My Year Long Journey with Education Reform

I left teaching for my daughter's birth in 2009, just before Common Core reared its head.

It wasn't until June 2013 that I started to research CC.  I started by going right to the Common Core State Standards document and reading the ELA standards that would govern my teaching.  With a huge sigh of relief, I found I agreed with the standards.  They were very similar to the ones I used for five years.

A couple months later, I started blogging for Crunchy Moms.  One of the first posts published was about CC.  I don't remember the posters points, but I do remember arguing with her.  This event started my further research into CC, and then later Race to the Top.

Some elements of current ed reform rub against values I've held about education since my undergraduate student teaching.  I value my autonomy in the classroom and the trust my hiring represents.  I believe all students are unique and thus deserve their educations tailored to their needs as much as possible.  I believe not everything of value learned at school can be tested or measured.  Other elements of current reform clash against newer beliefs, such as those I gained through my literacy master's work.  I believe that student choice is key.  I believe in varied assessment, both in type and formality.  I see poverty and cultural affects on education. 

My learning about CC and RttT has taught me more than anything else the larger system of education.  I am sad to say that almost nothing I have learned about the politics of education matches my beliefs about student needs or my professional role as a teacher. 


These are my current reasons for opposing CCSS and RttT:

1. Reliance on high stakes testing to judge students, teachers, and schools.
   
2. Created by corporations and lobbyists based on business world models with comparatively little educator input.
   
3. Rushed implantation resulting in insufficient professional review, no field testing, and no notification to the general public.
   
4. Questionable quality of standards including: developmental appropriateness for youngest learners, lack of mathematics for STEM careers and other such "basement" vs "ceiling" concerns, rigid sequencing affecting ELL and special education students in particular, and the loss of literature in ELA classrooms.  
5. Expensive. Local money wasted on tests and related materials, which benefit private, for-profit corporations.  
6. Connected to the longitudinal studies required for Race to the Top, which carries significant possibilities for unethical data mining. 

The first two reasons are the most pressing for me personally. 

In Defense of Reader's Workshop in High School ELA Classrooms

1. Greater volume of reading for all. Reading practices reading skills, models good writing, builds world knowledge, increases vocabulary, and offers opportunities for critical thinking.  We want all students reading as much as possible!  But, even with my top preforming courses, we did not read more than seven novels a year.  The "good" students read these and might have still had time left to read for pleasure; meanwhile, the "bad" students read none of the assigned texts and possibly nothing else independently all year.  When I used a workshop approach, even students who had read zero books the year before read at least three titles.  My students who were addicted to books read closer to a book a week. 
2. Engagement via choice.   This one is self exploratory.  Who isn't more excited to study what he or she chooses?
3. Personalized attention.  When we read together, I counted on class discussion to cover the content of the reading.  Can't really do that when all the students were reading different books.  So, I had to devise a method for conferencing with students often.  Where in the old system some students might slip through the cracks, in this system, I talked face to face with each student at least once a week.  (We had a rotating two day schedule, so I only saw students two or three times a week). 
4. Greater focus on skills.  When we read a new book each month, the focus becomes the book we are reading.  We are "doing" Huck Finn or The Scarlet Letter rather than practicing skills that can be applied to all literature.  The students would think we were studying the novel like they were studying cell division or the Missouri Compromise; that is, as a set of facts to be remembered and ordered with some basic understanding.  However, just as the Science and History teachers have larger themes running through their fields, in ELA, spitting back the novel's content is not the goal.  Rather, I want my students' experiences with the text to build skills they will carry to their next critical reading.  With a workshop approach, I focused my mini lessons on the skills I wanted the students to have to tackle analyzing literature rather than limiting myself to lessons that got us through the text.  We spent a lot more time practicing ways to handle new vocabulary, take notes that went beyond plot summary, and pull ideas together to form thesis statement, to name a few.  And, best of all, the students had more practice on the skills, so when we did read a novel critically together and write an analytical essay, they preformed far better. 
5. Easy to use short texts like nonfiction articles, poems, and short stories. Since the students were all reading different books, we used short texts when we worked together.  Sometimes, they were read for homework, and other times they were short enough to be read in class.  When the focus wasn't on what book we were currently reading, it opened my thinking up to a wide variety of texts that did not need to be linked together as long as they allowed us the ability to practice skills.  Three consecutive classes, we could read a Shakespearean sonnet, a Bradbury short story, and a local newspaper op-ed, and despite their differences, we could focus on using context clues for unknown words or finding details that supported main ideas. 
6. No more beating a dead horse.  In the old model, every piece of reading had to be thought about critically with some type of activity to hold thinking.  Every reading assignment had to have class discussions.  We always ended with a big final essay.  Needless to say, it got tedious for the students by mid year.  When I switched to a workshop approach, only the two or three texts we read together did we investigate that deeply.  The point of the work stood out in contrast to the other reading: When we read informally for pleasure or information, we preform one set of tasks versus when we read literature critically with the clear intend to write an analysis, we approach it with a different set of tools.
7. Creates a community of readers.  When all the books we read were full class reads, our options were limited.  The school had to own the books and they needed to not be designated to another grade level.  I was usually the only person in the room who could endorse any particular title available.  With reading workshop, students were recommending books to each other constantly.  The students had clear favorite authors, series, and genres, and they enjoyed sharing their knowledge with each other. 

Six Reasons to Opt My Child Out of State Standardized Testing

1. I trust teachers. Education was my child's teacher's calling, and thus she sought training through her degrees, peers, administrators, and professional development. She spends hours each week with my child. My child's teacher will always be a better judge of my child, both academically and as a whole person, than any test score. I trust a person I can have a conversation with far more than a corporation selling a product.
   
2. I trust administrators. Administrators were once classroom teachers. They evaluate our local teachers' performances better through utilizing their experiences and education than reading a print out of test scores.
   
3. Our money for education should be invested locally on personnel, facilities, and other programs and resources. Tests cost millions of dollars. Investing this money locally would return miraculous outcomes. Why send our money to large corporations who are interested in profits not our local children?
   
4. If you want your child to grow taller, you don't simply measure her more often. Students should be reading, writing, and creating to learn, not to demonstrate what they have learned. Time and resources should be spent teaching and learning as the most meaningful assessments are seamlessly woven into daily activities by teachers.
   
5. Children are not vessels to be filled. Education contains a huge human component through both the students and teachers. Standardized tests disregard this element while teaching to such tests devalue the inherent individuality of humans. Over reliance on testing devalues any growth that can not be measured statistically with a bubble answer sheet including curiosity, creativity, relationships, and metacognition.
   
6. Standardized test scores represent the socioeconomic status of the test takers. Districts already know this information and the tests provide no solutions. Consequences for schools that rate poorly on evaluations composed of mostly test score data are discriminatory. The accreditation process is a superior way to rate a school.
   

White Washing Teachers

I don't plan to return to work for two years, but I still think about my job application process from time to time. One topic heavy on my mind is how being myself could prevent me from getting a job. When I was hired at my first (and only) position, I was twenty-three and did not yet hold any strong views about really almost anything.  That is not the case now.  I have views about education, politics, feminism, and censorship that I don't wish to hide excepting the moments that I am acting solely as The Teacher.  Even then, there are still some ideas I never intend to hide. 

I've been thinking about this in two aspects recently.

One area of concern is my ability to share any ideas remotely sexual.  While blogging for the Crunchy Moms web site, I found myself wanting to write about the connection between breastfeeding and reduced libido.  This was appropriate for a natural parenting site, but it implies that I have sex and mentions the use of my breasts, and thus clashes with the societal belief that teachers should be asexual. I never wound up writing that article.  I found myself censored even though I'm not currently employed.  Can I share that I think that mildly dirty joke is funny?  Can I comment that that celebrity is hot, especially if he is young?  These topics are just the fluff of social media.  What about my views on rape culture and gender roles?  Or what about sharing information about my own body (be it breastfeeding, child birth, or actual sex) on my own private social media accounts with those I trust?  Do I need to worry that my privacy will be violated, not just in a perspective employer scouring my social media accounts for objectionable content, but also in an actual employer telling me I can not communicate about what I wish with who I wish? 

The second aspect is my beliefs about education and the related politics.  This one at least makes sense since it would be related to my job. I can see the point of view that I should not be speaking against my employer, but then I read this: The Deafening Silence of Teachers. 

I am lucky that the recent huge education reforms hit while I am not employed, but am still invested in education for my children.  Currently, I can speak out in any fashion I wish about reform and don't have to fear about repercussions at my job.  But, will any public statements I make now affect my ability to be employed later?  Currently, my stance on reforms is only visible on my private FB account and a public few blogs, both of which I could scrub clean prior to sending out resumes. (I know the internet is forever, but is a school district in basically rural Maine going to hire a hacker to dig up my past keystrokes?)  But, what if I choose to become more actively involved within my children's school district, which maybe the district I need to seek employment in soon?  While I agree that my employment should require that I am a good match for the school, should I be denied a position because I don't agree with the current reform fads?  Does my disagreement on ed reform have any bearing on my ability to preform my job?  Doesn't refusing to hiring me just further silence teachers?

At the present, I am pushing forward with sharing my views on current education reforms.  Its possible that I will financially regret this decision in a few years time, but I don't think I will have any regrets in terms of integrity. 

Education Read List Post 2009

I'm planning on including a "bragging" section at the back my professional portfolio when I go job searching.  One of the items I plan to include is a list of the professional reading I've done while out of the classroom.  (I also plan to include my other list projects such as Newbury, Printz, possibly Caldacott, Oscar best picture, and for personality Bravo's 100 Scariest Movies)

This list includes everything I've read about education, teens, or books since leaving teaching. 

Making the Match by Teri Lesesne

Read-Aloud Anthology by Janet Allen
Fires in the Bathroom by Kathleen Cushman
The Homework Myth by Alfie Kohn
Read Aloud Handbook (3rd and 6th editions) by Jim Trelease
The Hurried Child by David Elkind
Never Work Harder than Your Students by Robyn Renee Jackson
What to Read When by Pam Allyn
 Eisenstein Never Used Flashcards by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
500 Great Books for Teens by Anita Silvey

A Family of Readers: The Book Lover's Guide to Children's and Young Adult Literature by Roger Suttan

Raising Bookworm: Getting Kids Reading for Pleasure and Empowerment by Emma Walton Hamilton

Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Children's Literature by Leonard S. Marcus

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
Words, Words, Words by Janet Allen
Not Much Just Chillin: The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers by Linda Perlstein
Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers by Alissa Quart

First Year Reflection: Thoughts on Bloom's Taxonomy and Differentiation

I'm not sure if all teachers feel this way, but when I look back at my first year of teaching, I cringe. 

My first year teaching I had three preps, but four groups of students.  Two groups were labeled "advanced" and two were labeled "academic."  I then saw each group again for half a period for a writing lab.  While I had a lot of curriculum problems that first year (which took another year or two to work out), the biggest problem was differentiation.  

Here's a scary example of how I made the advanced work "harder:"  The advanced students had to supply the authors of the texts we read and match the titles and plots, while the academic kids only needed to match titles and plots.  Wow.  Why didn't someone stop me?

Looking back now, supplying the authors and matching the titles and plots both seem meaningless, but it sure did make for a test that was easy to grade!  However, the fact that I thought adding more to memorize would make a course more advanced, that appalls me now.  I'm positive that everyone around me let this type of mistake slide because I was a first year teaching, which by definition means learning everything on the job. 

As the years went by, I stopped having students memorize information almost entirely.  I lost a lot of my fun material when I stopped giving tests and quizzes.  No more fun bonus questions, review games, or prizes because we no longer had content to drill for a test.  No more tests because we no longer just retold information.  It was hard to let go of these fun aspects of my teaching, but I enjoyed my new content so much more when I was no longer rewarding the wrong type of performances.  Why reward a student memorizing when he can use all the sources I've been supplying to look information up?  Instead, there is no need to memorize who the author is because I'm going to let you have a copy of the text as you write me an essay showing some critical thinking on the text. 

Partly what I missed in terms of leveling my courses was a utilization of Bloom's Taxonomy.  I had learned about Bloom's Taxonomy in college and probably even had to implement it for some course work.  But honestly, it got lost among everything else.  Now, I know that when I create an assignment and its assessment tool, I need to think about Bloom's Taxonomy. 

First step, am I at least moving beyond remembering?  Remembering is the start of learning, but it can't be where the lesson ends or where the assessment ends.  That horrible work I did my first year often stayed on the first level no matter which class it was.  Does it matter if a student can match definitions or even write them from memory if she can't restatement or use the terms?  It isn't much use if a student can remember what a fragment or run on are if he can't remove them from his own writing.  Essay writing is fabulous in this respect because it forces students to move beyond remembering and understanding to at least applying.  A real high school level essay does more than restate content. 

Of course, the whole concept of an essay was another area of struggle.  I taught freshmen, so none of them had written an analytical essay, no matter their level.  When all the students are learning the content for the first time, how to do I make it "harder" for the higher leveled class?

1. Pace.  A teacher can always move slowly for the struggling students, and faster with the advanced students.  But, this assumes that just because you are "smart" you learn or work quickly and vice versa.  I can personally attest to the falsity of that assumption.  Part of what drew me to an English major was the analysis had nothing to do with speed.  As a dyslexic, I did not read fast, but that didn't matter in how I thought about the content.  Its true that an "honors" level course can move more quickly, but it is more because of the generally better class behavior, the homework completion, higher levels of attention and participation.  There are many top tiered students who need extensive time and practice to master new complex content.  Most of my core content (citing and thesis statements) took both sets of students the same amount of time to master, which was the whole year.  
2. Materials.  Provide different leveled courses with different materials to preform the same tasks.  Say your goal is to write an essay with a thesis statement supported by evidence.  Both courses can have the same goal assessing the grade appropriate new material.  The texts being used can be different such as Hunger Games versus 1984.  Or even, watch Star Wars versus reading Joseph Campbell, then write an essay on archetypes. 
3. Depth.  Animal Farm or Harry Potter are great examples of using depth.  There is a surface story which allows plenty of discussion about character, style, and theme.  Meanwhile, more advanced students can look at the same text on a much higher level of analysis, using much more content specific lens or themes.  Yet, the end product remains the same: an essay with a thesis and support. 
4. How much?  Much like pace, its traditional to just give advanced students more work.  Write longer papers, read more pages, do more practice problems, provide more examples, use more sources.  Unless the increased depth is also required, this is unproductive.  For some skills, more is just fruitless for any skill level.  If you don't know how to diagram a sentence, asking you to do two times or twenty times won't make a difference; if you do know how, the number of times you do it doesn't change your learning either.  With other skills, such as general reading and writing skills that are refined through practice, its probably, though not absolute, that higher tiered students are not the ones who need this practice the most, so why are they being given more? 
5. Support.  One piece of baggage I carried from my education was that providing supports somehow lowered the rigor.  For most cases, I now no longer believe that.  At first, when a special education student was allowed to use notes on a test as an accommodation, it seemed unreasonable.  But as I learned that many accommodations are just best practices, I started to see things differently. What if we let everyone have their notes?  Well, that changes the assessment.  I'm no longer going to ask students to restate content and I've been pushed to increase the rigor of my course, not diminish it.  Why not let students work collaboratively to reach goals?  Why not increase feedback from the teacher?  I've become a strong believer in gradual release, and that theory requires lots of supports in your teaching until students reach the mastery level.  A teacher can remove supports for higher categorized courses and add them to lower ones, but to what purpose? 
6. Last stop of Bloom's.  When a teacher needs to cover content, she can decide where to stop on Bloom's Taxonomy.  Maybe applying poetic literary terms is enough for one level of students to cover the material, while a second group stops only after they have evaluated the poetic literary terms use.  Its unclear which skills equate to covering the content sufficiently and how we decide it for which students, but we must ask:  Do the students grouped in the lowest level have opportunities to practice the higher skills on Bloom's Taxonomy? Never allowing these students to move beyond remembering and understanding is a disservice. 
7. Move up a grade level.  A good example is that I typically wouldn't actively teach academic freshmen essay organization structures outside a five paragraph essay because, at my school, that was sophomore content.  But, I did teach this to advanced freshmen as necessary.  If individuals or groups of students in the class were ready for the material, I would be begin to teach the content for the next year as it suited their intimidate needs and interests.  They had mastered the goal for their grade level, so we moved to the next one early.

A former collegaue commented on Facebook today that the golden rod is out early provoking his allergies.  Having little personal experience with golden rod, I remembered a poem I was forced to memorize and recite in the fifth grade containing a line on golden rod.  Why did my teacher have me memorize this poem and several others for recitation?  Was it a throw back to old fashion practices of recitation?  Were other skills being assessed of which I was unaware? 

I'm left wondering, is there value in memorization?  Yes, some content needs to be memorized.  Sight words when learning to read or basic math facts such as the multiplication table.  Do students need to know all the states?  I'd say, yes.  The capitals?  I'd say, no.  But how do I make that distinction?  It seems to come down to what we as a society consider a solid base of common knowledge.  And then, is it my job to make sure students become citizens with this knowledge base or that they can preform the higher levels on Bloom's Taxonomy?  Are the higher levels just for "honors" students?  For me, these questions are what makes creating a curriculum and differentiating it for all students so difficult, because it is my job to make sure all students have the knowledge base and the ability to apply, analyze, evaluation, and create.

I sure as hell wasn't getting anyone anywhere matching titles, authors, and plot summaries. 

Outline for Possible Adult Ed Study Skills Course

Every semester, we get a booklet from our local adult ed program offering courses ranging from knitting to personal fiance to GED credits.  There is always a statement asking anyone who has something to share in a course to contact them, but I've never been able to think of what I could teach.  Until now.  For this setting, I think I could give a strong study skills course. 

My ideas thus far:

• Textbook reading including text features and note taking
• Lecture note taking
• Literature note taking (if requested)
• Writing process (briefly)
• Time management including breaking down large assignments
• Reading a sylabus
• Test taking tips (all types of questions)
• Active studying
• Creating a study environment
• Ideas for organizing course materials
• Research skills?
• Plagiarism and citing (briefly)

Each topic shouldn't need a whole night, but it would be a multiple session course.