Teaching is an Engaging Exchange, not a Superficial Standardization.

The best teachers are communicators. They are listeners. They can figure out in a heartbeat how to help a student who is dumbfounded, misconstruing, or misspeaking. How they accomplish that depends on the particular student. They need to know their kids and be prepared and able to use a variety of means, starting with the simple idea of careful listening. Suppose a kid speaks up in class and makes an error. Too often, teachers will, for the sake of speed, make the correction and move on. What has that done? The kid still feels dumb; the class is less likely to remember it, because they always remember less when the adult says it.

The best teachers know how to respond when a kid makes an error. At some point, good teachers consciously or unconsciously learn to conceptualize what they teach, and as quick as a wink, figure out how to lead this mistaken student to the promised land of “I figured it out.” A quick series of clues, hints, and probing questions follow that allow him to succeed. Consciously, we figure out how much he needs. How far away is he from the right answer? Was it just a misspoken answer? Will repeating his answer give him the “oops” moment to self-correct? Can a simple example do it? A context clue? A rule of thumb? Maybe, an obviously wrong possibility is a clue. If nothing else works…ask another kid to help. Ahh, he’s gotten it. We can quickly move on. That whole exchange may have taken thirty seconds.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Tell me, and I forget. Teach me, and I remember. Involve me, and I learn.” Students learn best by action and discussion. How much talking should a teacher do? As little as possible. Your role is a moderator, a conductor, and a facilitator. How much should the kids do? They should do as much as possible: talking and interacting with teachers less than with each other, as a full class or in groups. Students are participants. The verb is to participate. It is why participation should be a major part of grades, at least 20 percent. Don’t we meet and participate in class far more than we test or write? Therefore, isn’t it the best place to assess student understanding and knowledge? Students get that. They see participation as a behavior to be expected and rewarded.

Therein lies the rub. In the top schools in the nation (usually the wealthiest and whitest), this usually isn’t much of a controversy, unless imposed on them by bureaucrats. Students who have the elite universities as their goals are taught even in elementary school the steps of analysis and synthesis. They are taught depth more so than breadth (depending on the subject). Time for in-depth activities is built into the curricula for students of all abilities. All existed way before Common Core was ever invented.

One way ninth-grade English students in Scarsdale High School are taught Shakespeare is via a Shakespeare festival. Each class performs one scene from the play they are all learning for each other in a daylong assembly program. That takes weeks of preparation, but those actors learn Shakespeare (and perhaps an appreciation of the bard) from the inside out.

Now, compare that to the minimally proficient standards to which we are holding urban students (Black, Hispanic, the poorest immigrants) “accountable.” Their Common Core Test prepped proficiency standards do not prepare them for any elite university. These standards barely prepare them for functional literacy during a time when our nation’s economic restructuring has all but made basic working-class jobs unavailable. Those that are available barely pay a decent wage.

Is that the equity the politicians claim they want?

Greene, David. Doing The Right Thing: A Teacher Speaks. p 27

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DO NOT GO GENTLY INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy.

We see a new oligarchy or Gilded Age in every phase of education. Republican and Democratic Governors alike such as Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie from my neck of the woods) are forcing educationally unsound policies down the throats of students, educators, and parents as local control…long the last vestige of true American Democracy disappears. The oligarchy rules again.

However I believe there will be another great Progressive Era such as the one that followed our last Gilded Age 100 years go.

As Dylan Thomas Wrote:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

We must all keep raging!

FIGHT OR PERISH: A guest blog by Harris Lirtzman

The other day, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Director of State Operations, Jim Malatras, sent this letter to Chancellor Merryl Tisch, demanding that the Board of Regents answer twelve fundamental education-related questions by the end of the month.  In the letter, the Governor threatened to use his control over the state budget to impose unilaterally his own education policies to break “the monopoly of public education” at a special session of the Legislature next month.

New York State United Teachers, the body that represents public school teachers for legislative and political purposes in Albany, responded to the letter with one great snit.  Rather than call teachers together in any meaningful way to oppose the governor’s agenda for the special session and work to gain parental support, NYSUT preferred to do what many paper tigers do—which is to climb up on the highest horse available and issue a polemical call to a war that it cannot win. NYSUT said this to the governor:

“The governor says he wants to put students first. If that were even remotely true, he would listen carefully and act on the advice of the real experts – parents, educators and students – about what’s best for public education. Instead, New Yorkers get clueless, incendiary questions that do the bidding of New York City hedge fund billionaires who have letterhead and campaign donations, but know absolutely nothing about how public education works. If the governor wants a battle, he can take the clueless New York City billionaires. We’ll take the parents, teachers, higher education faculty and students in every ZIP code of the state.”

NYSUT’s letter is simply not a serious response to a very serious situation.  It is an angry and “thought-less” response to the throw-down that the governor has tossed at teachers around the state, responding to it in a way that is familiar to almost any middle school teacher: “Nah, nah, you’re stupid and we know better.”  NYSUT’s response is juvenile and its intemperate tone only demonstrates to its members that it has no idea what to do in the face of the existential threat to public education that now stares back at us in New York State.

I can assure anyone who read NYSUT’s plaintive scream that giving vent to fear by yelling “you’re stupid” at the governor is not how serious organizations shape political and education policy in New York State.

The battle has been framed.  We cannot simply assert the superiority of the public education system as it exists without thinking comprehensively and strategically about what we would hold onto, what we would change, what is non-negotiable and what is negotiable.

Rather than deride the governor’s self-serving ultimatum to the Regents, I propose that we try to answer some of the questions he put to the Regents ourselves:

• What do we have to say that is a solution to Common Core other than that we “hate it?”  How do we make the persuasive case that much of it is entirely inappropriate developmentally for the students we teach?
• What do we do to make sure that students with disabilities are fairly treated in a system that forces them to learn Common Core standards that may not be appropriate for the most severely disabled of them?
• Do we oppose all charters or only those charters that refuse to make their operations transparent, include special education students and ELLs and which do not counsel out their students or refuse to back-filling cohorts?
• Do we support community schools in the manner that the mayor has proposed in his “School Renewal Program” with its requirement for teachers to re-apply for their positions or do we oppose that part of the program and have an alternative to offer the children of failing schools across the City and State?
• Do we support fair funding of public schools required by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity court settlement or do we have other suggestions about how to fund public schools so that every child across the state has access to a first-rate education?
• How do we promote a teacher training and certification process that ensures a diverse pool of teachers of color in our schools?
• What do we want education schools to do to help new teachers survive the terrible landscape they’re thrown into after they graduate?  What skills should they be taught?  How should their competence be demonstrated?
• Do we simply oppose the APPR as a state teacher evaluation system or do we oppose “junk science” altogether and have an alternative process for evaluating teachers?
• How do we make the case for due process persuasively and explain to the public how pervasive the arbitrary and capricious behavior by administrators is in our schools?
• How do we effectively protect teachers illegitimately placed in the Absent Teacher Reserve, almost all of them there because of the previous administration’s determination to close, rather than support, struggling schools and the City’s unwillingness to defray the personnel costs of the more senior members of the ATR who cannot be hired into schools because school budgets make that impossible to do?
• The Regents appointment process is a complete sham. What do we propose as a replacement?  Election by district?  Appointment by a panel of educators appointed jointly by the Governor, Speaker, Majority Leader of the Senate, Comptroller and AG?  I don’t know the answer but almost anything has got to be better than the process we have now.
• How DO we force open the selection process used to appoint a new State Education Commissioner to replace the benighted John King?

Simply saying “public education” is a right without recognizing that many public schools are failing is a losing proposition for teachers to make to the public and to other community and parent organizations that may want to support us.  We need to make an affirmative case about what we, believe works or should be tried in our schools and what doesn’t work and should be changed.

I assure you that because we believe that our cause is “righteous” or “self-evident” does not mean that anyone else thinks does.  We need to make a powerful and intelligent case for what we want to do to preserve the foundational democratic aspects of public education while making clear that there we want to improve public schools while protecting teaching as a profession.

I may sound too “pragmatic” for many of you.  I know why I fight and am idealistic in a way that also is clear-eyed in its recognition of the reality that now confronts us all.  We are about to do battle with some of the richest and most powerful people in the state, and we need to recognize our peril and plan, strategically, to defend ourselves in a way that the public, the media and, our allies in the legislature can hear and understand.  If we do not, our children will be victims, and we will perish.

Dr. Mark Naison: “This my friends, is an unbeatable combination.”

From Mark D Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Fordham University
“Dave Greene, one of the best teachers I have ever met, has written the most useful book about teaching I have read in the last ten years. Dave, who taught and coached at the Bronx’s, Adlai Stevenson High School, before he moved to do the same at Woodlands and Scarsdale High Schools, has unparalleled experience as a
program developer and teacher educator as well, having been involved in the WISE Program for high school seniors, and having mentored Teacher for America Corps members at Fordham University. When you add to this his role in founding
the Save Our Schools movement, you can see what a depth of knowledge Dave can draw upon.
This book has incredible chapters on theories of pedagogy, what makes the best teachers effective, and how effective assessment is a logical outcome of the accumulated knowledge of our best teachers and administrators. Dave tears up the latest fashions in education reform, showing their unfortunate resemblance to Frederick Taylor’s models of factory administration and has a brilliant critique of Teach For America’s approach to teacher training and pedagogy based
on his extensive experience working with TFA corps members in inner city schools.
You will come away from reading this book enraged at the powerful forces reshaping public education, but you will better understand what makes a better teacher. This my friends, is an unbeatable combination.”

The Wu Wei of Teaching

(Ooo way) is the ancient Chinese art of planned, or practiced spontaneity, an artistic skill many of us should acquire. An article in the NYT science section on Dec 16, 2014 entitled “A Mediation on the Art of Not Trying” described it as “the art of not really trying.” You may know it as, “Relax. Just be yourself. Act Naturally”.

It is when we “flow , or what we do well seems effortless to others. The paradox is odd. When one tries not to try, one automatically fails at it. The smile looks forced, the speech sounds over rehearsed. The conversation feel forced. We tighten up and often, if it is a sport, we choke.

When we are indeed using practiced spontaneity, we convey an authenticity and charisma. We exude a confidence and competence that fortifies our abilities to do whatever we are doing. Everything we do seems to work. We are “in the zone.”

One example that comes to mind is how the NY Knicks continually lose close games at the end of the fourth quarter. Phil Jackson’s, (the Zen Master) Triangle Offense, is a perfect example of practiced spontaneity that is very different than many of the NBA rigid offensive sets and engrained styles of play this group of Knicks are so used to.

So, when their game is flowing when there doesn’t seem to be much pressure on, they actually have learned to do the Triangle fairly well. Flow, as athletes know is that state of being in a zone, when you aren’t trying, but everything works perfectly. As I stated earlier, people describe it as being effortless.

However in the last portions of the last quarter when the pressure to win really is strongest, what happens? Instead of being relaxed and being themselves flowing through the planned spontaneity of the Triangle, they do just the opposite. They tighten up and lose.

According to Dr. Edward Slingerland (his real name) in his book, “Trying Not To Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity”, the three main branches of Chinese philosophy, Confucianism, Taoist, and Mencius’s version of Neo-Confucianism have thought about this question for millennia.

The first, Confucianism, bases its path to Wu Wei on “will power and rigorous adherence to rules, traditions, and rituals”.

Taoists, the hippies of their era and what many call the precursors of Zen and the Grateful Dead, believe the opposite. They emphasized personal meditation and “flow”. Note. Phil Jackson practices Zen Buddhism. Taoist said this about Confucianism. “ The worst kind of Virtue never stops trying for Virtue, and so never attains Virtue.” This is also the error of the Corporate, Political, and TFA led version of reform.

In my book, DOING THE RIGHT THING: A Teacher Speaks, I refer to good teachers’ ability to use both planned spontaneity and what Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe refer to as practical wisdom. It is the difference between the scripted Common Core and corporate reform version of lesson plans as opposed to a more Socratic process.

The solution is, in fact, a combination of Confucian and Taoist ways. It is based on the teachings of Mencius, who offered a middle way. To achieve “effortless grace” we must master skills with a great deal of initial conscious effort. Once we have gained proficiency, then it is easier to go with the Taoist flow and to avoid the pitfall of “paralysis through analysis”. As Slingerland suggests, “training yourself to follow rules automatically can be liberating, because it conserves cognitive energy for other tasks.”

However here lies the trap. We must be free to use that cognitive energy to “transcend our training and relax completely into what we are doing.” That is what the best teachers do and what the so-called reformers miss when they construct Common core “modules”, scripted plans, unwavering schedules, or standardized ANYTHING.

Mencius tells it best in a parable about a grain farmer who returned one evening exhausted from his labors.

“I’ve been out in the fields helping the sprouts grow,” he explained, whereupon his worried sons rushed out to see the results. They found a bunch of shriveled sprouts that he’d yanked to death.

The sprouts were Mencius’ conception of wu wei: Something natural that requires gentle cultivation. You plant the seeds and water the sprouts, but at some point you need to let nature take its course. Just let the sprouts be themselves.”

Teachers are both sprouts and the farmers of sprouts.

PREPARATION FOR LIFE AFTER HIGH SCHOOL CANNOT BE STANDARDIZED (edited)

I rewrote so those people who couldn’t see past the citations in the earlier versions of Linda Darling Hammond’s essay in the Sacramento Bee, could actually focus on the point of MY essay.

PREPARATION FOR LIFE AFTER HIGH SCHOOL CANNOT BE STANDARDIZED

I have long known that students are individuals, each with their own style of learning. They come to classrooms with varying degrees of competencies. They come with a wide variety of interests, motivations, hopes and dreams. They come from a wide variety of socioeconomic and family environments, even within the same towns, districts or neighborhoods. So why are public schools presently being told to teach students as if they are all the same? Why are they being taught in a substandard and homogenized way?

All of you can decide on the answers to that question, and there are many that I will don’t rant about here. I have done plenty of that. It is not the time to rant. It is, as it usually is, the time to discuss and propose options and better solutions and better solutions.

The rhetoric we hear talks about students needing to be creative, critical thinkers, socially responsible, and lifelong learners. As long as policies continue to give schools grades those policies are hypocritical. This century has been devoted to an accountability system based on standardized tests that measure relatively low-level skills and have been supported by the commonizing curricula and test preparation time that support these tests.

Tests obviously have their place in measuring preparedness but we should not be relying on them as heavily to help us understand how our students become who we say we want them to become.

Innovation is a funny word. I know of many educational techniques and programs that were innovated 40 and 50 years ago that were proven to work, but now have a hard time being recognized for their success in the US because they are not supported by those “invested” in new innovation for profit.

Project based learning, portfolio assessments, inquiry, mastery learning, and various programs offering experiential learning intertwined with academic learning have long existed and been quite successful. I ask, who profits at their loss? Not our students.

Let’s return to those goals we have for high school graduates. Ultimately we want them to be successful at whatever they do post high school, whether it be college, career, or post college career. To be successful we want them to be creative, critical thinkers, socially responsible, and lifelong learners. So what programs have 21^st century policies funded that explicitly do that? VERY FEW.

Why? Why do we dismiss what worked to excite, challenge, and make relevant while at the same time prepare them to excel at careers and college?

We are standardizing and commonizing them to intellectual death. Most are bored, unchallenged, and think most classes are irrelevant. All you have to do is ask them.

So I want to celebrate what I, thousands of teachers, and tens of thousands of students and parents know works: well-designed, highly structured, experiential academic programs such as WISE and California’s Linked Learning. These programs combine academic and real-world workplace learning. The objective is so students graduate ready life by developing the life skills we all know are necessary to be successful in general.

Finally, lets look at the outcomes of experiential/academic learning.

Students in programs like WISE “benefit from internships, service-learning projects and school-based enterprises where they apply learning to real-world problems.” They “can show what they’ve learned in applied assessments. Imagine students demonstrating their Web design abilities by building a website, or their accounting knowledge by creating a spreadsheet.” This is the type of assessment over 40,000 WISE students have had since 1973.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the assessments we use also have value to students themselves? We could go beyond the traditional GPA and test-score reports by using student presentations or portfolios that showcase evidence of student growth.

Now that would really be innovative!

The growing movement against Teach For America

Updated….

DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing

Please share:                    

For those of you who missed the AMERICA TONIGHT TV (12/11/14) piece on the hurt of TFA, or don’t have access the AJA channel in your area, here is the ONLINE LINK.

The growing movement against Teach For America: by Lisa Binns @binnsee & Christof Putzel @ChristofPutzel

Teach For America is a brand name in education, but it has seen increased backlash from its alumni and school officials

https://ajam.app.boxcn.net/s/uj6l5z3cnsw3qprvw8yt

If you want more about the hype and hurt of TFA as well as other positive things about what education can be please read my book:

DOING THE RIGHT THING: A Teacher Speaks. (available at Amazon, Google, Nook or Kindle)

View original post

The growing movement against Teach For America

Please share:                    

For those of you who missed the AMERICA TONIGHT TV (12/11/14) piece on the hurt of TFA, or don’t have access the AJA channel in your area, here is the ONLINE LINK.

The growing movement against Teach For America: by Lisa Binns @binnsee & Christof Putzel @ChristofPutzel

Teach For America is a brand name in education, but it has seen increased backlash from its alumni and school officials

https://ajam.app.boxcn.net/s/uj6l5z3cnsw3qprvw8yt

If you want more about the hype and hurt of TFA as well as other positive things about what education can be please read my book:

DOING THE RIGHT THING: A Teacher Speaks. (available at Amazon, Google, Nook or Kindle)

AMERICA TONIGHT: DON’T TEACH FOR AMERICA

Recently I was interviewed for an investigative TV report regarding Teach For America by award winning journalist Christof Putzel entitled:

AMERICA TONIGHT: DON’T TEACH FOR AMERICA

Does Teach for America actually hurt underperforming schools? America Tonight investigates.

 

It will be televised this Thursday, Dec. 11, at 9 pm on Al Jazeera America.

http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/schedule.html

I am not sure how much of the report will include portions of my interview, but I was interviewed for about 90 minutes.

You can find it on locally FIOS on Channel 614 HD, or 114.

On DISH Network it is Channel 215

On DIRECTV it is channel 347

How to find in your area: http://america.aljazeera.com/tools/channel-finder.html

I hope you enjoy watching.

 

If you would like to know more about good teaching and bad education policy I hope you see fit to pick up a copy of my book as well.

The book is available at:

http://www.friesenpress.com/bookstore/title/119734000011426145

http://www.amazon.com/Doing-The-Right-Thing-Teacher/dp/1460225481

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/doing-the-right-thing-a-teacher-speaks-david-greene/1117475977?ean=2940148833765

https://play.google.com/store/books/details/David_Greene_Doing_The_Right_Thing?id=yaMiAgAAQBAJ&hl=en

PREPARATION FOR LIFE AFTER HIGH SCHOOL CANNOT BE STANDARDIZED

I have long known that students are individuals, each with their own style of learning. They come to classrooms with varying degrees of competencies. They come with a wide variety of interests, motivations, hopes and dreams. They come from a wide variety of socioeconomic and family environments, even within the same towns, districts or neighborhoods. So why are public schools presently being told to teach students as if they are all the same? Why are they being taught in a substandard and homogenized way?

All of you can decide on the answers to that question, and there are many that I will don’t rant about here. I have done plenty of that. It is not the time to rant. It is, as it usually is, the time to discuss and propose options and better solutions and better solutions.

It is a lie to say schools do not have high expectations, even for selfish reasons. Who wants to look bad? As Linda Darling Hammond and Hilary McLean have written in a piece published in the Sacramento Bee, students must be “tested” on the right skills for college and career. And by tested they and I don’t mean standardized tested.

The rhetoric we hear talks about students needing to be creative, critical thinkers, socially responsible, and lifelong learners. Hammond and McLean tell us, and I concur, that as long as policies continue to give schools grades those policies are hypocritical. This century has been devoted to an accountability system based on standardized tests that measure relatively low-level skills and have been supported by the common curricula and test preparation time that support these tests.

Tests obviously have their place in measuring preparedness but we should not be relying on them as heavily to help us understand how our students become who we say we want them to become.

Innovation is a funny word. I know of many educational techniques and programs that were innovated 40 and 50 years ago that were proven to work, but now have a hard time being recognized for their success in the US because they are not supported by those “invested” in new innovation for profit.

Project based learning, portfolio assessments, inquiry, mastery learning, and various programs offering experiential learning intertwined with academic learning have long existed and been quite successful. I ask, who profits at their loss? Not our students.

Let’s return to those goals we have for high school graduates. Ultimately we want them to be successful at whatever they do post high school, whether it be college, career, or post college career. To be successful we want them to be creative, critical thinkers, socially responsible, and lifelong learners. So what programs have 21^st century policies funded that explicitly do that? VERY FEW.

Why? Why do we dismiss what worked to excite, challenge, and make relevant while at the same time prepare them to excel at careers and college?

We are standardizing and commonizing them to intellectual death. Most are bored, unchallenged, and think most classes are irrelevant. All you have to do is ask them.

So I want to celebrate what I, thousands of teachers, and tens of thousands of students and parents know works: well-designed, highly structured, experiential academic programs such as WISE and California’s Linked Learning. These programs “integrate academic and technical courses in high school with real-world workplace learning. The objective is that every student will graduate ready for a wide range of postsecondary and career options” (Hammond and McLean) as well as develop the life skills we all know are necessary to be successful in general.

“In a world where knowledge is rapidly expanding and technologies are constantly changing, “college readiness” and “career readiness” are no longer entirely different things meant for entirely different students. More and more of the competencies that high school graduates will need in the workplace are also what colleges expect: the ability to find and evaluate information, weigh and balance evidence, communicate effectively, collaborate to solve problems and learn independently.” (Hammond and McLean)

Finally, lets look at the outcomes of experiential/academic learning.

Students in programs like WISE “benefit from internships, service-learning projects and school-based enterprises where they apply learning to real-world problems.” They “can show what they’ve learned in applied assessments. Imagine students demonstrating their Web design abilities by building a website, or their accounting knowledge by creating a spreadsheet.” This is the type of assessment over 40,000 WISE students have had since 1973.

As Hammond and McLean state, “Wouldn’t it be nice if the measures used for accountability also have value to students themselves? We could develop new ways to communicate with postsecondary institutions that go beyond the traditional GPA and test-score reports by using student profiles, [presentations,] and portfolios that showcase students’ products,” along with evidence of the process of their growth.

Now that would really be innovative!

NOTE: Linda Darling-Hammond is a professor of education at Stanford University and chairwoman of the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing. She is also on the advisory board of WISE SERVICES. Her daughter, Kia helped start a WISE program in her High School (New Rochelle) in 1993.