Words with Friends obsession

Our students are obsessed with Words with Friends, a smart phone app for a Scrabble-like word game between you and anyone else who has the app. I signed up on Thursday last week, and I've already got about nine games going with students and colleagues.

Prior to downloading the app and joining the frenzy, I encountered several students struggling to play a word--even helped a few of them out when they were stuck. But on it goes--they are literally obsessed.

I find this interesting on several levels. It's a word game. They are playing with language--yes it's also engages mathematical thinking what with the scoring and the arranging the words on the board and the problem solving, but it's also a word game. I can't imagine my students getting together on a Friday night for a Scrabble party, but my phone kept buzzing at me on Friday and Saturday night to let me know it was my turn to play in a game because one of my students had taken his/her turn. They are sneaking their phones out in class just to play a word in a Words with Friends game. They are obsessed with a word game.

I've been laughing maniacally at this. Okay maybe not, but I think it's awesome that they are playing around with words and loving it, unable to resist it. It makes me wonder how else I could get them engaged in the subject matter of my class in a similarly obsessed manner where they are learning and thriving on it beyond their better judgment, sneaking their phones out in other classes to do something for my class...

Oh, and F. Scott--it's your turn in Words with Friends...

signing off--
M. Shelley

what to do while "actively protoring" a state-mandated test

F. Scott and I have just survived the yearly proctoring duties for the state-mandated test. It basically kills two weeks here at our school. We take two full mornings in two weeks in a row and to accommodate these testing blocks, the entire schedule for the week is a mess.

But I can live with that. A little variety in the weekly schedule is probably good for us. The worst part of it for me is "active proctoring."

What that means is that I am unable to do anything but watch the students take the test. I cannot read, grade, write, or work on my computer. I must walk around the room and monitor the students' progress through the test, make sure they are not working in the wrong test in the book, make sure they are not looking at a neighbor's test, make sure they are not doodling instead of taking the test seriously, etc. And even if all students in my room finish a particular test with a half hour left in the time allowed for the test, they all must sit silently until the testing session is over. THEY can read a book. I still must actively monitor what they are up to.

This of course is important. As much as I disagree with high stakes testing, as long as we have to live with it, it's best for our school if these tests go well. So I play along and follow the rules, which makes for a very difficult time for me. I tell the students I would rather be taking the test myself than watching them take it.

But somehow I muddle through. This year I paid close attention to how exactly I got myself through this. Here's my list of things to do to keep one's mind occupied while "actively proctoring" a state-mandated, high-stakes test.

1) Memorize the students' names. I did this during the very first 60-minute test my group of 18 took. When the testing session was over, I told them I knew all their names and they asked me to prove it. So I did. At least it made them smile before we plunged into the second 60-minute test.
2) Wiggle your toes. I did a lot of this. I wondered how vigorously I could wiggle them without anyone noticing when looking at my shoes.
3) Gaze out the window. Look for signs of spring. This, of course, only works if you have a window in the classroom where you are stationed. I did this year, but I didn't last year.
4) Monitor the pencil sharpness of students' pencils and replace as necessary. My students went through a massive number of pencils this year. This meant I had to re-sharpen just about all of them in between each testing session. One student used SIX in one writing test. I took to lining up three or four pencils on his desk at the start of the morning.
5) Collect and alphabetize test books as students finish up. Usually the first student finishes up about halfway through the testing sessions. So this gives me something to do every other minute or so until the testing session is over.
6) Sit, stand, sit, stand, sit, stand (at lengthy intervals).
7) But don't sit in that purple chair. There was a very low to the ground, delicate-looking purple chair in the classroom where I proctored this year. I was concerned that if I sat in it, I might not be able to get up, thus creating a hilarious scene that might distract the students in the room.
8) Compose blog posts in your head. Where do you think this one came from?
9) Take slow laps around the room. Be sure you are NOT wearing the corduroy pants that go swish swish swish when you walk.
10) Examine the student projects posted on the wall and remember to ask your colleague about them. The ones I saw this year were particularly intriguing.
11) As students finish, deliver reading material to their desks if they haven't brought their own. I had a stack of high-interest novels and I enjoyed trying to pick just the right book for students I had just met and didn't know much about.
12) Reorganize everything the box of testing supplies.
13) Drink water at regular intervals, but not too much so you don't end up with a too-full bladder.
14) Re-read the proctoring instructions again and again. I didn't want to mess up.
15) Walk the box of tissues over to over-sniffly students.
16) Clean up the mess under the pencil sharpener. Why? see #4 above.
17) Imagine my seven-year old daughter as a high school student taking a test like this.
18) Sing "Bridge over Troubled Water" in your head. That's what was stuck in my head for some reason.
19) Think deep thoughts.
20) Count how many pairs of Chuck Taylors are in the room (three--one pair brown, one pair gray, and one pair black with red thread).
21) Oh, and of course, watch the students take the test. But avoid making eye contact to lessen the creeper quotient for all involved.

So there you have it. I survived. My group of students this year was particularly awesome. They appeared to be taking the test very seriously and they made the atmosphere quiet and just right to support their peers' ability to take the test as well. And every time I replaced a dull pencil, they whispered, "thank you" to me.

Signing off--
M. Shelley

an example of how research positions teachers...

In the quasi-rant about educational research that I posted last evening, I mentioned that I thought the research I was asked to read and study during the first year of my doctoral program (and use as an example of quality educational research) tended to position teachers in such a way that devalued them as knowledgeable professionals possessing valuable expertise.

I read a research article today that I see as an example of this. The Educational Researcher (a research journal of AERA) that came into my mail box here at school yesterday contains this: "Creating Shared Instructional Products: An Alternative Approach to Improving Teaching" by Anne K. Morris and James Hiebert. I was intrigued because the title presented some hope that this article might bolster the argument I've been making to my district about how to handle the new state mandate to use quarterly "interim assessments."

I was hoping the "instructional products" the title mentioned included common assessments.

I've been pushing for teacher-built common assessments for courses (at the high school level at least--not sure if this is the best approach for elementary and middle schools) that would happen at least quarterly INSTEAD of externally constructed, mandatory interim assessments. I argue that developing and evaluating these common assessments from year to year could be a meaningful professional development opportunity. For example, get all the teachers who teach American Literature across the district together in the fall to review the course's curriculum and to come to agreement on four common assessments that every teacher will use. Then pull the teachers together mid-year to compare assessment data and talk about what's working (or not) in their classes. And then get everyone together at the end of the year to again compare assessment data AND make a plan for common assessments for the next school year. The benefits? Teachers will talk to each other and learn from each other and teachers will craft shared vision toward assessment targets. This better insures that students across the district will have access to a guaranteed set of outcomes from the course. This is something that our district cannot currently guarantee.

So this article's title--"Creating Shared Instructional Products"--made me think that it might help me argue for the value of common assessments as a way to improve teaching and learning INSTEAD of externally built interim assessments.

And there is a lot in the article to consider. I'm not writing off this article. I've already suggested it to my district curriculum leaders as something to consider as we work on our approach to the new state assessment mandates.

But from the very beginning (the abstract), the article positions teachers in such a way as to strip them of their professional expertise. The abstract begins:

To solve two enduring problems in education--unacceptably large variation in learning opportunities for students across classrooms and little continuing improvement in the quality of instruction--the authors propose a system that centers on the creation of shared instructional products that guide classroom teaching.

The two problems that this research article seeks to address are thus identified as TEACHER problems--things that happen in classrooms that teachers presumably have control over. And the solution offered is a way to "guide classroom teaching"--from the outside? It seems that may be the case. This positions teachers as a problem to be solved and it does not ask them to be part of the solution.

And toward the end of the article after the authors have outlined their recommendations for using "instructional products" to guide classroom teaching, the authors explain:

It is clear that teachers, researchers, and curriculum developers will bring different kinds of knowledge to these tasks. Although the boundaries are slippery, it seems clear that researchers or outside educators will need to fill in subject matter expertise and research design expertise, whereas teachers will need to provide classroom delivery (pedagogical) expertise as well as knowledge of contextual conditions.

Yes, we teachers do have the unique access to pedagogical expertise and knowledge of the contextual conditions of our schools and classrooms. I am pleased to see the authors recognizing this, but why exactly can't we teachers contribute subject matter expertise to solving the problems identified in this article? And why not research design expertise? There ARE practicing teachers who DO have research training and experience, who have done rigorous research on their own practice. And according to NCLB legislation, all teachers must possess subject matter expertise to be considered "highly qualified." It's as if the authors presume that classroom teachers are not experts on the subjects they teach and would be unable build curriculum upon that expertise.

This article--though it admits the "boundaries are slippery"--very clearly demarcates between teachers, researchers, and curriculum designers. I have found that some of the best teachers I know actually move seamlessly between all three of these realms.

This article proposes a problem that is very real but seems to place the blame on teachers. In actuality the gross variations in what students experience from classroom to classroom and school to school have much more to do with things teachers have no control over. Larger societal structures (such as poverty and the widening gap between the rich and the poor) contribute a lot to the differences between schools, for example.

Regardless of the reasons for the problem outlined in this research article, I think teachers and researchers alike can agree that the problem is there. But I wish the authors would enlist teachers in a more active role for finding the solution. Instead the authors position teachers here as the recipients of what the researchers and curriculum designers and content area experts decide should be the solution.

This was similar to what I found in dozens of research studies I was asked to read in the first year of my doctoral program. The research never said overtly and directly that teachers were not valued as professionals able to work on real solutions to the problems that challenge the system as a whole and our classrooms. The studies simply positioned teachers in ways that suggested they were not seen as agents of change. The studies rarely showed teachers working on viable solutions to the real problems the researchers set out to address with their research.

Slowly this chipped away at my own ideas about my future as a researcher. I entered the program hoping to study education from within the context of K12 practice. I feel unmoored the minute I step away from the classroom and look at it only from the outside. My sense of relevance erodes, thus eroding the relevance of any research I attempt to do. And after reading study after study implicitly devaluing that insider perspective, I began to question the value of it myself. But I wanted to learn how to see the classroom with rigor, especially from my insider perspective. That became my goal and continues to be.

A rigorous, insider voice is more important now than ever (did you see what F. Scott tweeted earlier today? (Right on! - Notice to All Banker Types from a Teacher http://t.co/KtuUhrG)

Thoughts from anyone out there?

Signing off--
M. Shelley

Frustrations with research

A conversation with F. Scott today sent me into a bit of a tailspin. This and a string of conversations I've had over the last week, hearkened back to the thoughts I expressed a while back after my experience presenting at the American Educational Research Association conference.

I'm taking a great risk here that readers will assume I'm writing off educational research as a whole. I'm not. I'm an educational researcher working to get my doctoral dissertation published as a book for teachers, working to design a study to examine the pilot I'm running with my senior class next year, working to build a life as a K-12 teacher AND researcher. I'm not writing off educational research as a whole.

And yet, I'm frustrated.

I'm frustrated that given the sheer numbers of educational researchers out there, the current educational policy wave driven by people who are not educators is steamrolling any opposing idea. Shouldn't we have been out in front of that movement? Our involvement has been in the form of the well-known researchers who have been invited to D.C. to simply give a rubber stamp to the decisions the policy makers had already made (this was essentially the role I ended up playing on a state-level committee myself). With so many of us on the ground doing research, how on earth has our role as experts been usurped so completely?

I'm frustrated remembering how it felt in the first year of my doctoral program that my practical teaching knowledge wasn't particularly valued--not explicitly by the things people said directly about teachers but implicitly in the way teachers were positioned in the research we were asked to read and study. I'm frustrated by the conversations I had this past weekend with a former high school student of mine who has already had a career as a high school English teacher and who is now a doctoral student in an education program at one of the leading research universities in the country. She wouldn't dare tell people there that she might want to go back to K12 teaching once she finishes the program. But I say why not? Why shouldn't there be more educational researchers working out the context of K12 practice? Why isn't this a valued outcome of a education PhD program?

I'm frustrated by a conversation last week with a doc student currently in the program I graduated from. He is the editor of a state-level language arts journal that reaches hundreds of teachers in our state, and he has a hard time convincing his doc student colleagues and professors to submit to this journal. Maybe it's not a top tier research journal, but why not have your work read by TEACHERS? Sometimes it seems that we researchers write for each other, present for each other, work our butts off just to impress each other. Do teachers, administrators, and policy makers read the top tier research journals? Sometimes it feels like the goal becomes the most elegant research design, but I want to know how that affects the lives of the students in my 4th period class?

You know what I really want to do? I want to build a research cooperative located right here in the high school where I teach. I want to secure funding so that I can teach maybe 3 classes instead of 5 and have time dedicated to doing the research too. I want funding for some of the other teachers in my building too who are doing amazing things that they should be studying and writing about. I want to cultivate a voice, a presence, and find a way to speak to those who really matter when it comes to designing the contours of students' day to day existence in school. I want to find the best avenues for reaching these decision makers and cultivate a place for voices from the realm of practice to speak and have a seat at the table. Maybe we could even start a journal, something unlike anything that is out there.

But the question is how--how to accomplish this? Who would give us money? Would our school district support us?

Lots to think about.
--M. Shelley

reading ruined already?

I'm sitting here helping my 2nd grade daughter with her homework.

She is to complete three story maps, each on a book from her shelves here at home that she has read and knows well. This task has paralyzed her.

And that's what I find fascinating.

With as natural as stories are to us as human beings, how is it that a task to map out a story paralyzes my child? How is it that identifying the characters, the setting, the problem/solution, and the important plot details is making my child believe that she is unable to succeed?

Normally my child whips through her homework. But tonight, she had to take a five minute break under a blanket on the couch. Now that she's been back at the table she has written down three plot details in about 15 minutes. Not the usual pace for a kid who can complete a week's worth of homework math story problems in about a half hour.

She's sitting next to me, whiny, doodling on her page. "What happens next in the story?" I ask her.

"I don't know. I forgot," she says very sadly. "You told me but I don't remember."

We had just read the story together. Surely she has not forgotten the details of the story yet?

"What if there's a right and wrong?" she asks me. "My teacher writes A LOT when we do these at school. We copy down what she writes on the board."

"Are you worried that you aren't writing enough?" I ask.

She finishes with another plot detail and asks me what's next. She has just flipped through the book again but asks ME what's next. She asks me to write it even. Or at least to tell her what to write. When I make a suggestion, she tells me that it's too long, too many words (this from a child who has handwritten several pages of her autobiography in one sitting, a child who read about eight Magic Treehouse house books in one weekend and has no problem with stories).

I worry that already school is teaching her that there is only one set of right answers about a story. I worry that already she is learning that what the teacher says about a book is right and her job is just to copy it down neatly on her story map. I worry that she is learning already that the purpose of reading a story in school is just to identify its parts and pieces, not to say what she thinks about a story.

I ask her if she would rather write about what she thinks about the story. She says the story map never asks her to do that.

I ask her why she picked the book she used for the first story map--and she said it was because it was short and she thought it would be easy to work with.

Oh my. Already? Choosing a book for a school task because it's short? How did this happen?

I'm certain her teacher means well and does not intend for any of this to happen. In fact, I have been quite impressed by what I know of my daughter's classroom. I know that the literacy approaches taken there are all informed by researched best practice.

But it's absolutely fascinating to see my child struggling already with a task in school that boils a book down to its mere components, separated from pondering what the story has to say about our life as human beings. She's so worried about not writing enough and not writing the right details that she's paralyzed.

Well, we just agreed she could have some chocolate if she finished another story map... now she's somewhat more motivated. Good in the short term for getting the homework done. Bad in the long term for her love of reading?

No wonder so many of my high school students aren't readers.

Signing off--
M. Shelley

What if?

You'll be seeing a lot from the book I'm currently reading, Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice, edited by Kylene Beers, Robert Probst, and Linda Reif. This book is becoming highly relevant to the work I need to do to contextualize the pilot the district has supported me in running next year with my seniors. In short, in order to more effectively differentiate to meet my students' needs, I'll be able to work with attendance in a flexible manner. There will be some days where not all of my students will need to be in class, thus making it possible for the ones who work well independently to do so and giving me more time to work one-on-one with the students who need more of that kind of support. It will be a hybrid online/face time course with a strong web presence to keep everyone on the same page.

I'm excited about this, but I want to approach it well. I want to know exactly WHY I think this might work. I want to know what to look for to see if it is working. And in the end, I want to be able to say with some certainty whether or not it's an approach worth repeating and exactly why. I've got a student teacher this semester and a bit more time on my hands to read, so hence my obsession with this book. I imagine I'll be using this space here to capture some of the passages and thoughts from the book that strike me as critical in my thinking about this pilot project.

So here's today's contribution (actually, I had intended to post it on Tuesday--but as F. Scott already indicated we had a crazy week here with state testing AND parent/teacher conferences). Kylene Beers wonders:

What if students sometimes worked independently and other times worked with others in their school community, local community, state community, or across the globe? What if schooling valued multiple intelligences and the curriculum were dependent on technology and multimedia? What if authentic assessments were more important than multiple-choice state tests? What if asking the probing question were valued more than providing the correct answer? What if students were required to do some sort of service project or community work and what if learning content in the textbook were not substituted for figuring out what to do with that content? What if school were the place where students found their voice, discovered how to think, and saw that what they did and believed and thought mattered? What if school were where students learned a lot (not all, but certainly a lot) about being a part of a democracy, a contributing part? What if school were a place for figuring out, where trying mattered at least as much as adequate progress, where learning proceeded at each student's level and pace instead of lock-step pace? I think if those things happened, then a high school diploma might mean something, and the something it would mean would be far different than what it meant in 1986 or 1996 or even today in 2006. (11)

So yes, what if? I love this vision of the potential the high school education. This vision might better engage more students, thus making school something real and relevant and worth their time.

We need more people wondering what if? and imagining other possible worlds for our students' lives in school.

For now, signing off--
M. Shelley

Quantify this!

In a week where I spent a good chunk of my working time watching 9th graders take a state mandated test that does not help them and tells us very little that we didn't already know, maintaining a positive attitude is tough (we had conferences as well- so additionally an exhausting week).

So I smiled this morning to read this great vignette from Joe Bower at for the love of learning.

I won't repost the whole thing, but the end is perfect:

This quick, light-hearted interaction with these two boys initiated a relationship that engaged them in learning for the remainder of time they spent with me. And in the end, they needed the relationship more than the math.

Can you test for that? How do you quantify the master teacher's judgement that the relationship is more important than the curriculum at that moment? Would you penalize Mr. Bower for failing to focus on the math (his ostensible job). Would you fire him because he's 'not a good teacher?'

Or would you PRAY, to what ever power you believe in, that your kid has teachers like that.

It's always the relationship first.

'No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.'

-F. Scott