Too many top priorities

I haven’t posted in a while.  I had a much-needed three week winter break during which I got much less done than I intended (so what else is new?). Now school has been back in session almost two weeks, during which time my journey has been very bumpy.  Just when I think I’ve made some progress rolling the boulder up the hill, it slips away from me and rolls back down the hill, knocking me over on the way down.  Where do I stand as I face the end of the first semester?

For one thing, I am getting to know these boys better and better, and the more I know them the more I like them.  They are mostly very likable and good-natured.  I enjoy chatting with them before class as they line up in the hallway and after school when I encounter them around the campus.  This sometimes makes it more enjoyable to teach them, but at other times when I face them as a class they resist all of my efforts to guide their behavior.  I have had more than a few very frustrating moments already in the new year.  I continue to feel constrained in what I can plan because of the difficulty in getting them to cooperate as a class.  

For another thing, it is truly awesome what the policy makers in the state government and the district administration expect me and all teachers to do.  Here’s a little list:

1. District concept-lessons for the four writing units (narrative, expository, response to literature, persuasive).  As I’ve said, they’re good lessons, very student-centered and constructivist, but they are very involved and often need to be simplified and abbreviated.  Each unit culminates in a major writing project.  For example, in the expository unit they must write a 500 word news story about an event in their neighborhood   It is a state and local priority for students to write more and better, of course, a priority that I share.
2. This is good since students should write a much as possible, and it also lends itself to the use of the online writing program I have described, MyAccess.  That has its own requirements for implementation, valuable as it is, and takes time to organize, but it is a priority that they write a lot.
3. We also want them to read more, especially on their own, so we have the program called “Accelerated Reader” in which students read a book at their level and then go online to take a brief quiz about the book.  I have now assigned them to read and pass quizzes on four books before the end of the semester.  This is now serving as homework, but it’s a lot of work to convince them that they really have to get a book from the library, read it, and pass the quiz on it.  Again, it’s worthwhile but has to be a priority of mine if it is to be successful.
4. Then on top of all this, we have the California Standards Test coming up in May and the District’s Periodic Assessments in February and April.  It is of course (you guessed it!) a priority for the state and district to prepare students for these tests.  I have received voluminous materials on paper and online to prepare them for these tests.  As I said in the kudzu post, I could spend all of my time on this priority alone.

So there you have it.  Four top priorities to be implemented with all of the attendant adaptation and organization they require.  I can’t argue with any of them, but together they present an almost insuperable challenge.   Each must be implemented on its own and then integrated with the others.  No wonder my head spins when I try to juggle them all in the pedagogical air!

And so I stride towards the end of a semester, the mid-point in the year, head bloodied but unbowed.  More soon.

Standardized Testing is the KUDZU of public education, part 2.

In the past decade standardized testing has come to dominate public education.  Schools are ranked and evaluated based on test scores.  Federal and state dollars are allocated based on test scores. Principals are fired and hired based on test scores.  Now teachers may be evaluated based on student test scores.  How did we get into this situation?

This trend to place more and more importance on test scores has been a political and not an educational decision.   Significantly, it has been a bipartisan political decision.  Democrats (Davis, Obama, Villaraigosa) and Republicans (Swarzenegger, Bush, Riordan) together with billionaire “reformers” (Broad, Gates) have relentlessly promoted standardized tests as the lingua franca of educational achievement.  The only voices of dissent have been the teachers themselves and their unions, and this dissent has strained the traditional bonds between teacher unions and Democrats.

I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that as test scores have been adopted as the primary measure of student learning, the level of funding for public schools has stagnated and even declined. At the same time all other aspects of children’s lives have deteriorated dramatically.  Health care, housing, nutrition--American children are worse off in all these areas as more and more have slipped into poverty. 

But rather than focus on children’s lives as the cause of problems in education, the bipartisan consensus is emerging that the cause of low test scores is not poverty--hunger, homelessness, ill health--and not inadequate  funding--large class sizes, no support staff, deteriorating facilities.  Instead the primary cause of educational failure is....TEACHERS!   Yes, if teachers will just cooperate by placing the proper emphasis on test scores, then it won’t matter if the children are ill-fed, ill-housed, and in ill-health; it won't matter if classes are large, support negligible, and buildings decrepit. 

But not all teachers are the problem.  According the the prevailing “reform” meme coming from Republicans, many Democrats, and the billionaires, the problem is veteran teachers, i.e., the highest paid teachers who have enough job security, thanks to union strength, to resist the headlong rush to enshrine standardized testing as the ultimate arbiter of educational quality.  Disgracefully, this message has come from political leaders who have never hesitated to take campaign contributions from teachers but who now find it easier to blame high-priced veteran teachers for problems in the schools rather than take on the true cause, poverty.

So let’s sum up.  We have had three decades of Reaganism in which wealth has been steadily distributed up to the corporate elite and away from the middle class.  During this time more and more children have slipped into poverty, and funding for public education (especially in California) has declined or stagnated.  Parallel to these developments we have seen the rise of standardized tests that are cheaper to administer and cheaper to teach than more holistic, authentic measures of student achievement.  Anyone see a pattern here?

In Part 3:  What happened to the progressives?

Standardized Testing is the KUDZU of public education, part 1.

“Kudzu is a climbing, deciduous vine capable of reaching lengths of over 100 ft.  Preferred habitat includes open, disturbed areas such as roadsides, right-of-ways, forest edges and old fields. Kudzu often grows over, smothers and kills all other vegetation, including trees. Kudzu is native to Asia and was first introduced into the United States in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. It was widely planted throughout the eastern United States in an attempt to control erosion.” (Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health, University of Georgia)

A few weeks ago in an English Department meeting we were examining the results of the first Periodic Assessment.  This is an exam the district requires every quarter to track student progress through the district curriculum.    We had detailed results broken down by question and by student.  We explored the district website that offered a wealth of activities to teach or re-teach each of the concepts and skills on the test.  We were encouraged to analyze our students’ results in great detail and to return to those things they didn’t learn, since they would all be on the California Standards Test in the spring.

All of this was very impressive, and before long I found myself thinking that there was such a wealth of available material that I could spend all of my class time preparing for the next test, reviewing the previous test, etc.  I could dig into the questions that many students missed and call up some of the remediation activities.  I could administer practice tests and review the answers with them and....

WHAT!!??  Am I out of my mind!? Spend all of my time reviewing past tests and previewing future tests!?  Devote every class to test preparation!?  No! No!  A thousand times no!!  What about writing?  and literature? and class discussions?  There are a lot of trees in the forest of education, and I can’t let the kudzu vine of standardized testing destroy them! 

In Part Two:  How did we get into this predicament?  The political and social context for the rise of standardized testing.

Sixth Street bustling

When I finally finished preparing for tomorrow at school I decided to talk a walk west on 6th St.  I have been connected with the Wilshire District my whole life.  My parents both grew up in this neighborhood in the 1920s and 30s, and my grandparents lived here throughout my childhood in the 50s.  We visited them often, and I have many fond memories of family gatherings in their old houses (one gone and one still standing).  My mother even brought us in from Van Nuys to see doctors and dentists in the area.  I remember going to Ollie Hammond's Steak House at Wilshire and Hobart with my grandfather Ralph Williams, who was active in real estate in mid-city LA.  My mother worked at Bullocks Wilshire during the war.  My parents were married and I was christened in Wilshire Methodist Church.  (That didn't really stick though since I've been an atheist most of my adult life.)

As an adult I have lived in Hollywood and Echo Park and passed through the Wilshire corridor regularly especially when I worked at Crenshaw HS.  Then on the school board I represented this area.  I fought hard for the Ambassador property (Victory!) and developed close relations with the Korean community.  Now I teach in the heart of Wilshire, of Korea town.  So I have a lot of affection for the Wilshire District, and I enjoy rediscovering the neighborhood.

Let me tell you that 6th Street is jumping!  I was dazzled by the array of small businesses along this street.  There are places to eat and socialize--coffee houses, Korean barbecues, sushi bars, Karaoke clubs, seafood grills, bakeries, and many more.  There are all kinds of other shops--hair salons, spas, jewelers, dress shops.  The venerable and elegant Chapman Market (1928 by Morgan, Walls & Clements) was an instant landmark and signaled the westward march of the city.  Today it is filled with chic boutiques and cafes.

There is also a fabulous three level mall called City Center on the block behind the towering Equitable Building (1969 by Welton Beckett).  This lavish collection of shops and markets is a bold post-modern deconstructed architectural statement that reminds me of Seoul. 

And there were plenty of customers for all these places--almost all of them Korean.  This was truly a little slice of Seoul (a vast metropolis that would tower above most of Los Angeles, by the way).  I assume many of these folks live in the lovely old residential neighborhoods in the mid-city, while others work in the area and socialize before heading out to the Valley or Fullerton.  Others may make the drive just to enjoy authentic Korean food and socializing.  I remember that Seoul was an intensely social place and that Koreans there and here love to go out to restaurants and cafes.  That was evident along 6th Street. 

I was a lovely walk, and I recommend it to all of you whether or not you have a history in this part of town.  It's even worth a drive into the city.  Annyonghi kaysayo.

Vittoria!

Friday, Dec. 3:  I have just completed my two best days yet at YOKA.  All four of my seventh grade English classes had a narrative writing assignment.  We had just finished the story “Amigo Brothers” by Piri Thomas.  This short story tells about best friends Felix and Antonio who are paired up in a boxing championship.  The story is more about their friendship than about the sport of boxing, and at the end, after a brutal fight, they embrace and leave the ring together.  The story does not reveal the winner.

The assignment to my classes was to write “The Next Chapter” for these two friends.  First they had to make a storyboard telling what happened in the year after the winner was announced.  They did this in pairs, and when they finished their storyboard each pair got a laptop so they could go to the online writing program (MyAccess.com) and write a narrative based on their storyboard.

This was a substantial assignment with two major parts.  They had to work with a classmate to get it done.  It involved thinking up a story, rendering it into little drawings, logging onto an online program, and writing a narrative of 300 words.    I was a little nervous about getting them through all of this, and so I was pleasantly surprised at how well it went. 

First of all, the chance to work on the laptops was a great motivation for getting the storyboard done.  The attraction of the computers is awesome.  Second, they worked well in pairs.  Some pairs were lopsided with one student doing most of the work, but even in those pairs both students were engaged in thinking up the story.  Third, when they finished the story board and got into the writing program, they were actually enthusiastic about writing down what they had come up with. 

I remain very impressed by the effect that computers have on these boys.  The computers focus and engage them in a way that teachers and paper books do not.  It isn’t just the games, although they love to sneak over to the games, but also the writing itself that they are more engaged in.  They are also getting used to all of the corrections that the computer program indicates.

And so this lesson went very well in all of the classes, even my very difficult sixth period.  I called the principal up in the middle of sixth period to invite him to come see how it was working.  He has invested a lot of school funds in getting this online writing program for all teachers, and I wanted him to see how it could work.

I’ve done a lot of yelling at all these classes, so I took the time at the end of each period on Thursday and Friday to compliment them on how well they worked on this assignment.  I was still exhausted, to be sure, but for the first time when Friday, 3:24 pm came around I felt very satisfied at how the week had gone.

A perfect storm, followed by a calm sea and a metaphor for capitalism

I haven't commented in a while.  I've been enjoying an unexpected week off.  Because of unpaid furlough days, LAUSD like many districts just closed the schools for this whole week of Thanksgiving.  It's been a salvation for me.  Last week I experienced the "Perfect Storm" of obligations that left me staggering towards Friday. 

I had a big housewarming party on Sunday Nov 14, so I was getting ready for that the whole week before.  The party was a big success, but I should have been getting my grades ready since they were due Weds Nov 17.  That realization hit me on Monday, along with the need to finish grading the written part of the periodic assessment and teach a class at National University Monday and Wednesday night.  Whew!  This is what made the week of Nov 15 the perfect storm of obligation, so I didn't sleep much and stumbled across the grading finish line a day late, on Thursday--just in time to collapse into this vacation week.

I know this sounds like more whining, so I want to counteract that with another burst of enthusiasm for the MyAccess online writing program.  I had the laptop carts in my room for a couple of weeks, and the boys have been working on their essays every day.  The more I use this program the more I like it.  It leads the boys to correct errors in their writing and then gives them instant feedback in the form of a numerical score.  As they make corrections or add more content, they see their score go up.

A high level of competitiveness is cited as one of the characteristics of the male brain (at least most of them), and one day last week some of the boys were actually competing out loud to see who could get the highest rating on their compositions.  They even called out their scores in excitement as they made changes to improve their essays.  That really sold me.  I realized that this program had generated the elusive "intrinsic motivation," since the students wanted to improve their writing for its own sake.

Even if I graded in detail everything they wrote every night (something I have never been able to manage and few teachers do) I couldn't match the instant feedback they get from this program.  They may groan when they see all of the spelling and other errors highlighted in their writing, but they can get to work and correct them one by one.  That is what good writing requires--patient re-examination of what you've written in the form of correction, expansion, revision.

There's still plenty of work for the teacher in this program.  The more generic recommendations about description, structure, and style will always require the teacher to illuminate and elaborate.  This program doesn't replace the teacher as much as amplify what the teacher can accomplish.  It is the best example I have encountered of how technology can make the teacher much more effective.  I look forward to using it throughout the rest of the year.

Time for another little detour.  I recently saw the movie "Unstoppable" with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine.  It's about a runaway train in Pennsylvania that is carrying a load of toxic chemicals and threatens mass destruction in a highly populated area.  It's thrilling from beginning to end.  The human characters, especially Washington as a veteran train engineer, are well done, but the train itself is the star--menacing, implacable, inexorable.

Afterward it occurred to me that this runaway train was a profound metaphor (I am an English teacher after all!) for the state of American capitalism--out of control, threatening to destroy millions of people, highly toxic, and driven by greed and arrogance.  Without giving away the ending, suffice it to say that the golf-playing CEO who is more concerned about the stock price than the potential human suffering DOES NOT save the day.  Anyway, I highly recommend it.

Seventh grade lives 1

I've spent so much time complaining about the behavior of these boys that I don't think I have adequately conveyed how charming and likable they are.  I'd like to share a couple of brief glimpses into their lives.  Today a small group of students ended up in my room at lunch.  They were all good students, and small boys.  They just wanted to use the computers.  I asked them why they didn't want to go outside for lunch.  One of them, an especially small and very soft spoken boy, said something like, "There's too much going on out there at lunch.  There are mean kids and bullies and we'd rather be in here."  Hard to argue with that.

Later in the day another boy was talking to his friends in an intense way. Other boys really like this boy because he's funny and clever and outspoken, although that can make him a little disruptive in class.  He said that he had a big problem--a claim supported by his friends--and would like to tell me about it.  While we were walking out to play basketball during advisory period, he said that his father had been picked up the night before and was going to be deported.  One of his friends walking with us said that had happened to him once too.  I said that must be really terrible and that I was sorry to hear it.

We didn't talk much more since he wanted to play basketball, but I was left with a sad feeling. I have a hard time imagining just how terrible it must be at age 12 to have your father snatched away from you all of a sudden.  It seems that any decent version of  "family values" would allow for fathers to stay with their sons.  This incident definitely puts a human face on the increasingly shrill calls to deport increasing numbers of people, many of them fathers who are needed by their sons.

As I get to know these boys, I expect to hear more stories about their lives.  I'm glad I'm not so obsessed with controlling their behavior that I don't stop to listen to their individual voices.  Vignettes like these surely lie at the heart of the teaching experience.  They are probably the reason we put up with the impossible work load and time requirements of the job.