Remembering Hitchens

I first became a regular reader of Christopher Hitchens as I was beginning a year abroad in Chile in 2003, through a pair of his pieces addressed to the life and work of the literary scholar Edward Said: first, an ambivalent Atlantic Monthly review of the updated edition of Said’s Orientalism, and then, a few weeks later, a touching Slate obituary to Said, who had recently succumbed to leukemia.  Living, studying, and volunteering thousands of miles from home—and from anywhere else I knew—constantly tested the borders of my independence and experience, and in the occasional lonely or unscheduled moments of those months abroad I often found myself, for 20 or 30 minutes or more, plumbing Hitchens’s new or old writings wherever I could find them online.

My ability to lose myself in his work would continue when I bought some of his books over the next few years.  At one moment, I’d be rearranging my bookshelf; at the next, I’d be flipping open an anthology of his, vowing to snap it closed again; and an hour later, I would have gotten myself accidentally engrossed in explorations of Kipling, Saul Bellow, the death penalty.  His command of politics and literature was impressive, his perspectives incisive, and his prose punchy.  At his best, he achieved a beauty of both language and analysis that was perhaps most on display when he joined books and politics.  Only one such example was his wonderful, counter-narrative Atlantic essay on Churchill, “The Medals of His Defeats,” which I found myself reading and rereading one Christmas vacation.  His writing also found a unique register when he was on attack.  He could sometimes allow personal slights and vendettas into arguments where they did not seem to belong, but when the target was clear, and the target’s character legitimately at stake, it was a thrilling ride.  I practically tore through The Trial of Henry Kissinger, and would again.  The fire extended to non-personal matters: he wrote frequently, and devastatingly, against capital punishment. 

Pieces like these showed, further, that he could both revel in American ideals while subjecting his adopted homeland to a skepticism for which he was famous.  He underwent waterboarding, for heaven’s sake, and found yet more reason to oppose torture.  At their best, his writings evinced a concept he once advanced (I don’t remember, and can’t find, where): that the measure of intelligence is in one’s tolerance for contradiction—which indeed he turned into the title of his Atlantic piece on Kipling, “A Man of Permanent Contradictions.”  If Hitchens’s views of America and its leaders could be multidimensional, his ardent defense of the Iraq war was at times indulgent, and led him to gloss over both the effects of battle and legitimate criticisms of it.  Yet his constant reminders of the authentic threats to organized civilization were a healthy counterpoint to my own opposition to the Iraqi conflict, and more.  Reading Hitchens gave me deeper, more nuanced ways of viewing post-9/11 politics.  Most of all, it made me skeptical of the widespread skepticism--felt on the Left, and which I’d felt myself--toward American purpose and power.

After a couple years reading his work, I was thus well aware of the qualities of Hitchens’s prose and persuasive power—to say nothing of his brash, biting public persona.  But it was a serendipitous meeting with Hitchens in the summer of 2005 that exposed me to a perhaps less prominent feature—his personal generosity. 

I was on campus at Stanford that summer doing research for my senior thesis.  I noticed Hitchens would be coming to the Hoover Institute as a Media Fellow.  I contacted the coordinator of the fellowships: Would the writer be holding any public events?  She got back to me: No, he would be here for a week, and would have no such events, but you should keep an eye out for other appearances in the future.  Very well, I thought, it was worth a shot, and I sent an email thanking the woman for getting back to me.  It was to my great surprise, then, to receive another email, the next day, from this same lady: Mr. Hitchens would be happy to meet with you one-on-one.  Please go ahead and contact him at the following email.

I don’t remember where I was sitting when I got this, but I surely catapulted out of my chair.  I emailed an introduction, and to at least attempt to justify this meeting that I had not solicited, stated an interest in discussing various topics I’d touched on in school and knew he was interested in: Chilean politics, Kipling, the Iraq war.  On the appointed day, when I knocked on the door to the Hoover office he’d asked me to come to, he turned from his computer with his characteristic slight smirk, cocked his head, and intoned, in full throaty British, “It is I.”  

This wasn’t going to my normal afternoon, that’s for sure.  He stuffed me into his maroon Volkswagen, and before we’d even gotten to the nearby Trader Joe’s to pick up lunch, he was discussing Jefferson and Paine.  At his in-laws near campus—where he spent the summer—he kicked off his shoes, padding into the kitchen to pull out the choice of spirits.  (It was more than a double-take to see my literary hero in his socks.  What can I say?  He didn’t look quite poised to confront Islamic fundamentalism at that moment.) 

As we sat outside, eating lunch and drinking, I’d lob him a topic and sit back to enjoy the response, emitted between puffs on his cigar.  He talked about Kipling’s poem White Man’s Burden, acknowledging the author’s contempt toward the colonized peoples yet elucidating a connection to the way American intervention in Iraq would one day be viewed.  He discussed the Pinochet investigations in Chile.  He recited some poetry aloud.  We were joined for some time by his wife, Carol Blue, whom I found very engaging (in one jaw-dropping moment for me, she came out to the patio, and asked her husband, in my paraphrase, “Sean Penn wants to know what’s better for us, Thursday night, or Saturday?”).  When he drove me back to campus a couple hours later, he curbed the VW, stretched out a paw, and nodded at me: “It’s been real.”

While I can’t say our meeting was exactly a two-way conversation—it didn’t take much to get Hitchens talking, and I was happy enough to listen—it represented quite a generous act on his part.  I hadn’t asked for a one-on-one, he had plenty going on, I was young.  He didn’t have to reach out, but he did; he didn’t have to invite me to his home for a long lunch, but he did.  About a year later, when I was considering applying for journalism jobs or internships, I emailed him for advice.  Again, there was no reason he should have felt he had to do anything, but he referred me to a contact at Slate.

The personal connection to Hitchens was meaningful, but tiny in the grand scheme of things.  Nevertheless, it made it all the harder to hear of his diagnosis with esophageal cancer 18 months ago.  The fact that he could be so battered by a disease—that it might at one point take his life—was so at odds with the verve and conviction I’d seen both publicly and in private.  As he confronted cancer, it brought out a new dimension in his writing.  His portraits of others—Said, Sontag—had shown Hitchens’s capability to be empathetic, even affecting.  But in a series of essays he wrote about sickness and death, he turned those skills on himself and rendered tender and deeply intimate reflections.  His June essay in Vanity Fair detailing the loss of his voice ended this way:

What do I hope for? If not a cure, then a remission. And what do I want back? In the most beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the freedom of speech.

When I heard Hitchens had passed away, early Friday morning, I was surprised by how socked I felt by it.  It wasn’t so much the small personal connection we’d made a half-dozen years ago as the larger impending absence to the world of words.  His voice punctuated the Web six, seven, eight times a month.  It was a voice not just frequent but muscular, a voice that stood out.  And it was singular, a voice that forwarded unique ideas, made unlikely connections, took on unassailable targets.  It is not clear who could say the things he was able to say, say them as often as he did, say them as well as he did--or who will.  

Next Steps for Adult Learners: A Sequence of Possible Classroom Activities

Last week, I laid out a concern facing many adult language learners: when you've maxed out the course offerings at one site, how do you find the next class?  Especially in a climate of long waitlists at the publicly- or grant-funded programs sought out by many low-income immigrants?  At my former small agency, where we could only support a five-month beginning-level ESOL course, the issue of connecting students to "next steps" became so paramount that one of the most important parts of the program became what students would get to do after the program.

Because all of my students wanted so badly to keep studying English once they'd gotten an initial taste, I developed, through trial and error, a series of activities designed to help them do just that.  I had a few guiding principles.  First, I wanted to elicit students' interest in next steps.  I had my own theoretical bases for why it was desirable for students to keep their language-acquisition momentum, and was happy enough to share it, but I tried to maximize their own urgency.  Second, it's a big, bad (well, at least long-waitlisted) world.  The Boston area, like many metropolitan regions, is replete with agencies, course offerings, and levels of study.  Negotiating these thickets in English is hard enough; harder still if one is learning English.  I was there to support students.  Finally, I made the process iterative.  This might be nice: write down three program phone numbers; add water; enroll in intermediate English.  But it's unrealistic.  The issued needed to be visited, then revisited.

So here's the rough sequence of activities to help students explore--and secure--"next steps":

Pose the Problem: Using the "problem-posing" methods derived from the revolutionary Brazilian educator Paolo Freire, I introduce a "codification" of the problem of continuing English.  Usually I show students a picture of a few adults sitting at home, looking downbeat (thanks, Google Docs), with a couple lines of dialogue from each I've typed on the paper: "I used to study English at X location.  I called Y program.  I'm waiting."  I lead students through a five-stage process to uncover the dilemma, make meaning of it, and develop an action plan for the characters.  At the end, I ask: What would you do in this situation?  And it turns into an action plan for themselves.

Write a Script: Students brainstorm questions to ask a program when they call it, e.g., Is there a cost?  What levels do you have?  When does class meet?  What's your address?  Students can usually hit the main ones themselves.  Teachers can suggest others they might have missed.  I help them collectively edit the quesitons, then pass out a "next-steps" form.  They write down the questions, and the form goes in a sacred spot in their binders.

Practice Phone Calls: This is your classic practice asking and answering the questions students have devised.  Student A is potential program registrant; Student B is a staff member at the agency being called.  It's more fun when students pull out their cells.  For those who are ready, it's most fun (and realistic, and challenging) when one student goes into another room, actually calls the other, then holds the conversation.

Bring in a Guest Speaker: In the past, I'd invite an adult-ed mentor of mine, whom I'll call Tim, a highly-respected program director at another program, to visit my class to talk about next steps.  He'd talk about "confidence," answer students' many questions (in English!), and recommend programs to look at.  Students already have an intrinsic drive for next steps, but this exposes them to another voice to reinforce the message and motivate them.  And, it provides them with a connection to a program.  I used Tim's visit as a placeholder the rest of my course to connect back to the next steps concept.

Find Programs: I provide students with directories of local English classes, divided by neighborhood.  Sometimes this means packets printed from the state Department of Education Web site, or Boston's English for New Bostonians Web site.  Sometimes this means directing students to those Web sites, with guidance on how to navigate the search functions.  Students fill out a preset worksheet with contact information for four to six programs.

Call Programs: A nice weekend homework assignment: between Friday and Tuesday, call two programs, ask the questions you brainstormed earlier, and write down the answers.  Now, some programs' outreach officers speak languages common to Boston immigrants, like Spanish or Haitian Creole.  But not always.  And few programs have staff who speak languages like Mai Mai or Somalian that other students of mine have spoken.  So while students may find they can simply speak their native language when calling certain programs, they'll have to ask the questions in English sometimes.

Share Back: After the first homework assignment, I have students share with each other the information they've heard from other programs.  If one student calls a program in Jamaica Plain and there are no intermediate classes, another student can cross that program off her list, and add in a different program that might make more sense.  We also discuss how it's going: Are there other questions students should be asking?  Did somebody's aunt just get in a program nobody knew about? Do they have more spaces?  Often this informal networking is just as important to getting students in continuing education.

Repeat, Repeat, Repeat: The next week or weekend's homework is to call three or four more programs.

Celebrate Successes: One morning last spring, a student came into my class early: "I have news," she said, "I have a class for August!"  Chances were, she had already told classmates the good tidings, but I asked her if I could put her on the agenda to make sure everyone heard, and celebrated, her news.

Hit the Pavement: I take my students to visit one other program, which in the past has been a well-respected site, located downtown off several bus or train lines, with multiple ESOL levels.  Such a visit, at which the program's outreach coordinator presented the course offerings and registration process, gave the concept of "next steps" yet another friendly face, provided a practical option for many students, and gave them practice getting there on public transit.  A visit to a local literacy center got at the issue from the other end: most public libraries are hubs for education and job-placement resources.

Discuss Plan B: After a few weeks of this process, I often raise the qustion: what happens if you're put on waitlists everywhere you call?  We brainstorm steps: read books, go to the literacy center, take a lighter-level conversation class at the library; call me for more ideas.  I make sure everyone has my cell phone number (though not every teacher would be comfortable with this) and office number to call me for more support should they still be exploring classes after graduating my course.

Follow Up Individually: Over the last few weeks of class, in one-on-one conferences with students, I check in with students about their progress finding classes.  As important as whole-class activities are to investigate next steps, individual check-ins can uncover particular difficulties or be a space to comfortably suggest new pathways or ideas.

Connect to Curriculum: I haven't done this in every class, but in one course our next steps explorations coincided with a unit on Following Directions (turn left, turn right, where's the restaurant? and so on).  I created mock conversation between a student and program staff involving directions from the train to a downtown program.  I built it into a Jazz Chant, which students practiced over multiple classes, both to reinforce in a high-energy way what they were learning grammatically as well as to suggest language useful for phone calls.  Ultimately, we turned it into a role-play, again with cell phones.

**

As I look at these activities, carried out in this fashion, a few things stand out.  First, it takes a lot of time and effort.  Not that that's a bad thing, but it's striking how prominent a role this has played in my classroom.  Second, there are obvious connections to students' self-advocacy for other resources.  The most obvious parallel is to securing free or affordable childcare, a common issue for so many of my past students: just as with ESOL programs, there are eligibility requirements, many suppliers, a variety of ways in which the service is offered, and variation in quality.  It might make sense to frame "searching for English classes" more explicitly as "searching for resources in general."  Third, the process assumes the need for next steps is universal, and lays out the activities accordingly.  In my experience, the need has been universal, but what about when several students have already discovered their next class.  Does it make sense to continue to use everyone's classroom time to address the remaining needs of a few students?  What would it look like to do some next-steps activities on a voluntary, out-of-class-time basis?

My dear Blog Visitors--what stands out to you?  What sounds good?  What's missing here?  What could be done differently?

The Week's Links: Not Forgetting Poverty & Remembering Hitchens

A few unfair swipes in this Times op-ed, but the larger point about addressing poverty to help address what happens in the classroom is a good one.

Any number of pieces can be read on the passing of Christopher Hitchens, but Jacob Weisberg's comment at Slate on Hitch's generosity to young people reminded me of a time when I had the very good fortune of seeing that generosity up close.  I'll have more thoughts next week.

My To Do List

Tentative plans, for once all of the last statistics have poured out my ears and I am officially on break ...

1. Write poetry for open-mic
2. Cook something while not in a hurry
3. Eat something while not in a hurry
4. Taper caffeine intake ...
5. ... and, being here, ramp up wine intake.  Bet you 10,000 dollars I won't be thinking about regression diagnostics there!

Next Steps for Adult Learners: What's the Problem?

This past April, I had the good fortune to spend a week in Montreal, bumming around la belle ville, barely missing the chance to use Bixi bike-sharing, and everywhere I went trying to pull together the bits and scraps of French I'd learned in the U.S. (and was learning there): at my hostel, at the grocery store, on the street.  I had enough grammar to purchase my share of wine, if too little vocabulary to discuss whether it was any good, to say nothing of follow the conversations that pinballed around my hostel's rather cramped and enlivened dining room once that first (second, or third) bottle had been uncorked.

I got by--indeed without having to fall back on English too often.  And I got better.  But eight months later, grad school has intervened and made those bits and scraps suddenly seem all the more infinitesimal.  It's a situation any of us who has labored through the beginnings of a foreign language as an adult can attest to: three steps forward, a few months off, two steps backward.  Language "attrition," as it's known, is only one of a murderer's row of hurdles facing adult language learners.  For adult ESOL learners, whose language acquisition is quite a bit more high-stakes than anything I've experienced, it's a big concern.  And an issue that raises important questions about helping adult ESOL learners access their "next steps"--how to help them keep studying English once they've maxed out the opportunities within a single program.  

Given the demand for ESOL in Massachusetts, it has been heartening to see how many small programs exist in all imaginable corners of the city: in the pocket-sized human-services agency where I used to work, in school-based community centers, housing projects, daycare centers, churches, prisons.  There are still the established, state-funded, multi-level programs, but who's kidding themselves?  The state can't or won't fund all the demand.

The challenge with storefront programs like the one I worked at is that they may not have the multiple levels provided by the state-funded bulwarks.  Students put 6 or 9 months in, then what happens?  In my five-month program, students did a number of things to prepare for graduation and the inevitable search for a next course.  For more on that, stay tuned.  But after a few months, either through the grapevine or formal follow-up, I would tally up the progress of my alumni.  The result was usually this: about half were studying English elsewhere, another quarter were looking or were on a waitlist, and the rest I either couldn't get in touch with or had ceased looking for more English.

I wasn't concerned about the 50 percent still studying.  These students were the obvious successes of our next-steps preparations.  It was the other 50  percent that got me thinking.  I hardly expected every student to keep studying English.  Life happens, especially for the low-income immigrant folks who came through our doors.  In one of many such examples, a student once had to drop my class right after starting because her daughter had a baby.  She was now a rather heavily-involved grandmother; English could wait.

I was curious about those three, four, or five who wanted to continue but didn't have the relatively immediate opportunity to.  Like virtually all my students, they had entered my program with clear goals for learning English: To defend myself in everyday situations.  To help my daughter with her homework.  To get a job (or a better one).  By the same token, I cannot remember a single student who didn't want to keep studying English once she got a taste of a class.  In following up months after graduation, I found that many were waiting for a call back, and many were on a waitlist--often at multiple programs.

That wasn't surprising, given demand in our area.  The main adult-education program in Cambridge has a waitlist of 439, a smaller program, 128.  In Somerville, the waitlist for the program run through the public schools currently stands at 1011.  In Boston, an organization in Chinatown runs to 296, another in South Boston to 211.  It was an accomplishment that my students had the motivation and wherewithal to get on those waitlists in the first place.  That can't be overlooked.  But the waits that inevitably ensued--three, four, five months or more--were a frustration to my old students.  And the likelihood that they were squandering to attrition some of their hardwon language skills ought to be a concern to all of us in the field.

Many a student--current or former--complained to me about this situation.  Nearing the closure of one cycle I taught, my beginner-level crew teamed up with an offer I wish I hadn't had to refuse: Would I make my next class intermediate-level, and keep them all on board for the next six months?  I couldn't, but it only reinforced my efforts to prepare students for what could come next.  Still, the mixed results of future groups suggests new ways to think about next steps.  Indeed, not every program has the bloated waitlists of the ones I mentioned above.  But how do we go about finding out what's available, and where?  And how do we get students into those spaces?

I Used to Think ...

"We need a course where we can pull together what we're learning in our three other courses." --classmate Z.


That course wasn't there for me to take, but as much as often this semester I've tried to pull together what I've learned.  In September, facing readings flush with theory that felt far removed from the classrooms I'd taught in and the immigrant parents I'd worked with, I felt like I was being asked to predict weather patterns at 40,000 feet based on how I felt the wind blowing over my face.  As time went on, I sensed progress, most notably when I opened my mouth in class, started, "In another class I'm taking, we've been studying X ..." and could make the link back.  Taking a reading from class A to integrate into an essay in class B: another good sign.  I can't completely make the jump from ground to cruising altitude yet (I leave that for the basketball court; oh, wait).  But I'm gaining hops.

I learned a lot about a lot of stuff, from the mundane to the pointy-headed: parent-engagement techniques in districts and charters, Common Core, methods to improve child protective services, promotive and protective factors in child development, how foundations affect school reform, an eye-opening amount of management theory, an eye-crossing amount of stats.  On a personal front, I've worked on communication, from how to use hand gestures to voicing dissent in a way that informs new consensus.  I've learned how to manage time much better (and only been made fun of for my 15-minute increments ... 200 times plus/minus 100 times by T.).  On a professional front, I've had many conversations with folks in numerous fields, to the point that I got an email back confirming an informational interview a couple weeks ago and found myself staring at the subject line thinking: Catie who?  Works where? (It was in the email; all's well).

I'm one stats project (speaking of that), two final papers, and three class evaluations away from being done.  But taking a moment to glimpse the light ahead, some changes in my thinking.  Warning: these are (a) a Sample, (b) Broad, (c) General, and (d) Obvious in some cases.  The more nitty-gritty stuff ... well, I'll leave that for my posts on ESOL techniques.


I used to think ... in terms what I saw right in front of my eyes; now I think, not only that way, but also in frameworks, strategies, concepts.

I used to think that business practices were cold; now I think they can inform many types of management.


I used to think of cradle-to-career work in terms of starting programs, a la the Harlem Children's Zone; now I think collective impact might work better in many places.


I used to think of consulting as outside my interests; now I think that consulting assistance has helped spur great initiatives that I'm very much interested in (see here and here).


I used to think about poverty in terms of the experiences of the students in my class; now I most definitely still think about them, but also about funding issues, building support to sustain policy changes, strengths-based interventions, targeting vs. universal, and more.

I used to think that early parenting classes were mainly site-based, or classroom-based; now I think that home-visiting may be the key to making them productive.

I used to think that national foundations were too aggressive in promoting school reform; now I think they have a role in advancing knowledge in the field and, yes, putting their money out there to spur innovation (insert many caveats here).

I used to think a mission statement was crucial to keeping an organization focused on what matters; now I think that's still important, but should also be accompanied by strategic action steps, a theory of change, a theory of action, and criteria for ways to measure those actions.  

Oh god, the profs have gotten in my blood.  Back to that stats.

2Rev

Interesting org, worth a look.

BikeBits #1

Spotted on Commonwealth Ave. last night:  Yellow stenciled warnings at pedestrian crossings: "Look left for bikes."

The paint was a little thin, but the paint/thermoplastic used for road markings is known to stick poorly on non-new asphalt, and the stencils were quite readable for those who needed to read them--people about to leave sidewalks to step into crosswalks.  Boston has gone to great lengths the last five years to make its streets more bike-friendly.  From Allston Heights to the Eliot Bridge completely on bike lanes or with road-shares.  Left-side lanes on Comm Ave. in Back Bay.  Proposed removal of parking spaces to accommodate bike-lanes on Mass Ave. (just in time for me to no longer be using that route to commute; sigh).  Lanes all around Dorchester.

It'd be wonderful to get to a point where drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians don't need explicit warnings for us all to coexist, but in a section of the city notorious for erratic behavior by all users, the heads-ups are a welcome sign--literally.

Politico Pith: Choice Thoughts from the State Secretary of Education

Not gonna say it was quite like seeing Lady Gaga walk into our library basement, but it was pretty cool.  Just a few (paraphrased) nuggets able to persist through my stats-addled brain-fog:

We hold school time constant and let learning vary.  We need to flip those: everybody to mastery, no matter how long it takes.

One of my big problems with NCLB was that it overidentified underperforming schools but didn't give states the money to help those schools.   

Teacher evaluation has to be based in part on student achievement.  It's a common sense connection parents know.  Last year she had a poor teacher and hated math.  This year she loves her teacher and math's her favorite subject.

If you want to guarantee great turnout at a school committee meeting out in the suburbs, don't propose revamping the reading curriculum--propose changing the school day by 20 minutes.

We just voted to do the first state takeover of a school system, in Lawrence.  I was at a school in a different city yesterday, and I was sitting there talking to those people, thinking, We should take over this district, too.

Climbing the First Year Mountain

This was exactly the time of the school year, several years back, when my first year of teaching started to suck.  It isn't news to anyone who's taught: the excitement of getting started quickly turns into survival, self-doubt, even the chills of disillusionment.  Many hope to spend a lifetime teaching, but never overcome the early challenges: at least a third of young teachers leave the profession within three to five years.

That's my story.  I came to high school Spanish teaching nontraditionally, having been an outreach educator for a year for the Red Cross, making presentations in Spanish to urban school groups.  I had a lot of enthusiasm and a great knowledge of Spanish--but little sense of how to teach it, and less of how to manage a classroom of ninth-graders.  I eagerly walked through the doors of an urban charter school that served students diverse in economics and ethnicity ... and rather quickly staggered into the abyss familiar to many neophyte educators: I was shifty, and the fourteen-year-olds smelled blood.  I was too authoritarian in some areas, but lacked an overall authority in the areas that counted.  Bronchitis came for a visit--and decided to stay.  I spent many hours preparing a group project on Spanish recipes I knew my kids would love ... only to see it sputter in execution.  The kids threw fits, threw balled-up paper, threw my attempts at behavior intervention back in my face.  My department head was busy helping not just me, but two other new Spanish teachers, and I was rarely observed in my critical first few months.  I had rented a studio to have peace of mind my first year, only to find I really needed a roommate I could come home and drain a fifth of vodka with to let off some steam with after a long day.

These problems were made worse by a spate of self-inflicted wounds: not observing other teachers till the late spring.  Not knowing what a truly rigorous classroom looked like.  Not examining my own practice enough to get there.  Simply and regrettably: not being tenacious enough.  I didn't do the thing all great teachers demand of their own students: step up, and get it done.

I was on the verge of quitting, but I did manage to see it through to June.  Within a year I was teaching adults.  It was a very different environment--I was very motivated to do well--I finally enjoyed myself, and my students finally had success.

But as I look back, I ask myself many questions.  From a policy standpoint, how many people out there are like me, having intended to teach K-12 for years but flaming out early?  What is the cost to the profession?  From a school standpoint, was I just a random example of somebody who wasn't quite equipped for that kind of classroom at that time?  How could my hiring school have better assessed my strengths and weaknesses, and either suggested they needed someone of a different profile, or hired me but then provided different supports?  How can schools offer key help in multiple areas upfront, without drowning new teachers in advice?

From a personal standpoint, if I could have stepped forward in time, and given myself advice with the benefit of hindsight, what would I have suggested?

Border Remorse

There are good reasons to be concerned by undocumented immigration and hope for better policy, but I continue to be struck by how incoherent/sloppy/hostile states' responses are in the absence of federal action.  Piece from The Boston Globe today on "buyer's remorse" experienced by states that pass legislation:

In Alabama, meanwhile, business leaders and lawmakers are feeling the tinge of a new law written with such haste that no one actually can figure out what it means. According to the New York Times, the law states that an individual must provide proof of lawful immigration status for any interaction “between a person and the state or a political subdivision of the state.’’ Vast government resources are now being used to ensure that local pee-wee football leagues are not filled with undocumented Mexican children. 

I visited the border south of Tuscon and in El Paso a number of years ago on a trip exploring border issues.  Among many memories in those nine days spent under a larger sky than I'd ever seen, I recall getting a firsthand look at the water jugs placed by humane organizations for folks who would inevitably brave desert heat (and cold) to get to this country.  There are humans at the center of the debate, first and always.  I also learned how wall-building and border-enforcement had been rather a bipartisan undertaking, from Reagan through Clinton, and how it had mainly had the effect of shifting paperless migration to treacherous mountain regions rather than stemming it.

Despite my skepticism about federal action, though, this is one of those issues where I suspect federal reform would be much preferable to current makeshift state forays into immigration policy.  Federal reform historically has been very imperfect, and would be again, but I think there's a fighting chance national senators would be less influenced by the nativist winds blowing at the state level, because of the political realities of the burgeoning Latino vote, which of course matters more at the statewide level than within a single (possibly gerrymandered) district.  A state senator can still get re-elected with a hardline immigrant platform, the thinking goes, but I suspect it's decreasingly possible for a member of Congress to.  Obama's made some motions toward this; perhaps its something I can hope to give thanks for during a second administration.

Lovin' Bikeful

Bikeyface:

Love the illustrations, love the voice, love the handlebar mustache adorned with bike lights, love how ... she's both pro-biking and pro-responsible biking!

Cultural Issues: Don't Accuse and Blame, Understand and Respond

On the political right, it's often popular to chalk up the inequalities of the world to poor people's “cultural factors” or “cultural reasons."  Culture of poverty, the culture in schools today, and so on.  The left runs from this sort of thing like Herman Cain from a Libya question ("just want to be sure, we're talking about ... culture here?").  But culture does affect folks in poverty, including adult learners, and that has to be kept in mind.

Toward the end of my first, six-month adult ESOL class an interesting phenomenon occurred.  Several students had managed to graduate from our English for Employment program without completing resumes.  They'd done all the career-awareness exercises in class, but when it came to meeting with my colleague caseworker to write resumes, no dice.  

What happened?  All of the students had made appointments with our caseworker, but had no-showed.  Some no-showed twice.  I hadn't tracked this, and had no idea until it was too late.  I was confused: my students could arrive bright and early every day for my morning class, but couldn’t get themselves to a single afternoon appointment with my colleague over the course of six months?  I had taken the time to sit down with the student, find a convenient time on my appointment software, seen her write the date and time in her calendar?  Given her a confirmation card?  And she’d gotten a reminder phone call from the receptionist?  And still, no-shows?

What's more, these were the best possible students from the 80 who had applied for the class.  They emerged from our screening process as the most reliable, most persistent, most able to succeed.  And they couldn’t come to a meeting they had no reason to forget, for a purpose—to help find a job—they all swore they cared about.  

If this had been just a couple no-shows--the occasional emergency with a student's kid cropping up--I wouldn't have been too worried.  But it was a consistent problem of no-showing.  Why?  Was it a different meaning to "signing up" for things in my students' native countries?  Was it the fact that most of my students were used to systems and institutions that don't expect much from them: the public-housing office, the welfare department, immigration?  Hard to say, but it seemed there were certain attitudes or approaches among students that deemphasized the caseworker meetings that were the lifeblood of our agency--and, for our clients, the ticket to completing a resume.

I'll admit to a flash of frustration that day as I reviewed all the missed appointments in our appointment log.  But most of the frustration was at myself, for (a) not anticipating this might be a problem, and (b) not having a system in place to check that our students were actually following through on their appointments.  Rather than point the finger at students and say, "It's a culture problem," I tried to understand and respond.  For our next cycle, we tied attendance of caseworker meetings to class attendance.  When I made an appointment for a student to see a colleague of mine, I emphasized that it was as important as showing up to class.  Every couple days, I checked the appointment log to make sure students were following through on seeing our caseworkers, and if there was a no-show, I checked in with the student to figure out what happened.  Every two weeks, I met with my career-services colleague to check on student progress--and we even created individual strategies for each student.

Culture matters.  People carry culture with them from their families, their communities, their home countries.  They develop cultural responses to the things they deal with every day.  As I learned, even if "culture" seems to a be a problem, as educators, rather than accuse or blame, we should understand and respond.

We're Not Not in Kansas Anymore

Great piece today in the Times about how Hispanics are reshaping ... small towns in Kansas--quite beyond  the traditionally immigrant-attractice meatpacking meccas like Dodge City:

Hispanics are arriving in numbers large enough to offset or even exceed the decline in the white population in many places. In the process, these new residents are reopening shuttered storefronts with Mexican groceries, filling the schools with children whose first language is Spanish and, for now at least, extending the lives of communities that seemed to be staggering toward the grave.

Fascinating point that the slower pace of small Plains towns appeals to immigrants' because of how it harkens back to their childhood turf.  This news--along with the rapid integration in suburbs around many cities--does call into question whether cradle-to-career initiatives that are too rooted in the "inner-city" may be missing bigger trends.  It's not to understate the poverty challenges still very much present in central cities, but to point out that the conversation about uplift for all kids can't be limited to Harlem, Pilsen, Watts, Roxbury.

From Dependence to Independence: Building Community Outside of Class

This past spring, a couple weeks into my adult ESOL class, a couple students came up to me and said, "We'd like to have a Friday Social every week."  "Sure," I said.  By the next week, a half dozen students were delegating who was responsible for napkins or cutlery and who was on salad duty, lugging in huge plates of food, and hobnobbing with fellow classmates they'd only met a scant few weeks before.

On the one hand, what could be better?  We were building a community for folks who often lacked one.  My students came from neighborhoods high in poverty in violence, from which most families try valiantly to shield their kids, if not just get out.  Some of my students lived in shelters--so they were definitely trying to get out of their communities.  Most of my students toiled to raise their families in relative isolation.

Friday Social was a chance to kick back among a newfound group of peers.  At the bare minimum, they could let off some steam between learning the present continuous and setting realistic goals (woo-woo!).  More than that, the social was a space to share what their lives were like, and learn from each other: What do you do for daycare for your daughter?  What's your son's school like?

But I was faced with this dilemma: the student social started running 10 minutes over the 15 minutes which had always been the allotted time, making it tougher to dive into important material after break.  And the social was happening all in Spanish--while most of the students were Latin American, one was from Africa.  To tackle the language use, I introduced the concept of "small talk," modeling questions you could ask your classmate as you munched arepa: How's your family?  Where do you live?  I then had different students prepare questions for each week ahead of time. 

To tackle the time issue, I brokered an agreement: Social could last 20 minutes (more than the usual 15-minute break), so long as 15 of those minutes were spent speaking English.  While I reveled in the organically, student-created nature of Friday Social, I accepted their gracious invitation to eat alongside them, but maintained a low profile.  It was their space.

In my constant mission to move students from dependence to interdependence and independence, Friday Social was, unintentionally, a great example both of how an interdependent, out-of-class culture can crop up among adult learners, and of some of the dilemmas such a cultural gathering poses in practice.

At the end of the day, for folks living in poverty, especially immigrants, the chance to build a support network was incredibly valuable.  When it comes to moving adults toward relying on each other and on themselves, there are many steps to be taken.  But rather than provide my usual list of promising practices, as I have about gaining independence in language acquisition and classroom culture, I wonder what more I could do.

Imagine if students created working groups outside of class to share ideas about public benefits, education programs, and supports for their children? ...


created parent unions for their schools? ...


protested adult-education budget cuts?

These are just the tip of the iceberg.  Things I haven't gotten to yet.

What ideas do you have?

Starting Line Item

Announcement from the Obama Administration today that Head Start funding will be subject to competition.  Shuttering centers if they don't show academic progress, directing funds to successful programs.

The changes will require all lower-performing Head Start programs to compete for funds instead of receiving the money automatically. The new benchmarks to determine eligibility will mean some programs that fail to show children are making academic program will lose funding. Grants will be reviewed every five years.

In general, I support the President's move toward competitive bidding, especially in energy and transportation, usually havens of earmark lard, cough cough.  Besides creating some motivation for lackluster centers to work better--and it's not at all clear to me that Head Start's mixed outcomes have to do with lack of staff motivation rather than inability to attract and support great staff--I'm  not sure how this helps increase the supply of high-quality childcare for kids from tough backgrounds.

Some centers will get better, and maybe get more money, but short-run it implies shuttering more centers.  And justifying one's own existence based on potentially hard-to-measure academic outcomes could certainly be a recipe for book-cooking.  It looks like sanctions rather than support.  I'd love to be proven wrong.

Finally, thank-you-thank-you Business Week for this graf:

Before making his remarks, Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius toured a classroom at the Yeadon Head Start Center. He played with 16 3-to-5-year-olds gathered around smaller circular tables. One group worked on putting together a puzzle, another played with blocks.

Now if that isn't a metaphor for working with Congress, what is?

Occupaideia: The Week's Links

Favorite tweet this week: anthonyha: I wish it was physically possible to murder one's inbox.

Joseph Stiglitz explains why, when it comes to Occupy Wall Street, he's in.

Things are even getting hot in Louisville, writes Charles P. Pierce, in his awesome new nook at Esquire.

I'll just point out that the Red Sox are still looking for a manager, and I'm still looking for a job for next year.

From Dependence to Independence: Culture Isn't Just About International Night

Teaching is listening.  Learning is speaking.  It's a paraphrase from my thick mental file labeled, Profound Things Debbie Meier Wrote.  In some iconic sense, teaching might seem to value what teachers have to tell and give.  For teaching adults, at least, I'd say it's more about learning how to ask and request. 

Last week I discussed how to help ESOL students move from dependence to independence through language acquisition.  What about culture?  It's not just about throwing an international night where everyone noshes on food from five continents.  You can help your students become more interdependent and independent by empowering them in the classroom.  Here's how:

• Buy-in about class norms:  Earlier I've made the case for infusing even adult classes with lessons on skills and behaviors to help students become better ... students.  Building efficiencies and norms in the classroom are part of that.  Smoother procedures and more minutes on task help everyone learn--not just kids.  But with adults, their buy-in must be part of the process.  So when you're setting up your class procedures, ask the class for input and use their ideas.  One example: Class Constitutions.  At the start of each course, I'd lay out a few things I needed from students (punctuality, 100 percent English use, and so on).  Then I'd ask for their rules.  I'd show them an exemplar constitution from a previous course.  I'd provide a few categories: How students help themselves learn.  How students help others learn.  How to organize materials on the desks.  I'd give my students 15-20 minutes to write their own rules.  We'd post them--and follow them.  Students became responsible for motivating (and sometimes policing!) each other.

• Buy-in about what to study: Ask your adults what they'd like to learn.  The answers may surprise you.  Here are some that surprised me: How to speak English at the RMV.  How to understand street signs.  Integrate what students need for everyday life into class!  It doesn't need to derail accepted ideas about the sequence of English grammar to be learned.  But content is moldable--you can shape almost any topic to almost any grammar theme.  It doesn't need to derail the level of language you're teaching either: give beginners simple statements for the RMV registration desk, advanced students more complex conversations.  Student buy-in for curriculum can be taken much further, though.  For one course, I convened a "curriculum committee" of students to meet before class, multiple times, to brainstorm with me how to make the most of ongoing class activities and what new things to try.  ESOL students aren't preparing for some pre-ordained high-stakes test.  They're trying to get around America.  For the most part, they have a good pulse on what they need.  Listen--then use your language-teaching expertise to help them get there.

• Realia: Two days before you give a lesson on filling out hospital forms, should you make a stop at a nearby medical clinic to pick up forms?  No need.  Assign students the homework of going and getting realia on their own.  Invariably this technique yields an interesting range of items that reflects where students actually go and what they actually need help with.  For instance, before a lesson on how to navigate the RMV, a student handed me an impenetrable accident report form.  We don't know how to fill this out.  Duh.  And I thought they just wanted to renew their licenses.  Show students an example of what you're looking for before they go find it.  And as I learned the hard way: make sure one student doesn't go get a form and photocopy it for the others!

• Students as each others' resources: So many of my students came from communities beset by violence, anonymity, and lack of social connections.  Many of them had strong family networks--but did they know their neighbors?  Visit their local community centers?  That was unclear.  As much as possible, I encouraged them to become their own network of support and resources.  Did I tell them about upcoming immigrant events and parenting workshops?  Yes.  But I also got them sharing.  One example: as my students prepared to leave my program and enroll in a higher-level English class, I had them go through a sequence of lessons on finding their "next step."  I provided materials so they could research other English programs.  I gave them very structured forms in which to write down addresses, phone numbers, and possible questions to ask a program when you called (is there a cost?  when are classes?).  For homework, I had them make calls.  A few days later, I'd have them share what they had learned with fellow students.  I called program X, and they have spaces.  Here's the number.  At this point, they were doing the hard work, and I was just facilitating it.   

These are some ideas--I'd love to hear more.  A few final points: all of these areas to develop student interdependence and independence are purposeful.  The actual structure of teaching language--from comprehensible input to student practice to performance and assessment--need not change.  You aren't handing over the keys to language skills delivery.  You're just finding areas to empower student voices and experiences and making the most of them.  These techniques are also modeled, guided, and scaffolded.  If I had said to my students only, "Write a class constitution," the activity might have taken twice as long, confused half the students, and yielded ten different ways of saying "listen to the teacher, dammit!" 

There's always a time to provide a resource or a piece of advice.  There's always a time to stand in front of the class and lead a listening lesson.  But find the right spots to ask and request, not just tell and give, and your students will get a lot more from the class, from each other, and from themselves.

What's My Story?

A guest from a DC-based advocacy org came to very briefly present to a class of mine the other day.  She started this way:

I'm an alumnus of this class, and I'd like to make connections among other alums.  My work in DC is in health insurance.  Here's the issue: there are 8 million uninsured children in America.  But 6 million of them are eligible for health insurance, just not enrolled.  Some states have added a question to school registration forms about health insurance, and quickly been able to identify who needs to be signed up.

Wow.  In four to five sentences, she introduced herself.  She put her purpose out there.  She used two very simple numbers to paint a vivid picture in ways anybody could grasp.  And she suggested policy solutions.

Pretty complete picture.  One of my goals for the next year (-plus) is to be a better communicator.  What's my story, and how do I tell it?

Thrilled

by the best World Series this side of 2001.  Hoping Roger Angell still has enough left in the tank to give us a New Yorker post-mortem.  Happy to see Charlie Pierce manning the Esquire politics blog.  Frustrated to be trudging through ... snow?!? this morning.  Warmed by MelissaCzarnik's tweet that "A Bus full of kids just went by the #occupythehood #occupymke #ows protest screaming 'Scott Walker licks booty.' "  That's what we were sayin' all along.

From Dependence to Independence: Language Acquisition

How can I help my students move away from dependence and toward interdependence and independence?

That's the question I touched on in an earlier post. 

The adult immigrants I've worked with constantly talk up the American Dream: they came here to get a better life, better job, better future for their kids.  Now, we can quibble about how realistic that dream is.  But to help them move toward it means helping them feel more independent and have the skills to be more independent.

How do we do that in an adult ESOL classroom?  I see at least three areas: Language Acquisition, Classroom Culture, and Community-Building.  Today, I'll focus on language.

Stoking Independence in Language Acquisition: There's a concept called the "Atlas Complex," in which language teachers tend to prance around theatrically, make themselves the center of attention, and constantly treat students to a torrent of corrections and insider hints about the language to be learned.  There are definitely times when the teacher should explicitly model things and lead the class.  Indeed, I could write a long post on the essentials of teacher-directed task of comprehensible input.  I did some of that every day as an ESOL teacher.  But in general it's much more effective to move students toward talking and using the language themselves, once they're ready.  Some ideas on that front:

• Correct where it makes sense to correct.  Now, I'm generally a believer in Doug Lemov's concept of "Right is Right," but the limit of that approach in language acquisition is that overcorrecting students can actually impede language learning for speakers at certain levels.  More broadly it stifles students' sense that they are co-creators of the classroom experience, a key ingredient of a lively language class.  So be purposeful about when you provide correction.  I started every class with an active language warm-up (5-8 minutes), and never corrected, because I prioritized getting the juices flowing and didn't want to shut students down emotionally by jumping in.  In structured vocabulary and grammar lessons, I did correct, and early--I would rotate and monitor, take notes on trends, and provide feedback.  When we did activities like having students analyze a problem in their community, it was about content, not perfect language use.  There, I focused on building higher-order thinking skills and let incorrect usages slide.  There's a time for correctness, and a time for fluency.  Maximize opportunities for students to be comfortable and talking--the more they own the language, the more they're building skills to survive the real world.

• Correct in a "least restrictive" way.  The special-education concept of "least restrictive environment" is useful in ESOL, too.  Students will depend less on you and build their own interdependence and independence if given chances to find corrections themselves.  If a situation arises where students correctness matters, and a student says, Does she has a fever? consider moving through this taxonomy to help them find the correct statement:
•  Indirect correction: Say, Does she ... (drawing out the pause, making it obvious there's a correction needed) or say, Does she has?  This prompts the student to reconsider and try again.  If that fails, give her another chance, then try ...
• Peer correction: Say, Can you ask a classmate? or Can XX help you? or Can you check your book? If that fails, try ...
• Guided direct correction: Say, Does she has or Does she have?  That final one almost always does the trick.  It's also a form of comprehensible input.
• As an alternative in some activities, try delayed feedback.  If many students are making a mistake, put the options on the board, stop class, and go over them.  Nobody feels called out, everybody who needed help benefits, and you've made the error explicit.
• That said, You don't need to hover.  Often, students will correct each other--if you've created a culture of collaboration (more on that in a later post).  This builds interdependence beautifully.
• And pick your battles.  Even in an activity where correct speech is desirable, nobody wants constant correction.  Break down someone's emotional strength and you've broken down their ability to learn--and especially to learn a language.  Space out corrections.  Keep a pulse on who's receptive to what kind of correction.  Depends on the situation.

• Up the student talking time (STT).  Students learn more language when they work with each other, ask questions, negotiate speech.  Few things are as important to linking language learning in class to language use in the world as this step.  There are lots of ways to structure a class to do it.  Here's one simple technique I've found success with: Two Lines:
• Students stand up and form two lines, facing each other.
• They do whatever the speaking activity is with the person they're facing--model it first!
• The teacher moves alongside the line, listening.
• After a minute or two, student pairs perform.  Offer corrections if need be. the person at the end of one line goes to the other end, and everybody moves down a step, thus forming new partners.
• Students continue the task.
• What's good about this?  By changing partners, students hear a range of accents.  That's a life skill.  They're exposed to more speakers who produce more variety of language, which is good for learning new words.  Errors have a better shot at natural correction in a classmate pairing.  And it's movement, a break from desks.

Correcting when necessary, correcting purposefully, and upping student talking time are all great steps to getting students engaged in the very ins-and-outs of learning a language.  There's a lot more to moving students toward independence, but in a language classroom, these hints should help them take a big first step there.

How Much, or How?

Ooh boy, Nicholas Kristof writing about all the things I care about! 

He gets right to the point about how little public funding goes to children under age 5.  And to how early investments in children actually have documented cost-benefit pay-offs.

Kristof's also refreshingly frank in taking on Head Start questions.  He admits what we've long known, that some gains (e.g. IQ) for kids who go through HS wear off quickly.  But he points out that "the former Head Start participants are significantly less likely than siblings to repeat grades, to be diagnosed with a learning disability, or to suffer the kind of poor health associated with poverty."  Those are really important measures, especially when you consider how repeating grades sets kids up to drop out.

His closing point is: we can't afford not to fund early childhood.  But it's not just a question of how much funding early-childhood gets.  It's a question of how programs are run.

Problem is, quality of day-care varies a lot.  And overall, the picture isn't pretty--some programs are excellent, others terrible, most in-between.  That variation happens even within a government-funded program like Head Start, not to mention in the ever-growing area of private day-care.  Are play areas safe?  Are teachers well-trained?  Are adult-child interactions engaging?  These are not side questions, they are the main questions.

Dumping a whole lot of money into early-childhood without ways of ensuring programs are actually well-run won't do much for the disadvantaged kids Kristof cares about.  Kids from tough backgrounds need great programs, not just more programs.

The Weakened Links

Trying to fund linkages is impossible, because it we'd have to deal with too many funding streams--federal, state, and local.

That's what staff members from a foundation that fights poverty in a large U.S. city told me when I asked them if they provide funding to help programs link together with other ones--not just drive funding to single organizations. 


Research shows that helping poor people through interventions works best if one intervention leads to another.  Nonprofits are notorious for protecting their turf and avoiding collaboration.  We're never gonna solve tough problems unless we solve them together.  And we're never gonna work together unless we can line up our dollars.

By the way, this was a major foundation with a lot of pull.  If they step back from linkage-funding with their hands in the air, that says something.

Shout #1: From Dependence to Independence in the ESOL Classroom

The home-cooked arepa.  The colorful pencil, offered during break.  The stuffed doll brought back from Puerto Rico: There was nothing more touching than when one of my adult ESOL students took the time to give me a gift. 

After a year of teaching, under almost all circumstances, I stopped accepting them.

Dependence.  My students--mostly Latino--had a major cultural predilection to it.  Growing up, they stood up when their teachers entered the room, and called them maestros.  In the U.S., they were heavily dependent on the social-service safety net.  They were women of color taught by a white male.  If they had jobs, most worked as housekeepers, where they busted butt and kept their mouths shut.  Everywhere they looked, the power differential was against them.

But for immigrants, any pathway to success in the U.S. must be a path away from dependence and toward independence.  

Every time students asked me for my opinion during a class discussion.  Every time they asked me for my perfect pronunciation.  Every time they waited for my approving smile after giving me a slice of cake--built their affinity for me.  It filtered their class experiences through me.  It made me the source of All Language Knowledge.  It made them rely on ... me.

Are there times to accept gifts?  Absolutely, and I'll discuss that more in a future post.  Are there times to jump in with a correct pronunciation?  Sure.  In the classroom, is some reliance on the teacher a good thing?  Yes, at least at first.

But my students came in with tons of dependence, and didn't need any more from me, that's for certain.  So with every subsequent decision, I started asking myself one question: How will this help my students become more interdependent and independent?

It's a question all of us ESOL teachers should be asking ourselves every day.

How Do You Have a Mission and Still Be a Dreamer?

... or, how do you get nitty-gritty and fuzzy all at once?

Dan Pallotta had a post a few months ago urging missions, not just "mission statements":

Don't waste your advertising space on your mission statement. Use the space to tell people what you've accomplished, or what amazing thing your product will do — use it to show them what mission you're actually on.

And from Steve Jobs's Stanford speech, where he asked himself:

"If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

When I ran an adult ESOL program, I came up with a clear mission statement outlining exactly what my students would get out of it. 

The four most important things: 1) Everyday language skills, like how to talk to the doctor.  2) Academic behaviors and skills, like arriving on time to class and organizing a binder.  3) Setting goals that are realistic and achievable.  4) Links to "next steps," i.e. the program they could continue on to after graduating from mine.

I talked about them constantly.  I would even say, "I'm on a mission to help them ..."  And I focused like a laser on making sure they happened.  Did they happen?  You bet they did.  I wouldn't let them not happen. 

But if you focus like a laser, how do you remember all the other things you care about?  One class, we tried to get students job placements, and failed.  We got them more job-ready, but they didn't have enough English to do more.  I saw how hard it was for my immigrant students to change certain parenting habits.  I saw how even the many services my human-services agency provided--food stamps applications to immigration assistance--weren't enough to move most families out of poverty.  I constantly wanted to expand to more levels of ESOL, but without expanding staff, it wasn't realistic.

I was so focused on what I could do and had to do--and how to do it better.  That was the mission.  

How did I keep dreaming about solving the bigger problems?  I sat on the porch on summer Saturdays reading about language acquisition, or the Harlem Children's Zone.  I spent a couple months visiting other programs doing similar but slightly different things.  I schlepped to trainings, networked, debated ideas over food and beer.  I piloted a bunch of ideas in my program--some successes, some failures.  Any way to increase the flow of ideas into my brain--and classroom.   

But ultimately I found the day-to-day work, in a one-man program in a small agency, was so demanding that it shut off the really big dreaming.  I moved on.

Wherever I land next, I hope I can answer the question, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" with a resounding "Yes."  I hope my workplace makes it easy to do that.  I hope my colleagues are asking themselves the same question.  Nonprofits must focus on doing excellent work every day.  It is about the daily impact.  It is, at some level, about the next grant.  But it has to be about dreaming, too.

NCLB Stew

Piece at the Times about Tom Harkin's NCLB re-write.  Still waiting for more analysis, but I was struck by this quotation from Grover Whitehurst:

“Harkin’s bill would return control to the state departments of education and the local school districts, and they’re the ones that got us into the mess that No Child was designed to fix,” said Grover J. Whitehurst, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who headed the Department of Education’s research wing under President Bush. “Districts and states have not been effective in delivering quality education to children from low socioeconomic backgrounds, so why should we think they’ll be effective this time around?”

Okay, okay, states and districts haven't always taken the lead in promoting achievement.  Or rarely.  We can debate that.  But it's not like NCLB had much to say about instruction and achievement, either, except to set pie-in-the-sky goals of universal proficiency by 2014 and impose punitive consequences (that were actually pretty easy to escape through the "other" option of school turnaround)  for those not on track. 

The idea that simply raising motivation to get improve achievement was sufficient to get the process going failed on two fronts.  First, it left states to fix, fiddle, and nip data to "show" proficiency.  Second, it's proposals for creating better options for kids were a) tutoring and b) transfer.  Leaving aside whether this is actually an effective way to raise all boats, only tiny, tiny numbers of kids took those up.  NCLB didn't deal much with capacity of teachers and schools, nor with good fallback plans.

Harkin's bill may not be stellar--I for one am interested to learn more--but it's slipshod to hold up NCLB as the original, responsible alternative.

ConStrived?

I had a fascinating conversation Friday with a self-described "instigator" who's helping lead a replication of the STRIVE Together program of the Cincinnati area elsewhere in the Midwest.

Such organizations are modeled loosely off the Harlem Children's Zone and attempt to create cradle-to-career pathways for kids in disadvantaged areas.  These Midwestern models differ from HCZ in that they are larger than 100 square blocks and promote collaboration among existing agencies.  And their funding is different--I mean, not everyone can be hand-in-glove with Wall Street, right?

Here's what else the Other Midwest Plan has going for it: business, community, and school-district buy-in.  Focus on STEM subjects: science, technology, math.  Accountability measures from top-to-bottom, including managed instruction and continuous improvement plans.  Use of great practices from across the country.  Assurance of on-the-ground quality, through plenty of support and professional development for teachers, out-of-school time programs for kids, inclusion of volunteer labor.  Emphasis on kindergarten readiness.  I took the devil's-advocate pose over and over, and got pretty satisfying answers back.

When what started as a 20-minute call ended at an hour, I thought: Wow, this Other Midwest Plan sounds great!  ...

... But is it too good to be true? 

The rapid dissemination of the cradle-to-career idea (which I've written about before) is encouraging, insofar as I think it's a good way to frame the movement to achieve legitimate outcomes for kids from tough backgrounds.  But it's also a new path full of booby-traps. 

A few questions that I think must be addressed:

• How does the laudable focus on educational achievement not get narrowed to outcomes in math and English (or, in a better world, math, English, and science)?  
• How do you avoid imposing so much quantitatively-based accountability that you create (unfortunate but plausible) incentives to "teach to the test," or worse, manipulate data?  How do you create broad, fair evaluations?
• We know that quality of teaching and adult-child interaction are so important in both K-12 classrooms and daycare.  How do C2C programs assure that the consensual, progress-oriented message from movement leaders is not diluted at the grassroots level?  More to the point, how do they plan to increase the supply of effective front-line practitioners, especially in an era of fiscal retrenchment?
• The C2C approach is warm, fuzzy, and consensus-oriented.  It sometimes seems everybody's determinedly on the same page--or at least trying to get there.  What if the consensus is wrong?
• How do you make room for (Business-Speak Alert) "process correction" or continuous reflection, when you're keeping a good face up to secure grant money and political will?  
• Many of the major social advances in American history grew out of mobilization and politicization of people at the grassroots.  People spoke up and got angry, and things changed (see Civil Rights, women's rights, the Voting Rights Act).  Can a movement that is so--in some ways--bloodless have long-term impact?
• How do you keep funders and agencies working together?  If funding pulled back at some point, or results were uneven between agencies, wouldn't agencies be tempted to steer their own ship again?
• Isn't this an idea from Rich White Men for poor people of color?