This is the first in a series about subtle paradigm shifts that need to occur in education.

Joel picks up a lizard and places it on the sliding glass door.  "Its fingers or toes . . . I think they're toes.  His toes are stuck to the door."  At another time, I might engage him in the question about why he's using "he" as a default.  However, right now isn't the ideal time for a conversation on language and gender.

Joel looks closer and offers a hypothesis, "I think his tail is part of how he stays balanced."

He adds another lizard to the door, studies it and then adds three more.  Finally, he decides to hold the lizards in his hands to get a feel for how they stick to things.  "There's no slime or anything.  It's not wet," he informs me.

*     *     *

When I was in college, I learned that objectives had to be "observable behaviors."  It was all part of the Skinner's patented pigeon-in-a-box method of learning.  Professors warned us that we had to have quantified data in the form of specific behaviors in order to assess learning.

"Don't tell a child to differentiate between the causes of the Civil War.  You need to say that students will differentiate four out of five causes of the Civil War given a fill-in-the-blank test.  See the difference.  You can't measure the first."

I can't measure the inquiry and creativity of studying lizards, either.  Learning is a cognitive process.  Objectives that obsess with "observable behaviors" fail to recognize that it is not a mental journey that exists within the individual student.  Sometimes learning cannot be easily observed.  Often, it cannot be measured.

And yet . . .

I've often fallen into the trap of viewing learning as something that simply happens in the mind alone.  I've treated education as an abstract process contained within the cerebrum (and occasionally the amygdala if we're getting emotional).  For all my talk of "the whole child" I often fail to remember that learning is an action.  Typing a blog post is an action.  Picking up lizards is an action.  Reading a book is an action.

There is no make-believe "up-in-the-clouds" zone of cognition followed by a set of actions.  Even the act of silently reflecting is simply that - an action.  When I treat learning as simply an act of cognition, I fail to grasp the fact that it is a full-scale, multi-sensory action.  When I treat learning as simply a behavior, I assume that it is all external, all good-bad and based upon a set of reinforcements.

If I can remember that learning is an action, I'm more apt to treat students as whole people with the need to engage with their world uses all five senses.  However, I'll also remember that the mind is engaged in a mental journey that is often a mystery to me and perhaps even a mystery to the student.  I'll recognize that learning doesn't exist in a make-believe abstract vapor, but that it also doesn't exist as a set of reinforcements in a Skinner Box.

 

November is National Novel Writing Month (or something like that) and so I'm going to take the plunge and write A Wall for Zombies.  I'll be posting it to a Google Docs and then self-publishing it in early December.  I plan to write it in twenty days, edit it in ten days and see where it goes.  The image above is a concept cover.  I'd love to hear some feedback.

The story begins with the premise that zombies are not inhuman monsters so much as a misunderstood and marginalized people group.  Everything from their oral traditions ("the mind is a feast for all the enjoy"), to their meditation rituals (slow walk) to their homes (rising up from the ground) have been misinterpreted by missionaries, politicians and popular perception that they are "the living dead" hell-bent on a Zombie Apocalypse.

After years of being forced to repress their cultural identity, shared stories and language, they are now granted official protection as a nation.  Zach relocates with the rest of his zombie family.  After a few examples of "zombie bounty hunter" violence, the fledgling nation decides to build a massive wall.  As Zach struggles to make sense of his cultural identity, he grows skeptical of the wall, the troops and the motives behind the Zombie Relocation Program.

I read a post yesterday about how to be a bad teacher.  I respect the author, but I couldn't help but feel a vague sense of shame after reading it.  I know it wasn't her intent, but I thought about the list - losing your temper, being on Twitter, saying negative things about students - and it struck me that on some level that was me during my first year.

I struggled my first year.  The students were hard (eighth grade isn't always easy) and I grew impatient.  I was a buddy and a drill sergeant and a bunch of things that I didn't want to be.  I yelled at one of my classes at least once a week.  I really lost it once or twice.  I relied on bribes (I think they were called PAT points) to get kids to behave.

I read books about how to be an effective teacher.  I spent hours reflecting.  As my wife moved further along in pregnancy, I still found myself over-analyzing the day's lessons and trying to get a grip on the classroom climate I was developing.  Sure, we did some cool projects.  We started a class magazine and filmed our first documentary.  However, I constantly slipped up.

Fridays were the worst.  It's when I would walk into the copy room in solitude and feel like a failure.  For all the talk about effectiveness, I felt behind the curve.  And maybe I was.  Instead of being honest with other staff members, I wore a mask of competence and relished my role as a rebel.

So, with that in mind, I'm writing a letter to new teachers. I probably have no business doing this, but here it is:


Dear New Teachers,

Chances are you're overwhelmed, exhausted and maybe even a little insecure.  I know that NCLB calls you Highly Qualified, but chances are you're not there yet.  You know it.  Your students know it.  Chances are the staff around you knows it.

But here's the cool part: it gets better.  It really does.  You'll lose your temper less often or you'll learn to speak with more authority.  You'll grow in your ability to differentiate instruction.  You'll get ahead of the paperwork.  You'll never truly master it all.  Teaching will always be challenging, but seriously, it gets better.

It's common in the first year to be terrified by the sense that you're failing.  It's tempting to get angry with the context and with the system or even with the students.  Yet, the ultimate measure of success is less about achievement and more about your attitude.  Ultimately, what will make you a good teacher is humility.  Will you be open about where you are struggling?  Will you be vulnerable with a small bad of friends that you trust?  Will you take ownership of the areas where you are weak so that you can grow?  If you get frustrated with students will you think through how you can shift your approach?

If you are responding with humility, chances are you're on the road to success.  You're willing to learn and you'll be okay.

Sincerely,
John

 

The Issue:
Computational fluency is an issue in the classroom.   I watch students count by fingers, hands hidden under the desk, trying their best to recall the trick they had learned years ago about multiplying by nines. Others struggle to remember how to apply the Order of Operations to a basic algorithm.

When I ask teachers about it, they say complain about New Math (I'm not really sure what that means) and about the lack of memorization.  They explain that there are too many standards to cover.  Others talk about the need for higher expectations.

On some level, they might be right.  Maybe students do need to memorize facts.  Perhaps they are struggling through low expectations.  However, I've noticed that the solution presented is often "do more" rather than "think better."  This approach only reinforces the problem.  Students need to practice computation.  However, when they practice it incorrectly, it becomes hard to reverse the misconception.

I'm not against having students practice computation.  However, it seems to me that the practice should occur after they have practiced slowly with immediate feedback.  So, if students are learning about decimals, fractions and percents, they need to understand the concept first and then they need to practice with three or four problems (especially ones rooted in an authentic context) with the chance to reflect upon their mistakes, their processes and the alternate methods used to solve such problems.

I'm not against having students practice math computation.  It is a small but significant part of mathematical thinking. There is nothing wrong with students completing ten to twenty problems in one setting, if they need to practice the application of the concepts and skills they have learned.  However, the practice needs to occur after the concepts have been attained and after the students have a basic understanding of the skill.

Reasons for Slowing Down:

1. Students need to wrestle with harder problems, even if the process is slower. 
2. Students need to share their process with other members of a group and compare the various methods used in computation. 
3. Students need instant feedback so that they do not waste time practicing with bold misconceptions and shaky skills. 
4. Students need to reflect upon their mistakes, methods and concept attainment.  
5. Students need to use computation that is rooted in an authentic context.  

 

I'll let Natalie Merchant say it best -- a hundred times over

Dear Readers,

Sometimes on a real hard day when my ideas feel a little too crazy and this vocation feels a little too lonely, the feedback I get from readers makes all the difference.  Although I'm skeptical about the notion of "online community," it often feels like a community.  I've met some of you in person.  I've met others through blogging.  However, regardless of the interactions, I appreciate the way you have listened, questioned, commented and pushed my thinking.  Thanks.

As a small token of appreciation, I'm selling all of my books on Kindle for a dollar. Click below for a link:

A Sustainable Start

Drawn Into Danger

Pencil Me In

Sages and Lunatics

Teaching Unmasked

If you've enjoyed any of the books, it would mean a lot if you offered some feedback by either an e-mail or a review on Amazon.com.

Thanks,
John

I'm surrounded by a group of intellectuals, feeling outside of my league.  I can keep pace with them on philosophy and current events, but I'm lost when the the conversation turns to the Oxford Comma.  (Note the proper noun.  It is very proper, indeed.)

"We used to argue about the Oxford Comma back when I was a freshmen."

"Wasn't it nice to get out of high school and have peers who also enjoyed good literature?"

"Or to be able to listen to indie artists and not be mocked for it," another says.

I grow silent as they move into the topics of art house films, travelling to Europe and the sense of community that they miss.  A man notices my silence and says, "Where did you go to college?" and my response is, "I just went to ASU."  They crack a few jokes about it being a party school and move on.

I omit my years at Glendale Community College, because it feels, in the moment, like admitting to a crack addiction or time in prison and these are people whose water is always tepid rather than lukewarm.  I have no business showing my Gaucho pride.

I rarely get to hang around with intellectual elites.  However, on the rare occasion that people in the room boast of their former schools, I explain, "I went to this real small community-oriented college.  It had some of the most knowledgable professors in an intimate, seminar-styled setting.  You might of heard of it: GCC."

The response tends to be laughter.  They chalk it up to hipster irony, but the truth is that community college is America's best kept secret.  Here's list of why I liked community college:

• The professors: My professors tended to be knowledgable (as well-educated as my university professors), available (no grad students teachings the class) and undistracted.  They weren't interested in research as much as teaching.  I realize that there's an upside to the research that goes on in the university, but it was refreshing to have teachers who simply loved the subject and the chance to teach it. 
• Smaller classes: not only did this mean I got a chance to sit in small classes (that grew smaller as the semester progressed) but I got to hang out with several of them after class.   Smaller classes meant more discussion and more classroom activities that moved beyond the zone of lecture. 
• Unpretentious Peer Group: this was huge for me.  I hung out with jocks, skaters and burnouts.  But I also got to hang out with single moms going back to school, international students trying to learn English and folks my grandparents age who never stopped learning.
• Variety: there was a sense at GCC that I could be undeclared as long as I pleased.  Hell, everyone was undeclared.  If you showed up to class at all, you were among the top of the class.  In the process, I put together a patchwork of humanities classes and then added physical geography, computer programming and communication. 
• Cheap: If I'm going to earn a degree, why should I pay more for the prestige that comes with a name?  
• Challenging: Oftentimes at the university, I ran into professors who defined rigor as simply reading and writing more.  There wasn't a sense of reading slowly and annotating a text, debating the ideas or writing for a deeper purpose.  However, at community college, there was a sense that  the student body was busy.  They weren't simply partying all the time.  What this meant was that professors tended to give difficult work rather than require more work.  

Perhaps there is a reason that people mock community colleges so often.  I admit that my view is limited to two and a half years in one campus.  However, my own experiences suggest that maybe it's time that people rethink the way we view community college. 

Photo Credit: Susan High on Flickr Creative Commons

 

Quinn the Business Bohemian meets me for coffee.  Both of us drive our vehicles without a question of whether they will start.  Both of us pay our two-fifty without thinking about where we will get our next meal.  We talk briefly about the Occupy Everything protests.

"On a global scale, we are the one percent," he reminds me.  "When I went to Sweden, I was a tourist.  I was treated like a king.  Then I watched the way they despised the Saudi Arabian immigrants."

I think about a picture of protestors.  Two of them tapped away on MacBooks that were manufactured by labor in underdeveloped and developing countries.

"I went to a birthday party a few weeks back and I was the racial minority.  It felt uncomfortable.  I forget the power inherit in this sense of comfort that you feel," I tell him.

"I wrote a blog post recently about being a man in the business world.  If I was a woman and acted the way I do, people would call me a bitch," he explains.

"The tough part of inheriting injustice is that it affects everyone, both the victims and the beneficiaries.  We never asked for this power, but we haven't exactly let go of it," I say.

We talk for awhile about our privilege and the myth that we have gained our place through hard work.  We are the product of privilege.  In both a geographical and historical context, I have the winning lottery ticket.

So, it has me thinking about the protests and the notion of "the other 99%" and "occupying" space.  For all the talk of occupying Arizona, the reality is that I live on occupied land, taken by conquest first from indigenous nations and then from Mexico. I can complain about trust fund babies and nepotism, but I am the beneficiary of a geographic trust fund. By accident of birth, I inherited white, middle class privilege in ways that I am still coming to terms with.

I struggle to come to terms with what to do with this reality.  As a teacher, it means I approach students with the knowledge that I have to step down humbly in ways that I might not in the suburbs.  It means I have to remind parents that they should hold as much or more power than me (despite being marginalized).  It means I have to be honest in teaching social studies instead of being "neutral."  I need to tell students about American conquest and genocide.

It gets trickier in our neighborhood or at church or in other social contexts.  I don't think there is a how-to list of dealing with power and privilege.  However, I believe that awareness and humility have to be part of the solution.

 

My response to a meme where I was tagged by "Mr. Foteah" and Joan Young

The question of "why do you write?" is an easy one for me.  I have written consistently since the third grade when I first attempted a Scooby Doo knock-off novel.  I began journaling in middle school and writing poetry in high school.  I write, because I am a writer.  It's in my blood and it's so intimate to me that it's not really an option.

The answer to "why do you blog?" is a bit more complicated.

I first began blogging as a way to share my private thoughts with a larger group.  I wrote on Myspace and Blogger as a way to recapture the sense of community I was already losing straight out of college.  I wrote about broken car doors, politics, suburbia and the irony of life.  I shared stories about being a new father and my fears that I would be a failure.

Every once in awhile a friend would leave a comment and I felt elated, but neither Quinn nor Dustin nor I were ever that faithful in leaving comments.

A year later, I began blogging on TeacherLingo.  I felt shocked and even a little scared when strangers began asking hard questions and leaving meaningful comments.  Slowly, I began to see that my voice mattered.  My initial blog title "Musings from a Not-So-Master Teacher" fit well, because I had, for the first time ever, a place and a method where I could share how I really felt as a teacher who was crushed by the system.  I could be vulnerable about times I lost my temper.  Instead of facing the judgment of peers, I experienced a certain acceptance that saved me from burnout during some really confusing transitions.

Over time, I began to read more blogs.  I joined Twitter and engaged in the conversations around reform and practice.  I found, in this PLN concept, a community of educators who pushed me to think differently (especially some of the writers on the Cooperative Catalyst) along with some kindred spirits who wrote in a way that connected with my soul (especially Stephen Davis and Michael Doyle) along with several more who challenged my thinking, offered fresh ideas and asked meaningful questions.  

I've done everything wrong.  I don't have a "key issue" that I champion.  I've changed the layout and title more times than I should.  I've created far too many other blogs (Living Facebook, Pencil Integration, Ditch that Word, Letters to Personified Technology, Not Easily Trained, Reasons I Love Teaching) that I've either abandoned or neglected.  More recently, I'm recognizing that these mistakes aren't all bad.  They are me and not "my brand."  If I'm someone who starts and stops projects in "real life" why should my "blogging life" be all that different?

Despite these mistakes, I have been surprised by the recognition I've received as a blogger.  I was shocked to be invited to TeachPaperless and The Cooperative Catalyst.  I've been surprised each time I was nominated for an Edublog Award.  I'm often shocked by the number of views and retweets I get on a single post.

I'm not sure how to answer the questions "Why do you blog?" or "What do you get out of it?"  I blog because of the conversation that leads to better teaching and sometimes out of a pride and arrogance of being noticed.  I blog because I want to express my voice in an online world and sometimes the motives are positive and other times, they're pretty selfish.

 

The 49ers are four and one this season and a major difference between the games they won and the game they lost has to do with learning to let go.  All of last season, Alex Smith threw ridiculous interceptions when he was nervous.  It didn't help to have a mad-as-hell coach in his face shaming him for something he really couldn't control.

This season (aside from the game against the Cowboys), he has learned to throw the ball away.  Instead of spending ages in the pocket and taking a sack or trying to force the ball into heavy coverage, he has realized that there really are four downs to get ten yards.   It's a lesson that Kevin Kolb is still learning with the Cardinals and it's a lesson I struggled to learn as a rookie teacher.

See, I had these lesson plans set up as my playbook.  Occasionally, I felt the urge to call an audible, but I felt committed to making the lessons work each time.   I would have a confused class, a fire drill or a discipline issue and my response was almost always a rushed attempt at a completion.  Sometimes it worked.  The students "got" it.*

Often, though, the students failed to grasp the concept.  Instead of forward progress, I would turn the ball over to apathy, confusion and mixed concept attainment.  Sometimes students completed whole projects that turned out to be a waste of time and led to vast misunderstandings of history.

Other times, I waited too long.  I wanted to make sure that every student understood the concept and with the sheer amount of waiting, I would be sacked - tossed to the ground in negative yardage by boredom and anger while so many students couldn't understand why I had left them open too long.

I was too arrogant to throw the ball away and say, "Look class, this lesson wasn't working" or "this project wasn't well constructed."  I didn't realize the power in tossing the ball away, giving up a down and coming back with a new play.


*I know, I know, it's not about content delivery, but about student construction of knowledge.  Football metaphors are probably a dangerous territory for a teacher.  I've learned, in time, that if it is a game of football, it's one where we each customize our routes and run a no-huddle offense.  We work as a team and learn together toward a goal that goes far beyond anything a football metaphor can handle.   

photo credit - Roger Smith

 

Recently, I had a chance to view Mitchell 20, a documentary dealing with a low-income school situated right outside of my school district.  Here's my review:

We need better stories of real education reform.  In a large-scale corporate reform movement, the most dominant voices demand that the public waits for a Superman.  A billionaire self-proclaimed fix-it man, once known for crashing Windows, lambast teacher's unions and demand prescriptive solutions that strip away teacher autonomy.  In Time magazine, Michelle Rhee poses with a broom stick, promising sweeping change in D.C.  Meanwhile, in the name of "innovation," popular bloggers blast teachers for being slave-drivers, prison guards, thieves and child abusers.

We need counter-narratives. We need better, humble, honest stories about educational transformation.  We need stories of grassroots movements led by the teachers themselves.  We need to tap into the cultural mythology with the use of film.  After watching Mitchell 20, I'm hopeful that filmmakers can reframe the story and present a better narrative than Waiting for Superman.
  
Mitchell 20 tells the story of twenty teachers from Mitchell Elementary School who banded together to transform their school through the application process of National Board Certification, empowered by the support of their administrator.  In the process, they run into obstacles, both human and systemic, but continue to develop their craft and collaborate to improve instruction within their own classrooms.

The film tackles some deep contextual issues that are often lost in the arguments about reform.  The documentary delves into the effects of poverty and the issues of race, raising hard questions that might make the audience uncomfortable.  They tackle the issues of transnational educational businesses and the role in the often failing prescriptive solutions.  Here, the enemy is not the unions, the teachers or individual politicians, but rather a standardized system that strips away autonomy and creativity from teachers.

I was impressed by the comprehensive, multi-faceted approach to the journalism of this documentary.  It was a visually-appealing, thought-provoking combination of interviews, video story-telling and entertaining animation all working toward the powerful conclusion that the ultimate solution to school reform needs to focus on empowering teachers to grow professionally and change the schools from within.  It was refreshing to hear authentic teacher voices in a space that is so often dominated by the corporate-reform echo chambers.

Within one of the animated pieces, the narrator explains the outdated, industrialist hierarchy. "The teachers at the bottom without a real voice in their profession." The graphic is haunting, but nowhere near as haunting as the reality that many teachers feel powerless against the heavy-handed, kill-and-drill factory system.

And yet . . .

Mitchell 20 proves that teacher-led, student-oriented, grassroots efforts can overcome some of the immense obstacles that public education currently faces.  Mitchell 20 reminds the viewers why we don't need Supermen.  Hard-working teachers are already changing schools, not by saving them but by serving them with perseverance and humility.

Mitchell 20 is a reminder that amazing things are happening in public schools and it's time we celebrate these stories with honesty and humility.  We may not own the mainstream megaphone, but we have indie books telling great stories.  We have active PLN's with bloggers offering a more authentic voice.  Now we have a film, Mitchell 20, redefining the reform narrative through a multimedia lens; reminding not only the teachers, but also larger public, that teachers are not the problem.  They are the solution.

 

I learned the Order of Operations through memorizing my own twist on a famous mnemonic device (In reference to The Simpsons, I called mine Please Excuse My Drunk Aunt Selma).  It worked well when solving 7 + 2 x 5.  However, PEMDAS failed me when solving  10 ÷ 5 x 60.  While other students could mentally explain the answer as 120, I continued to plough through what felt like never-ending long division (nobody explained repeating decimals), convinced that I was bad at math.

Still, when I visit classrooms I often notice PEMDAS listed vertically as a first-to-last list (meaning Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division and Subtraction).  While this approach is memorable, it fails to capture the true nature of the Order of Operations. Incidentally, if I'm interested in any order, it's the Order of the Phoenix #yeahIusedaHarryPotterreference #yeahIusedhashtagsinablogpost.

As a teacher, I don't use PEMDAS for a few reasons:

• PEMDAS leaves out the square root function.  
• PEMDAS treats all grouping symbols as parenthesis.  The truth is that a division problem can have an implied group (think numerator and denominator with addition inside both).  It's best to treat grouping as a process and a concept rather than a symbol.  
• With PEMDAS, students fail to comprehend that we multiply and/or divide from left to right, and add and/or subtract from left to right.For example, when students are asked to solve 320 ÷ 4 x 20, many will answer 4, instead of the correct answer 1,600.  

So, what do we do?

I think the biggest solution is to remind students that certain operations hold importance over others and that beyond this order, things generally go from left to right.  I've seen some teachers use a pyramid (though this can be troublesome when students struggle to see whether they should start from the top or the bottom).

How do they memorize it?

Students learn the Order of Operations the way they learn the rules to football or baseball: by practicing it correctly.  Let them manipulate numbers and see the value in adding parenthesis.  Encourage students to take situations and develop problems.  Allow them to practice the Order of Operations with fewer, more complex algorithms.   After awhile, it starts to feel like a language one speaks rather than a recipe book that one follows.  

It's critical that students understand the nature of numbers and why we use the Order of Operations.  I've always said "most to least powerful," but one of the comments on this blog explained it best as "what can be broken down."  Exponents go before multiplication, which progresses to addition.  The complimentary way is square root into division into subtraction.  Grouping goes first, because it acts as a method of separation (not unlike a paragraph or a stanza in written language). 

I'm not opposed to using a graphical device for the Order of Operations.  Throughout last year, I used a spectrum to remind them  of sequential order. Click below to enlarge: