Author: Sam

I write books and talk about stuff.

Making Sense of Steubenville

Posted on | by Sam

As educators, what are we to make of the ongoing tragedy in Steubenville, Ohio – a community in which one teenage girl was raped and publicly humiliated, two teenage boys are being shipped off to juvenile detention, and two other teenage girls are now under arrest after threatening to beat and kill the victim?

First, we must recognize the central role that parents play in helping their children develop a clear sense of right and wrong. As the victim’s mother said in a prepared statement to the court, “We hope that from this something good can arise. I feel I have an opportunity to bring an awareness to others, possibly change the mentality of a youth or help a parent to have more of an awareness to where their children are and what they are doing. The adults need to take responsibility and guide these children.”

Second, we must acknowledge that every community has the potential to allow this sort of behavior to occur. Like other communities, the members of Steubenville High School’s football team were afforded respect and privileges few teenagers can manage responsibly. More troubling, however – and more relevant for those of us who have dedicated our lives to supporting the learning and growth of young people – was the behavior of all the other students who gave implicit support to the boys’ actions by documenting and trading pictures of the assault – and doing nothing to protect the girl, whose drunkenness was so severe it prompted one of her assailants to say she resembled “a dead body.”

Finally, we must take stock of the work we are doing every day in our schools and classrooms – the only factor squarely in our control – and ask ourselves what it is we are explicitly working to instill in the young people we are there to serve. The fact that our state and national policies continue to overvalue academic knowledge (and a myopic definition of academic knowledge at that) at the expense of every other aspect of child and adolescent development is not an excuse for inaction. As educators, we have a responsibility to think long and hard about what kind of people we hope will graduate from our schools – and what sorts of skills and dispositions those people will need to embody – and then make sure the work we are doing each day (and the standards to which we hold ourselves accountable) are aligned with that vision.

The good news is this is already happening in scores of schools across the country – from New Hampshire to Iowa to Colorado. It’s even happening at the state level in Illinois, where every school has not just a set of academic standards – but a set of social and emotional standards as well. And it can start happening in any school, anywhere, as soon as that community decides that the holistic development and growth of children matters more than anything else.

“Human compassion is not taught by a teacher, a coach, or a parent,” the victim’s mother also said. “It is a God-given gift instilled in each of us.”

That’s not quite right. Our capacity for compassion is certainly present in each of us at birth. But it’s equally true that while all of us are born with the potential to behave compassionately, none of us is able to do so without the benefit of strong support, clear guidance, and a supportive network of adults that believe characteristics like empathy are not merely soft skills – they’re benchmarks of what we aspire, on our best days, to become.

(This article originally appeared in Education Week.)

A Hole in the Wall, or Our Heads in the Cloud(s)?

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(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?

Your Education Stories (for a price)

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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.)

Creating a School Culture That Works (Podcast)

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I’ve just launched a new audio interview series with the good people at the BAM! Radio network, and the link for my first episode is now live.

Listen in as I discuss the core components of a healthy school culture with two of the country’s best educators: Mission Hill principal Ayla Gavins and Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Joshua Starr. And please share your thoughts and reactions.

A Tale of Two Schools

Posted on | by Sam

(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.