Jehovah Witness’s mom would not have approved of that day’s activity. I am also sure that this boy has played a lot of group games under the radar. He didn’t ask for any help getting set up.

Gaming does not steal nearly as many minutes from learning as texting does — it’s too obvious — but it’s still a problem. Plenty of one-player game options exist. Students have said to me, “Please, just let me finish the game. I’m almost done,” as if this is a reasonable request. Or, “C’mon, I’m close to my highest score ever!”

Eduhonesty: If we want to improve America’s test scores, we had better begin to ban or block phones. They are too tempting.

Happy New Year!

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Sorry about the lack of posts. I have been visiting elderly parents in a techno-free zone.

As I sat in the early 20th century house with its tub, but no shower, I reflected on how little we talk about the maelstrom of technology that is sweeping learning down the technological drain.

Smartboards are nifty. Interactive technology is frequently an educational win. I’m not technophobic in the least.

But those phones are doing damage, especially at the high school level. It used to be that you needed to be sitting near your friend or girlfriend to pass notes. Now you don’t even have to be in the same city. In a large classroom, students can stash phones in laps and behind books or bags as they tune out the outside world while tap tap tapping class minutes away. They are usually easy to spot. A student can only stare fixedly at his or her lap for so long before the teacher should start walking toward that phone.

Eduhonesty: Unless you are in the classroom, I believe it’s probably hard to visualize how much trouble these phones represent in the aggregate. Readers probably think, “Well, seize the phones!” We do sometimes. It’s a lot of work and trouble to be grabbing up phones, though. I’ve known captured phones to disappear from the Dean’s Office. I’ve known students to claim their phones were damaged while in school custody. While some parents may be supportive of the school’s disciplinary actions, others will storm into school, loudly demanding that the school return their property. Personal privacy issues quickly come into play too.

Many schools have somewhat of a handle on the phone challenge, but no school I know of has managed to gain total control of phones. These small rectangular solids suck up educational minutes, turning them into opportunities to misspell and butcher the English language while making dates to meet in some adult-free house after school. I have scanned message threads when picking up phones.

This is for the parents: You want your kids to be safe. That’s why you bought the phone probably, along with a need to quiet the chorus of “But everybody has one!” Just about everybody does have one by high school, no matter how poor the district. Middle schools don’t lack for phones either. I feel compelled to give some advice, though: Check those phones when you can. You need to know that Tom’s aunt works and the house is always empty in the afternoon. You need to know that Penelope is meeting Tom at that house every afternoon. Even if the messages are more innocuous, you need to know that your son or daughter somehow managed to spend hours on the phone when they were supposed to be learning math and English.

Talking to the miscreants

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They tap. They make random noises. They whistle. They try to push your buttons, mostly because they don’t understand the material. In this time of crazed test-mania, we have progressively more of those kids, I believe, because we are required to teach to a test that may be years above the operating level of some students.

It’s important to remember that those kids mostly want attention. They want not to feel lost and expelled from the academic loop. They want to be heard. They want that teacher from earlier years who seemed to be in their corner.

Eduhonesty: There’s no fix for the crazed test-mania right now — short of the zombie apocalypse — but we can find a few minutes to talk to the lost kids, even maybe convince them to try some after school tutoring. We can let them know we care. That stops some of the random tapping and noise.

Here is the challenge for American education: How will we reengage these students who we effectively expelled from the learning process when we handed them the book they could not read to get ready for the test they could not pass?

Noneducators may be sitting out there thinking, “Why would anyone do such a thing to a kid?” They need to understand the teachers did not have any choice — even though many initially went to administration to express their concerns. I’ll add more on this later.