On (Teaching) Writing Well

How did you learn to write? Can you point to particular lessons? Particular teachers?  Particular assignments? When did you know you were a good writer? When did your writing achieve voice? When did you develop a discernible style?

Now that you are thinking about how you learned to write, begin thinking about how you would teach someone else to write. What lessons would you provide? What would you have students read? What assignments would you design? How would you teach voice? How would you teach style?

If you stop to think about all things that children need to know to write well, you would likely throw up your hands at the prospects of success. Spelling. Punctuation. Capitalization. Handwriting. Grammar. Sentence structure. Paragraph structure. Organization. Cohesion. Sequence. Narrative structure. Argument. Parallel Structure. Style. Purpose. Figurative language. Subject-Verb agreement. Tense. Point-of-view. Coordination and subordination. Voice. The list goes on and on. And then on top of all the skills, we must concern ourselves with the will to write. Where does the motivation come from?

I think it is a mistake to think in terms of teaching when it comes to writing. Writing well can’t be taught, but it can be learned. We learn to write by reading in a special way. Children learn to write through an apprenticeship to writers. The job of the teacher becomes to help children see themselves as members of the “writer’s club” and to create an environment where students use that membership to develop skill as a writer.

More than thirty-years ago, Frank Smith posited that children learn the complex task of speaking by “listening like a speaker.” That is to say that because children had the motivation, indeed the need, to speak, and because they were made a part of the world of speakers (a member of the speakers club) they learned to speak. Similarly, if we can make children feel like members of the writing club, Smith said, they will learn to write by “reading like a writer" (Smith, 1983).

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to observe a pre-kindergarten class full of children aged 4 and 5 in a writing workshop. After a brief lesson on shoes and the concept of “pairs”, during which the teacher, Mrs. F, skillfully enlisted the help of the class puppets, Curiosity and Bubba, the children were invited to go off and get their journals and write about their favorite shoes or whatever else was on their mind. As would be expected in a class of children this age, some children “wrote” by scribbling, others wrote by drawing, while a few combined drawing with some words they knew how to write.

One child, Jamya, combined a drawing of her favorite shoes with a string of letters and letter-like shapes. She read her story to me and while the “words” were not recognizable to me, she was able to point to each shape and tell me the story it represented. Next, she did an extraordinary thing. This 4 year-old picked up her journal, walked over to the cat puppet, Curiosity, and read her story aloud. Jamya is an author who has found her audience.

Jamya is well on her way to being a writer. She can write only a few words and letters, but her writing has voice and passion. Most importantly, she considers herself a writer with something valuable to  say and she seeks out an audience for her writing in the form of the classroom’s beloved puppet. Jamya has a great writing teacher. Mrs. F has set up a writing environment where young authors can hone their trade.

How can all teachers achieve a classroom environment where children consider themselves authors and where students apprentice themselves to other writers to strengthen their writing? I think the first step is to help students feel like they are members of the writing club, so that they "read like a writer" and apprentice themselves to skilled writers. Students are most likely to feel like real writers if they are given plenty of time to write, lots of choice in what they write about and real audiences to write for.

The Writer's Workshop as conceived and popularized by Lucy Calkins and others out of Teachers College Columbia, provides the ideal structure for creating writers. In this structure, the teacher provides instruction in the form of a brief mini-lesson, followed by lots of time for children to write and confer and an opportunity to share their writing at the end of the session.

It is easy to imagine mini-lessons that focus on the mundane "stuff" of writing: spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar, etc. It is more difficult to craft lessons that focus on the qualities of good writing, but it is also more important. Good writing is less about knowing how to punctuate dialogue than it is about knowing how to use dialogue to advance a narrative, reveal a character or foreshadow plot complications. Teachers need to provide samples from their own writing and from the writing of others to show students how skilled authors craft their writing for maximum impact.

In this way, the teacher fosters the ability of young writers to "read like a writer." As more and more examples are provided, students begin to find examples of what authors are doing in books that they read and begin to incorporate these things into their own writing. Along the way, the teacher should help students find "mentor texts." Ralph Fletcher defines mentor texts as texts "that you can learn from." In other words, we want to help children find books that will guide them in developing their craft. When students find a book or author that they love, they can apprentice themselves to that author and find crafting ideas to include in their own writing.

Students then must be given lots of time to write and lots of leeway in what they write about. Just as aspiring adult writers are advised to "write about what you know", so young writers will write best when they can choose to write about those things they know well. What they know about is being a kid and everything that comes from that. They also may know about a topic that they have become obsessed with like dinosaurs or airplanes or horses or baseball. These are the topics around which they can learn their writing craft.

The apprentice writer also needs lots of in-process feedback. Feedback must be regular and timely. Feedback must also focus on the crafting of the message and not on the more mundane aspects of spelling and punctuation. Teachers can help students become apprentice writers by first focusing on assisting the student in crafting the message artfully and later helping to clean up the mechanics.

Finally, all writers, young, old, skilled and still learning need an audience. In writer's workshop the teacher and other students often serve as the audience during Author's Chair sharing time. Great writing teachers, however, need to think of broad and authentic audiences for their aspiring writers. One way is through letter writing. Students may be encouraged to write letters through an in-school post office where they can write to students and teachers in other classrooms. Letters can also be written to the school newspaper, the local newspaper, to local politicians or to school administrators.

Classroom or school-wide literary publications are another way to help children see that their writing is intended for others to read, enjoy and learn from. Magazines like Stone Soup and Merlyn's Pen provide an outlet for student writing, as do local essay contests. It is critical; however it is accomplished, that apprentice authors envision a genuine audience for what they write.

How does all this fit in with the Common Core State Standards in English/Language Arts. The standards lay out targets for what children should know and be able to do in writing. As such, although I could and have quibbled with aspects of the Common Core, they are not horrible. The real danger of the Common Core comes from being closely linked to standardized testing. Standardized tests tend to reward formulaic writing (if they assess writing at all). If the Common Core narrows the curriculum, so that children are taught to write to a standardized test prescription, then the Common Core will have done a great disservice. Those who have crafted the Common Core say that they do not wish to tell teachers how to teach. I say we should take them at their word and teach the way we know will work best for creating writers.

The teaching of writing is alchemical. It involves teachers assisting children to envision themselves as writers for real audiences, helping them discover mentors to guide their development, providing timely instruction and feedback, and then standing alongside as they spin their straw into gold.

Chris Christie's Pronoun Problem: Lessons for Teachers and Education Leaders from Bridgegate

"I am not a bully." When I heard these words come out of the mouth of the Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, I had the same reaction as I did when I heard Richard Nixon say, "I am not a crook." I thought, "Oh, yes you are." I served for several years as the Anti-Bullying Co-Ordinator for a suburban New Jersey school district, and if there is one thing I learned from that experience, it is that Mr. Christie fits the bully description.

Last Sunday I read an excellent column by Frank Bruni of the New York Times entitled, "The I in Christie's Storm." Bruni's premise is that Christie has a pronoun problem. Even in his two hour apologia on Bridgegate, Christie was focused on "I", unable to see beyond his own nose. Bruni says that effective political leaders need a strong ego (certainly Christie qualifies there), but they also need to be inclusive; they need to address the issues related to the pronouns "you" and "we." The "you" in the political equation is a genuine concern for others. As a leader I serve "you." That is what Christie is trying to do with his hugging of Superstorm Sandy victims: see, I care about you. The "you" message is undermined by Christie's boorish bullying tactics and certainly by Bridgegate. The "we" in the leadership equation is the ability to convince others that what I want to accomplish is our mission: "we" are in this together. For Christie the "we" too often comes across as me, me, me. As he said to a New Jersey teacher who voiced a concern, "I am tired of you people." Ultimately, Bruni says, a politician's obsession with "I" leads to another "i" word - isolation.

I believe that classroom leaders (teachers) and education administrators can learn a lesson from Christie's pronoun problems. Let me explain.

When the Bridgegate scandal broke, I was in Honolulu, Hawaii (I know, poor me) visiting my friend, colleague and former boss, Earl Kim. Born and raised in Hawaii, Earl is currently the Head of School for the Kamahameha School, a large private school dedicated to the education of native Hawaiian children and the preservation of Hawaiian culture. Previously, Earl had superintendent positions at two school districts in New Jersey. He left New Jersey because he could not continue to work in the educational environment that was being engendered by Christie and his minions. To me, Earl was and is the finest representation of the balance of the I, you and we in education leadership.

As all leaders must, I believe, Earl had a well developed sense of "I." He had studied economics and public policy and public education. He had worked as a teacher, assisant principal, principal and superintendent. He was confident in his understanding of schooling and what was best for teaching and learning. This sense of "I" allowed him to set a vision for his leadership and a direction for the school district he was leading. But Earl realized that his expertise and his vision were not adequate for leadership. He worked very hard at the "you" of the leadership equation. His concern for the children entrusted in his care was exemplary. He was hyper-diligent in attending student activities. He often started meetings with stories about individual students he had met and what they were experiencing. The only time he exhibited impatience was when others did not seem to put the children first.

Finally, Earl embraced the "we" of this leadership pronoun troika. He valued and truly listened to the advice he received from others. His cabinet had his ear. So also did union leadership and individual teachers. Earl could admit he was wrong and change course when the evidence indicated it. He received criticism with equanimity. When teachers complained they did not see enough of him, he went on a "listening tour" in the various buildings. He was moved by these discussions and what he heard helped frame subsequent plans for the district.

In short, Earl Kim embodies the balance of "I", "you" and "me" necessary for great leadership. Christie, stuck with his overabundance of "I" is less leader and more demagogue. I have addressed Christie's demagoguery in another post here, for now suffice it to say that Christie's verbal abuse of teachers, attacks on teacher unions, efforts to undermine public education, and rhetoric about failure factories are all a result of an excess of "I" type self-aggrandizement. All this is about the self-styled truth teller, Christie, and not about the parents, children and teachers of New Jersey. The people of New Jersey, the "you" and "we" are left out of the isolated Christie's vision.

What can educators learn from Christie's excess of  "I?" First of all, unlike Christie, most educators suffer from too little "I." Those of us who go into the profession are generally team players. This can be dangerous when what we are doing is under attack. The truth is that as a profession we are very well-prepared and dedicated people who are out to do the very best for children. The education reform movement has managed to brand us as incompetent feeders at the public trough. The Common Core, teacher evaluation based on standardized tests, charter schools and vouchers are all direct slaps in the face of our profession. We need a sufficiently developed "I" to fight back at this lunacy, stand up for our profession and our professionalism and reclaim the high ground.

But while we need to assert the "I" in the equation, we also must remember the "you" and the "we." In education, if you are a teacher the "you" is the children. If you are an administrator the "you" is the child, teacher and the public. As teachers we must be sure to always give our best to the children. This is the essence of professionalism. If our lessons are not the best, we work to improve them because we serve "you" the children. If an individual child struggles we try to determine why, because we serve "you" the individual child with a particular need. If parents don't understand why we gave a particular assignment, we communicate with them as best we can because we serve "you" the parent. As administrators we serve the teachers by making sure that "you" the teachers have the resources and feedback you need to be the best possible teacher and we serve "you" the public, by insuring that we hire, retain and develop the very best educators we can find.

The "we' in classroom and education is the profession. As Ben Franklin said, "We must hang together, or most assuredly we will hang separately." We need to support each other in our profession. This means teachers helping other teachers, administrators helping other administrators, teachers helping administrators and administrators helping teachers. This "we" means never saying to a parent or community member, "Your child should have learned this last year." It means working collegially to improve our practice. It means presenting a picture of a profession that respects all the members of that profession and works at the top levels of its capabilities.

So there it is. Chris Christie has made his pronoun problem a problem for the people of New Jersey and for all who serve public education in New Jersey. Let's fight back by balancing our own "I", "you" and "we."

Does Class Size Matter?

On Monday, I had the pleasure of observing some excellent reading instruction in 4th grade classes in a small town school district in New Jersey. To give you an idea of size, I was able to observe every fourth grade regular education teacher (6) in the district over the period of one school day. Many things jumped out at me during these observations, but nothing was as startling as the class sizes in these six rooms – 12, 13, 11, 18, 19, 20. 

Now, the reaction you have when you read those numbers will depend on who you are. Likely, if you are a teacher you are awed by all the possibilities that classes this small would afford you as a teacher. If you are a parent of a fourth grader, you probably are pleased that your child would be able to get so much individual attention in the class. However, if you are a taxpayer in the district without children in the school, you may see this as a wasteful expenditure. It looks like the district could save lots of money by reducing the staff in half. Finally, if you are a district leader, you are looking at these numbers and trying to determine how to present a responsible budget in difficult financial times, while balancing staffing needs with other expenditures including building maintenance, educational supplies, technology needs, and so forth.

The district I described above is not a wealthy district. It falls in the middle of the pack in terms of socio-economic status. According to a district administrator I talked to, this small town has always prided itself on neighborhood schools and small class sizes. The town's motto is "Small Town, Big Heart." A school board or school leader looking for greater efficiency in the district by consolidating schools would find stiff public resistance.

In 2008 I was working as the Director of Human Resources for a large suburban school district. As part of my responsibility, I was charged with establishing class size guidelines to present to the Board of Education for approval. Obviously, this was a heady responsibility. I went about the job methodically and, I hoped, thoughtfully. I read the research, including the well-known STAR research out of Tennessee that showed that large reductions in class size (from 22-24 down to 12-17) could have educational benefit, especially for at-risk children. I read other research that seemed to indicate that small class size reductions had small impact. Other considerations played a role as well. As a teacher, I had taught classes as large as 39 and as small as 22. I knew in my heart 22 was better. But was it better just for me or better for the students, too?

Another thing I needed to take into consideration was the community expectations. Many families moved to the district because of the high quality of the public schools. They sacrificed a great deal to buy expensive houses and pay high taxes to send their children to a highly respected district. These concerned and vocal parents were not going to stand for high class sizes. Eventually I recommended the following structure.

Grades K-2:                20-22 students
Grades 3-8.                23-25 students
Grades 9-12.              24-27 students

Special consideration was given to some classes with special requirements. Supplemental Instruction was capped at 10 students and high school science at 24 because there were only 24 lab stations in each room.

No sooner were these guidelines approved by the Board, then the recession hit, the State aid to the District was slashed, and hard personnel decisions had to be made that had a incalculable human impact, but also brought the class size parameters under ever deeper scrutiny. I found myself in daily discussions about how far we could stretch the guidelines and where the stretching might have the least educational impact. In the end the guidelines were maintained, but at the upper ends of the ranges.

So class size does matter. It matters to teachers and parents and boards of education and taxpayers and school leaders. But does it matter for students and how does it matter for them. The corporate education reform movement likes to cite the mixed evidence of actual learning gain of students in marginally smaller classes to argue for rewarding "high performing teachers" by paying them more to accept larger classes of students. The idea is to have more students exposed to these top teachers. Makes sense doesn't it?

Well, I suppose it might make some sense if we all defined education as a score on a  standardized test. It might make sense if we could actually reliably determine who "best teachers" are. Unfortunately, and most fortunately, schooling Is much more than a score on a standardized test and teaching is much too complex to be easily quantified.

What do we want children to learn in school? Of course we want them to be able to read and write and compute. But I believe we want so much more. We want children to learn to be good citizens. We want them to learn to think critically. We want them to learn to be knowledgeable consumers. We want them to develop a social conscience. We want them to learn how to get along with others. We want them to feel safe in school. We want them to be allowed to explore their interests. We want them to be nurtured. We want them to learn how to "do school", so they will be successful at the next level of learning and we want them to learn how to "do life" so that they can live a happy and productive life. Is this asking too much of school? Perhaps, but in my experience this is exactly what good schools do and more.

And what do we want from teachers? Yes, we want highly intelligent people who know their content well. We want teachers who are skilled at planning engaging lessons. We want teachers who are skilled diagnosticians, skilled at meeting diverse students needs, skilled at classroom management, dedicated to their work. And we want teachers who are good nurturers, who really listen to children and value their thinking. Would the impact of a great teacher be increased by loading in more students or would it be diluted by the increased demands?

Back when I was teaching those 39 ninth-graders, it really wouldn't have mattered whether I was teaching fifty students or 20 students in the class. At the time, in my first year, I was a stand and deliver teacher. I stood in front and lectured and students took notes and spit back at me what I said. Over time, I learned to be a facilitator of learning, rather than a "sage on the stage." When I made that shift, I truly began to see the benefits of reasonable class sizes. So, it is not just about controlling for class sizes. Teachers must change the way they teach to take full advantage of the smaller sizes. In the schools I visit, especially the elementary schools, this is clearly happening. It is a huge challenge to meet the needs of all students. When students are at-risk the struggle is even greater.

Good teaching matters. Arriving at school ready to learn matters. Class size matters. Policy makers need to insure that teachers get the training they need to take full advantage of reasonable class sizes. They must also look closely at the needs of their students and set guidelines for class size that are most likely to meet those students needs. Yes, class size does matter, not just for the adults in the room, but for the children, also.

A Teacher's New Year’s Resolution: Read Aloud Daily

I was treated to a remarkable experience at my brother’s home this past Sunday, where the family was gathered for an annual holiday celebration. My brother came out to the family room where I was sitting taking in a football game and said, “You better look into the den, your granddaughter is holding court.” I went in to check it out and there I saw my twelve year-old granddaughter, Allison Rainville, reading aloud to a rapt audience of her younger cousins, ages ranging from one to nine. The book was The Polar Express, by Chris Van Allsburg. Allison’s reading was expressive, even dramatic. I thought, “Boy, this kid would definitely score high on a fluent reading rubric.” I was proud of my granddaughter and pleased that the read aloud of a book had captured the children’s attention away from all of the distractions that electronic games, remote control cars and new dolls can create at this time of the year.

So I got to thinking, what would be a great, easy to implement and educationally sound New Year’s resolution for all teachers to make? How about reading aloud to your students daily? I am taking the pledge, also. Even though I now teach in college, read aloud remains relevant and engaging to my 20 somethings. I resolve to read to them at each class.

In this time of Common Core implementation, runaway standardized testing and teacher evaluation based on student performance on these tests, I worry that the daily read aloud may become a casualty of education reform. The truth is, there will never be a time when reading aloud is not a relevant and effective instructional strategy for students. In case your supervisor does not think so, here are ten reasons that read aloud matters that you can put into your lesson plans.

1.    Read aloud helps children relate to reading as a pleasurable experience.

2.    Read aloud provides a rich aesthetic experience for students.

3.    Read aloud exposes students to different text genres and writing styles.

4.    Read aloud provides students with a model of fluent, expressive reading.

5.    Read aloud increases vocabulary.

6.    Read aloud provides opportunities for the teacher to model comprehension strategies.

7.    Read aloud helps young children make connections between speech and print.

8.    Read aloud engages students in more complex text. Typically, children can listen and comprehend text two years above their reading level.

9.    Read aloud helps second language learners become familiar with the sounds and shapes of English.

10. Read aloud helps students learn to ask and answer questions about text.

What should you read aloud? The truth is any text can make for a good read aloud, but I would encourage careful choices based on high quality or high impact texts. Texts for read aloud should be rich in the quality of language used to communicate a message. For younger children, high quality picture books that tell the story through words and pictures will make good choices. For very young children, cumulative stories like The Napping House, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, or Brown Bear, Brown Bear are enjoyable and help students develop oral language. Poetry is written to be read aloud and makes a good choice for read aloud at any age.

You can follow this link to a list of great picture books for children in grades K-2.

You can follow this link to a list of great chapter books to read aloud to students in grades 3-5.

You can follow this link for a list of read alouds aimed at middle school readers.

When reading to high school students, poetry is always a good choice, but I would often find my read-alouds for older students in the pages of the newspaper. I would choose something of local interest or a well-written essay from the op-ed pages to read to the students and often to spur debate. The New York Times gathered a list of recommended articles from its pages for reading aloud to older students. You can find that list here.

So, what do you say? Will you join me in my resolution to read aloud to students every day? It is one of the most powerful uses we can make of our valuable instructional time.

Happy New Year and Joyous Reading to all!

Resource: http://www.education.com/reference/article/reasons-read-aloud-children/

The Limits of Competition: Teaching and Learning Are Not Competitive Sports

When I served as a supervisor of English/Language Arts for a suburban school district, I infuriated a few teachers when I outlawed the Pizza Hut Book It! reading challenge in classrooms. What I said to the teachers at the time was that reading was not a competitive sport. I wanted the teachers and students to see that reading was not about accumulating numbers of books or pages read, but about the joy of interacting with text. Reading competitions cheapen the intended purpose of reading and pervert the act of reading from a “lived through experience” to a dashed off experience. I didn't want children racing through the pages of a book to earn a free pizza, any more than I wanted them sprinting through the hallways on the way to lunch.

Americans are in love with competition. The evidence is all around us. Whether it is Every-Night-of-the-Week Football or American Idol or Survivor, we seek to slake our thirst for competition in myriad ways. Heck, I love competition myself. I played sports as a student and coached sports as a teacher. The athletic field is a good place to decide who is best on this day and at this time. Competition can motivate people to drive themselves to extraordinary feats. The Olympic Games provide a stage for what elite athletes like Michael Phelps can do in the name of competition and country.

American business, too, is built on the idea that competition serves the country and economy best. We are told that competition leads to innovation, reasonable prices and high quality products and job creation in the market place. “Market forces” are the reason, we are told, for America’s economic leadership in the world. We’ll leave aside for a moment that many successful companies seem to mistrust market forces once they have cornered the market. We must agree that competition has served the American business community pretty well over the years.

Education reformers like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and Arne Duncan want to bring “market forces” to bear on education. School choice is one of the hallmarks of this design. We are told that if we allow schools to compete for students, our educational system will improve and so we get legislation and billions of dollars put behind charter schools and voucher schemes.

We are further told that teachers must compete for their jobs. Teachers must prove their “value added” to the educational enterprise through evaluations based on the scores of their students on standardized tests. Students are also brought into the competition. In order for our country to continue its “competitive” edge in the world, our students must be challenged with a more “rigorous” standards based curriculum that will keep us competitive with China, Japan and Finland.

There are three things fatally wrong with this “market forces’ scenario as I see it: 1) schooling is a public trust aimed at creating a knowledgeable citizenry for a democracy, 2) teaching well occurs through collaboration, not competition, 3) learning is socially constructed through the interaction of children, their parents and their teachers. Let’s take a look at these three aspects of the education debate to see where the “market forces” educational reformers group gets it wrong.

In Volume IV of the recently released Program for International Assessment (PISA) report on international education, the authors say “schools that compete with other schools for students do not perform better than schools that don’t compete” (P. 192). This statement was part of a segment on the report providing policy recommendations to educational leaders entitled, Recognize That The Quality of Education Does Not Automatically Respond To Market Mechanisms. Education reformers seem to put a great deal of stock in the PISA results, so I certainly hope they read through Volume IV.

The entire idea of “market forces” in public education is wrong headed. Competition does not and will not make schools better. Schooling is a combined, public responsibility. All charter schools and vouchers do is drain public school districts of scarce resources. The best way to fix a public institution is through a cooperative effort of parents, teachers, educational leaders, education researchers and politicians to help every community get the public schools that they want and need.

Recognizing that poverty is the biggest threat to democracy and long term prosperity would be helpful. About sixty-percent of the variation in student performance in school can be attributed to out of school forces. Another twenty per-cent is determined by in school forces. Only by working to improve the out of school living conditions of children, while at the same time improving the schools that the children are coming to, can we make a real difference in children’s lives. In other words, improving schooling in the United States will take a cooperative effort, not a competitive one.

When I worked as a reading specialist in a K-3 school many years ago, I would lead a monthly “share group” meeting on literacy teaching at 8 AM, forty minutes before teachers were scheduled to report. The meetings were entirely voluntary and very well-attended. At those meetings teachers contributed instructional practices that they were successfully using, discussed books that they were reading with children and shared recent research that they were trying to apply. In other words, teachers were collaborating on their own time to improve their practice.

Teaching well is a collaborative activity. Any new teacher can immediately tell you the teachers who helped smooth over the bumpy beginnings of a career. If we seek to improve professional practice we must foster this collaboration and dedicate resources of time to allow this collaboration to take place. In many school districts now, professional learning communities are forming, either formally under district leadership or informally as I discussed above to improve instructional practice. This movement is very promising, but it is a delicate flower at the beginnings of growth. Draconian teacher evaluation measures based on standardized tests will kill it. If teachers are forced to compete with other teachers for their jobs, the sharing of good practice will inevitably suffer.

I suggest you read some about the atmosphere created at Microsoft by their “stack ranking” practices which were put in place by Bill Gates. Microsoft recently abandoned the practice because it was working against collaboration and innovation, yet education reformers think this is a good way to deal with teachers. As Linda Darling Hammond (2013) has said “New research from the National Center for Literacy Education (NCLE) shows that educators in every subject area and role are eager to work together to deepen literacy learning…. It also showed that educators are committed to common-sense changes to improve teaching and learning practices” (The Answer Sheet). And it is only this cooperative, change from within model that has the potential to make a real difference in the teaching profession. Top-down teacher evaluation competitions will destroy collegiality.

Learning is socially constructed. It literally takes a village of parents, other adults, older children and peers to educate a child. In school, children learn from teachers and other adults in the building as well as from their classmates. Skilled teachers use their abilities not only to provide direct instruction to students, but also to foster a rich learning environment based on teacher-to-student and student-to-student talk. By collaborating with classmates, students expose their own thinking to the community and their learning is reinforced, modified or re-directed. Knowledge is built through the dynamic interaction with teacher, content and peers. Learning is collaborative, not competitive.

There is only one team in public education and all American citizens are on that team. We pay school taxes whether we have children in the public schools or not. We all benefit from the public school as a center for the community. We all have a responsibility to see that the school is well staffed and has adequate resources for the population it serves. Our public schools are not a place for market force competition. Our schools are places for us to demonstrate our collaborative abilities. A place where we all work together, so that all of our children receive the education they deserve.

Putting Students First: What Does that Really Mean?

We can see, if we care to look, that the way we treat children – all of them, not just our own, and especially those in great need – defines the shape of the world we will wake up in tomorrow. – Barbara Kingsolver

My wife, Cindy Mershon, and I were talking over lunch about the perceived and real issues related to education. Cindy said to me, “The real issue is that we don’t value children in this country.” While I tried to digest that statement she went to the library to pull out a book. Then she read me an essay, part of which I quoted above, from Barbara Kingsolver’s collection, High Tide in Tucson.  And so, I began to think about the education reformer battle cry, “We must put children first.”

The so-called education reformers like to say that they want to put children first. And so we get organizations like Students First, Kids First, Achievement First, Just for Kids and we get rhetoric from reformers like Steve Perry, who seems to accuse every reform agenda critic of being anti-child and racist. For the reformers, “Education is the civil rights issue of our time” (Edna Bush, 2013). The clear implication is that educators have not been putting children first, or as Steve Perry puts it, they “put jobs first.”

Reformers look at the dire conditions in urban schools and they decide that the poor teaching and intransigent unions are the cause. Citing the oft repeated shibboleth that the “teacher is the single most important in-school factor in a child’s learning”, they base their remedies on so-called “school choice”, staff “churn” and stripping union members of job protections.

Here are the chief tenets of the reform agenda as I can best discern them:

·         Parents deserve choice in the school they send their children to. Children should not be relegated to a poor school because of their “zip code.” Vouchers will allow parents to choose better schools for their children.

·         Charter schools will use public funds to create “healthy” competition with regular public schools and create replicable models for public schools to follow.

·         Teacher accountability measures must be tied to student scores on standardized tests, so that we can make judgments about the most effective teachers.

·         Teachers whose students score well should receive monetary rewards to “incentivize” high performance.

·         Tenure and seniority rights must be stripped from union negotiated contracts, so that “bad” teachers can be more easily removed.

·         Public schools should adopt a business model of “creative disruption”, where staff “churn” is a featured part of improving performance by a regular removal of the lowest performers.

·         States should loosen teacher certification rules, so that more people can come into the profession without the burden of extensive training in teaching.

·         Curriculum should be tied to a set of national standards that will be the basis for a yearly standardized testing regime.

Sound good? Well, apparently it does to many people judging by what is going on across the country in the name of putting children first. What would be funny, if it were not so horrifying, is that all of the things listed above do not put children first. What they put first is a corporate agenda to privatize public education and profit from it. If the corporate reformers were really serious about putting children first, they could look at the thousands of schools in the country that have strong unions and a wide variety of teachers and who are doing a terrific job of educating children, better even than Finland. How is it that so many schools in the country are doing well, if the problem is teaching quality and unions who want only to protect poor teacher’s jobs?

While the United States is leading the developing world with 22% of its children living in poverty, we have wealthy reformers telling us the problem is lack of school choice and poor teachers. Let’s ask ourselves who profits from a narrative that bashes unions and demonizes teachers. Could it be those famous union bashers like the Walton Family and Michelle Rhee and the other plutocrats behind the pillaging of public education? Or how about that “creative disruption” maven, Bill Gates?

In the U.S. our social programs for children are hands down the worst in the industrialized world. – Barbara Kingsolver

What would an agenda that actually put children first look like? (Many of these were enumerated in Diane Ravitch’s excellent book, Reign of Error.)

·         Excellent pre-natal care for all expectant mothers to be sure every child got a healthy start in life.

·         Excellent child care available for every working mother.

·         Social workers and child psychologists available to advise parents on parenting activities that will help prepare the child for learning.

·         Paying working parents a livable minimum wage so that they can feed, clothe and spend time with their children.

·         Universal quality health care

·         Universal Pre-K education

·         Public libraries in every community

·         Health clinics in every urban public school

·         School counselors in every public school

·         Librarians in every public school

·         A rich curriculum for every child in every public school that includes physical education, the arts and lots of after school enrichment activities.

·         A curriculum that is broad, rich and deep and not narrowed by an overreliance on standardized testing.

·         Strengthening the teaching profession by attracting top level candidates, preparing them well in both content knowledge and pedagogy and encouraging them to work in areas of greatest need through competitive salaries and improved working conditions. Merit pay does not incentivize teachers. It has been tried and it has failed. What professional educators desire most is good working conditions. Good working conditions means reasonable class sizes, a workable schedule, a physical plant in reasonable repair, helpful supervisors and friendly, open colleagues.

·         Improving teacher evaluation so that it is a valuable and integrated part of the profession, which provides meaningful feedback that the teacher can use to improve performance. This requires viewing the teacher as a professional and not a cog in a testing machine.

·         Employing sufficient administrative staff, who are experts in teaching and learning, to provide valuable feedback

·         Working with teacher unions to provide needed support to lower performing teachers until the desired improvement is either made or the teacher is counseled out of the profession. (Yes, this can happen and does happen, see Montgomery County, Maryland’s PAR program for instance.)

What we get from reformers is an easy to sell, but deeply flawed narrative that puts children first in words only. If the agenda of the education reformers is to put children first, where is the outcry from these people when budgets for urban education are slashed as they have been in Philadelphia? Or when 30 neighborhood schools are shut down in Chicago? There is no outrage from the reformers because the denial of funds to public schools plays into reformers hands. They can again point to public education and say it is not working. In corporate parlance they are “starving the beast.” And where in any reasonable sense of "putting the child first" would we be subjecting young children to battery after battery of standardized tests? 

If the reformers really wanted to put children first, they would be fighting for every public dollar that could be found to support quality, neighborhood schools for all children and for living conditions that allow every child to arrive at school secure, healthy, well-fed and well-prepared to learn. When I see education reformers fighting for those things that will truly benefit children, and not their own corporate agenda, I will believe they are willing to put children first. The way we care for our neediest children, in and out of school, is the civil rights issue of our time.

[Children] thrive best when their upbringing is the collective joy and responsibility of families, neighborhoods, communities, and nations.” – Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver quotes from “Somebody’s Baby” in High Tide in Tucson (1995). NY: Harper Collins.

Stories Matter: Where Does Story Fit in the Common Core?

We need to insure that stories are an integral part of our instruction and we need to be able to explain why to those who might challenge this notion in the name of “college and career readiness.”

I have a story to tell you. This week I was attending the annual College Reading and Literacy Association conference in Boston, Massachusetts, to learn from colleagues and to deliver a paper. On Friday afternoon, I delivered my paper, attended a late afternoon session and returned to my room about 6 PM. Being in the city and alone, I searched on the internet to see what plays might be going on that night. I couldn't find anything that struck my fancy, so about 7:20, I decided to walk the few blocks from the hotel to the Boston theater district to see if I could find something interesting. As I turned the corner onto Tremont Street, I saw a large, well-lit marquee declaring “Live from the Dublin Theater Festival, Waiting for Godot, October 31 – November 10.” Perfect, I thought; I had seen the play twice before and enjoyed it, why not see this production direct from Ireland? I wondered why I hadn't seen this on my internet search.

As I walked down the street I noted that there was a large and loud contingent of teenagers and their parents lining the sidewalk. “Must be some American Idol phenom in town,” I thought, as I made my way toward the ticket booth. The lobby of the theater was mobbed with people waiting for the doors of the theater to open, so I had to wriggle my way through them to the ticket booth. I thought, “Nice to see so many young people interested in a Beckett play.”  At the ticket booth, the friendly young woman said that they were nearly sold out, but she was able to find me a sole ticket way up in the mezzanine. “I’ll take it,” I said, feeling fortunate, and forked over my 40 bucks.

Turning away from the ticket booth just as the theater doors opened, the mob of young people, parents, and a few folks of my vintage streamed past me to get to their seats. I looked down at my ticket. It read, Step Africa: A Celebration in Dance. Wait. What? I walked outside and looked up at the marquee once more. There in small print below the ad for “Waiting for Godot”, it read, “Two Nights Only, November 8, 9, Step Afrika.” Hmm… Well I had already purchased the ticket, so I went inside, climbed to the top of the mezzanine, seeing all the young people in the crowd in a whole new light, took my seat and waited for the show to start with a combination of anxious anticipation and amusement.

What I saw was one of the most exhilarating performances I have ever seen. Step Africa is a dance troupe dedicated to the tradition of step dancing that began among the African American college community as a sort of combination of the traditions of tap, African dance and social dancing ( I learned all this from the program.). Whatever the influences, it was an exciting display of rhythm, movement, high energy and sound. Ten young dancers on the stage possessing amazing dexterity and grace. I accidentally walked into a performance I would have never chosen, but was extremely pleased that I got a chance to see. I was thoroughly entertained, but still waiting for Godot.

Why do I tell you this story? Because I think the role of story in the classroom could be undervalued by the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  The CCSS call for 50% informational text in Kindergarten and a gradual increase in that percentage as children move through the grades, along with the call for reading short excerpts and an emphasis on close reading may crowd story out of the curriculum. There seems to be a devaluation of fiction and story in the CCSS focus on making students “college and career ready.” Is there room for story and storytelling on a standardized test? But stories matter and stories deserve a central place in any curriculum. Here’s why.

Story is how we make sense of the world. There is no reading comprehension without a sense of story. My little story above illustrates so many things about life, small and large, not because it is such an exceptional story, but precisely because it is not exceptional. It is a shared experience. Who hasn't made some kind of silly error by not paying attention to the clues around them? Who hasn't gone to see something they thought they would not like and enjoyed it immensely? Story makes us human. Story builds community.

Kathy Short comes to the defense of story in the curriculum in her recent article, “The Role of Story and Literature in a World of Tests and Standards”, which has just been published as a part of a series of articles I highly recommend in the book Whose Knowledge Counts in Government Literacy Policies? by Goodman, Calfee and Goodman. I have discussed other articles from this book in the blog pieces here and here. Short says, “We need to understand why stories are important and why they matter to our students as learners and as human beings and to our work as educators, both in our work in developing curriculum and in addressing the broader political context of public policy and mandates (page 114).”

In other words, we need to insure that stories are an integral part of our instruction and we need to be able to explain why to those who might challenge this notion in the name of “college and career readiness.”

What do we need to know about story? Here is what Short has to say.

·         Story is how we make sense of our experiences

Just as it did in my story above, story allows us to take all the crazy stuff that happens to us during the day and make some sense of it (Rosen as cited in Short, 2014, p. 116). It helps us find meaningful patterns in our world.

·         Story is how we make sense of information

Information does not tend to be retained unless it is connected in some way through a story (Gottschall as cited in Short, 2014, p. 116). This is why effective math, science and history teachers couch new concepts in stories. Remember Archimedes and, “Eureka!” When we tell the story of 9/11, we often begin with the story of how we first heard of the attack on the World Trade Center.

·         Story is how we connect to each other and our histories

Without our stories of the past (growing up during the depression, Marian Anderson singing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, first responders on 9/11) we can’t envision a better world to come.

·         Story is where we explore our fears and our futures

Story allows us to practice for the real life dilemmas we will face. One type of story we all experience is dreams. Dream stories allow us to work out our fears, much like fairy tales help young children work out their fears of abandonment and loss.

·         Story is where we develop values and community

Stories contain life lessons. One lesson the story I told on myself above might be “Pay close attention to your surroundings for clues about what might be happening.” Another lesson is “embrace serendipity;” it can yield unexpected rewards.

·         Story is a way to change the world

Short notes that a book like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, is a story that changed the world. The story of Malala Yousafzai, the Afghan teenager shot by the Taliban because she insisted on attending school is changing the world as we speak.

·         Story is a strength for all learners

As any teacher of primary children can tell you, all children have stories to tell. Short says that the challenge for the teacher is to build on children's strengths through the stories they bring with them. Acceptance of the stories, from many different cultures and backgrounds, must be a valued part of meaning making for all children (p. 118).

Short says that the CCSS call for a 50/50 split for fiction and informational text is a “false dichotomy” (p. 121). Much informational text is told through a narrative structure (Think of books like Gail Gibbons, Monarch Butterfly or Martin Jenkins, The Emperors Egg, both of which are informational text told in narrative form). And then, of course, there is historical fiction like James and Lincoln Collier’s, My Brother Sam is Dead or Irene Hunt’s, Across Five Aprils two books that teach much information in the process of telling a fictional story.

Short is further concerned that the CCSS emphasis on short texts will mean that students are reading truncated stories. A chapter from a good book is not the same as reading the book. Take a look at a typical high school anthology excerpt of “The Iliad” to see if that gives the student a good sense of the story.

Finally, there is the issue of text dependent questions. When the focus of the instruction is first on what the text actually says it robs the student of what Louise Rosenblatt has called the “lived through experience of the text.” Essentially, what this means is that the reader creates his/her own “story” of the text from which all further explorations are based. We need to encourage students to have this lived through experience because without it we lose engagement and without engagement we lose any chance at rigor. Mining the text for what it says explicitly is the necessary next step.

So, no matter what directives we may get in the guise of “college and career ready”, let us remember that all children need story and need to have their stories valued. Our classrooms must remain places where there is plenty of time to create, share and revel in our stories.

Reference

Short, K. (21014). The Role of Story and Literature in a World of Tests and Standards. In K. Goodman, R. Calfee and Y. Goodman (Eds.), Whose Knowledge Counts in Government Literacy Policies? (113-127) New York: Routledge.

Are Teachers Professionals?

How can we counteract the denigration of our profession and demand our place at the decision making table? One way would be to double down on professionalism.

Teachers are currently under siege. Education reformers have targeted teachers as the culprits in what they see as American education’s failure to remain competitive with other countries. Teacher job security, salaries and pensions have come under attack by state governors advancing a misguided reform agenda. Teacher professional associations are vilified as protectors of poor performers. Teach for America is placing recent college graduates with no coursework in education into classrooms after five weeks of training and claiming they are getting great results.

The blog, Thoughts on Education Policy asked the question, Are teachers professionals? Among many reasoned responses, the question elicited this response:

Teachers are not considered to be professionals because they are not. Anyone can become a teacher and it only takes 3 years of playing with paints and learning how to make potato stampers. Teachers are the least (by far) educated of those you tried to compare them to- lawyers, doctors, accountants etc. In many cases teaching is a last minute career choice because people trained in other fields cannot get jobs. I am sick of hearing teachers rating themselves [as professionals]- you have 3 months holidays a year, you are required to work less than 7 hours a day and you only need to train for 3 years and even then the training is at a basic standard.

All righty then.  Do we dare call ourselves professionals in the face of this kind of sentiment?

Here is my favorite definition of profession: a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation (Merriam Webster Online Dictionary retrieved October 26, 2013).

Does teaching fit the definition? Certainly, I believe teaching is a calling. Whenever I ask people why they went into teaching they talk about their love of children, their desire to make a difference in society, the pleasure they get from watching young people’s growing command of challenging skills. Some do say that teaching would allow them to balance a career and a family the way some other professions might not. Most people enter the field because they are called to it. I have encountered many second career teachers, who left a business world they did not find rewarding to teach.

Does teaching require specialized knowledge? Here again the answer is yes. Teachers require specialized knowledge in child development, pedagogy, learning styles, exceptionality, classroom management, lesson design, literacy and much more.

Is the training long and intensive? Well, if we compare the training to that of a doctor or even a lawyer, the answer is no. Teachers can get their license to teach after earning a bachelor’s degree that includes a period of practice teaching. The practice teaching is usually formally one semester, although most schools of education get their pre-service teachers into the classroom for some experience beginning in the sophomore year. From my own experience and from the experience of most teachers I have known, student teaching is intensive. Perhaps it should be more extensive. I doubt that anyone enters the classroom fully prepared and research indicates that it takes about 3-4 years to master the craft.

I believe that teaching easily meets the technical definition of a profession, but many forces keep the public from viewing teaching as a true profession. Among these forces is low pay (never a good route to respect in the US), the number of women in the profession (for ages other professions like doctors and lawyers were male dominated), the characterization of teacher professional associations as unions (think Teamsters), and the fact that all Americans have gone to school and wonder just how hard the job can be. Of course, then there are the old canards about “holidays” off and short work day schedules.

What other profession would have national standards imposed on it without the full participation of the professionals who would be affected by those standards? How is it that the teaching profession was denied a place at the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) table? The CCSS and the supporting materials being distributed with them, the widespread reduction in autonomy that teachers face, the growing movement to put untrained college kids in the classroom and the insistence on tying test scores to performance, all point out that the outside world and especially the education reform world has little regard for teachers as professionals.

How can we counteract the denigration of our profession and demand our place at the decision making table? One way would be to double down on professionalism. It is one thing to be a member of a profession; it is another thing to consistently display professionalism. What would a culture of teacher professionalism look like?

1.    The production of high quality work day in and day out. This will mean well-planned and engaging lessons that have clear objectives and clear ways to assess student achievement of the objectives. Providing students with clear, formative feedback that will help them improve their learning.

2.    A high standard of professional ethics. This will mean putting the student first in all considerations, not in the reformy way that this is used as a battering ram against unions. This means never denigrating a child either to his/her face or in the teacher’s lounge during lunch. It also means never denigrating other professionals with whom you work in front of parents or others. One of the great sadnesses of my career in education was to hear teachers say to students or parents that a previous teacher should have taught something and now the class was behind. Professionals don’t bash each other to their clients.

3.    Insisting on a level of autonomy in your instructional decision making. It is the law in most states that the local school board establish the curriculum and that teachers carry it out. Beyond that it is the professional's job to determine how best to deliver that curriculum to the students in the classroom. We must assert our autonomy in finding the best instructional practices to meet the needs of our students.

4.    Maintaining a consistently collegial attitude toward fellow teachers and supervisors. Teachers must show a willingness to share ideas and provide support to junior colleagues and to learn from all colleagues.

5.    Having the ability and willingness to reflect upon instruction and seek ways to improve performance. Improved performance can come from personal research, dialogue with colleagues or from seeking out relevant professional development opportunities.

6.    Meeting deadlines and keeping accurate records.

7.    Maintaining open lines of communication with parents and members of the public.

8.    Being a life-long learner. This means reading the current journals, keeping up with the research and furthering your education through pursuit of advanced degrees.

9.    Treating professional development opportunities seriously and attempting to learn from every such opportunity. Treating professional development providers with respect (as long as they respect you and observe all the characteristics of professionalism listed here). I recently did a presentation to a group of teachers and afterward a teacher who had attended and was clearly a master teacher, thanked me and said she learned something. I thanked her and said I hoped she learned something she could use in her classroom. She then said, “I always learn something at professional development even though I have been doing this for a long time.” This is a professional attitude.

10.  Being an advocate for children, teachers and teaching. This means writing letters to the editor when the local newspaper supports some reform agenda that is bad for kids and education. It means letting your voice be heard when draconian testing policies are put in place. It means helping the public draw the curtain back on the phony “we’re in it for the kids” rhetoric of the corporate reform movement. It means being a cheerleader for all that is right and good about our profession and a loud and persistent scold about all that is wrong.

What do you say? Let’s stand up and speak out for our calling as a profession. We can do it by modeling professionalism, treating each other as professionals and keeping our voices in front of the public as the concerned, knowledgeable and capable professionals that we are.

Defending Reader Response from the Common Core

The Common Core's "deep reading" approach to literacy and language arts is desperately needed, and will give students… the tools to be prepared for college, career, and life--tools they currently lack. I know because I see these unprepared students in my college classroom.
Prior, Karen Swallow. Why I Support the Common Corps Reading Standards. The Atlantic, April 24, 2013

Sounds great doesn’t it. The writers of the Common Core Reading Standards have provided us with the panacea. These standards will “give” our students the skills they need. Surely we want our students to be deep readers, i.e., to read beyond the surface level, to be able to deeply understand what the author is trying to convey through a thoroughgoing and thoughtful analysis. But to think that stating these goals in a document like the CCCS is going to make it happen is, to quote Janet Emig on a different topic, “to engage in magical thinking.”

Swallow is critical of the “reader response” approach to reading comprehension, as a soft approach that does not ask the students to go beyond a personal connection to the text and ends with surface understandings and miscomprehension of text. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Louise Rosenblatt’s reader response theory would know that reader response is merely a first step toward a deeper understanding of text. Teachers use reader response to get students engaged in the reading so that deeper discussion of the text has a basis in student connections to the text.

No doubt many teachers do not take students much beyond this initial understanding, but that is a flaw in instruction and not in theory. If the standards hold teachers more accountable for following up on reader response, so much the better, but let us not throw out a powerful teaching tool because we think the Common Core demands it.

In fact this is just the point. The Common Core is mute on how to achieve the “deep reading” it requires. It is left to the teachers to determine how this will happen. The Common Core will not “give” the student anything – good teaching will. And good teaching includes having students make personal connections to the text as a basis for deeper understanding.

The Need to Read Aloud

Recently, as I was cleaning out my office, I came across my copy of The Read Aloud Handbook, signed for me by the author, Jim Trelease. More than 30 years ago, I was doing a presentation at a reading conference in New York City. It was one of my first presentations at a large conference like this and I was quite nervous. My topic: The Role of Read Aloud in the Middle School Classroom. I had become a huge advocate of read aloud as an instructional strategy through my graduate work and through the reading of the Trelease book.

After the presentation, which I thought had gone rather well, a gentleman from the audience came up to me and said, "Hi, I'm Jim Trelease." I was floored. Jim Trelease, nationally known author and the country's biggest advocate of read aloud, was in the audience as I stole and shared many of his ideas. I think I stammered something like, "It's a pleasure to met you. I hope you liked what I had to say." In my mind I was thinking, "Oh my god, I hope I credited him appropriately."

He said kindly, "Absolutely, I think you were right on the mark. And thanks for plugging my book." He was very gracious, signed my copy of his book for me and gave me his phone number so we could stay in touch.

Over the years we ran into each other at subsequent conferences and he never failed to remember me and take a moment to talk about our work.

I bring this up now because I fear for the place of read aloud in our schools today. Only six years ago, with the encouragement of my then Superintendent, Sam Stewart, I had decreed that every student in every school in our district would be read to at least once a day. Now, I hear from many teachers that read aloud is being crowded out of the curriculum. Read aloud is an endangered species because of the creeping demands of accountability and testing. In an atmosphere where teachers feel under siege and where standardized test scores are high stakes, an apparent "soft" part of the curriculum, like read aloud, may get crowded out.

So perhaps now is a good time to revisit Jim Trelease and remind ourselves of the critical learning that results from children being read to every day.

• Read aloud conditions the brain to view reading as a pleasurable activity
• Read aloud builds background knowledge
• Read aloud builds vocabulary
• Read aloud provides a fluent reading model for children

The most skilled teacher would be hard pressed to design an activity that has that much bang for the buck. When an administrator asks you your goals for read aloud, recite the list above. Fight for the right to read aloud to your students. We must read to our students every day. To fail to do so is educational malpractice.