In This Issue:

1. Dealing with the “eager beaver” dynamic in class discussions

2. Using a school’s internal expertise for professional development

3. Setting the bar higher for schools serving at-risk youth

4. Examining our own biases reading young adult literature

5. A critique of teacher-of-the-year awards

6. What explains the huge variations in teacher absences?

7. Short item: Photos and music of the Vietnam War

 

Quotes of the Week

“No one who has committed their lives to education reform signed up to measure ourselves against a despicably low standard that represents nothing more than the failed system that we are trying to improve. Let’s start by ensuring the metrics against which we measure ourselves and our students’ outcomes truly place them on a path to college completion.”

            Ian Rowe (see item #3)

 

“I can’t stand to read things that are totally boy-centered. I mean, it can be a lot about boys, but that can’t, like, totally be what it’s about.”

            A middle school girl on some young adult novels (quoted in item #4)

 

“It does not necessarily lie within a teacher’s power to expose each individual’s implicit biases, nor would we want that power, but it is within our power and responsibility to offer every student an opportunity to recognize implicit bias, both in his or her own reading life and in the literature we bring to school, and thus to make the implicit explicit.”

            Barry Gilmore (ibid.)

 

“The honors kids – the Hillary Clintons and Mitt Romneys of the school – sat at the top of the meritocratic heap, getting attention and encouragement. The kids with the greatest needs had special-education support. But, across America, the large mass of kids in the middle – the ones without money, book smarts, or athletic prowess – were outsiders in their own schools. Few others cared about what they felt or believed or experienced. They were the unspecial and unpromising, looked down upon by and almost completely separated from the college-bound crowd. Life was already understood to be a game of winners and losers; they were the designated losers, and they resented it. The most consistent message these students had received was that their lives were of less value than others’. Is it so surprising that some of them find satisfaction in a politics that says, essentially, Screw ’em all?”

            Atul Gawande in “Is Health Care a Right?” in The New Yorker, October 2, 2017,

            https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/02/is-health-care-a-right

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Dealing with the “Eager Beaver” Dynamic in Class Discussions

            In this Cult of Pedagogy article, Jennifer Gonzalez describes a history teacher’s elation after an animated discussion about the Holocaust that she had planned for ten minutes and lasted the whole class. “Days like this rock,” thought the teacher. But she was missing some important details:

-   Haley had a lot of questions but never found the right moment to ask them. A few times, she almost raised her hand, but someone else would start talking and she didn’t want to interrupt.

-   Robert felt like an idiot the whole period because he wasn’t 100 percent sure what the Third Reich was and definitely didn’t want to ask.

-   Nadia thought the discussion was dumb – people were really oversimplifying the whole tragedy. But she didn’t want to start trouble.

-   Becky and Kyle, super-shy students, were silent during the discussion.

-   Three other students were secretly texting the whole time.

In fact, only nine of the 28 students in the class contributed to the discussion – four were really into it, five commenting once. The other 19 were passive observers.

            This teacher had the “fisheye syndrome,” says Gonzalez, as if she were looking at her class through a peephole lens that made the talkative students look larger and pushed the quiet ones to the periphery. “I’ve been guilty of fisheye teaching,” says Gonzalez. “A lot. Recently, even. And I’ve seen many other teachers, good teachers, do it too… You pose a question, and one of your sharp, verbal kids pipes up right away with an answer. It’s a good answer, one that takes the class in the direction you were hoping they’d go, demonstrating a solid grasp of the material. Wow, you think, they’re really learning! (and, if we’re being honest: You like me! You really like me!). Then it happens with another student, another extrovert, and then one more. Things are hopping now, a bona fide ‘class’ discussion, but really, you’re just volleying with three or four students. Most of the others have already checked out. You don’t realize because you’re high on the whole thing, the nice rhythm we’ve got going with those three or four, that we lie to ourselves just a little.”

            But can’t a student get just as much from listening to a good discussion as from taking part? No, says Gonzalez. Here’s what’s going on in an eager-beaver-dominated discussion:

-   Unless quiet students speak, the teacher can’t really tell if they’re understanding or even tuned in (especially if they are “compliant pretenders”).

-   The passive students aren’t getting practice at verbal communication and thinking on their feet – skills that employers always mention in surveys of what they’re looking for in employees.

-   No amount of listening compares with the cognitive and social challenge of framing and expressing ideas. Students who actively participate in class are getting far more bang for their buck than passive observers.

-   Quiet introverts especially need to speak. “Although our painfully shy students will resist,” says Gonzalez, “and our compassion will make us want to protect them, we do them no favors by letting them avoid this practice.”

In addition, the extroverts must learn to listen, not be the center of attention, let someone else take the stage. “In school, in their careers, and in their most important relationships, listening skills are hugely important,” says Gonzalez. “Chances are, your big talkers don’t have a lot of practice in skills like paraphrasing another person’s ideas, asking thoughtful follow-up questions, or thinking quietly before they speak. By making a concerted effort to balance the participation in our classes, we are also giving those extroverts a chance to grow in ways that could have a powerful impact on their quality of life.”

“Some students are naturally going to be more active, more talkative, livelier than others,” Gonzalez concludes. “We’re not trying to make them all be the same, just better, stronger, more balanced versions of the people that showed up on day one.” The shift may happen in baby steps – quiet students making just one contribution a day. Here are several ways to help the process along:

-   Video several class discussions and view them afterward, monitoring the number of students who participate.

-   Make a laminated seating chart and use a dry-erase marker to check off students when they speak.

-   Be explicit with students about the importance of broad student participation in discussions.

-   Have sidebar conversations with over-participators about limiting their comments and sometimes paraphrasing a classmate’s thoughts.

-   Pull aside quiet students before class and prime them with a question you might ask or contribution they might make.

-   Increase wait time. Ask a question and have a “no hands raised” period of at least three seconds to give more reflective students time to process. These simple steps are especially helpful in getting girls to participate more.

-   Vary discussion formats, using think-pair-share in groups of 2-4 students, or sometimes having all students write about your question before discussing it.

-   Use icons to call on students. An English language teacher in Malaysia printed out four sets of icons (a duck and three others) and distributed them randomly around the classroom. When an icon appeared on the screen with a discussion question, the students who had that icon had to come to the front of the class and answer the question or perform a task. “The looks on their faces every time they saw an icon appear was just a classic!” said this teacher.

 

“The Fisheye Syndrome: Is Every Student Really Participating?” by Jennifer Gonzalez in The Cult of Pedagogy, September 25, 2013, https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/fisheye/

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2. Using a School’s Internal Expertise for Professional Development

            In this article in Independent School, teacher/author Lauren Porosoff suggests four ways of tapping in-school resources for PD:

            • The Workshop – A faculty member presents an idea that’s had a positive impact on students. Then, with the presenter’s guidance, colleagues try doing it themselves. For example, a math teacher at Porosoff’s school showed how he was making short explanatory videos for students to watch at home, opening up more class time for working with groups of students on challenging problems. This teacher showed colleagues how to make videos in their subject areas and deal with the inevitable challenges – students who don’t watch the video or don’t understand fundamental aspects of the content, and how to help students work together to solve problems. In Porosoff’s school, there’s been no shortage of teachers with useful ideas to share in workshops.

            • The Council – Several teachers describe a classroom challenge or dilemma and ask colleagues for ideas. Some examples:

-   How can I teach grammar in a way that improves student writing?

-   How can I make algebra fun?

-   How can I incorporate discussions of current events?

-   What creative project can I assign instead of the Civil War essay?

-   Why did so many of my students fail this test when it seemed they were well prepared?

-   How can I include service learning in my classroom?

-   How can I make best use of new technology without letting it use me?

-   How can I ensure 100 percent participation?

-   How can I teach compassionate behaviors?

-   How can I give students brain and body breaks?

-   How can I take better care of myself?

-   How can I get Donny Crawford to talk in my class?

Once several questions have been posed, teachers form groups of 4-7 and serve as a “council” for each question. The presenter describes exactly what is happening in the classroom, states the desired outcome, answers clarifying questions, and then is silent while the group discusses the issue and offers insights.

Tackling the question of how to get Donny Crawford participating in class, a colleague who knows the student might tell about his interest in current events, another teacher might suggest partner discussions and writing prompts, yet another might suggest rethinking what participation looks like. “By presenting,” says Porosoff, “teachers benefit from the collective expertise of their colleagues, who in turn benefit from hearing and wrestling with a colleague’s dilemma. Even if the groups don’t solve every problem, presenters might leave feeling surprised by successes they hadn’t noticed, inspired by their colleagues’ insights, aware of new resources, and ready to try new methods… And the whole group becomes stronger by working together toward the success of one of its members.”

Porosoff suggests asking a few accomplished veteran staff members to take the lead presenting problems to overcome the fear others might have admitting classroom weaknesses and failures.

• The Toolbox Share – A school leader or department chair poses a question to colleagues and everyone contributes ideas. Some examples:

-   How do we incorporate movement into our sixth-grade classes?

-   How do we communicate with parents when a kid gets a bad grade?

-   How do we examine math resources for bias?

-   How do we use historical fiction in our classes?

On the last question, members of the history department might ponder this question before the meeting and bring books from their classroom libraries and historical fiction writing assignments they’ve given. “Rather than having one expert share a ‘best’ practice,” says Porosoff, “– and narrowing the faculty’s repertoire to include only that practice – teachers can expand and diversify their collective repertoire to include more ways to help students learn.”

            • The Bring-Back – Teachers who have been to conferences share ideas they found particularly helpful. For example, a teacher went to a technology conference and attended a workshop on how game-making helps students be creative and understand how ideas interconnect. Back in her school, she showed slides from the workshop and led a discussion on how her colleagues might use the ideas in their classes. A science teacher thought about how to make games to learn the parts of a plant and a history teacher considered modifying a board game about the U.S. Constitution that he once used. “In a bring-back,” says Porosoff, “everyone explores and experiments together – in much the same way as we aim for our students to do.”

            School leaders – principals, department chairs, deans, directors – can use all four of these formats to orchestrate high-quality professional development meetings. In classroom visits, team meetings, and conversations with colleagues, leaders need to keep their eyes open:

-   Spotting expertise within the faculty;

-   Listening for common concerns;

-   Noticing teaching strengths and weaknesses;

-   Keeping track of conferences teachers are attending and books they’re reading;

-   Carving out time for PD;

-   Observing whether ideas are being used in classrooms and are making a difference.

 

“Closer Than You Think” by Lauren Porosoff in Independent School, Fall 2017 (Vol. 77, #1, p. 30-36), http://bit.ly/2fDYnX3; Porosoff can be reached at [email protected].

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3. Setting the Bar Higher for Schools Serving At-Risk Youth

            In this Education Gadfly article, New York City CMO leader Ian Rowe says the way education reformers, especially charter school leaders, are measuring success is not nearly demanding enough. True, the average six-year college completion rate of the leading charter management groups (35 percent) is much higher than that of the overall population of low-income graduates (9 percent). “Nine percent?” says Rowe, paraphrasing a Chris Rock routine. “You beat nine percent! What do you want, a cookie?!”

            “No one who has committed their lives to education reform signed up to measure ourselves against a despicably low standard that represents nothing more than the failed system that we are trying to improve,” says Rowe. “Let’s start by ensuring the metrics against which we measure ourselves and our students’ outcomes truly place them on a path to college completion. Let’s shift our focus to absolute results that are aligned with the highest of expectations instead of being continuously shielded by relative comparisons to the pitiful outcomes of a dysfunctional system.” Specifically:

-   Measure on-time, four-year college completion rates instead of counting those who take six years.

-   Use unchanging, national benchmarks like NAEP to assess student progress instead of annually determined, politically motivated, state-set standards.

-   Focus on an achievement gap defined as how far we are from 100 percent proficiency instead of obsessing over gaps among racial and demographic groups that are all performing poorly.

-   Distinguish between “proficient” and “advanced” scores on state assessments instead of lumping the two categories together.

-   Track college completion rates beginning after eighth grade instead of twelfth.

By taking these steps, concludes Rowe, we would be “forced to confront the reality that the vast majority of kids who have been in our schools are not on a path to college completion. Perhaps then we would act with the appropriate urgency to both explicitly name and then address causal factors that truly impede our ability to achieve the academic and life outcomes we know are possible for our kids, such as the decline in family stability and the explosion of multiple births to unmarried women and men age twenty-four and under.”

 

“Reject the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations, Don’t Be a Party to It” by Ian Rowe in The Education Gadfly, September 27, 2017 (Vol. 17, #39), http://bit.ly/2wtmBtX; Rowe can be reached at [email protected].

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4. Examining Our Own Biases Reading Young Adult Literature

            In this article in English Journal, Barry Gilmore (a principal, author, and former English teacher) describes what happened when he recommended Nicola Yoon’s Everything, Everything to a student; she wanted to know whether it passed the Bechdel test. “I can’t stand to read things that are totally boy-centered,” said the girl. “I mean, it can be a lot about boys, but that can’t, like, totally be what it’s about.” Of course she had to explain the Bechdel test to Gilmore, who’d never heard of it: Does a work of fiction contain at least one scene in which two or more women (preferably named characters) discuss something other than a male? Thinking about the book he’d recommended, Gilmore was relieved that, in addition to the main narrative about a girl falling in love with a boy, it did include scenes in which the girl speaks to her mother and a female nurse about other subjects.

What interested Gilmore in the girl’s question “was that she had keyed in to an area of bias I, with nearly 25 years of experience in schools, had missed entirely. Her response drew out an implicit bias in my thinking and reading. What else, I wondered, had I missed?” To find out, he convened a group of seventh- and eighth-grade girls and asked them about other trends they’d noticed in the young adult fiction they were reading. Some responses:

-   In many works of fiction, especially fantasy, strong girls are presented as being strong because they have older brothers (who usually bully them); girls rarely gain strength from growing up with sisters.

-   The skin color or race of white characters is almost never discussed in an initial description, while it is with members of minority groups, often comparing its color to food: almonds, coffee, caramel, cappuccino, chocolate, mocha.

-   Minority characters are often “white people wearing costumes” – that is, a token character who brings no authentic experience to the story.

Clearly these girls were perceptive about the messages literature sends that many people don’t notice. “If our goal is to encourage critical reading and textual analysis,” Gilmore wonders, “what activities or assignments might encourage and reward the sort of critical observation achieved by the girls with whom I spoke? And, importantly, what role can young adult literature play in broadening the exposure of students to a variety of voices and perspectives?”

            Gilmore saw clearly the importance of students reading literature with characters different from themselves; research shows that this is crucial to developing empathy for people of different races, nationalities, religions, and sexual orientation. But broadening the scope of what’s read in school poses difficult choices for English teachers who might not have enough time to have students read both Animal Farm and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

            Gilmore pursued the subject of implicit bias in subsequent meetings with his group of middle-school girls. They claimed they were all for leadership by girls and women, and were surprised when he showed them the results of a study by Richard Weissbourd saying that many boys and girls harbored biases against female leadership. Gilmore had the girls look at a number of young adult novels and they recognized assumptions they made about characters whose gender or race was ambiguous. He asked them to identify an implicit bias they might bring to their reading and write it on an anonymous sticky note and post it on the wall. These were some of the biases revealed:

-   I think I assume that characters are white until I know they aren’t.

-   I always think of characters as skinny.

-   I think the names of characters tell me how they look.

-   I don’t know if I have implicit bias but I probably do and don’t know it.

-   I guess I assume that certain characters are poor (skin color).

-   I read this book called Grasshopper Jungle about a boy who was maybe gay and I couldn’t finish it because I didn’t like reading about it.

“These were the same girls who had adeptly pointed out examples of implicit bias from their own reading,” says Gilmore. “In our discussion, the girls themselves recognized this fact: they were annoyed by the implicit biases of authors, but they also brought their own biases to reading.”

            These realizations are helpful to students – and their teachers. Gilmore suggests three classroom practices that support a fuller understanding of texts and readers’ biases:

            • Identity charts – In the middle of a page at the front of their reader’s and writer’s notebooks, students write their name in a circle and draw lines out to jottings of various aspects of their personality – interests, hobbies, place names, gender, racial, and other characteristics. One girl’s chart included: brown hair, brown eyes; stage crew; terrible at sports/clumsy; “How I Met Your Mother”; Jewish; student, 8^th grade, middle school; daughter, Mom, Dad, Spike (dog); “Terrible Three” (friends); books/reader; Kiera Cass; Rick Riordan; John Green!

The point of this exercise is to bring to the fore and recognize what we bring to texts as readers. Discussing identity charts, one class noticed: (a) Some students listed race and others didn’t (the teacher’s question: How does our awareness of race as a piece of our identity change the way we read?); (b) Most of the white and Hispanic students listed a specific country of origin, while most black students identified themselves by race (teacher’s question: How do our understandings of place of origin and race combine to affect our reading point of view?); and (c) Some students used adjectives on their charts and others used only visible activities or characteristics (teacher’s question: How do authors decide how to describe and introduce characters to us?).

• Fishbowl discussions – Three to five students sit in a small circle in the middle of the classroom and conduct a discussion of a text while the rest of the class sits in an outer circle taking notes and not speaking. When a student in the center finishes speaking, someone in the outer circle (including the teacher) may tap him or her on the shoulder and take that place in the discussion circle. Ideally, almost everyone gets to participate in the discussion by the end of the class. Gilmore has found it helpful to have several statements in his back pocket to introduce at an opportune moment, including:

-   There are aspects of this character’s background important to a full understanding of the character that a casual reader might easily miss.

-   This character (or story), as good as it is, plays into some common stereotypes and misunderstandings.

-   This character (or author) brings both explicit and implicit bias to the story.

After a recent fishbowl discussion of Katheryn Erskine’s Mockingbird, a 12-year-old boy wrote the following reflection: “I always thought of people with Asperger’s as weird. I guess I’ve had a few kids in my school with this or something like it. I know it changes how I read this book, but I got really into Caitlin’s story and the way she told it, so I think that can help me look at things a different way instead of just the way I always saw it.”

            • Graphic organizers – Gilmore suggests having students draw a Venn diagram of their own characteristics compared with those of a character in a novel. This is helpful, he says, “Because the goal of incorporating bias into our thinking is to produce richer bridges between ourselves and others (whether they are characters, groups, or real people)…” Making Venn diagrams with To Kill a Mockingbird, one girl listed Scout’s characteristics: smart, strong, takes risks, brother, strong father. She listed her own: sisters, black, shy, don’t speak up, love to dance, strong mother. In the overlap space, she wrote: courage, adventurous, tomboy, Christian, South. After reading several other books involving African-American characters, this girl wrote a culminating poem:

White and black,

Age nine and age thirteen,

From the country and from the city,

Both Southern,

Both tomboys,

Both girls,

Both more than people see.

I can’t know you, but I can understand you…

“Literature is important in part because it opens for us areas of human experience we might not access otherwise,” Gilmore concludes. “We shouldn’t make the mistake of believing that all aspects of that experience lie close to the surface or that we can capture them with a simple list of themes on a whiteboard; each student brings unique biases to the act of reading – and so do authors, and so do we. ‘In order for students to examine their own beliefs,’ notes Melissa B. Schieble, ‘teachers must make their assumptions and ideals transparent.’

“Yet it’s important to note,” Gilmore continues, “that lessons in implicit bias should not be framed or received as instructions to feel guilty or condemnations of entire groups as racist, sexist, or otherwise prejudiced.” Implicit bias can be overcome with rational deliberation. “It does not necessarily lie within a teacher’s power to expose each individual’s implicit biases, nor would we want that power, but it is within our power and responsibility to offer every student an opportunity to recognize implicit bias, both in his or her own reading life and in the literature we bring to school, and thus to make the implicit explicit. It’s not a crime to communicate what we don’t mean. It is, however, a shame not to take the time to examine our communication and to try to say what we do mean, which includes the message that the reading life of every adolescent is important and valued.”

 

“Saying What We Don’t Mean” by Barry Gilmore in English Journal, September 2017 (Vol. 107, #1, p 19-25), http://bit.ly/2xbntms; Gilmore is at [email protected].

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5. A Critique of Teacher-of-the-Year Awards

            In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Jacques Berlinerblau (Georgetown University) questions “why narratives about great teachers abound in hype and sentimentality.” Annual awards given to the best teachers are bunk, he says. “I don’t doubt that there are some truly phenomenal instructors out there who have deserved these accolades (just as I don’t doubt that some duds have received them as well). Yet this system of tribute undermines a lot of what we aim for as educators.”

There are several problems with spotlighting “great” teachers, he says. First, it’s very hard to know what is really going on in classrooms on a day-to-day basis. Second, it’s difficult to get people to agree on one set of criteria for good teaching. Most important, educating students “is a collective, not an individual, enterprise,” says Berlinerblau. “One great teacher cannot teach an entire curriculum. That takes a team.” And each person on a team has different strengths and weaknesses with different students and different subject matter. It’s the long-term impact on students’ learning that matters.

Then there’s the problem of insufficient support for improving classroom practice – a big deficit at the university level as well as in K-12 schools. Making a big fuss about one great teacher each year “asks us to gawk at those who somehow overcame immense, and correctable, structural obstacles,” says Berlinerblau. “It turns our attention away from the manner in which contingent instructors are treated… Christening a Best Teacher is like a lily-white company congratulating itself on its diversity after hiring one African-American executive VP.”

Paying tribute to individual superstars, he continues, does to the profession “what high fashion does to women – enslaves them to preposterous and unhealthy expectations of what constitutes the beautiful in pedagogy. I still don’t have an answer as to why conversations about best teachers trigger exaggeration and confetti drops. That sort of hyperbole, in any case, is inimical to the type of balanced analysis that educators value and impart. I, for my part, could just as well do away with the entire vainglorious discourse. Less noise about best teachers might let us finally concentrate on the challenge of producing lots of good ones.”

 

“Best Teacher Awards Are Bunk” by Jacques Berlinerblau in The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 29, 2017 (Vol. LXIV, #5, p. B6-B9), no free e-link available; Berlinerblau can be reached at [email protected].

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6. What Explains the Huge Variations in Teacher Absences?

            In this Education Gadfly article, David Griffith asks whether the high rate of chronic absenteeism among public school teachers (27 percent missing more than ten days of the school year for illness or personal reasons, according to a recent study by the U.S. Department of  Education’s Office for Civil Rights) is explained by the fact that three quarters of teachers are female. After all, says Griffith, women “are more likely to miss work due to maternity and, in most cases, the burden of being primary caregivers.”

            Maternity leaves and teachers’ children’s illnesses are one factor, says Griffith, but there are others: the stressful nature of teaching, the fact that schools are “a hypochondriac’s nightmare,” and other serious illnesses and life events. Taking all this into account, and comparing teachers with other white-collar occupations that have a longer work year, Griffith calculates that the projected rate of chronic absenteeism among teachers should be about 10.8 percent.

            So what explains the higher teacher absence average (27 percent) and the dramatic variations across the nation (10 percent in San Francisco, 16 percent in Utah, 75 percent in Hawaii)? And why do traditional public schools average 28.3 percent chronic absences and brick-and-mortar charter schools only 10.3 percent? Griffith concludes that these variations “have more to do with policy than personal circumstance.” What policies in San Francisco and charter schools explain their lower rates of absences? That’s the question, says Griffith. “And if 10 percent is good enough for teachers in San Francisco, why isn’t it good enough for teachers in the rest of America?”

 

“Does a Mostly Female Workforce Explain America’s Teacher Absentee Problem?” by David Griffith in The Education Gadfly, September 27, 2017 (Vol. 17, #39), http://bit.ly/2xNs2W5

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7. Short Item:

            Photos and music of the Vietnam War – This site, a companion to the new Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary, http://origin.kcts9.org/vietnam-war-timeline/, has photos from each year of the war accompanied by the music that was popular that year.

 

“On the Record: A Music Timeline of the Vietnam War” Introduction by Doug Bradley, 2017

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