Words from Linda Rief

Just a tidbit from my reading today. It articulates well the problem with the runaway train of our educational policy today. But how do we fix the problem? Still trying to figure that one out...

“While we see our students as individuals, and while we recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each one, policy mandates often seem to view students through the same myopic lens, treating all students as if they were the same. Yet we know that their differences are their strengths. We know how and when to differentiate our instruction based on the variety of learning styles each student brings to our classroom. We know how to take students from where they are to all they can be. We have to trust ourselves as professionals, hired because we know books, know reading, know writing, know the conventions of language, and know what to do to help each student grow as an individual based on his strengths and needs. We have to continue to work as a professional community to show others what works to keep students learning. Scripted lessons mandating Tuesday’s writing to be the same for each student in every school are guaranteeing mediocrity. We have to continue to learn and grow as professionals who use our voices to speak out against the standardization of all learning” (p. 204).

From Rief, Linda. (2007) “Writing: Commonsense Matters.” Adolescent Literacy: Turning promise into Practice. Kylene Beers, Robert E. Probst, and Linda Rief (eds.). Portsmouth: Heinemann, pgs. 191-208.

Signing off,
M. Shelley

Story time with TeacherSabrina

We talk a lot in this office about how to get the message out. We talk about constructing narrative, and how the 'school reform' movement has done a good job of constructing a narrative that is simple and clear (wrong, but simple and clear). And we think, "in what ways might WE work on constructing narratives that are effective in telling our story as educators, that can convey to the public a clear message about the 'school reform' movement and its dangers, pitfalls, and problems."

Then TeacherSabrina just goes ahead and does it.

Papergraders loves you teachersabrina. You rock!



Teachersabrina is at FailingSchools

Story map homework breakdown 2.0

I wrote a while back about my daughter's frustrations with the story map homework she had been given from her second grade teacher. I wondered why she was so paralyzed and unable to complete the story map that simply asked for her to list the characters, setting, problem, solution, and mail plot events of a book off of her shelves at home. I did what I could to help her work through it. I tried to convince her that it was okay to have a different idea about a story than her teacher might have. And I was relieved that she got the assignment done.

But I got home last evening and there she sat at the dining room table with a blank story map sitting in front of her. She sat slumped over in frustration; my husband sat next to her at the table looking completely exasperated and frustrated.

Here we go again.

Seeing she was clearly stuck, I invited her to take the dog on a walk with me. As we walked up the hill on the trail behind our house, watching the dog frolic happily along side us, I took her through the same conversation we had last time she got so frustrated by the story map homework. I asked her if she remembered my story as a reader and what happened to my love of reading at school. She told it all back to me--about how I used to love to read when I was younger but grew to not enjoy it anymore by high school. She told me about how a teacher of mine told me I was flat out wrong when I disagreed with her interpretation of a book in AP English. I told her about how this shut me down as a reader for several years. I reminded her that I didn't want this to happen to her.

As we hiked along, I explained how I had thought last time about discussing this all with her teacher but decided against it. This will not be the first time that a teacher suggests there are right answers about a story in her life in school, and I do not want to rush in every year and try to fix it for my kid. Instead, I want to help my kid develop survival skills so she can still do the work asked of her with stories in school AND remain the engaged reader that she has become.

I do not blame my daughter's teacher. The problem is so much bigger--it's more in the unchecked assumptions we all carry with us about what we are supposed to do with stories in school.

So here's what we did. As we hiked, we composed a mantra for my daughter to remember when she did her homework. When we got home, the first thing she wanted to do was write it down--so we did. I wrote one word, she wrote the next and so on until we had written out the following:

"It is okay for me to have a different idea about a story than my teacher does as long as I can explain what I think and why I think it."

We both signed and dated it. And then we came up with a process for her to complete a story map "with very little stress." This we also wrote down, on the reverse of the page that held the mantra:

1) Read the story aloud together and pause whenever it seems a problem comes up in the story. Write the problems down and choose the one that seems to be the most important one.

2) Daughter writes in the characters, setting, main problem, and solution on the story map.

3) Daughter takes a break on the couch. During the break, she explains aloud what happens in the story and Mom or Dad writes down her words. This becomes daughter's rough draft.

4) Daughter uses this rough draft to select the plot events she wants to include in the story map and writes them on the story map.

5) We celebrate: "yay yay yay yippee yippee yippee!"

I wonder what this process will look like when she's in high school and writing literary analysis papers. I wonder how much help she'll still need at that point.

Signing off,
M. Shelley

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