Sigh . . .
Tag: Learning
In American Schools, What is Quality Work?
For years now, I’ve been asking everybody I meet the same question: “When and where were you when you learned best?”
I’ve asked this question because so many of our national school reform efforts are not about learning at all; they’re about achievement, which has come to mean something quite apart from the stories people tell when you ask them to recall one of the most powerful experiences of their lives.
And here’s the thing: if you stitch everyone’s stories together, a clear pattern emerges. I know because I did this (see for yourself). And what emerged was that we all need, to differing degrees, learning opportunities that are challenging, engaging, relevant, supportive, and experiential.
I was reminded of that work – and of the importance of relevance – when watching Chapter 8 in the 10-part video series about Mission Hill, a public elementary and middle school in Boston. It begins with a young boy holding an alligator. It continues with young children organizing and opening a bakery in their classroom. And it concludes with a group of teenagers eagerly ripping open a package that contains fresh copies of the book they have all worked to co-create.
What we learn is that the children have been asked to imagine a possible future profession for themselves, and to interview someone who does that work so they can better understand if it might really be for them. One child envisions a life as an animal tamer. Another thinks he might become a martial artist. And two other students have each set their eyes on becoming the future Mayor of Boston.
“It’s so important that the ideas come from the kids,” says teacher Kathy Klunis-D’Andrea, “and that they get to see them actualized. There’s so much that they can learn about those real-life experiences that make true connections that they don’t forget. They are locked into learning.”
Of course, what we see at Mission Hill is more than just relevant projects. There’s a culture in place, an ethic, that demands the best of its teachers and students. As longtime educator Ron Berger puts it in his wonderful book An Ethic of Excellence, “Weighing yourself constantly doesn’t make you lighter and testing children constantly doesn’t make them smarter. The only way to really lose weight and keep it off, it seems, is to establish a new ethic – exercise more and eat more sensibly. It’s a long-term commitment. It’s a way of life.
“I have a hard time thinking about a quick fix for education,” Berger continues, “because I don’t think education is broken. Some schools are very good; some are not. Those that are good have an ethic, a culture, which supports and compels students to try and to succeed. Those schools that are not need a lot more than new tests and new mandates. They need to build a new culture and a new ethic.”
To build a new ethic at a school, of course, one must begin somewhere. Berger believes student work is the logical place to start. “Work of excellence is transformational,” he writes. “Once a student sees that he or she is capable of excellence, that student is never quite the same. We can’t first build the students’ self-esteem and then focus on their work. It is through their own work that their self-esteem will grow.”
This ethic of excellence Berger describes is at the center of schools like Mission Hill. It’s also present in organizations like Expeditionary Learning, a national network of more than 150 schools. And that network isn’t only filled with established, stable schools; it’s expanding to include the places where a school-wide ethic of excellence is being cultivated for the very first time.
One such place is the Mundo Verde Public Charter School in Washington, DC. Now in its second year, Mundo Verde decided to document one of its expeditions – typically, multiweek explorations of a topic that involves not just original research, but also a culminating project that is presented to the public – in its first year of operation. The film of that experience, La Expediçion, highlights the same qualities we see at work in Mission Hill – and the same core characteristics we see in our own personal learning memories.
As you watch both videos, consider the quality of the work Mission Hill’s 8th graders and Mundo Verde’s Kindergartners are able to produce. In schools like these, there’s no doubt about what matters most – quality work. And if there was any doubt about why that was the right goal to have, Mission Hill’s 8th graders clarified matters by the title they chose for their book: A Place for Me In The World.
(This article originally appeared in Education Week.)
This is what’s at the center of teaching & learning
Watch it — and imagine if every reform effort was primarily concerned with increasing the relational — as opposed to the computational — quality of a school community and the people who work and learn there.
If you still doubt that the foundation for learning is emotional, not intellectual . . .
. . . you have some more reading to do. You might start with this article written by a public school principal in Maine. You could continue with a short summary of renowned psychologist (and Nobel Prize winner) Dan Kahneman’s research into how the mind actually works. Or if you wanted to consider a drastically different source, you can listen to Lupe Fiasco’s “He Say, She Say,” and read the lyrics (below) to hear one artist’s prescient insight into a larger problem plaguing his (and our) community, and standing in the way of deep, lasting systemic change in our schools.
As Pedro Noguera said, “unmet social needs become unmet academic needs.”
As soon as everything from federal education policy to the KIPP Network’s six essential questions includes, and transcends, academic measures of success, we’ll have a chance at reimagining education for a changing world.
Until then, make no mistake — we’re kidding ourselves, and the best we can hope for is a perfecting of our ability to succeed in a system that no longer serves our interests.
Listen.
I can’t, I won’t, I can’t, I won’t
Let you leave
I don’t know what you want
You want more from me?
She said to him
“I want you to be a father
He’s your little boy and you don’t even bother
Like “brother” without the R
And he’s starting to harbor
Cool and food for thought
But for you he’s a starver
Starting to use red markers on his work
His teacher say they know he’s much smarter
But he’s hurt
Used to hand his homework in first
Like he was the classroom starter
Burst to tears
Let them know she see us
Now he’s fighting in class
Got a note last week that say he might not pass
Ask me if his daddy was sick of us
Cause you ain’t never pick him up
You see what his problem is?
He don’t know where his poppa is
No positive male role model
To play football and build railroad models
It’s making a hole you’ve been digging it
Cause you ain’t been kicking it
Since he was old enough to hold bottles
Wasn’t supposed to get introduced to that
He don’t deserve to get used to that
Now I ain’t asking you for money or to come back to me
Some days it ain’t sunny but it ain’t so hard
Just breaks my heart
When I try to provide and he say ‘Mommy that ain’t your job’
To be a man, I try to make him understand
That I’m his number one fan
But its like he born from the stands
You know the world is out to get him, so why don’t you give him a chance?”
So he said to him
“I want you to be a father
I’m your little boy and you don’t even bother
Like “brother” without the R
And I’m starting to harbor
Cool and food for thought
But for you I’m a starver
Starting to use red markers on my work
My teacher say they know I’m much smarter
But I’m hurt
I used to hand my homework in first
Like I was the classroom starter
Burst to tears
Let them know he see us
Now I’m fighting in class
Got a note last week that say I might not pass
Kids ask me if my daddy is sick of us
Cause you ain’t never pick me up
You see what my problem is?
That I don’t know where my poppa is
No positive male role model
To play football and build railroad models
It’s making a hole you’ve been digging it
Cause you ain’t been kicking it
Since I was old enough to hold bottles
Wasn’t supposed to get introduced to that
I don’t deserve to get used to that
Now I ain’t asking you for money or to come back to me
Some days it ain’t sunny but it ain’t so hard
Just breaks my heart
When my momma try to provide and I tell her ‘That ain’t your job’
To be a man, she try to make me understand
That she my number one fan
But its like you born from the stands
You know the world is out to get me, why don’t you give me a chance?”
Energy or Entropy?
I spent the other morning in my son’s Montessori classroom. It’s a beautiful, old-school room with high ceilings, large windows and plenty of space, which is good because it’s filled each day with twenty-eight 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. No small task.
I’ve been in Montessori classrooms before, yet I was still surprised when the day was never officially called to order. Instead the children took off their shoes, found some work (or not), and began their day in twenty-eight different ways while their two teachers, Ms. Luz and Ms. Allison, surfed in between them to check in and gauge where each child was at on that particular morning – hungry, happy, angry, sleepy.
This flow of atoms continued for the next four hours. When it was snack time, rotations of five children ate in self-organizing shifts – the order determined entirely by the classroom’s five Mardi Gras-style necklaces. (If you weren’t wearing one, it wasn’t snack time.)
Sometimes, the teachers joined a student to inquire about his work or perhaps to add a wrinkle to what she was doing, as Ms. Luz did when my son took out a container of plastic animals. She stood by as he spread the animals out on a colored mat, and then quietly asked him in Spanish (it’s a language immersion school) to identify the different figures. When he found the right one, he would get up and cross the room to repeat the Spanish name of the animal to Ms. Allison, who would either help correct his pronunciation slightly or simply say, “Exacto.” Then he would return to the mat of animals, and Ms. Luz would be ready for the pattern to repeat itself, while all around her a swirl of similar teaching moments provided plot points for the classroom’s chaotic graph of individualized ebb and flow.
When the children gathered in a circle for their first all-class activity, at 11:15am, I watched Leo’s teachers to see how they were doing. I remember reaching this point of the day as a teacher and feeling enervated, parched, and desperate for a break in the action. But because Ms. Allison and Ms. Luz had hadn’t spent the morning trying to corral all 28 students into a single activity (or into a state of singular attention), they mirrored the spirit of the children – fresh, engaged, centered.
Energy vs. entropy. Corraling vs. allowing.
There is great wisdom in a learning environment that allows the motivation and self-direction of the participants to drive the activity, and in which skilled adults work with the natural flow of energy and attention to help children develop a sense of themselves, their interests, and their place in a community. Imagine how much better both child and teacher would feel if this sort of environment was the norm and not the exception?
A Part of Us is Dying in Chicago
I can’t reconcile the deep sense of community that filmmakers Amy and Tom Valens have captured in their 10-part video series about a year in the life of a public school in Boston, with the painful public clashes we’re witnessing in Chicago – where 54 of the city’s schools will soon be shuttered.
Indeed, although the nation’s attention is fixed on the historic fight for marriage equality in the U.S. Supreme Court, a part of us is dying in the Windy City – and no one in the mainstream media seems to care.
No one disputes the fact that Chicago, like so many American cities, has real problems to solve. Population is down. Money is tight. School choice is growing. Tough decisions must be made.
By the same token, can anyone dispute that we have reason to worry about the state of our civic discourse when Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, allows the announcement of something as contentious as 54 school closings while he is on a ski trip in Utah? And can anyone blame local community leaders who wonder what to think of the Mayor’s plan to hold additional hearings on the issue? “If nobody is going to be heard at the hearings, what’s the use of having the hearings?” said Marshall Hatch, a local pastor. “If it’s a done deal, then stop wasting everybody’s time.”
A part of us is dying in Chicago because so many of us are so increasingly convinced that on the most important issues of the day, we are voiceless. We know changes need to be made – and we are increasingly abandoning, or giving little more than lip service to, our historic commitment to make those changes democratically, deliberately, and delicately. The issues in Chicago are complicated, from tax policies to population declines to legacies of race-based oppression, but the willingness of elected officials to confront those challenges in a spirit of co-construction with their constituents has become as laughable as, well, the Cubs winning the World Series.
Which takes me back to A Year at Mission Hill, and the ways in which this series is quietly and consistently demonstrating the generative power of a community in which everyone’s voice is valued and actively solicited. Mission Hill is a public school with charter-like autonomy. Its teachers are all unionized, and everything the district requires of its other schools, it requires of Mission Hill. Yet this is a school where, as teacher Jenerra Williams puts it, “We take the state test, we prepare for the state test, and we don’t get consumed by the state test.” This is a school where we see teachers repeatedly working together to diagnose, support, and engage kids. And this is a school where we see highly committed and skilled adults in an ongoing dialogue with each other about the only question that matters: “Of all the things we can do together, what must we do?”
Watching what’s happening in Chicago makes we worry about the extent to which we remain committed to the “we” in that question – We the people. What’s happening there is a national tragedy, and an example of what happens when powerful people recall the first half of the famous quote by Winston Churchill – “Democracy is the worst form of government” – and conveniently forget the second half – “except all the others that have been tried.”
As Mission Hill demonstrates, democracy is messy, it is inefficient, and it is slow. But as I watch its students practice calligraphy and study honeybees, as I listen to its teachers share strategies and struggle to improve – and as I ride my bike past the throngs of demonstrators for and against marriage equality outside the Supreme Court – I’m reminded that examples of our inextinguishable commitment to the spirit of individual liberty and equality are all around us.
Mayor Emanuel, are you watching?
(This article originally appeared in Education Week.)
A Hole in the Wall, or Our Heads in the Cloud(s)?
(This article originally appeared in Education Week).
There are two recent cultural inflection points you’d be wise to check out if you care about the future of education: the first is Sugata Mitra’s acceptance speech for receiving the TED Prize, in which he outlines his plan to “build a school in the cloud;” and the second is ed/tech writer Audrey Watters’ article warning of the potential consequences that could follow an uncritical acceptance of Mitra’s vision.
Mitra, in case you missed it, is the Indian computer programmer who in 1999 placed a computer in the hole of a wall facing a community of uneducated children in a New Delhi slum. Within weeks, the children taught themselves how to use it and surf the Web, with nary an adult in sight.
Since then, Mitra’s work has involved other experiments in providing children with the space and a sufficient prompt to light their self-directed learning energy on fire. The culmination of this work (which he now has $1 million from TED to actualize) is the school in the cloud – a space where children can explore and learn on their own using resources from the worldwide web. “It’s not about making learning happen,” says Mitra, “it’s about letting it happen. The teacher sets the process in motion, and then she stands back in awe and watches as learning happens.”
It’s a provocative idea – albeit one that could just as easily describe thousands of well-run classrooms across the country right now. That’s part of what worries Watters, a veteran reporter on the intersection between education and technology. “In the TED world of techno-humanitarianism,” she writes, “this computer-enabled learning certainly makes for an incredibly compelling story. But once something becomes a TED Talk, it becomes oddly unassailable. The video, the speech, the idea, the applause — there too often stops our critical faculties. We don’t interrupt. We don’t jeer. We don’t ask any follow-up questions.”
Watters then asks a slew of follow-up questions, but the gist of her argument is that ideas like Mitra’s aren’t “simply about the rise of the learner — we’d be so naive to believe that’s the case. It’s about the rise of the technology industry alongside the collapse of the education sector. Take away the public school, as Mitra suggests — it is a colonial legacy! — and replace it with computers. . . The School in the Cloud project posits that education is a corporate (financial) investment rather than a public good. Why fund public schools when we can put a kiosk in a tech company’s annex? Why fund public schools when you can learn anything online?” Indeed, she cautions, despite Mitra’s “claims to be liberatory — with the focus on ‘the learner’ and ‘the child’ — this hacking of education . . . is politically regressive. It is, however, likely to be good business for the legions of tech entrepreneurs in the audience.”
Who is right here? Are ideas like a school in the cloud indicative of the future of learning, the death of public education, both, or neither?
Since the article has come out, there’s an interesting conversation, with lots of civil friction, unfolding on Facebook. “I’ve spoken with Sugata Mitra multiple times,” said Nikhil Goyal, a 17-year-old critic of public education, “and he doesn’t have a vein of profit intention. He’s not advocating for the abolition of public schools. He’s not advocating for the abolition of teachers either. He’s providing a setting for young people to learn by means of networking and ‘big questions.'” And besides, Goyal concludes, “school as an institution is obsolete. That must be transformed. We know that very well. It should be turned into a public space and learning environment. Nobody is saying that we should demolish public schools.
Veteran educator (and fellow Ed Week blogger) Nancy Flanagan isn’t buying it. “I have a long-standing skepticism around The Magic of Technology, all the way back to the teaching machines that were introduced when I was in elementary school (back in the 1950s), up through Nicholas Negroponte and the one laptop/one child project. I’ve seen ‘miraculous transformations’ come and go, and still believe that Neil Postman is right: Americans love the idea of technology driving change, rather than change driving technology.”
Once again, who’s right?
Predictably (for anyone who reads me regularly), I see truth in both assertions. Sugata Mitra is right – learning needs to become more personalized, and great teachers create a spirit of curiosity and inquiry through questions, not answers. And he’s right that the universal (and near-instantaneous) accessibility of information has irrevocably changed the way we think about knowledge, and learning, and school.
But Watters is equally right to remind us about the myriad forces at work that would love to see the complete dismantling of public education as we see it, that characterize education as a private commodity, not a public good, and that believe not just that technology is an elixir, but also that the nonlinear site-specific magic between adult and child (and child and child) is a fungible resource, easily outsourced and replaced by an army of Grannies in the Cloud.
For me, this debate surfaces a vital question: how do we maintain our commitment to education as the most invaluable of public goods, while also embracing the changing nature of the human relationship to information, accessibility, and self-direction? Goyal believes we should turn all public schools into public learning spaces, available to anyone and everyone. Mitra believes the very act of knowing, as we have previously understood it, is obsolete. And Watters and Flanagan see in ideas like Mitra’s a profit-minded wolf in sheep’s clothing.
What do you think? And where to from here?
This is what a “relevant education” looks like
Imagine if all schools and all educators were more attuned to ensuring that what we show and share with children is meaningfully connected to the daily realities of their lives and passions?
Your Education Stories (for a price)
It’s suddenly in vogue to gather and tell stories as part of an organization’s larger strategy to build an audience and effect change. On one level, I love this development — indeed, I’ve been gathering people’s stories about their most powerful learning experiences for years, which has resulted in a website, a radio story series, and even a book (proceeds of which do not go to me, by the way).
I’ve done this because I believe that before we can solve the riddle of how to provide every child with a great education, we need to develop a deeper understand of what great teaching and learning really looks like — and requires. That is the motive. Over time I’ve also reflected a lot on the core elements of a great story — one that can inspire and edify — and tried to apply those principles in the current 10-part video series A Year at Mission Hill. Like all things, it’s a work in progress, but we’re clearly onto something — as the appeal of this Prezi attests.
Yesterday, however, I received an email from Michelle Rhee’s organization, Students First, relating to an effort underway there to gather people’s stories about why they choose to put students first. We’re told that Michelle nodded along as she read “the same frustrations and motivations that drive me to action reflected in their responses.” And we’re told that 100 lucky submitters will receive a signed copy of her new memoir, Radical.
I clicked on the link to read the stories, and a couple of things became quite clear: first, these are not stories. People aren’t being asked — nor are they being given space — to share a personal narrative; they’re being given an opportunity to reaffirm the professional rationale of Students First. And second, it’s clear that organizations like Students First don’t actually give a damn about individual people’s stories. They care about selling books, acquiring new email addresses and demonstrating the reach of their current network.
Those things, in and of themselves, aren’t necessarily bad strategy — and they certainly aren’t evil. What they are, however, is indicative of Michelle Rhee’s impersonal approach to systemic change. And I can’t think of anything more ironic than a nationally-known “radical” reformer for schools — the most personal public space that exists outside the family in our society — who believes that, in the end, something as sacred as a person’s personal story is little more than a convenient framing device for giving away free books and building out an email list.
Buyer beware.
(This article also appeared on Huffington Post.)
A Tale of Two Schools
(This article originally appeared in Education Week.)
There are two current storytelling efforts about two different schools that, if you’re not careful, might feel like the American version of a tale of two cities.
In the first, a 10-part video narrative about a year in the life of the Mission Hill School in Boston, we’re treated to the best of times: a place where every children is known and cared for, where learning is experiential and engaging, and where the adults are both extremely skilled and highly collaborative.
In the second, a two-part This American Life series about a high school in Chicago, we’re given a glimpse of the worst of times: a place where 29 current or former students were shot the previous school year, where some students spend their entire high school careers avoiding social relationships out of safety, and where every member of the football team has dodged gunfire at least once in their young lives.
On one level, these two stories do provide some stark, uncomfortable contrasts: at Mission Hill, there are good days and bad days, but on balance the school is steady, secure, and consistently supportive of its students. And at Harper High School, there are moments of personal transformation, but on balance its students are forced to survive in a Sisyphean environment filled with fear and uncertainty.
On another level, however, the stories of Mission Hill and Harper High provide the rest of us with a clear message about the state of public education as it is – and as it ought to be. In fact, it’s impossible to hear these two schools’ stories and not see three clear implications for school reform going forward:
1. Our nation’s schools need to do a lot more than improve reading and math. It’s fitting that Harper High School is a “turnaround school.” That means the U.S. Department of Education has given it an additional $1.6 million annually “in order to raise substantially the achievement of students.”
If you haven’t been paying attention, anytime you see the word “achievement” you can just replace it with “standardized reading and math scores.” In other words, the only explicitly stated goal of our federal turnaround funds is to raise student performance on tests. That’s not just myopic – it’s tragic, particularly when you hear the story of Harper High and you meet young people like Thomas, a young man who had witnessed multiple murders, and who already worried he would hurt a lot of people soon.
Not surprisingly, the story’s reporters met Thomas in the school’s social work office, where he was usually found. “Sometimes I just need to talk to somebody,” he tells them, avoiding all eye contact, “and that’s why I come here.”
Don’t get me wrong – every school in America should set high academic standards for their students. But let’s be equally honest about something else: in communities like Thomas’s, young people often have just two places to escape to – the streets or the school. And when we threaten the ongoing existence of safe havens like a social worker’s office – as Harper will be forced to do when its looming budget cuts take effect – we increase the likelihood that Thomas will take a wrong, perhaps deadly, turn.
2. Our nation’s children all need the same things. It’s impossible to watch the Mission Hill series and not see the value of ensuring that every child feels known, loved and supported by at least one adult in the school. Once again, this is a foundational element of the schooling experience that transcends academic content. As Mission Hill 3rd grade teacher Jenerra Williams puts it, “You have to know them to teach them well. And once you do, you just naturally become their advocate.”
We see the same lesson at Harper High, where social worker Anita Stewart says goodbye to a young person running off to class with these words: “You are a person. You are valuable and you matter.” Indeed both of these remarkable educators understand something the bulk of our education policies chooses to ignore: that unmet social needs become unmet academic needs.
This observation should inform everything from how schools are evaluated to how teachers are prepared. Once again, however, our desire to engender measurable school reform on a political timetable (as opposed to one that actually reflects what we know about how organizations can implement lasting changes) has left us with empty discussions of schools that “boost performance” and teacher preparation programs that act as if a deep understanding of child development is a luxury, not a necessity. And once again, we can do better.
3. Our nation’s teachers need and deserve our support. There’s no escaping the fact that in the last several years, we’ve painted a general picture of America’s teachers as lazy, protected, and inferior. But the stories about Mission Hill and Harper High reveal a different picture: of adults who are highly skilled, highly committed, and highly valuable to the communities they serve.
To be sure, there are teachers out there whose unions have protected them from sanction, and whose ability to impact the lives of their students has long since passed. I had some of these characters as colleagues, and in my experiences working with schools around the country for the past decade, I would say they account for no more than 5% of the profession.
By contrast, the educators we see and hear at Mission Hill and Harper are masters of their craft, and models for us all. They are more than heroic; they are ambassadors of a profession tasked with the most important goal of a democratic society: to help children learn how to use their minds well, and how to harness the power and uniqueness of their own voice.
For these reasons, A Year at Mission Hill and This American Life are exactly the sorts of stories about public education we need. In Boston, we see a school in which both old and young are struggling to actualize a Dewey-esque reflection of the ideal learning environment; in Chicago, we see a school in which both old and young are struggling to escape a Dystopian reflection of our national culture of violence. And in both schools, we see personal stories of hope and transformation, and a real-life reflection of the social and emotional foundations of a healthy school.
The rest is up to us.
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