Among the many, many, many remembrances, Ross Douthat's takes the form of an ironic, grudging concession that Steve Jobs was a revolutionary even for late-adopters like him. The last outpouring of response this big to a death I can remember was when Michael Jackson died. Speaks to the way media and consumer culture have crept into everyday life. The number of people who hadn't had Michael Jackson as soundtrack to some part of their life was like the number who haven't tapped at a sleek Apple product. Not that many.
Speaking of products, neat stuff happening at a tech school in Boston. Can't say I ever went to class in the ... Liberty Mutual Alternative Fuels Lab. But these kids do.
I happen to think Mormons of a certain age have plenty to answer for on their, um, policy platforms, but the loose-lipped accusations of a Rick Perry endorser only make Mitt Romney look more like the Proverbial Adult in the Room, and that's the kind Republicans like to nominate. Not sure how long this 10-gallon hat can stay afloat.
The bigger, more serious point, is how generally accusatory our politics have become. Not just the gaffes on the campaign trail, but all this un-American, un-Christian food-flinging. I just don't think this happened back in the day. Even back in my high-school days, when Clinton was fending off Whitewater and sex scandals, there was at least the shadow (well, sometimes more than that) of a basis for the attacks. Are the instant media the cause, or just a symptom?
Finally, I want comments. I'm not expecting 972 per post, but some would be great. I just changed the comments setting so all you need is a Google account to get in. Hop on board!
October 7, 2011
October 5, 2011
NCLB Soup
If Law A guaranteed 100 percent student proficiency, but was only10 percent implementable, and Law Y shot for only 80 percent student proficiency but was 80 percent implementable, which would you prefer?
Interesting piece at The New Republic by Kevin Carey (Ed Sector) about the Obama Administration's tweaks to NCLB. Basically, takes the moon-shot "everyone achieves by 2014" mandate away while empowering teachers and schools and states to do the things NCLB didn't properly address, like helping students meet stable standards, teacher quality, authentic school turnaround.
Meanwhile, Carey casts a plan among some Republicans to back away from NCLB as long-term retreat from federal spending obligations masking as nostalgia for the good old days when the Feds kept their hands out of the schools.
As far as Obama is concerned, while I never worshiped him as The Second Coming, I voted for him, would do it again, and will do it again (short of some major shift in the political landscape leading to a sudden embrace of Mitt Romney ... oh wait, yeah, I'm voting for Obama). I share many reservations about his term, including some with the still-cohering Occupy Wall Street movement.
But he has initiated many "tweaks" that could have positive long-term impacts, like changing funding formulas for usually earmark-riddled energy and transportation sectors, this NCLB work, RTTT, and so on. In that sense he has been more manager than leader--despite the oratory skills we all know. Is it enough to be a President of "tweaks"? No, and that may spell doom for him come next November. But worth watching the long-term impacts.
Interesting piece at The New Republic by Kevin Carey (Ed Sector) about the Obama Administration's tweaks to NCLB. Basically, takes the moon-shot "everyone achieves by 2014" mandate away while empowering teachers and schools and states to do the things NCLB didn't properly address, like helping students meet stable standards, teacher quality, authentic school turnaround.
Meanwhile, Carey casts a plan among some Republicans to back away from NCLB as long-term retreat from federal spending obligations masking as nostalgia for the good old days when the Feds kept their hands out of the schools.
As far as Obama is concerned, while I never worshiped him as The Second Coming, I voted for him, would do it again, and will do it again (short of some major shift in the political landscape leading to a sudden embrace of Mitt Romney ... oh wait, yeah, I'm voting for Obama). I share many reservations about his term, including some with the still-cohering Occupy Wall Street movement.
But he has initiated many "tweaks" that could have positive long-term impacts, like changing funding formulas for usually earmark-riddled energy and transportation sectors, this NCLB work, RTTT, and so on. In that sense he has been more manager than leader--despite the oratory skills we all know. Is it enough to be a President of "tweaks"? No, and that may spell doom for him come next November. But worth watching the long-term impacts.
October 3, 2011
Reviewing Homework: Thoughts for the ESOL Classroom
The Usual Good Stuff from Coach G on the limits to reviewing homework.
Coach whistles teachers for two main offenses:
Correct, Collect or Act It Out?
How or whether to review homework depends on what the homework is for:
Let It Be
Is there ever a time to just let students review the homework, regardless of whether you know how well they did it? Trying to muster some words of wisdom ... yes. In an immersion language classroom, it's great. Remember that middle-school German teacher who just drilled you to death on grammatical forms? Guess what? You actually weren't learning as much as Ms. Mickeltickel told you you were. Rote drills have a place ... but a limited one.
Turns out that we develop a lot of language skills through "negotiating meaning." All those little phrases like "Repeat, please," "Excuse me," "Did you hear that?" "What's next?" "Can you help me?" "Okay," "Right," "Give me my stapler back!" And so on. In an immersion class, in small groups, students are forced to use a ton of this "small stuff."
Unless you're pretty sure everyone got the homework completely right, in which case there are plenty of other techniques to get 'em talking, taking five minutes to review the homework serves two purposes at once. And since review often occurs early in class, it's a good, low-stakes way for students to get their tongues and brains working in the language.
There's plenty more to say about homework review. Cold-calling. Breaking students into groups to review one section, then share out. Collecting homework for quality control and direct feedback. But the big questions to always remember are, What's it for? and in a language class, Can I use review to get kids talking?
Coach whistles teachers for two main offenses:
- Rotely reviewing and correcting problems: if everyone got a question (or all of them) right, teacher-led rehash is a waste of time and spark for student disruption.
- "Disc jockey" review, where they ask the students what questions to go over. Kids ask to go over questions they actually got right as a ruse to fool around, and the quiet kids never pipe up.
Correct, Collect or Act It Out?
How or whether to review homework depends on what the homework is for:
- Some homework's formative, helping students develop skills on the way to larger objectives, and it's probably a good idea to make sure it's correct. For that I'd heartily recommend Coach G's suggestion that you put answers on the board and let students work through their errors. Or my own ESOL-specific technique--see below.
- Some homework's preparatory. What do I mean? It's not just practice, but a building block for a classroom activity. A key in any language classroom is what's called "information exchange" tasks, where some students have information others need, and they speak in the target language to share that info. Bare-bones example: A homework could be, "Write 5 sentences describing yourself with adjectives." The students bring it in, a volunteer reads the sentences out loud (without saying the author's name), and in teams the students guess who the classmate is. For this sort of activity, I recommend you collect the assignment, help students make corrections over the next couple days, then do the activity. That assures the activity is based on legitimate input, not someone's error-riddled scribbling from the night before.
- Finally, some homework's performative. Students work on a big or small project, and the final homework assignment is to prepare it for presentation. No need to correct here (well, a peek over their shoulders is probably a good idea!). Let them get up (or get in groups) and act it out.
Let It Be
Is there ever a time to just let students review the homework, regardless of whether you know how well they did it? Trying to muster some words of wisdom ... yes. In an immersion language classroom, it's great. Remember that middle-school German teacher who just drilled you to death on grammatical forms? Guess what? You actually weren't learning as much as Ms. Mickeltickel told you you were. Rote drills have a place ... but a limited one.
Turns out that we develop a lot of language skills through "negotiating meaning." All those little phrases like "Repeat, please," "Excuse me," "Did you hear that?" "What's next?" "Can you help me?" "Okay," "Right," "Give me my stapler back!" And so on. In an immersion class, in small groups, students are forced to use a ton of this "small stuff."
Unless you're pretty sure everyone got the homework completely right, in which case there are plenty of other techniques to get 'em talking, taking five minutes to review the homework serves two purposes at once. And since review often occurs early in class, it's a good, low-stakes way for students to get their tongues and brains working in the language.
There's plenty more to say about homework review. Cold-calling. Breaking students into groups to review one section, then share out. Collecting homework for quality control and direct feedback. But the big questions to always remember are, What's it for? and in a language class, Can I use review to get kids talking?
September 30, 2011
Balls and Strikes: The Week's Links
Um ... considering all the talk this baseball season about expanding the postseason to five teams, the bottom two having a one-game showdown for the Wild Card, thus reviving the Moribund Pennant Race, what does the final-day theatrics say about that?
Interesting piece by Dahlia Lithwick over at Slate about why the Administration might let the health-reform law go before the Supreme Court sooner rather than later. She quotes Peter Suderman:
Finally, I only buy electronics that make me bare my teeth and growl FIIIIRRRE. As in this. The name sort of beats you over the head, but at least you can't accuse them of mixed metaphors. Appealingly low-cost. And appealingly making me want to get one and walk down the street with it humming "ooh, ooh, ooh, I'm on ..." or "we didn't start the ..."
Interesting piece by Dahlia Lithwick over at Slate about why the Administration might let the health-reform law go before the Supreme Court sooner rather than later. She quotes Peter Suderman:
If the mandate is upheld, Obama will claim constitutional victory, and argue that Republicans pursued a frivolous challenge in service of political gain. If not, he'll presumably argue that the challenge itself represented a partisan attack by political foes who aren't interested in fixing the health care system and that America's court system has become hopelessly biased by an extremist conservative judiciary that's in the thrall of the Republican party.And a wonky piece at The New Republic surprisingly makes me feel optimistic about the dwindling of the death penalty, in practice and in law. Didn't know they'd dropped so precipitously, for a lot of reasons. Of course, that DP still exists at all is to say that it persists as an idea, problematic in a country that stakes much of its global swashbuckling moral authority on ideas.
Finally, I only buy electronics that make me bare my teeth and growl FIIIIRRRE. As in this. The name sort of beats you over the head, but at least you can't accuse them of mixed metaphors. Appealingly low-cost. And appealingly making me want to get one and walk down the street with it humming "ooh, ooh, ooh, I'm on ..." or "we didn't start the ..."
September 28, 2011
Eight Is the Loneliest Number
Every once in a while, a statistic just comes out of nowhere and knocks me down. The share of GED recipients who actually complete college once they've started (now, there's a conversation for another day). The Red Sox' abysmal September record (now, there's a conversation for ... oh wait, there might not be another day).
Yesterday's stunner? A number (from the 90s) showing that only 8 percent of public investment in education is spent on children birth-to-5.
Everything we know says that kids cognitive, emotional, linguistic development has a huge, lifelong impact. Why don't we fund 0-5 better?
Now, I understand: the public K-12 system is a 500-billion-dollar gorilla taking up much, much more than 8 percent. A lot of birth-to-five life happens at home. The private-public balance for daycare is more on the private end than in K-12. The "Head Start didn't work" perception is out there--even if it's not entirely true. But it's still shocking how little our society invests in arguably the most important five years of life.
For society at large, I think it comes to down to this: perception of crisis. Major foundations like Gates, Broad, and Walton zealously fund all stripes of K-12 school reform. These initiatives are problematic in many ways, but I think they've caught fire among donors because of the obvious crisis of American high schools. Open the paper and you read about this-or-that failing school. Turn on the news and you get a steady diet of "kids these days'" troubles with drugs and gangs. Employers are finding that young adults can't do the job. Colleges are finding freshman can't do the classwork.
But there's very much a 0-5 "crisis," as well. Toddlers with health problems, kids who haven't seen letters or heard enough talking at home, and on and on. But this crisis is much more silent. It has to do with complicated genetic-environment interactions beyond the grasp or interest of policymakers. Further, three-year-olds who are falling behind aren't marauding the streets in gangs ... they're just not getting right kind of attention or discipline from Mom or Dad. And even if kindergarten teachers can already see the negative outcomes, these outcomes aren't blaring over the news or failing in droves out of Stats 101 at Your Local State College.
So we don't intuitively grasp early-childhood issues the way we do with older kids. Even if we did, where would the political will be to act? Kids don't vote. Parents of poor, at-risk kids don't either.
Just yesterday, I heard a former advocacy worker say: You have to kiss serious politico butt to get lawmakers to give money to early childhood. I don't want to be mired in pessimism, but how do we change this?
Yesterday's stunner? A number (from the 90s) showing that only 8 percent of public investment in education is spent on children birth-to-5.
Everything we know says that kids cognitive, emotional, linguistic development has a huge, lifelong impact. Why don't we fund 0-5 better?
Now, I understand: the public K-12 system is a 500-billion-dollar gorilla taking up much, much more than 8 percent. A lot of birth-to-five life happens at home. The private-public balance for daycare is more on the private end than in K-12. The "Head Start didn't work" perception is out there--even if it's not entirely true. But it's still shocking how little our society invests in arguably the most important five years of life.
For society at large, I think it comes to down to this: perception of crisis. Major foundations like Gates, Broad, and Walton zealously fund all stripes of K-12 school reform. These initiatives are problematic in many ways, but I think they've caught fire among donors because of the obvious crisis of American high schools. Open the paper and you read about this-or-that failing school. Turn on the news and you get a steady diet of "kids these days'" troubles with drugs and gangs. Employers are finding that young adults can't do the job. Colleges are finding freshman can't do the classwork.
But there's very much a 0-5 "crisis," as well. Toddlers with health problems, kids who haven't seen letters or heard enough talking at home, and on and on. But this crisis is much more silent. It has to do with complicated genetic-environment interactions beyond the grasp or interest of policymakers. Further, three-year-olds who are falling behind aren't marauding the streets in gangs ... they're just not getting right kind of attention or discipline from Mom or Dad. And even if kindergarten teachers can already see the negative outcomes, these outcomes aren't blaring over the news or failing in droves out of Stats 101 at Your Local State College.
So we don't intuitively grasp early-childhood issues the way we do with older kids. Even if we did, where would the political will be to act? Kids don't vote. Parents of poor, at-risk kids don't either.
Just yesterday, I heard a former advocacy worker say: You have to kiss serious politico butt to get lawmakers to give money to early childhood. I don't want to be mired in pessimism, but how do we change this?
September 26, 2011
The Right Stuff: Skills and Behaviors Beginning ESOL Students Must Have
In "Teaching Students How to Be Students," I recommended a few steps for helping students learn the skills and behaviors they need to be successful in your classroom--or any future classroom they might step into.
Since Monday is a good day for Serious News, let me be clear: these are not quick fixes. If it took two minutes to show students how to organize a binder, and they could do it perfectly after a single observation, every teacher would do it. But everybody doesn't do it.
So in signing up for a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, it is a huge help to know exactly what skills and behaviors matter in your class, your grade, your level.
I came up with a brief taxonomy of topics for Beginning ESOL learners. I thought. I sketched ideas. I begged, borrowed, and stole from fellow teachers. Here's a sample of our results--some language-specific, some adult-specific, some transferable to any classroom:
Beginning ESOL Skills & Behaviors
1) Puncuality
This list could go on and on.
What are the most successful techniques you've used?
Since Monday is a good day for Serious News, let me be clear: these are not quick fixes. If it took two minutes to show students how to organize a binder, and they could do it perfectly after a single observation, every teacher would do it. But everybody doesn't do it.
So in signing up for a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, it is a huge help to know exactly what skills and behaviors matter in your class, your grade, your level.
I came up with a brief taxonomy of topics for Beginning ESOL learners. I thought. I sketched ideas. I begged, borrowed, and stole from fellow teachers. Here's a sample of our results--some language-specific, some adult-specific, some transferable to any classroom:
Beginning ESOL Skills & Behaviors
1) Puncuality
- Being on time
- Having your materials out before class starts
- How to listen to classmates
- Tracking the teacher
- How to find directions on a worksheet, and where to write your name and the date
- How students or the teacher should get the class's attention
- Transitioning efficiently into groups
- Working patiently and productively with other students
- Listening to instructions, and repeating them back
- Using extra time effectively if you've finished an activity early
- Self-advocating in class: I don't understand. I need to go to the bathroom. Pass me the scissors. I can't come to class tomorrow.
- How to use a "dialogue journal"
- Completing homework fully and to the best of one's ability
- Where, at what time, and with what materials to complete homework
- How to space out studying for a test, and identify what to study
- Getting help vs. copying an answer
- Practicing for a performance assessment
- Identifying a teacher's feedback, and whether it's positive or corrective; responding to it through questions or corrections
- What an organized desk space looks like
- How to organize and maintain an effective binder
- Dating papers
- Having all the necessary materials: pencil, eraser, notebook, binder with divider
- Asking for clarification about directions
- Methods to support your own learning outside class
- Evaluating personal strengths and weaknesses
- Asking the teacher or a classmate to resolve a difficulty
- Getting/making up missed work
- Finding a class buddy to save papers and provide notes if you're absent
This list could go on and on.
What are the most successful techniques you've used?
September 23, 2011
Out Standing in the Field?
Took a lot of field trips today:
11:15: Interview at an organization that facilitates policy-changes to strengthen community-college outcomes
1:00: Met with the co-director of an upstart parenting program that is explicitly trying to be small and focus only on early-parenting--while linking with other resources to help low-income parents give their kids a successful life
3:30: Met with a social-entrepreneur/student who's poised to launch an organization that would connect poor schoolchildren with wraparound services for their families, to help remove barriers to learning and change the "conversation" about how schools operate
It's a good thing at my age you don't need to fill out permission slips!
By my count, that's 1 existing "linkage" program that's very big and supports front-line work, 1 new front-line program that supports linkages but wants to remain small, and 1 new linkage program that works at the front lines and wants to be big.
If you followed that, I bet you can tell me where the pea is!
Two lines of argument I'm constantly thinking about (in a very, very reduced form):
1) We have enough organizations and enough services. To help disadvantaged folks, we just need to connect them better from one program to another.
2) Poor people shouldn't have to run from program to program to meet their needs. Give them one-stop shops with all services under a single roof. Found a new org that does it all. Or add another program to round out your org.
What do you think?
11:15: Interview at an organization that facilitates policy-changes to strengthen community-college outcomes
1:00: Met with the co-director of an upstart parenting program that is explicitly trying to be small and focus only on early-parenting--while linking with other resources to help low-income parents give their kids a successful life
3:30: Met with a social-entrepreneur/student who's poised to launch an organization that would connect poor schoolchildren with wraparound services for their families, to help remove barriers to learning and change the "conversation" about how schools operate
It's a good thing at my age you don't need to fill out permission slips!
By my count, that's 1 existing "linkage" program that's very big and supports front-line work, 1 new front-line program that supports linkages but wants to remain small, and 1 new linkage program that works at the front lines and wants to be big.
If you followed that, I bet you can tell me where the pea is!
Two lines of argument I'm constantly thinking about (in a very, very reduced form):
1) We have enough organizations and enough services. To help disadvantaged folks, we just need to connect them better from one program to another.
2) Poor people shouldn't have to run from program to program to meet their needs. Give them one-stop shops with all services under a single roof. Found a new org that does it all. Or add another program to round out your org.
What do you think?
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