Rejecting the Dream Act

          The rejection of the Dream Act is a repudiation American values because the American dream is about the future, not the past.  Our country was founded on the idea a person's worth is determined by what he or she does, not by what their parents did.  The children we have turned down for American citizenship have done exactly what we ask of all immigrants.  They have stood in line their entire lives earning the right to citizenship by learning American culture in our schools.  They are like all of our children, some are bright and ambitious, some are searching to find themselves and some have given up.  But, they are all Americans because we have insisted they be educated as Americans.
         Now that they wish to show their appreciation and serve their country, they have been told that because their parents broke the law, we do not want them.  How mean spirited can we be?  I once had a student from Mexico who told me her family had come to America because they were hungry.  Where is our compassion for our neighbors to the south?  Why do we refuse to lend a helping hand to them like we have done for the many people we have accepted because their home country was in chaos and they needed help?
         The rejection of the Dream Act could have grave consequences for American growth and development.  Children take the messages of culture and act upon them in unexpected ways.  For the children of our illegal immigrants the rejection of their application to serve our country must be disheartening.  I wonder how many of them are looking for another place where they can be accepted for their accomplishments, rather than turned away for the sins of their fathers?

College Ready

I have begun a change in life related to my career in education.  Upon retirement I felt like many and could not really stop working.  I concerned myself with education issues and worked as a substitute, did some post retirement work as a school librarian, attended conferences on the brain and learning, spent some time working for PBS Teacherline, taught an online University course, did some contracting at a charter school and started this blog.  I developed a belief that kindness and cooperation are the missing ingredients in education.  I read Nel Noddings' Happiness and Education and concluded that she is right, we have worried too much about the technical side of education and not enough about the social emotional growth of the young people in our country and the goal of education should be to learn how to be happy.

As I have been going through my various stages of retirement education reform has been proceeding full blast.  Predicated upon the perception that our children are not prepared for the future and worries that other countries beat our scores on standardized tests it seems as though my generation of educators have utterly failed.  This has been a constant moan since I began teaching.  The public schools are failing our children seems to be a consensus that has been building for a certain portion of the U.S. population.  They want to replace our community based local control of education with school choice.  Schools whose only responsibility are the students they are teaching.  This seems to me a narrow view of education and seems to undermine the value of learning cooperation, diversity and common societal values.  It feels to me that the basic premise of this movement is if you don't like it, go somewhere else.  I always thought the American spirit had something to do with working through problems by finding common ground.  My ideas of kindness, happiness and cooperation don't seem to be the thinking of the educational establishment nor society in general.

So, I have decided to become a participant in education as opposed to being a proponent for any particular pedagogy.  I hope to experience the same college education our recent graduates are getting.  Of course I can not afford to go to Harvard, but I did obtain a scholarship for Vietnam Veterans sponsored by the state of New Mexico and I have enrolled at the University of New Mexico  as an English major studying creative writing.  I am starting over and trying to develop a second career as a writer, an idea that began with this blog and blossomed when I self published Bombs Away Buckaroos.  These projects have made me realize I never had training as a creative writer and have much to learn.  So, I have a goal but along the way hope to share my observations of the capabilities of my classmates and the quality of my education.

It has been an interesting two weeks but my overall impression is positive.  If we failed these students, then we failed my generation.  The students who go to the classes I do are interested, mostly do their work, seem to be future oriented and introspective.  They are certainly young adults who have the same problems all young adults have had with the meanings and problems of life in our culture.  My creative writing class is full of young minds who understand what they are asked to do and seem capable of doing it.  My first impressions of their writing is that they are no better or no worse that the students I attended with in 1965.

We will see.  I hope to report my impressions and share some of the work I am assigned as I progress through the beginning of the final third of my life or hopefully the 3rd quarter.  It sort of depends on having a healthy body and engaged mind!

School Improvement Grants

I read Jonathon Kozol's book Savage Inequalities many years ago and still wonder why we have not developed programs to turn our inner cities and their schools around.  I remember talk about enterprise zones and throughout my career people have acknowledged the sad conditions people in inner cites endure, yet nothing seems to have been done to help bring dignity and humane conditions to these areas where many of most needy children grow up.  That is why I wonder why the current reform movement is so intent upon creating conditions to punish all schools for failure when we need to marshal our resources to help those who live and go to school in intolerable conditions.

Yesterday the U.S. Department of Education news releases reported that a handful of states are receiving School Improvement Grants to turn around their persistently lowest achieving schools.  This seems like a really great thing to do.  Unfortunately the states must present one of the following plans for these schools to receive the money.

• TURNAROUND MODEL: Replace the principal, screen existing school staff, and rehire no more than half the teachers; adopt a new governance structure; and improve the school through curriculum reform, professional development, extending learning time, and other strategies.
• RESTART MODEL: Convert a school or close it and re-open it as a charter school or under an education management organization.
• SCHOOL CLOSURE: Close the school and send the students to higher-achieving schools in the district.
• TRANSFORMATION MODEL: Replace the principal and improve the school through comprehensive curriculum reform, professional development, extending learning time, and other strategies. 

These steps constitute doing more of the same old thing.  The problem is not the schools nor the teachers, it is the condition in which many of these schools operate and the despair within their communities.  These grants are another opportunity to turn America's public schools over to corporations and privatize education.

I firmly believe that any child can receive the best education in the world at almost any American public school.  It is the responsibility of the adults in the community and the governments that support those communities to provide  models and the ethics of success for their children.   This can not be done if the adults, children and the community are in states of stress and disrepair.  Let us solve the problems for our children and not pander to political whims.

Illiterate America

The battle for literacy is being fought in our classrooms daily, but the true cause of illiterate America is not being addressed by endless hours of reading instruction.  Just as the innumeracy will not be defeated by hours of solving long division problems.  The problem is not our inability to read or compute algorithms, it is our inability to make meaning of the information we read.  As I follow the news about our diverse political thinking it seems as though everyone believes what they hear if the information comes to them from someone with whom they agree.

I had this problem when I was teaching online.  I taught a basic research class for college freshmen who had just finished a course in writing opinion papers.  Many of my students could not make the switch to writing an objective paper.  They were out to prove their point of view and used research from sources that agreed with them rather than searching and reporting on all points of view on their topic.

I fear this type of thinking is becoming epidemic with the Internet.  I regularly receive informative emails from people who want me to agree with their point of view.  They regularly use information that comes from unreliable sources and pass it on as if it were true.  One of the emails that sticks in my mind concerns Jane Fonda.  She is hated by many Vietnam veterans and other patriots who periodically pass on information about her behavior during her visit to N. Vietnam.  No matter how reprehensible her behavior was, most of the information has been refuted by those whom she reportedly harmed.  A quick check of different sources on the Internet shows much of the information in these emails to be false. 

It seems to me our failure in schools is not that we do not teach our students to read, it is that we do not teach them to discern propaganda and rhetoric from fact!

National Standards

There are many movements to reform education and many of them do nothing to develop creativity.  We are in a race for high scores in reading and math at the expense of creativity. Recently, Governors and state commissioners of eduction developed a common core of state standards in English-language arts and mathematics for grades k-12.  According to their website,    

These standards define the knowledge and skills students should have within their K-12 education careers so that they will graduate high school able to succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing academic college courses and in workforce training programs. The standards are:

• Aligned with college and work expectations;
• Clear, understandable and consistent;
• Include rigorous content and application of knowledge through high-order skills;
• Build upon strengths and lessons of current state standards;
• Informed by other top performing countries, so that all students are prepared to succeed in our global economy and society; and
• Evidence-based.

Now the question is what exactly does the government want to do with these standards?  The Wall Street Journal on its editorial page sees national standards as a distraction from the work of firing teachers and handing out vouchers, but more importantly pointed out that monies from the Federal Government could end up being withheld for noncompliance

 With the Administration's blessing, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers have proposed a set of uniform K-12 math and reading standards for all states. Compliance will supposedly be voluntary, but Education Secretary Arne Duncan said states that support the effort will have a better chance of receiving Race to the Top money. And President Obama suggested that states that opt out risk losing millions of dollars in Title I grants for low-income students.

 I was raised in an Air Force family and we moved a lot.  I certainly see the sense in having national standards.  As a youngster some states were ahead of others and there was always a fear of being setback when your family moved to a new duty station.  However, as an educator I am in agreement with Tamim Anasary in Edutopias article From Education at Risk:Fallout from a Flawed Report

 Only on-site teachers can really make a broad ongoing assessment that gets at a range of achievements and takes the individual into account. By contrast, uniform standardized testing whose outcomes can be expressed as simple numbers allows someone far away to compare whole schools without ever seeing or speaking to an actual student. It facilitates the bureaucratization of education and enables politicians, not educators, to control schools more effectively.

NCLB has left a bad taste in my mouth for federal education mandates and I am fearful that the common core standards could become another mandate.  Just as we are a mobile society and need some standards across state lines, we are certainly a republic and our states and communities have aligned their education product nationally by adopting common curriculum created by educational organizations and through state development of benchmarks and standards.  Education corporations, specifically textbook companies have  gathered that information and created curriculum for our country.  Seems to me that is free market capitalism at work.

My  true fear is that as we work to create educational reform we are taking away the strength of our country.  The ability to create and innovate are not being encouraged in our schools.  Teachers should have the ability to create lessons based upon the needs of their students and local situations.  Children should be encouraged to explore and learn what interest them without being stuck in a timeline of instruction.  Unfortunately all of the reform to date is really based around the philosophy that teachers do not know what they are doing and the national standards are another method to undermine their authority and expertise.

Is ADD truly a disorder?

Take a look at the website Born To Explore, if we are going to create a culture of kindness and inclusion perhaps it is time that we think about all children in a positive way.

"I'm alarmed that to think than modern science may be turning creativity into a medical disorder" - Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D., from "The Myth of the ADD Child."

 Excerpts from an "Are you ADD" list,
from "Driven to Distraction" by Hallowell & Ratey.

1. Are you more creative or imaginative than most people?
2. Are you particularly intuitive?
3. Even if you are easily distracted, do you find that there are times when your power of concentration is laser-beam intense?
4. Are you usually eager to try something new?
5. Do you laugh a lot?
6. Do you get the gist of things very quickly?
7. Are you much more effective when you are your own boss?
8. Are you a maverick?
9. Do you tend to approach problems intuitively?
10. Do you often get excited by projects and then not follow through?

Book Review

Disrupting Class:  How disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson

The basic thesis of Disrupting Class is that we all learn differently and technology can help to capitalize on that neurological fact to improve education systems.  This is not as simple as it seems because schools have gathered students into heterogenous groups which present a knowledge base in a step by step process that benefit some learners but not all learners. Stakeholders in this  process are entrenched in this paradigm and reluctant to change.   How to break through this traditional learning paradigm is the focus of the book.

The argument that schools are designed for standardization and can not meet the needs of all learners leads to the discussion of student-centric schools where learning is customized for each student.  Which fits nicely into the concept of differentiation.  The authors believe that if schools are to educate every student then they must begin moving toward the student centric model and away from the monolithic batch process with all its interdependencies.  They further believe that computer based learning is an emerging disruptive force that will accelerate this movement.

The theory of disruptive innovation is that innovations improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically by lowering price or designing for a different set of consumers.  This is opposed to sustaining innovations which in the case of education is the monolithic standardized system that exists today. 

The authors believe that as in the private sector, schools have continually had their goals changed.  But unlike the private sector they must create new products from within the existing paradigm because they are a monopoly making it difficult for new models to compete on the changing goals.  Schools, according to the authors, have been given four primary aims over the history of the United States. These arep preserve the democracy and inculcate Democratic values, provide something for every students, keep America competitive, and more recently eliminate Poverty  Traces of all of the goals can be found in our current system and each goal has been met by teachers and administrators who want to improve the system.  Today, however, the game has changed.  Computers are the change agent and learners are different because of their familiarity with the digital world of knowledge.

Schools have been purchasing computers and using them to sustain and marginally improve the way they already teach and run schools. This has not led to significant change in how education systems work and can not do so until computer based learning disrupts the instructional job of teachers in a positive way by creating student-centric learning systems allowing teachers opportunities to give more individual attention to those they teach.

The example from industry that illustrates how this can be done is Apple computers.  When Apple came on the scene computers were large, specialized, expensive machines that were beyond the understanding and budgets of most individuals.  The sustaining innovation was for large corporations to continue making money selling these machines to large businesses.  Apple disrupted this paradigm by marketing the computer as a toy for children.  The main rule of disruptive innovation is that to succeed it must be applied to applications where the alternative is nothing.  Just like Apple, they provided computers to people who would never have been able to afford any of the computers on the market prior to Apple.

In education the computer is disruptive when it provides opportunities for students for whom there was no alternative.  If a student wants to take Chinese and there is not a teacher at the school to teach it, disruptive innovation can create a product for that student.  This is already happening throughout our schools.  It is up to the policy makers and administrators to encourage this growth as in Florida and Minnesota where virtual schools are growing much faster than anticipated and providing opportunties for students whose individual needs are not being met by the standardized operations of the typical school.

The reason that a large investment in computers in schools has not created a better education system is because we are using computers to do more of the same type teaching, didactic instruction.  Computers will become disruptive as they begin to replace this type of instruction.  That means finding places in the standardized model for which there is a demand but limited opportunities to meed that demand.  School administrators and teachers must be looking for opportunities to provide computer based learning to students who want to take classes that schools can not provide.  AP, specialized courses like language, recovery credit, and small and rural districts with limited resources are some of the ways technology have begun meeting the needs of students.

As the model of sudent centric learning takes hold in schools it will lead to better software.  At first the software will be expensive and mirror the dominant learning styles in the classrooms.  The authors believe that experience in industry and business demonstrates that a second stage will follow where software will be developed by teachers to meet individual learning needs.  There is a vast untapped area of non consumption or needs with no alternative that computer learning technology will fill and create a student-centric project based learning models that will cause the technolgoy to disrupt the standardized education models of today.

Experience in industry and business show that four factors will drive this disruption and change education.
1.  Computer based learning will keep improving
2.  The ability of computer based learning to create differentiated learning pathways.
3.  The upcoming teacher shortage.
4.  Costs will fall as the market accelerates.

The outcome of this change will alter the dynamic of teaching and change the pedagogy.  As students engage the knowledge base in computer based programs, teacher will have become learning coaches and tutors spending most of their time moving from student to student encouraging and helping learning rather than delivering one-size-fits-all lectures.  Teachers will need to be more cognizant of student needs and learning styles than they are today.  Assessment will become instant and instructive.  Students will know exactly what they need to do to be successful using computer learning technology.  Mastery learning will become the accepted model of learning and there student will repeat lessons in different ways in order to master the information.  Teachers will also know exactly what students need in order to help them.  This type of teaching will be much closer to the 19th century model of the one-room school house than the enormous learning institutions that have developed during the 20th century.  Under this system students can be evaluated by how far they have moved through a body of knowledge rather than what per centage of the knowledge they have mastered.

The authors call for a transformation of education through disruptive technoloty.  They envision chartered schools as laboratories where needed changes can begin and spread throughout the system.  This is an important book that educators must read and consider.  It is a warning to public schools that if they are to survive they must adopt a different way of doing business.

Throw the Bums Out! There are more players than just teachers

I like to listen to talk radio and frequently tune in different station to hear all sides of the daily whine.  The car radio was tuned to a local station and a moderator and guest were discussing various societal problems.  When they discussed education, the guest began the rhetoric of scapegoating teachers.  The message this man sent out was that our schools are in ruins and it is the fault of the teachers, so we have to create vouchers, and charters to move improve education.

There is a persistent drumbeat in the media causing us to believe all our schools are failing and the way to solve the problem is to get rid of the teachers.  My experiences as an educator leads me to believe that this is a very simplistic solution.  Certainly there are bad schools and certainly there are bad teachers but to label all students as poorly educated and all teachers as bad misses the mark at the heart of the problem.

My experience is that most teachers are dedicated professionals trying to help as many students as they can.  Most students want to succeed and usually behave like adolescents in pursuit of that goal. What I find interesting about the debate is that since I began teaching in 1975 nothing has substantially changed.  At that time schools were failing, students were not going to be able to succeed in life, other countries were ahead of us in test scores,  and teachers were the problem.  It is hard to believe that adults today have the thinking skills to evaluate the problems  of education, that they do is a testament to the fact that somehow they were able to make meaning of their educations despite the fact it was so bad.

I believe that part of the problem is that most children did not like being told what they had to do and blamed their teachers for their unhappiness at having to go to school.  I think that is the root of the problem.  Many people remember their education from negative emotional memories.  This can be solved by making schools a happier environment.  I believe that being kind and respectful to all students can go a long way toward achieving the goal of children being happy about going to school.  When they first started school that is how they felt.  Educational institutions should strive to create environments of wonder and awe.

What about the bad teachers?  There are some, but I do not believe that you can find them by looking at their student test scores.  Education is a cooperative, collaborative process with many stakeholders and they all have a hand in the success or failure of each child.  Parents,  administrators, teachers, education aides, school boards, unions, substitute teachers, state legislators, and federal administrators are some of the stakeholders in this process.  How do we evaluate their responsibility for the system failures and successes?

My real question is how do bad teachers get to the classroom?  Maybe we should evaluate that system as opposed to scapegoating the teachers.  How does a bad teacher get a degree in education?  What role does the hiring process play in putting bad teachers in the classroom?  Why can't certification processes be better filters of good and bad teachers? Why aren't "bad" teachers identified early in the evaluation process, given guidance, and mentored?  Certainly a contract can be negotiated with teacher's unions that recognizes the importance of working together for the best interests of the children.

Our adversarial, competitiveness drives the school systems.  These are not 21st skills, they are 19th century skills.  Today it is more important than ever that we show our children how collaboration and cooperation drive teams to win.  The United States is a team and if we truly believe that our children are important we need to demonstrate the best traits of competition, not the worst.  Throwing out teachers is not the answer to reforming education!

What would happen if schools encouraged kindness?

Information about Kindness in Education
Teacher's Guide for Teaching Kindness
A to Z Teacher Stuff - Teacher Tips: Promoting Kindness
Random Acts of Kindness Lesson Plan for Teachers
Acts of Kindness | In Your Classroom

Thoughts from Yrisarri
Bella said, “They can make me come to school, but they can’t make me learn anything.”  This was 1994 and Bella was a 16 year old girl responding to my question of what her parents would think when I told them she did absolutely no work in my class.  Bella taught me about motivation, I had to work very hard and be very nice to Bella.  She wasn’t a problem student, she was very quiet, she just sat at her desk and reflected all period long.  In the end I won Bella over and she began to work, but only because I did not write her off and treated her decision not to work with respect, kindness finally won her over. 

I remember a third grade grade teacher in an elementary school where 1/2 of the students had to take her class.  She was always punishing children by isolating and belittling them.  Her message was that these bad little boys and girls have to be taught how to behave.  Yet, when treated with respect these same students responded with excellent behavior.

What brings these stories to mind was the news a couple weeks ago about an elementary principal who had written a letter mocking a second grade student’s ability to learn.  It was meant as a letter to his staff, but this kind of leadership encourages truly poor teachers.  Rather than discrediting an entire profession for failing test scores, let’s look beyond superficial evaluation methods and find out why our children are not motivated to get an education in a country that provides unlimited opportunities for those who succeed in our school systems.  The teachers I would like to see leave the profession are the ones who cause the Bellas to hate school, maybe she had the 3rd grade teacher who thought little boys and girls need to be taught how to behave!

Society seems to have become a place where calling names and discrediting others is more important that solving problems .  The data we are gathering in education is being used for finger pointing and punishment rather than evaluation and improvement.(Diane Ravitch: Education has become search and destroy mission and teachers are often the targets | Get Schooled )  It seems to me that rather than acquiesce to the lack of civility and inability to get along with others education should view this as a problem to tackle by treating students in a respectful manner. 

The competitive and punitive nature of our education system causes young children to behave in ways we can not fully appreciate.  One unkind word can change the course of a child’s thinking about how people should treat each other.  I would like to share a Chinese story that I think addresses this problem.

Chang Kung and the Golden Secret

Chang Kung was a good and kind grandfather with a very large family. He had so many children, grandchildren and great -grandchildren, that his house was full of people all of the time. His house had to grow larger to hold everyone, and so it became a collection of houses, side by side, in a big circle around a yard.

The unusual thing about Chang Kung's huge family wa s that nobody ever quarreled! The children never teased each other, or got into fights. The grown-ups never got mad at each other. They never scolded the children, or spanked them.

Stories about this family that never quarreled spread over all the countryside until even the Emperor heard about them. He said “I wonder is these stories are really true. I shall go find out.

The Emperor rode to Chang Kung's house in his sedan chair, carried on the shoulders of four men dressed in red. His guards carried long bows and arrows, and other attendants followed, pIaying flutes and harps.

The Emperor visited all the houses of the family of Chang Kung, going from room to room, talking to everyone he met. Finally, he said to Chang Kung, "It is true that no cross words are spoken within your walls. You must have a golden secret in order to keep so many people living together in such peace. I would like to know your secret. "

Old Chang Kung took a brush and ink and a bamboo tablet. He carefully wrote one word. Then he wrote the same word over and over, until he had written it a hundred times. This is the word he wrote.

The Emperor said, "You have written many words, but at the same time you have written only one word. "

Chang Kung said, "That one word is my golden secret. That one word is kindness, over and over without any ending. "

The Emperor was so pleased that he said, "Let all the families in China learn the golden secret of Chang Kung and his family!" The Emperor had pictures of Chang Kung painted so that people could hang them on their kitchen walls to remind them to keep the golden secret.

March 1st Rally in Santa Fe for Early Childhood Programs

On March 1st I went to Santa Fe with my wife, grandaughter, and father to advocate against cutting essential early childhood programs by attending a rally in the capitol building rotunda sponsored by The Decade of The Child.  The Decade of the Child (DoC) is a grassroots advocacy coalition focusing on the well being of young children in partnership with other groups and agencies.  DoC is committed to empowering children and their families to discover and pursue their full potentials to ensure a positive future for New Mexico. 

Alan Sanchez, the executive director of St. Josephs was the moderator and his rallying cry of "We Need Money" was picked up by the crowd who had traveled from all parts of the state and hopefully reached the ears of their legislators.  The same legislature that is considering a 20% cut of state allocations for early childhood programs. 

Advocates insist we can not afford this cut because it devalues the quality of life for young children and their families and undermines the fiscal purpose of early childhood programs, to create future savings by investing in early childhood programs for learning and care.  The DoC and other advocates believe that early childhood programs help create healthy, contributing future members of society.  A new report by Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a national law enforcement organization shows that , "quality early learning can save $80,000,000 a year on corrections costs in New Mexico."

Baji Rankin from Decade of the Child cited a study in Michigan which showed a $1 billion savings from early childhood programs in 25 years. Diana Montoya from the NM Human Rights Commission spoke for her grandson Diego by saying "don't let us down." That message was echoed by former Governor David Cargo as he spoke to the lack of a level playing field that has been developed by uneven subsidies in the form of tax cuts to the people who least need them and then placing the burden of paying for state services on the middle and lower economic classes.  Jaime Tamez the executive director  Cuidando de los Ninos indicated that serving homeless children is difficult without a constant commitment from the state legislature.  Other speakers included Catherine Freeman the chair of the NM Early Childhood Consortium and Rosa Barraza a child care provider and president of the NM Child Care and Education Association.  A particularly poignent plea for funding was made by Deb Dennison who explained how comforting funding from Mi Via was for her as her son died of a rare neurological disease.  She pointed out the importance of expending as much money as needed to ensure the health of our chidren.  

All of the paricipants wanted the legislature to hear one simple message

 

Don't Lose Ground-Maintain our Investment in Ealry Chidhood!!

If our statement that "children are the future" is not just rhetoric, we wouldn't be cutting any money from the budget for these essential programs.

Math Education are we instructing the right part of the brain?

Some Interesting Websites
 Forvo is the largest pronunciation guide in the world. Ever wondered how a word is pronounced?  Ask for that word or name, and another user will pronounce it for you. You can also record your own pronunciations.
 VPike will fascinate kids and adults alike.  When you enter an address you will see a picture of that place. 
10 Cool Math Sites contains ten math sites for students of all ages, as well as teachers.  There are websites for everything from basic flash cards to game theory. 

Articles on Math Education
 A A-Maze-ing Approach to Math by Barry Garelick in Education Next
'Algebra-for-all' Approach Fount to Yield Poor Results by Debra Viadero Education Week
 West Brain, East Brain by Sharon Begley in Newsweek
Number Wars: School Battles heat Up Again in the Traditional versus Reform-Math Debate  by Linda Baker in Scientific American

Thoughts From Yrisarri
I recently read an article that asks whether or not a math teacher should have a degree in mathematics.  That depends a great deal upon what level is being taught and the amount of math study the teacher has completed.  It is probably a good requirement for a high school teacher with classes in upper level math because of the need for depth of knowledge needed to transmit not only the information but a love of the subject.  I have encountered many math teachers with minimum exposure to math who have been assigned to teach teach math at the middle or high school level.  Needless to say, these teachers are frequently ineffective because they don't know math. There are also many people who know about math but don't necessarily understand how to work with children.  It seems that this problem of math aptitude for the teacher has some real solutions.  The problem however, is deeper than who has a degree and who does not have a degree in math.

The most important skill of any teacher, including the math teacher, is to motivate the students, provide the student with the proper challenge, and explain what they do not understand.  Unfortunately we seem to have a culture in which many people admit they do not understand math or just do not see why it is important to their life.  Elementary teachers reflect the society they represent and many do not understand the relationship between math and problem solving and are unable to motivate their students to want to learn math.  These teachers end up teaching math as a language by having their students solve and memorize equations.  Even if the student is motivated to learn math that is only a small part of learning mathematics .

An interesting study of east vs. west mathematical thinking demonstrates the difference in the ways each culture is taught math.  Using brain scans to determine what part of the brain an individual uses when confronted with a math problem the researchers found differences between eastern and western use of the brain.  Asian brains generally used the spatial/visual portions of the brain while their western counterparts depended upon the language area of their brain.

I spent a number of years in Asian cultures and my experience leads me to believe that a difference between how we learn math may contribute to the difference in how our brains treat math problems.  In the U.S.  we jump immediately to abstract concepts when teaching math.  The use of graphical representations runs counter to a child’s intuitive knowledge about math.  All kids know that three cookies on the plate are preferable to one cookie.  But, when we put the number 3 and the number 1 in writing and begin talking about what they mean, we have moved beyond the concrete operations the child needs to fully conceptualize what we are talking about.

The Japanese use the abacus to learn math.  I vividly remember young children doing math operations on the abacus much faster and more accurately than I could with pencil and paper.  When their students begin solving equations in all four areas of math using a concrete model, our students are memorizing math tables of graphical representations.  I believe this helps to explain why Asians use visual/spatial areas of their brain and we tend to think in terms of language.  I also recall that most Japanese students knew their "math facts" because of repetition on the abacus.

The aversion to math in our culture is often echoed by middle school children and their chants of “boring” and “I’ll never use this”.  This is not something they thought of on their own.  Frequently you hear their parents say exactly the same thing when you discuss their child's problem with math.  We need math teachers who can counter this national aversion to math by demonstrating and relating the subject to daily life and who understand that math is a way of thinking more than a specific operation.  They also need to motivate children by their teaching to want to learn math.     

Teachers do not necessarily need math degrees but they do need to understand and value math at various levels based upon the level they teach.  However, nothing will change unless there is a paradigm shift in our country.  As long as we do more of the same thing in our math instruction, our children will not want to learn math because it seems boring and useless to them.  It is going to require a commitment from the teachers to learn a different way of thinking about the purpose of math and giving our students positive messages about their ability to think in mathematical ways.

Graduation from High School After 10th Grade

 Some Useful Websites for Teachers
My Timeline will help you construct a timeline, adding events, descriptions, and images that help bring content alive.
How Stuff Works is a great site for a student to explore!
After School Activities brings hands-on activities and digital library resources into afterschool play!


Some Articles to Read 
(These articles may require you sign up to read them) 
Librarians' Roles Shifting to Address the Demand for Quality Online Content by Katie Ash 
'Algebra-for-All' Push Found to Yield Poor Results By Debra Viadero 
Educator Teamwork Seen as Key to School Gains By Lisa Fine

 

Thoughts from Yrisarri

This week I read a number of articles about plans for high school aged students to enter college and some about the importance of cooperation among teachers at schools to insure that all students get effective teaching.  I think these ideas have a lot of merit and could be utilized to make education more relevant and effective. 

Ky. in test that sends sophomores to college 
Information from: The Courier-Journal, http://www.courier-journal.com 

Louisville Ky. (AP) — Kentucky and seven other states will participate in a pilot education program that will send some students to college two years early. The National Center on Education and the Economy is providing the program under a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  The Courier-Journal in Louisville reported that, under the program, students who complete the 10th grade with test results showing they can handle college-level studies will be allowed to enroll in colleges and universities.  The program is still being worked out, but is expected to begin in fall 2011 with 10 to 20 high schools taking part in each of the states.  Besides Kentucky, schools in Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont will participate.

Why not take this idea further?  Mandatory public education should end after the 10th grade for students who are prepared for the next level of education.  One of our educational problems is the 9th grade.  Young adolescents are beginning to view the world around them with a different frame of reference and become impatient with the schooling process.  I believe if they knew there was only one more year of mandatory schooling, there would be more motivation to finish.  My experience is that students in early adolescence have a hard time assessing their long term future and a shorter goal to graduation would help.  Not all students need to go to college at 16, but they do need to have a curriculum that is relevant to their lives and ambitions.  At end of mandatory public education is the beginning of what Australia calls Tertiary Education

from Australia's Government Website  http://www.dfat.gov.au/aib/education.html

There are two types of tertiary education programs: those offered by institutions, private training providers and industry in the vocational education and training (VET) sector; and those offered by universities and other higher education providers.

Why not allow students to make a decision about their education at this point?  Something that is often overlooked about our educational system is that anyone, at any age can change the direction of their careers by going to school.  Some students may choose to work and that should be encouraged and be a part of a planned tertiary education experience. The tertiary experience would provide for a diversity of curriculum, programs and experiences for young people prepared to take that step.  I believe that offering this program would cause many more students to be prepared.  Not everyone will be ready at this point but those who are not can be mentored and tutored in a more effective manner than flunking or passing to the next  level without the skills they need to suceed.

It should be understood by all Americans that  life-long learning is encouraged by our society and there is no real end point or time in life when it is too late to study and change.  Just as there should be no subjective value placed on the work individuals choose to do.  In a democracy such as ours there should be an egalitarian approach to vocational and professional choices individuals make.  All jobs should be understood to have paths for growth and advancement, and that security is possible with most choices made about work.

So how do we decide if a young person is prepared to take this step? It would require cooperation among school, community and business to create a meaningful diploma.  A committee chosen from representatives of the larger community could evaluate a student’s portfolio and decide if they had met the predetermined standards and benchmarks the community believes are necessary to begin the tertiary stage of education and guide them in the execution of their next step.

from When Should Students Graduate ... And Who Should Decide ?
By S.G. Grant  Education Week On-Line

What would happen, we wondered, if state policymakers took themselves largely out of the picture and allowed local, district-based committees to define the assessments that would demonstrate students’ readiness to graduate? Students would still need to sit for and pass the standardized state exams, but those results alone would not determine whether a student was competent and ready to graduate. Instead, state exams and their scores would be part of a larger slate of assessments that gauged students’ knowledge and understanding in more realistic and authentic ways.

A system like this would require that we care about each individual and work together as learning communities.  The burden of success would be local rather than centererd in some distant bureaucracy.  Each student would be required to have an educational plan evaluated at predetermined benchmarks.  Teachers would have to cooperate  to insure that student plans are successful in the long term.  This would cause schools to take advantage of the full talents of their teachers and administrators.

from Teacher Learning: Sine Qua Non of School Innovation
By Stephanie Hirsh 

You wouldn’t know it from current discussions about teacher effectiveness, but the talent and expertise needed to raise student achievement already exist in many, if not most, schools. Unfortunately, too few of them have a culture that encourages teachers and administrators to work together on a regular basis, to consult each other more often on matters of teaching and learning, to share responsibilities for instructional improvement, and to implement professional-learning opportunities that address both their needs and their students’.

Having the right conditions for professional learning promotes trust and respect among educators, the essential ingredients for an honest dialogue about what is working and what needs to change. Absent these conditions, the most effective teachers and successful schools will continue to operate as “islands of excellence,” rather than as places all educators can turn to as a way of learning how to improve their own results.

This plan would require us to focus on the individual students, give them a voice in their educataion, allow for the growth of diverse curriculums in the teritary system, give students authentic instruction, and provide for community and school cooperation at many levels. It would also depend upon rethinking what schooling, education and learning mean and how our society views the value of different types of work in our culture.

The Crisis in Education

Useful Websites
Cramster.com  is a good site high school and college students, it is an on-line study community with lots of useful resources and advice.  Social networking for study!!!
The Week in Rap is a novel way to let your students learn about the news of the week in the language of rap!
Veterans History Project - The Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war.
Today in History Calendar - One of the free educational resources at Thinkfinity.  A great bulletin board addition!

Books to Read
The Education of Gospel by W. Norton Grubb and Marvin Lazerson discusses the idea that more schooling for more people is the remedy for our problems and that the aim of education is to prepare for work.

Interesting Articles about Education
For Students at Risk, Early College Proves a Draw by Tamar Lewin from New York Times on-line.

There is a payoff for the long bus rides: The 48 SandHoke seniors are in a fast-track program that allows them to earn their high-school diploma and up to two years of college credit in five years — completely free.

These Things We Believe by John Norton, Teacher Magazine on-line (you may need to subscribe to read this article)

 Good teachers are frustrated, I believe, because they care so much about the work they do. They feel strait-jacketed by conflicting directives from above, and overwhelmed by constant budget cutting that makes a hard job even harder. More and more, there’s a temptation to respond to the constant criticism with angry rebuttals that point out society’s mixed messages: “Teach to the test.” “Individualize instruction.” “Stick to the teaching script.” “Transform students into critical thinkers.” Then, when teacher tempers boil over, we hear: “How come they’re always whining?”

A Climate of False Crisis by Deborah Meir from the blog Bridging Differences in Education Week on-line.   (you may need to subscribe to read this article)

Narratives are easier to remember, and so we invent them. And, we always insist that at this moment we cannot move with caution because—it's a crisis in need of an immediate fix.

Thoughts from Yrisarri

For more than a decade the American school has been under one of the severest attacks it has ever encountered in its history. This assault is focused, in part, on the school's alleged inability and inefficiency in helping our children master the knowledge and skills they need to live in a highly technological and constantly changing society.

This statement is from Philosophy and the American School by Van Cleve Morris and Young Pai. The book was my Philosophy of Education text book in a class I took in 1979!  My entire career has been one marked by the educational crisis. This drumbeat of crisis in American education has been the driving force for change in the public schools. When we change we have to buy new curriculum materials from educational publishers. My guess is that the crisis is not real but manufactured for America's two competing/cooperating institutions - government and corporations. It is part of the  philosophy that allows us to remain in a state of stress about the future so that we will buy ideas and programs to alleviate that stress. What I have seen in my career in response to this fear is a movement away from local control of education to increased state control and less local curriculum development in favor of purchased curriculum programs.

There are problems in education that need to be addressed, but to place the future of our country on the shoulders of our children is wrong.  One way to improve learning in our schools is to decrease the stress on children not increase it.  As Jonathan Kozol has pointed out in his books, there are deplorable schools in our nation's urban centers. It feels as if the educational reformers want to make educators the scapegoats for society's neglect of  inner cities and rural schools.  We have been busy fighting terror in foreign lands when it festers in America.  A terror that makes children look to gangs and violence as answers to their problems rather than school and education.  This is not the fault of our schools; it is the fault of our national priorities.  To punish all schools for this problem does not make any sense.  I have always maintained that any one can get the best education in the world at about any school in America if they are motivated to learn.

Our biggest problem is that children and adults are rejecting the traditional American education while government and corporations, who have taken control, insist that what needs to be done is more of the same.  Charter schools, home schools and technology are providing new avenues for the customers of education and they are using these new tools in ever increasing numbers while the public schools are not allowed to compete.  Teachers and their learning communities have good ideas about what is needed.  They know that learning is more important than passing tests and they know how to make that happen.  They realize that they must motivate their students by providing a curriculum that is interesting and contains the correct challenge for each student.  They know that all students need differentiation because each person is unique and to provide a blanket curriculum across a nation as diverse as American is counter productive.

Our aim in American schools should not be to educate based on the average of the data to solve society's problems but to educate each person to reach their potential.  Our country will be much stronger if we allow individuals the freedom to learn what they need for their future.  More government and more corporate control will not accomplish this task.  Just as each student is an individual so the needs of each community are unique.  Let's put our resources behind helping each community meet its needs and that will further larger national interests more than dictating those needs from the top down. There is not a crisis in what our children know, but rather how our politicians and governments use them to further their interests.

Standardized Testing is a Narrow Measure of Teacher Effectivenss

Interesting Websites
Xpeditions a National Geographic website with an interactive “museum” that takes you on geography journeys. Here you’ll climb a mountain, hover over the Earth, speed across Europe, visit an archeological dig, and even order sushi—plus games, animations, and more!
Thinkfinity.org   is the cornerstone of Verizon Foundation's literacy, education and technology initiatives. Their goal is to improve student achievement in traditional classroom settings and beyond by providing high-quality content and extensive professional development training. This free, comprehensive digital learning platform is built upon the merger of two acclaimed programs Verizon MarcoPolo and the Thinkfinity Literacy Network. 
Lifestyle will introduce children to the wonderful world of writing with four websites they will have fun exploring. 

Articles to Read 
Retaining Teacher Talent This article contains research from Learning Point Associates about teacher effectiveness.  The studies probe teachers for their views on what makes and effective teacher. 
Moms' Depression in Pregnancy Tied to Antisocial Behavior in Teens is a Science Daily article about a study with some surprising findings.  
Physical Education to Valuable to Sacrifice to Budget Cuts an article by Besty Hurd from Saginaw Michigan explaining the importance of PE to a community that just cut those programs from their school.   
Convergent Education  (You have to subscribe to be able to read this article) is a special report from ESchool News about the growing schism between students use of technology and the way schools want them to learn. 

In short, students no longer are limited to learning only in classrooms under the tutelage of certified instructors during designated school hours–and this change has profound implications for educators.

 Thoughts From Yrisarri
There has been much in the news lately about evaluating teachers as a core principle for educational reform.  Much of the discussion is politically driven as part of an effort to challenge educational unions and some of it comes from corporate effectiveness models.  All of this discussion leads one to believe the schools are full of bad teachers that we can not get rid of and that effective teachers have students with high test scores.  Evaluating teachers is an important aspect of the job and I have certainly met some who should not be teaching.  That does not mean we should develop narrow prescriptive tools for evaluation purposes. 

But what is an effective teacher and who determines which teachers are effective?

Our new policy makers want to create a one size fits all test for effective teachers,  student achievement on standardized tests.  If your students aren’t performing well on those tests you lose your job; if they are doing well you get a bonus.  This seems to me to be a narrow approach to a complex situation.  If that is all it takes to be an effective teacher let us just put all the kids on computers and let them study for the tests!

Teaching is a combination of skills and artistry that takes time to develop and should be measured in a more responsible manner.  Teachers must motivate groups of children and differentiate their learning to match their developmental needs.  Students are not products to be formed in molds but individuals with unique needs and wants to be counseled and given guidance.  The effective teacher connects with their students and helps each one to reach their potential.

Measuring a teachers effectiveness has to be done in the context of the community.  This does not mean we should not hold all learners to high standards, just that what is a high standard to some is not perceived to be so by others.  Expectations need to be realistic from student to student, school to school and community to community.  Teachers should not be judged in isolation, but as part of a team.  All the teachers who teach a child are responsible for his or her education, not just the teacher being evaluated.

If the aim of education is to develop learners into effective and productive citizens, you may not be able to evaluate a teacher until the students are adults and in the workplace.  Shouldn’t we expect our schools to develop healthy, happy adults who love to learn?  That is what I expect.   How do you measure a teachers ability to do that?

Sometimes things teachers do are not immediately learned.  How do yo measure the effectiveness of teachers who plant seeds that do not grow right away?  There are teachers who develop the social emotional skills of their students, those are just as important for their future as academics, but not easy to measure.  Are those bad teachers?

Why not allow the evaluation of teachers to be done by their customers, the community they serve?  What if parents were allowed to choose their children’s teacher or even their children’s school? Wouldn’t that be a pretty good indicator of what the community views as a good teacher?  How about allowing for peer review and student input?  How about improving that the process for hiring educators to insure that dedicated competent individuals become our children’s teachers.  Why not guarantee that a teacher can advance in salary and responsibility to insure better schools?   There are many ideas for measuring and improving teacher effectiveness.  Why do policy makers seem to be stuck on the narrow measure of teacher effectiveness based only on standardized testing?

Unfortunately education is under attack and has become highly politicized at the national and state levels.  Fears about the future, wars against unions, calls for narrow agendas, and misunderstanding about what teachers do all contribute to a climate that causes us to look for scapegoats for what is perceived to be a deteriorating education system. 

Evaluating our teachers is too important to allow policy makers and bureaucrats to create narrow systems of evaluation that measure only one aspect of a teacher’s work.  If we want better schools, then we must expand the discussion about how we will evaluate the job our teachers do.

 

Friends of Early Childhood-NM Lesgislators Reception

One of the most important aspects of educational reform is to recognize the importance of early childhood programs in developing children who are ready for schooling.  That is why the Friends of Early Childhood reception for New Mexico Legislators at Rio Chama Steakhouse was a lobbying event in truly in the public interest.  Hosted by the NMAEYC, Voices for Children and the New Mexico Community Foundation should have been attended by every NM legislator.  For even if a legislator believes that responsible parenting is the key to child development, it is important for them to recognize that it is not the fault of the child if the parents are not responsible parents.

The attendance was better than anticipated with many familiar faces from both the house and the senate showing support for our youngest citizens.  There were over 40 supporters from the legislature and various departments of state government impacted by early childhood programs.  Of particular interest was the attendance by Representative James P. White from District 20 in Bernalillo County which includes some of the East Mountain communities.  That is one of the areas in NM in need of assessing their early childhood programs because of the rapid pace of change due to an exploding population.

Aron Segotta, the NM State Police Chief, addressed the gathering and stated his belief that early childhood programs will eventually reduce the amount of crime in our state and reduce our prison population.  Dorian Dodson, the cabinet secretary of CYFD,  was there to show her support.  She stated that close to half of her budget goes to early childhood programs and the rest to programs in the juvenile justice system.  With funding of more early childhood programs the future of this department could be one which spends less money repairing the damage done to children in their early stages of development.

The program included a viewing of the video Change The First Five Years and You Change Everything made available to all NM legislators by the Decade of the Child organization.  This video was produced to help develop a better understanding of why preschool children need these programs and influence the legislature to find more money to help early childhood programs in New Mexico. 

Baji Rankin from Decade of the Child and Emily Nunez-Darnell from the New Mexico Community Foundation were hosts of this event.  Our youngest citizens are grateful for your attendance, but talk is not enough.  Will the programs to help children in need be funded?

College For All: An Unnecessary Goal for Public Schools

Some Useful Websites
Lure of the Labyrinth- A cool way to develop pre-algebra skills
Map Maker is a great site for middle school and high school students who want to add maps to a report.
Architect Studio 3D On this Web site, you can design a house, walk through it in 3D, and then share it with the world. You can also learn more about architecture, past and present, and explore Frank Lloyd Wright's life and work.
The How-To Series The five posts from the blog Free Technology for Teachers give directions on how to use Web. 2.0 tools in the classroom

Articles to To Read
Revolution and Evolution in Educational System by PRof.MSRO ICFAI, University of India

 Education and character are two sides of same coin and one without the other makes no sense. Money can come and go, but it is the character that is valid from the beginning to the end of life. Any person, whether they can be equipped with the formation of character of each part of the world beyond. To put it in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. Put “The function of education to teach an intensive course, to think and think critically intelligence and character ….. .. .. This is the goal of true education. “

Meeting Kids Where They Are-Not Where We Wish They Were  by Jack Schneider From Education Week

Precious, in all likelihood, is not going to college.
This runs contrary to the aims of the dominant players in modern school reform, who, whether they are in government, school districts, or philanthropic organizations, routinely employ the phrase “excellence for all” in justifying their expenditures. The theory of change among the educational entrepreneurs, it seems, is simple: Find what works and make it available to all students. As Teach For America’s chief executive officer, Wendy Kopp, has said of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan: “He just wants to find and scale the ideas that work"

 Adolescence and Mistake-Based Education by Carl Pickhardt PHD in Psychology Today

In childhood, the age of dependence, a conscientious parent is often the best teacher. In adolescence, the age of independence, confronting hard consequences is often the best teacher. 

The Dramatic Rise of Anxiety and Depression in Children and Adolescents: Is it Connected to the Decline in Play and Rise in Schooling? by Peter Gray in Psychology Today 

Rates of depression and anxiety among young people in America have been increasing steadily for the past fifty to seventy years. Today five to eight times as many high school and college students meet the criteria for diagnosis of major depression and/or an anxiety disorder as was true half a century or more ago. This increased psychopathology is not the result of changed diagnostic criteria; it holds even when the measures and criteria are constant.

Books to Read
Happiness and Education by Nel Noddings

Jonathan Kozol, author of Savage Inequalities and Ordinary Resurrections  says, 'Noddings' thesis and argument that happiness and education not only can but should coexist must be taken seriously by everyone concerned about preparing children and young adults for a truly satisfying life in our democratic society.'

Quote of the Week

I used to think that a college degree was the leg up to success in life, an accomplishment that made you a better person, a stronger contributor. I thought it mattered less where you went to college than what you did with that education. Now, I understand that as a first-generation graduate of Regional State U, and a Baby Boomer, I was simply part of "credential creep."         Quote from Nancy Flanagan in the blog, Teacher in A Strange Land

Thoughts from Yrisarri
Educational policy reform is being driven partially by the idea that our public school system should prepare all students for college.  This is not only unnecessary but it is unrealistic and based upon arrogant beliefs about the value of work.

The goal is being proposed by well-intentioned people who believe in diversity and want all Americans to have the advantages of a college degree.  The argument is that statistics show that a person with a college degree is more likely to have a higher salary than their peers who do not.  As a matter of fact, as you progress on the educational ladder you statistically improve your chances of higher lifetime earnings.

While that is true, what about individual desires?  Why should we base educational goals on population wide statistical analysis?  There will always be individuals who are not ready or do not want to enter into a program of studies at a college.  Many of our high school graduates can benefit from going to work, or doing volunteer work to help them make informed decisions about their futures.  Why should they have to prepare for college in the public schools?

It is arrogant to think that the only pathway to success in America is through a college education.   There has been a misguided notion about the trades and their importance in our society.  After all, Benjamin Franklin was a printer who was as erudite as his better educated peers.  The value of work should not depend upon completion of a program but upon the quality of that work.  It seems to me that in today’s world the value of work is determined by the needs of corporations.  They provide large salaries to workers they need to create more money, not those who provide a high quality of work.

We seem overly concerned about another set of statistics.  Those that measure success in being able to make high scores on tests.  Our children’s relative standing among nations of test takers seems too low for many and we have to improve.  Once again we are not thinking about quality education but about being able to pass a test.  America has always been at the forefront of innovation because our educational system has worked.  We have provided the best scientists to the world, not the most.

College is not truly necessary for success in America.  What contributes to America’s success, however, is our ability to go to college whenever we are ready.  This requires a citizenry that values education for its own sake and pursues learning as a normal part of life.  A recent study indicates that anxiety and depression have increased exponentially in our children over the past 50 years.  This is not going to provide a foundation for success in the future.  As long as we place our values on statistics and corporate needs and not on individual needs and desires, our foundation for success will be weak.

National Standards

Websites for Learning
Funology has all kinds of acitivities for kids ages 5-8!!
Time for Kids - A powerful teaching tool, TIME For Kids builds reading and writing skills and is easily integrated across your curriculum, including social studies, science and math.
Discovery Kids is based on the Discovery Channel and has many interesting science and and nature activites and information.

Articles to Read
Differentiate Don't Standardize by Nel Noddings
"What do advocates of national standards expect to accomplish? Unless the ends sought are both significantly important and feasible, we should turn our attention to problems that are truly pressing, such as reducing the number of high school dropouts and curbing youth violence."
Debunking the Case for National Standards by Alfie Kohn
"I keep thinking it can’t get much worse, and then it does. Throughout the 1990s, one state after another adopted prescriptive education standards enforced by frequent standardized testing, often of the high-stakes variety. A top-down, get-tough movement to impose “accountability” began to squeeze the life out of classrooms."
We've Always Had National Standards by Diane Ravitch
"Most educators believe that the United States has never had national standards in education, but this is not correct. Without any action on the part of the federal government, we have indeed had standards in the past, and we have them now. They were not written in a document, nor are they now, but they are real nonetheless."
College and the Workforce: What 'Readiness' Means by Catherine Gewertz
"As the standards movement has evolved, one of its key questions has shifted. Instead of simply asking what students should know and be able to do to complete high school, educators and policymakers are now asking what students need to master to be prepared for the higher-level demands of college and career."
Teachers' Letters to Obama by Anthony Cody
"The overwhelming message is that, although we supported President Obama as a candidate and continue to have hope today, we do not feel heard by this administration, and have grave concerns about many of the actions of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan."
Educational Delema: Rigor v Relevance by Tom Vander Ark
"I remain committed to the idea that we can build rich instructional systems around fewer, clearer, higher standards--systems that incorporate content-embedded assessment (e.g., score from a learning game), performance assessment (e.g., essays and projects), adaptive assessment (e.g., quick online quizzes), as well as summative assessment--that promote rather than detract from engaging personalized learning experiences."

Thoughts from Yrisarri
In a mobile society standardized education seems an essential ingredient for success.  The big question is how do we standardize instruction across a vast population with diverse needs and wants?  Should all students in our public schools be studying the same thing at the same time? Are national standards a limiting factor to one of our national strengths ie: creative thinking? Will national standards prepare all students for their future? Will national standards cause teachers to become little more than technicians for a program? Will national standards solve our education dilemma? Do we truly have a dilemma?

These questions and more come to mind as I follow the debate on implementation of national standards for our schools.  My primary concern really comes down to the question of how we view our children.  It seems like we are experiencing another top down educational reform by people who are not cognizant of the true needs of our children.  Seldom are children mentioned as something other than a statistic to be manipulated by reform so that our national interests will be served.

If there is an educational dilemma it is based in my observation that many students see no connection between what they learn in school and what they perceive to be needed for their future.  By and large our students are not motivated to learn, and those who are learn to pass the tests.

I believe there have always been standards in our schools and that those students who desire to go to college are able to acquire what they need to succeed in college from their high schools.  Those students who did not wish to go to college have had various options during high school to pursue their perceived needs.  But, high school has not provided a well-balanced curriculum that provides for intellectual, physical  and emotional growth.  Without this balance we are sending our young people to confront life with only part of the skills they need.

Our emphasis has historically been on the intellectual side of the balance scale and today we have inactive kids who have a difficult time getting along with others who are different from them.  I believe that if we are going to create national standards they should be geared around developing programs that decrease our need for prisons,develop healthy and inquisitive young adults.

It is time we reorganize rather than reform education.  Instead of spending our time developing programs that have students lock stepping through an education, we should develop and organize our education system to allow for individuality and creative thinking.  A caring system that values the individual will cause more students to be motivated and prepare themselves for their futures.

There is agreement that we have a problem in particular with keeping our kids in school and that problem manifests itself around the end of childhood and the beginning of adolescence.  Why don’t we address the problem at that level?  Most of the information needed for further learning is in place by that time in our children’s education.  Why not graduate our students from mandatory education at age 15?  If they have learned the information that our society deems necessary for understanding our society we should acknowledge it.  In New Mexico we have a pass or fail test given to students at 15 testing that type of knowledge.  Why should a student go on if they can pass that test?

After graduation, with basic knowledge for living in our society in place, let students choose what they wish to study for, college, business, vocation, military, or paraprofessional work.  As the Australian's call it, let us develop a useful tertiary education system from ages 16-20.  They can all be rigorous programs that teach all students workforce skills at the same time.  Aren’t workforce skills the ability to understand that you must be on time, you must focus on your work, you must take responsibility for what you do?  Reading is not the problem in our youthful workforce; it is attitude!

While my idea is not perfect and perhaps not workable, let us use the strength of America, creative thinking, to solve our problems.  Let us work together to identify the true problems and then create local solutions to those problems.  If we continue the path we are on we will only do more of the same, continue to create students as products rather than individuals whose futures are in their hands not ours!

School LIbraries

Websites for Learning
Digital Storytelling is an Open Thinking Wiki with some good resources for teaching about stories.
LibraryGames.com  is committed to making the Library fun and Librarian's lives easier by creating entertaining educational library games, library videos, and Cds for school Media Centers and Public Libraries. 
Zotero is a free easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources.
ICyte enables you to highlight and save text on any webpage, allowing you to recall the most relevant
information.
Brain Games contains scientifically designed games to help you imporve memory and attention.

Articles to Read
The Impact of the School Library Media Centers on Academic Achievement  from the ERIC Digest
Proficient Readers Need Good School Libraries by Gaby Chapman from Education Week
School Libraries key in Teaching Information Skills by staff of ESchoolNews.com

Thoughts From Yrisarri
A local televsion news commentary program recently featured a panel sharing thoughts about different aspects of funding state and city programs.  During the discussion one panelist pointed out that library funding needed to be on the table.  His reasoning was that libraries are “antiquated institutions” in today’s world. If you go to a school or public library you will find that they are busy places.  So why do so many people believe the library is an antiquated institution? 

Perhaps it is a misunderstanding of the multifaceted roles of libraries and librarians.  One must view this institution through a wider lens that focuses on the needs of all members of a society rather than individual needs.  As a school librarian my roles have included purchasing all types of media, organizing that media, circulating the resources, serving as the school media specialist, integrating technology into the services, teaching  information retrieval, reading great books to children, finding good resources for teachers, assisting in literacy programs, designing facilities, serving on committees, and more.  What I did in my job depended upon the vision of the school board, administration and teachers about the purpose of school libraries and librarians.  In my view the best schools demanded that the library and librarian be at the center of the school both physically and intellectually. 

An important component of today’s lbrary is technology.  Narrow visions of the library can keep it from developing the technology infrastructure needed to deliver effective services.  Early in the technological revolution money was cut from the library budget to buy computers.  By cutting the budget without disucssion, I felt the library’s role in the digital revolution was being minimized.  That I believe is at the heart of the vision of the “antiquated" library. 

Many today believe they can find whatever information they need on the internet making the library irrelevant.  What these people do not know that librarians know is that only a small fraction of total information is available. Everyone agrees that you get what you pay for and that knowledge is power.  So why do people believe that the power of knowledge is free?  The most current, complete and accurate information costs money.  That is what libraries have been about, gathering that expensive knowledge and making it available to everyone no matter what media is being used to share the information. 

Historically the school librarian has been at the center of curriculum, using the library budget to acquire materials and services to suport teachers and students in their work. School library programs are being overlooked in the current round of educational reform presses forward.   Some schools do without librarians using assistants to check out books to the students. The next step is to get rid of school libraries all together.  After all they are “antiquated institutions”. 

Excellent schools have excellent libraries where students love books and know how to find the best information. Technology is an integral part of a library used to find books and other information offered by the library.  In these schools the librarian is a resource using the library to provide programs and services which assist teachers and students in their pursuits. By the way, these schools with excellent “antiquated institutions” also have high test scores.

Help not Punishment for Struggling Teachers, Schools and Students

Some Useful Websites
AAA Math features a comprehensive set of interactive arithmetic lessons. Unlimited practice is available on each topic which allows thorough mastery of the concepts. A wide range of lessons (Kindergarten through Eighth grade level) enables learning or review to occur at each individual's current level.
Energy Kids-Find energy related stories, hands-on activities, and research articles for your classroom! These curriculum-based lessons are separated by age-grade.
The Open Door Web Site is a reference source for both students and teachers.  The contents of this site are designed for use by students between the ages of 9 and 17.

Articles about Cognition, Affective Education and Pyschomotor Benefits
Emotional Intelligence Is the Missing Piece -This article is explains how social and emotional learning can help students successfully resolve conflict, communicate clearly, solve problems, and more.
Why Exercise Makes you Less Anxious - At a time when high stakes testing is imposed upon our students this article by Gretchen Reynolds point makes it clear that Physical Education should be more important to our curriculum than before.
Proficient Readers Need Good School Libraries - Gaby Chapman's article focuses on the fact that studies show that reading achievement in a school is directly related to the quality of its library but says,

School libraries are slowly but steadily being replaced by an onslaught of packaged reading programs designed to teach “virtual reading,” in which students can learn everything about reading without actually doing it.

Book Review
Mind Reading- by Allison Gopink  is a book review for Stanislas Dehaene's new book about the reading and the brain called Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention .  Neuroscientist are discovering that reading has not been around long enough for humans to have become an inate part of the human brain.

Thoughts From Yrisarri
In my years of teaching and working in schools I came across a few poor teachers.  But, as I listen to to the movement for reform it seems as if there are many more bad teachers than I ever imagined.  One of the cornerstones of the current push from the Secretary of Education and other reformers is to rid the schools of bad teachers.  It seems that teacher unions and teachers themselves are to blame for the education disaster in America!

Once again the Department of Education is missing the point of the future for our children.  It is more important in today's workforce to know how to cooperate, punitively firing teachers who are deemed "bad" teachers by some objective or subjective criteria, is not going to help create a culture of learning that teaches our children good values.  Competition is between companies, not between workers in the companies.   The current thinking seems to be that competition is the missing equation in education.  This includes students and the teaching force. It is as if teachers and students are always applying for the job but never get to practice their skills.

Instead of calling for dismissal of teachers for doing poor work, let us first decide that we will help any teacher who does not meet basic benchmarks without threatening the job of someone who invested personal treasure in themselves to become a teacher.  Perhaps schools that don't meet the benchmarks can be assured that their community will be helped without a threat of takeover or dismantling of a community investment.  Maybe we can even make it clear to our students that we want to help them not fail them.  I think that message is not received by many of our students today.

What I suggest is that our first instinct be to help others rather than dismiss them.  One of the great reforms for education could be to create a culture of kindness and a tradition of caring about others.  We can begin this by finding ways to "dismiss" the punitive natures of some of our classrooms and schools.  One way to begin this reform is by committing to help struggling teachers, schools and students rather than punish them when they fail.