Monday
October 29, 2007
This week’s Economist outlines the results of a major study by international consulting firm McKinsey, looking into why some education systems (Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore, South Korea) consistently perform better than others. The answer, they argue, is the teachers.
The most successful school systems do three things:
- Hire the best teachers. According to the report, these countries recruit from the top 5-30% of college graduates. They limit spots in education programs, rather than casting a wide net and trying to sift through for enough good candidates. They pay average salaries, but have above-average national respect for the profession.
- On-the-job training and collaboration. In these countries, teachers receive training and support every year. They visit each other’s classrooms, plan lessons together, and share ideas. One teacher in the study remarked, “when a brilliant American teacher retires, almost all of the lesson plans and practices that she has developed also retire. When a Japanese teacher retires, she leaves a legacy.”
- Intervention for struggling students. In successful systems, students who fall behind receive extra services from trained teachers. In Finland, as many as 1/7 of teachers are devoted to working with special education students.
Of course it’s difficult to compare different countries, with different cultures, histories, and economic situations. But any study that emphasizes the fact that good teachers and good teaching are the key to improving education is ok by me.
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Thursday
October 25, 2007
In this two minute video, designed to support education reporters trying to do a better job of representing teaching in the media, a number of teachers talk about great teaching.
Among their thoughts, they mentioned that great teachers…
-- are reflective and question themselves...constantly ask why.
-- have a purpose...and the students know what it is
-- are knowledgeable. There’s a lot of valuable, rich content.
-- have a buzz in the classroom. Students are engaged and talking about their learning
-- are never satisfied with what doesn’t work.
One says, “Mediocre teachers instruct, good teachers model, great teachers inspire”
How do you define great teaching?
(If you’re interested, the site has a number of other videos about what to look for in a classroom. These are intended for journalists, but I can’t help but wonder who else should be viewing them, too. Politicians, perhaps?)
Labels: Conversations
Thursday
October 18, 2007
In a familiar turn of events, No Child Left Behind has designated a certain level of violence that constitutes an official “Dangerous School,” but left each state to determine its own criteria. And it will shock nobody to hear that Illinois, like many states, is using the most stringent standard, expulsions, rather than police incident reports. According to this month’s Catalyst:
Under the Illinois criteria for designating a school as dangerous under No Child Left Behind, not one CPS building has ever received the label, even though numerous campuses have problems with violence year after year.
Not only does using expulsion statistics underestimate the volume of violence experienced in some schools, but I believe it misrepresents the type of violence. I don’t have statistics to back me up here, so chime in if this doesn’t match your experience. I think most violence in schools, even violent schools, is pushing, shoving, and yelling - not shooting - and it’s based on the most mundane of things. Misunderstandings, jealousies. Every school has these, but violent schools have an incredibly high volume of them every single day. They grind down students and teachers’ nerves, leaving everyone feeling anxious, tired, and angry.
A group of students from Chicago’s Mikva Challenge Youth Innovation Fund (a group I helped launch in 2003) recently released a report outlining what youth think should be done about school violence. Their recommendations thoughtfully consider some of the root causes of the violence, suggesting things like better security guard training, better lunch options to avoid hunger-based frustration in the afternoons, and organized social programming to help break down barriers between students.
These recommendations might not prevent major gang warefare, but could they help diminish the sheer mind-numbing volume of he-said-she-said pushing matches? Sure. The full set of recommendations is here. I’m sure the students from Mikva would be interested to hear teachers’ perspectives on this.
Labels: Conversations
Friday
October 12, 2007
Illinois’ formerly optional moment of silence is now mandatory, thanks to yesterday’s vote by the state legislature to override the Governor’s veto. Proponents of the law claim it has nothing at all to do with school prayer, and is simply an effort to make sure all students have a quiet moment to reflect on their day before school begins.
Tribune columnist Eric Zorn expresses my primary issue with this law very well:
At some point we—and I’m talking to you, you silent lambs who haven’t even bleated as this nonsense has moved through the legislative process—need to stand up to the idea our elected busybodies in the Capitol have any business issuing one-size-fits-all decrees about best pedagogical practice.
Some schools, some classrooms and some students may benefit from the calming effects of a moment of silent thought-gathering as the school day begins. Sure. But others may not need it. They might benefit more from a moment of science, to paraphrase a bumper sticker I saw recently, or from singing a song, or from doing 100 jumping jacks or a group primal scream as the tardy bell rings.
I trust the teachers and the parents and the administrators at each school to make such a decision without any arm-twisting from Springfield.
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Wednesday
October 10, 2007
How many of you will assign student projects this year that, for example, include photos downloaded from the internet? Do you know what guidelines to give them about copyright? There are a variety of copyright exemptions that apply to teachers and students through the doctrine of “fair use.” But if the study cited in this article is correct, you probably haven’t heard all that much about it.
In too many classrooms across the country, sweaty palms and the fears associated with a call to the principal’s office aren’t just student afflictions: Educators, especially those who teach media literacy, are experiencing a collective anxiety about what is legal and what is not when using digital images and recordings in their lessons, according to a new report…
Teachers face conflicting information about their rights, and their students’ rights, to use copyrighted works, the report says. They also face complex and often overly constrictive copyright policies in their own institutions. As a result, they use less effective teaching techniques, teach and transmit false copyright information, and do not take advantage of new digital platforms for their instruction.
For a real, current example, take a look at this story on ed-tech blogger Wesley Fryer‘s site. (And while you’re at it, take a look at the incredibly neat projects that caused the controversy, which were made using VoiceThread, a tool we discussed in the Digital Storytelling Resources conversation). Fryer also links to a clear and comprehensive article he wrote on educational fair use back in 2003. Worth a read.
The Digital Storytelling Resources conversation has links to some Creative Commons resources. Creative Commons is a free, voluntary “some rights reserved” license that allows authors to grant permissions to others to use their works in specific ways (unlike the “all rights reserved” copyright). You can not only use this to find photos and music for your students to use, but can also use it to safeguard their rights if you post their projects online.
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Thursday
October 04, 2007
Saturday, Oct. 6 is going to be a busy day. Try to get to one of these events if you can!
[For CPS teachers]
Chicago Foundation for Education hosts its 19th annual Creative Classrooms workshop, with sessions on classroom projects, information on CFE grants, resources, a keynote speaker, and more.
[Open to anyone]
Golden Apple, A+ Illinois, and National Louis University are co-sponsoring Let’s Talk: Illinois School Funding.
Labels: Golden Apple, Illinois, Opportunities
I wonder what I would have said back in grad school in 1999 if someone had asked me the question “how long do you intend to stay in teaching?” I think that I probably knew then that teaching was going to be part of my working life, but not necessarily my final destination. I stayed in the classroom for four years.
A few interesting studies have been published recently that look at teacher retention rates, and teachers’ explanations of why they stay or leave the classroom (look here, for instance). But I’m intrigued by a slightly different element of this issue, featured in a recent New York Times Magazine piece on Teach For American, which takes up the common assertion that TFA teachers “view their teaching stint as a résumé-burnishing pit stop before moving on to bigger things — that T.F.A. stands for ‘Teach for Awhile.’” It makes me wonder if different types of teacher preparation yield teachers with different career goals at the outset.
It makes sense that someone who has done their teacher training as an undergrad will come out of college thinking “teaching is my career,” while someone with a liberal arts degree might think “teaching is just one of many things I could do.” And perhaps career switchers entering teaching through alternative certification programs are more likely to see teaching as their long-term career, thinking “I have chosen teaching after examining all my other options” than teachers who are younger and haven’t had a chance to experiment. Are people who think “teaching is a good job” more or less likely to stay than teachers who think “I want to change the world”?
Is someone asking teacher preparation candidates questions like,
- Why do you want to be a teacher?
- How long do you intend to stay in teaching?
What about you? Did you see teaching as your long-term career when you were preparing for it? Do you still?
Labels: Conversations
Wednesday
October 03, 2007
With so much NCLB rhetoric flying around the newspapers and blogs this year (and last year, and the year before that), it’s refreshing to read something short, clear, and simple, that makes a little bit of sense. From Diane Ravitch in the New York Times:
No Child Left Behind can, however, be salvaged if policymakers recognize that they need to reverse the roles of the federal government and the states. In our federal system, each level of government should do what it does best…
Under current law, Congress now decides precisely which sanctions and penalties are needed to reform schools, which is way beyond its competence. The leaders of the House and Senate Education Committees are fine men, but they do not know how to fix the nation’s schools.
The obvious solution is to reverse roles. Washington should supply unbiased information about student academic performance to states and local districts. It should then be the responsibility of states and local districts to improve performance.
Diane and another eminent education thinker, Deborah Meier, discuss and debate ideas on their blog Bridging Differences. Definitely worth a visit.
Labels: News
