No AP Classes?

From the NYT, an article on how the Scarsdale, NY school district has cut the AP courses from their curriculum, focusing on deep thinking in classes of similar topics. Kids are still taking the AP tests at the end of the year, but they aren't forced to "get through" all of the material.

Fascinating.

Cheating & Education

Here's an editorial-type article (?) on cheating in schools. Fascinating to me mostly because my research in graduate school was on cheating and academic honesty. I've got a lot of data on this stuff!

Also, working 50 hours a week really, really blows sometimes. It's like the weekend doesn't even exist.

Manifesto: What a Week/end!

Teachers are busy people. We appear to not work all that many hours in a day, if you compute hours worked by time actually in front of a classroom full of kids. By that measure, someone might calculate that I work for 200 to 275 minutes per day, which is 3.3 to 4.6 hours per day, give or take. Cushy! If only that were so...

I arrive at school at about 7:30 am, 45 minutes before school begins. In those 45 minutes, I check in with colleagues, print and photocopy papers to hand out to children, write and answer emails to colleagues and parents, and check in with kids to see how they're doing, plus grade, plan, or compute grades.

During my "free time" at school, I evaluate lessons that I have already given, plan new ones, try to divine which one of my students might be having trouble and why, grade papers. I often stay at school until close to 6pm, working on the same sorts of issues as I do during my "free" periods at school, plus going to department, faculty, and other types of meetings. Then I often work another 2+ hours at home.

My weekend was full of school commitments too, with Homecoming on Saturday -- floats to watch, parents to schmooze, games to watch, and a dance to chaperone, until nearly midnight. Not to mention the 12-ish hours that I put in doing planning and grading between Friday night and late this afternoon.

Admittedly, I have a heavy load this year, with new classes to prepare for and some extra voluntary commitments for school. But I don't know a teacher worth their salt who doesn't put in this sort of work. It's why the teacher burnout rate is high and its hard to keep hardworking people in the job, especially given the money that is paid. (Yeah, I only get paid for working 40 weeks of the year, but if you think that good teaching doesn't require summer work, you'd be wrong. This past summer, I spent about 2 hours per day working, without extra compensation.)

I love my job because I love hanging out with kids. There's no better place to laugh and it's possible to be so silly and instill such a love for history and learning and have an influence on the individual development of young people. I don't know what the answer is to a teacher shortage and high burnout rate -- the people who are drawn to teaching are often those who thrive on a high level of activity and stress. People understand what my job title is, but they don't understand why I teach.

Science and Education...

though not at the same time. First, a little moping about Monday -- if I don't believe in them anymore, does that mean they won't exist? The same goes for the fall and the fact that we're past the equinox. I didn't vote for that!

And now, on to the show:
- From the NYT, an article about a glacial pothole that has been found under the site of the World Trade Center construction site. Very fascinating for the geologists among us. And for me too.
- From the Christian Science Monitor, an article about people who might want to become teachers.
- Also from the NYT, something about the call for less emphasis on SAT tests. Dude, that debate is SO 10+ years ago!

Treading Water

I feel swamped but not overwhelmed with schoolwork at the moment. I think I would be overwhelmed if not for the summer work I put in. Thank goodness I did. I'm relatively caught up on grading, relatively on top of what I'm doing at any given moment. Of course, I'm already "behind" in the freshman class, but that's ok, I think. It'll all work out the right way, even if we don't read all of the last book. Fortunately, the last one that we're scheduled to read this year is a series of short pieces, really, so we can skip around if needed.

Wednesday, more than halfway through the week, yay!

Politics depresses me right now, as I'm desperately scared that the wrong people will win the Presidential election in November. On the other hand, I'm always up for talking about the state of education, so here are a few things of note:

- from the NYT, something on a public prep school in Yonkers
- in addition from the NYT, their blog on teaching

Equity in Education

So, here's an article from the NYT (it's been a while, right?) about the struggle to rebuild schools in New Orleans, post-Katrina. Even more than rebuilding, the educators are in the middle of attempting to re-imagine what schools can be and build that. They don't want to replicate the previous, broken system, they want to try new things and see what happens. They're using a combination of the charter school models to ramp up achievement and achieve some measure of equity for the students in the city. Fascinating use of the "big names" in school reform organizations: Teach for America, KIPP, New Leaders for New Schools. They've all managed to get young idealistic types to leave what they were doing wherever else in the country to go there to essentially experiment on the kids. The level of experimentation is scary, but admirable: no one's arguing that what they had before was a good thing, and no one really knows what the right answer is in terms of doing right by those kids. Something new is what's wanted, needed. Returning to the status quo is not an option.

The Week

I've spent a week in western NH, attending a week-long session on coaching professional development groups for teachers. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and learned a lot. It's a type of interactions that my internship school used and that I wanted to bring to my current school. Being back in the environment of these groups and the procedures reminds me so strongly of my internship year -- and that feels good on some level. The thing which initially sparked memories was the language surrounding the ideas -- it's unique and culty, in a good way. I'm excited about asking my colleagues to join my group.

Interesting stuff for the week:
- seeing a black bear cross the road on the way to my class on Tuesday morning
- our group leader quoted the following on Wed:
"Sit down and be quiet. You are drunk and this is the edge of the roof." (Rumi)

Other stuff too. I'm so mentally through that I can't conceive of spending another day doing the work. I need to sleep again.

Textbooks

From the NYT, an article on textbooks, digitized textbooks, and the illegal electronic sharing thereof. Commentary on the costs of books, the used textbook market, and the new digital textbook frontiers.

I think that maybe if textbook publishers quit sending so many free copies to instructors, schools, departments UNREQUESTED then they might see their costs go down and therefore have less need to pass it on.

That and the practice of updating the damn things every year, especially when it's something that doesn't change all that much...

NH, part 1

I arrived in NH on Wednesday, leaving MD at 6 am and managing to make the drive in a mere 10.5 hours. I think that's my fastest time yet. According to the map sites, if you drive up 95 and through NYC, it should take about 9, but I don't go on 95 and I don't go through NYC. No thank you.

We spent yesterday having our annual family reunion, with people who we don't get to see very often, but who are lots of fun. It was nice to have a family gathering sans funeral/memorial service.

Working hard on my schoolwork for next year, which I'm hoping to make a major dent in this week... Here's something from the NYT for today, on methods and formulas for school diversification. The new integration ideas concentrate on multiple measures of diversity, i.e. more than just race -- and are considering socio-economic status, which is probably a good thing.

Science, Education, & College

From the NYT, an article on increasing the number of women in science and science departments' relationship to Title IX.

I'm a little bit irritated that the author referenced the idea of women taking up science when there were strong, positive role models and then didn't check on stats/information from the women's colleges. Title IX was only instituted in the early 70's and it's just going to take a while for that effect to fully trickle into college departments -- for there to be women with PhD's to hire in equal numbers who can then encourage college women to go for degrees in science too. 30 years is not long enough to fix the "pipeline problem." Check the stats on women's colleges -- they turn out science degrees (and they go on to earn PhD's) in much higher proportions than at the co-ed schools and I'd bet that it's because of the role models and the can-do-anything atmosphere that prevails at such schools. The bias is subtle at co-ed schools, but I'd bet it's there, same as it ever was.

More on Education

So, I spent the past week at teacher training to teach AP United States history next year. Yes, I will be teaching to the test. Hopefully, the kids will buy in and generate some good scores over the course of the year and then on the exam. I've got about 5 inches of paper that is comprised of lesson plans, activities, essays, multiple choice questions, and the like. I know how the thing is scored and that the multiple choice section drives the test. I have the tools to teach the thing. Now all I have to do is go back and reconsider the syllabus that I submitted to the AP people, since it's probably a tad bit... wrong.

In other news, here's an article from Slate on the hiring of public school teachers. It's interesting, from the standpoint that it links studies done about the effectiveness of teachers in raising test scores and tries to then figure out where the common factors are in having effective teachers. (Turns out, it's nearly a mystery.) And it's also pretty anti-union, but again, that's understandable, since people tend to see the teachers' union as the reason bad teachers are able to stay in their jobs.

American History

So, I'm teaching American history next year, both AP and regular. It will be my first time with both of these courses. And I realized as I was sitting in my AP teacher training class today in Baltimore that I've missed American history. There's so much that I really get frosted about in my country's history, but then there's also a lot that I really like. I wish that women (and African-Americans) had gained the right to vote earlier, but better late than never, eh? Civil rights, more generally, same thing. There's this capacity to take stock and at least attempt to do the right thing, albeit slowly, too slowly, and never quite enough, but change does come in the United States, social and diplomatic and political change does come.

Hence my hopefulness, despite my incredibly jaded view of American history, that change will come in November.

Impressive, eh? A post completely without specifics and linking change in American history to current politics!

Tenure for Public School Educators

So, here's an interesting article from The Washington Post which details negotiations between the DC teachers union and the school district. It's ultimately about a proposal which would offer teachers more money to give up their tenure. Teacher tenure for public school teachers is one of those really divisive issues for some in education. I get why some people
are bothered by it, the idea that teachers could be good for three years and then get really lazy once they get tenure, knowing that it's much harder to fire a teacher after they have tenure. Tenure is appealing for school districts because it's not transferable and they know that once teachers get it, they are unlikely to switch districts willy-nilly and there's something to be said for retention of staff. Tenure is appealing for teachers because there's a sense that it allows teachers to be more free with their students & subjects -- especially if you teach a potentially controversial subject like, say, social studies.

From the POV of the school district, I get why they would be willing to do this, pay teachers more with the understanding that their heads are always on the chopping block. On the other hand, the idea of tying teacher pay to student testing is scary to me. So much goes into whether a kid does well on a standardized test outside of the effort that an individual teacher puts into her or his classroom. Kid's sick that morning or just discovered that her parents are getting a divorce and there goes those test scores, no matter how well-educated the kid is. This is especially tricky in a city district like DC, where a higher percentage of the population of children is dealing with the issues that keep kids from learning, like being poor or hungry or homeless or having an otherwise less-than-ideal home life.

On the other hand, we've tried it the other way and it hasn't worked so hot, so let's give it a whirl and see what happens.

More on Education

Some history of school reform, in the form of what exactly went on the 1980's with the report called "A Nation at Risk" and what the author sees as the risk today. I think that he probably has it right -- that the challenge is making sure that all of our students have access to good quality education, even those traditionally underserved by the system. What's amazing about that? I have no idea. I feel like that's what the Breakthrough Collaborative (formerly Summerbridge) has been saying for years. Seriously, this is news?

Also from the NYT, "Informal Style of Electronic Messages is Showing Up in Schoolwork, Study Finds." First: they did a STUDY on this? And second, duh.

Grading

Well, here I am, faced with a big old stack of 38 essays to grade. (2 more will appear on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.) I like assigning essays, since I know that it makes the kids better writers to actually do it. But that all goes out the window when it's time to, you know, grade them. Grading is so horrific. I hate that I have to rate students, especially knowing that it affects their self-esteem. (I know it used to affect mine. I rarely ever read a comment on a paper that a teacher or professor wrote until senior year of college.) I wish there was some other way to assess their work without grading. Or testing. Granted papers and projects are better methods of assessment than, say, standardized tests, but still. It's a struggle.

I wonder how much my grading has changed since I was an intern? That year, the kids used to call me "C is for Cynthia." Apparently, I was a tough one. (Seriously, though? There's no excuse for not knowing how to correctly punctuate a sentence when you are in high school. That's the part with rules. Constructing an argument is much more difficult than knowing where to put a comma or whether to use two, to, or too.)

As pain in the ass as my Summerbridge weekly evaluations were, at least they were more descriptive of what the kids could do. I feel like the B+ tells parents and students nothing, which I guess is where our comments come in. But it was easier to be detailed in the weekly evaluations because we only had 8-10 students or whatever. I have 75... (which is nothing compared to some public schools)

Students Changing the World

An 8th grade student at the school where I teach has an idea: to have a memorial day for all of those caught up in the middle of wars, not the soldiers (as we already have days to remember them), but the innocent bystanders. He would like to present this idea to as many people as possible and work up to Congress and the United Nations.

Think he's a smarty pants? You bet he is. (A good public speaker too.)

Sign his petition, link to it, tell your friends.

Got some media influence that you wouldn't mind exercising? Lemme know all about it.

Rainy Sunday

Some more on education, from The Christian Science Monitor: a study on the effectiveness of Teach for America teachers -- and it turns out that the program is doing well, better than traditionally trained teachers in some subject areas. What I particularly like about the article is that it makes note of the fact that the program is incredibly selective (21% acceptance rate, from top colleges and universities). Although I adored my program (at a public university in New England) and learned quite a bit, I definitely think that it was a money maker for the university -- if you could pay, they would let you in, or at least that was my perception.

"One challenge with a model like TFA is that it's hard to replicate, says Douglas Harris, an educational policy professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The study suggests more broadly, he says, that people should be open-minded about 'all sorts of possible alternative routes to [teacher] certification.'

Cognitive ability is an important predictor of worker effectiveness in complex occupations like teaching, Mr. Harris's research has found. So alternative programs could be useful, for instance, if they draw in candidates who 'learn faster and learn better,' he says."

Mmm, Nerdiness

History alert: article about train tunnels (and building new ones)

Museum in western Mass (one of my favorite places on earth)

Something on the difficulty of creating rules for schools, especially middle schoolers.

Cricket in NYC Schools

From the NYT: Cricket is the newest sport being played in NYC schools. Wow.

Slate: Fixing It

Slate (online magazine) has initiated a series of articles to outline what needs to be done to fix what the Current Occupant (to borrow a phrase from Garrison Keillor) has done during his time in office. This one's about education.

"The act is at once the Bush administration's signature piece of education legislation, its most significant domestic policy initiative, and the most intrusive federal education law in our nation's history. The federal government provides less than 10 percent of all education funding, yet NCLB drives education policy in every school district in the country."

Being that NCLB [No Child Left Behind] is one of the reasons I left public education, it's nice to hear someone actually point out the disparities between the requirements of NCLB and the funding provided by the Feds.

Are there things wrong with public education? Don't get me started. But the way to fix them is not with NCLB, at least not as it's currently written. There are good goals in the NCLB: "creating high goals for all schools, ensuring accountability for meeting them, and focusing attention on disadvantaged and minority students who are too often ignored" but excessive standardized testing, exacerbating the culture of shallow, over-broad, disconnected learning is not going to fix it.

"Standardized test results tend to track socioeconomic status." 'Nuf said. You can tell more from SAT scores about the kind of car a kid's parent drives than you can accurately predict their success in college.

I don't agree with their stance that it's time to create national standards in subjects, simply because the Feds aren't providing the funding for all schools in the nation. (That's my Libertarian/New Hampshire streak showing.) Large states with weirdly conservative standards is what has corrupted the textbook industry, at least in my subject, history/social studies -- I think national standards will eliminate the creativity of individual teachers.