From the Wall Street Journal
THE SATURDAY ESSAY
September 27, 2013, 7:17 p.m. ET

Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results

By JOANNE LIPMAN

I had a teacher once who called his students “idiots” when they screwed up. He was our orchestra conductor, a fierce Ukrainian immigrant named Jerry Kupchynsky, and when someone played out of tune, he would stop the entire group to yell, “Who eez deaf in first violins!?” He made us rehearse until our fingers almost bled. He corrected our wayward hands and arms by poking at us with a pencil.

Today, he’d be fired. But when he died a few years ago, he was celebrated: Forty years’ worth of former students and colleagues flew back to my New Jersey hometown from every corner of the country, old instruments in tow, to play a concert in his memory. I was among them, toting my long-neglected viola. When the curtain rose on our concert that day, we had formed a symphony orchestra the size of the New York Philharmonic.

Eduhonesty: There’s so much truth in this article. I remember my toughest teachers with the same respect. I can still see their faces, while the features of less demanding teachers long ago faded into time’s mists. That said, all kids are different. That strict English teacher I wrote about a few days ago? He has a few “A” students who are working hard and enjoying learning. A greater number of kids want to drop out of his class. They complain about him vociferously.

I’d like to take a bold position here: I do think there is something to be said for labeling garbage for what it is. Kids know when they blew through their work. They shouldn’t be allowed to pass their courses by turning in half-baked thoughts that have been converted into half-assed writing. When we let them do this, we convince them that they can fake their way through their responsibilities, a life-lesson that’s likely to clobber them after they graduate.

Most teachers I know are accepting late work. It’s all the fashion now. Administrators cite studies in which this helps prevent students from losing motivation. Personally, I doubt the “whenever-you-get-around-to-it” homework approach yields much academic gain over time. Blasting out last-minute work (often copied from someone else’s returned papers) isn’t infusing real knowledge into the majority of our chronically-late homework-returners.

I’m watching an interesting little vignette unfold, though. The new guy in English is refusing late work. Many of his students are failing. Good or bad? I’m not sure. I know that students are more likely to do his homework. I watch them pulling out their English first in study classes. English now takes precedence over other classes since timeliness counts. I suspect English-guy is doing the right thing. Will he be stopped? The school is unlikely to accept a large percentage of failures.

Eduhonesty: We should have failed more students and we should have failed them sooner. Many paragraphs I read are sloppy, some are even unintelligible. But when we pass the students writing those paragraphs, we tell them implicitly that their work is OK. Now these students are in high school.

The conflict has been ongoing. Academically-disadvantaged schools don’t want to fail students who are not at grade level, often not close to grade level, so they pass students along. It’s this automatic passing that explains the Algebra 2 students to whom I was explaining addition and subtraction of fractions today. I think they now remember and understand the common denominator. I also think these students are in the wrong math class. You can call a kitten a lion, but that won’t make the kitten a lion. You can call a class Algebra 2. Hell, you can call the class Calculus or Nuclear Physics. If its students can’t add fractions, though, any one of those names is a fiction. Pre-algebra would be a stretch, given that the content these students don’t know sits smack in the middle of the elementary school curriculum.

I’ll be interested to see how English-guy does with the administration as he makes his stand.

We were discussing Syria. My students asked where Syria was located. I have put up two big maps in my room, one a world map that has nothing to do with anything in my specific curriculum, although it never hurts to point out England when describing the origins of the U.S. government. I showed them Syria. Then they wanted to know where Kenya was. I took the yardstick and pointed to Kenya. I told them Kenya was in Africa, showed them Africa.

These are high school students. They ought to know this stuff but they don’t. For one thing, no one is teaching geography now. They get a smattering of U.S. geography in elementary school, enough to identify states and capitols, a skill most have lost a few years later. The world remains a great mystery, though, excluded from consideration because there is zero testing bang for your buck in actually being able to find the Middle East on a map.

Eduhonesty: We can chalk this one up to the scramble for test points too, I think. Common Core Standards are mumbling about adding some geography to the still essentially nonexistent social studies standards, but right now the emphasis for testing and curricular purposes is falling on math, English, English and math. That cuts geography entirely out of the game in many districts that are desperate to raise points.

For those who are interested in the economy: Thanks to Bob Frey for the occasional quote: bob@lakesideadvisors.com

“What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?” ~ Irv Kupcinet

Musing on conspiracy theories: We are furiously working on teaching critical thinking skills. The Common Core is all about critical thinking. Why? Maybe it’s because a number of students would nod agreement if I said something like, “And we need a strong missile-based defense system to defend ourselves against Martians or other extraterrestrial terrorists.”

My students are frequent movie-goers. Not all of them understand that the entertaining ending of Independence Day can only be considered absurd. One told me that World War Z was his favorite movie. I saw World War Z.* The movie has as much in common with the book as Will Smith’s “I Robot” had with Isaac Asimov’s original robot stories. The ending has everything to do with drama and almost nothing to do with science. O.K., I admit it’s a zombie movie. But the ending doesn’t even have the support of pseudoscience. As much as I love Brad Pitt, I’d never see that movie twice and it won’t come close to breaking my top ten list for the year.

Eduhonesty: We have well-documented studies showing that students read less than they used to. The reading they do may be random internet articles or badly misspelled text messages. They go to the movies regularly. No wonder they will support the idea that the moon landing was a hoax, while dismissing evolution by saying, “I didn’t come from monkeys.”

*The book’s great btw. Even if zombies aren’t your genre, the insights into human behavior on a micro and macro level make World War Z worth the read.

So bathroom passes are now on an emergency basis. We are supposed to give them out only in cases of dire need. This hugely favors the girls. There’s nothing I can do when a girl suggests her time of the month may have arrived. She gets a pass. Pregnancy allows a student to leave the classroom whenever she feels the need. The boys have no equivalent. One lucky guy in one class can claim inhaler need — another immediate permission to exit — but the rest of them are alleging discrimination. A couple have claimed to be pregnant. We’re getting a few laughs out of “Martin’s” alleged pregnancy anyway.

I just demand documentation and move on with my lesson.

I know how the fan met its untimely end. And I know who. It’s sad. He’s not such a bad kid and a pretty smart one too. He just had one of those brain-disengaged moments as he walked out of the classroom. I’m glad he didn’t hurt himself. Pointy metal objects and fans don’t mix.

We’ll see how it plays out. I hope he confesses. Natural consequences would include not replacing the fan. But even with a fan, brains are baking in this room. By the time we are in the high eighties, I know my thoughts are getting scattered.

“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.”
~ Beverly Sills

Why I worry about the Common Core and this relentless testing: Some of these kids HAVE given up and are no longer trying. You have to think there is some chance of success in order to try. Inappropriate tests make kids feel stupid and defeated.

Eduhonesty: Too much disappointment may doom our less resilient students. We have to test but we need to shift away from (or de-emphasize) tests we know students will effectively fail. If the kid doesn’t speak English yet, exempt him! Or give him a test related to his English-language learning instead. If the kid’s in special education due to learning difficulties, give him a simplified version of the test.

For adults out there: It’s a lot like regularly having job reviews that are testing you on skills you don’t and can’t possess. Then the Powers that Be make sure you know you failed, supposedly to encourage you to do better.

Hmmmm. The above observation makes me think of some Charlotte Danielson teaching reviews I know of.

The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how
you use them.”

~ Unknown

I am working in a poor, academically-disadvantaged school. But some students seize learning. These students will manage in college because they keep working no matter how many obstacles crop up in this battered, old wreck of a building with its lack of air conditioning and frequent staff turnover.

I wonder how to tap this drive. What motivates these students? It’s not just smarts. The halls of this school are filled with smart kids who are letting learning slip through their fingers, unconcerned with any future or even present goals.

Studies show that people who defer gratification to receive a larger reward later do better in life. But what makes that kid decide to wait 20 minutes to get two pieces of candy instead of one? Most importantly, can deferred gratification be taught somehow?

The high school algebra books that my students have to carry probably weigh around 5 pounds.

Heck, I’ll go weigh one.

Correction: My blue Algebra 2 book weighs 6.4 pounds. Algebra 1 is only slightly lighter. I carried three textbooks out to my car at the start of the year, my home set. These books together weigh 15 or 16 pounds or so.

If we want to know one reason why the homework is not getting done and the books are not getting home, or from home back to class, I’m sure I know part of the reason. Students don’t want to carry these books around. If their locker is near class, they’ll grab the book during a passing period. But if that locker is across the school, the book’s such a big pain that they often don’t bother. Teachers and administrators say, “you should carry your books with you during the day.” But we don’t allow them to have backpacks in the classroom for security reasons. That means they have to carry the books in their arms. My shoulders hurt after carrying three books downstairs and to my car (I’m a bit of a wimp.) so I can see their point of view.

These books are simply too heavy. If they must be sold as hardcover books so they will survive longer, they ought to be broken up into three or four books. Carrying home over 1,000 pages of algebra when you only need three is a recipe for unfinished homework. For that matter, what algebra class is going to finish over 1,000 pages of algebra in one school year?

Eduhonesty: These books are absurd.

I also wonder if these books do not represent another piece of subtle discrimination against our impoverished and urban school systems. Middle-class high schools rarely require uniforms. They frequently allow students to keep their backpacks during the day. Uniforms and backpack-rules are features of schools with gang problems and high levels of security. But in the absence of a backpack, there’s no good way to carry 20 pounds of books.