Garbanzo Toons

Mothers With no Shame

I teach elementary school in an "urban" school district. Yes, the children struggle mightily day after day to learn . . . except for the ones who struggle mightily not to learn. I've learned over the years that if the child is a mess, take a look at the parents, lack of parents, and the poor kid's general home situation. Just because there is an adult living in the home, even if this person gave birth to the child, he or she may not be a parent. Case in point: the other day as parents were in the school picking up their children, I passed by a mother in a black t-shirt. Written on the back of her shirt in big red letters was, "Fuck the Police." Remember, this was inside the school, and there were many children around. No matter how poor a child's reading skills are, there are certain words that they learn to read anyway. I didn't get a look at her face, she was going one way and I was going the other. I don't know who her child is. Based on years of experience, my hypothesis is that her child is not a good student and is possibly resentful and combative. This woman thought nothing of walking through an elementary school wearing clothing featuring foul language. What other deviancies are part of this woman's normal behavior.

Labels: education, foul language, parents, school

posted by Harry @ 6:55 PM 0 comments

Gadgets and Education

Friday, we teachers were trained by some nice fellows from our local Barnes and Noble on the proper use and care of their electronic reading device, the Nook. It is a handy little device. You can read books on it, including many that you can download for free since they're in the public domain. You can also electronically highlight passages and take notes. There is a built-in Merriam Webster dictionary that you can call up simply by resting a finger on the word you are having difficulty with. I had no idea these devices had come so far. Not only can you link to the Barnes and Noble website or Amazon to buy books, you can also link to Google and get some of the books for free. You can, I think, surf the web. You can listen to online music. You can play games. There are apps. Some are included. And you can buy lots more.

Wait. Back up. You can play games? Yes, but they're educational games that are either included with the Nook, or that you can download. Well, they might not all be educational. The teacher next to me was playing one of those games where you make objects disappear by aligning a certain amount of the same object and then clicking on it. Of course, our students won't have access to those silly games. They will be trapped into playing reading, and phonics, and math, and grammar, and science games. Right? Well, actually,

It’s elementary. Public education bureaucrats do the darnedest, stupidest things. Clever kids are ready, willing and able to capitalize on that costly stupidity in a heartbeat. Within days of rolling out a $30 million Common Core iPad program in Los Angeles, for example, students had already hacked the supposedly secure devices. The Los Angeles Times reports that the disastrous initiative has been suspended after students from at least three different high schools breached the devices’ security protections. It was a piece of iCake. The young saboteurs gleefully advertised their method to their friends, fellow Twitter and Facebook users, and the media. “Roosevelt students matter-of-factly explained their ingenuity Tuesday outside school,” the L.A. Times told readers. “The trick, they said, was to delete their personal profile information. With the profile deleted, a student was free to surf. Soon they were sending tweets, socializing on Facebook and streaming music through Pandora, they said.” Goodbye, Common Core apps. Hello, Minecraft! The district spent untold millions of taxpayer dollars on iPad “training,” but many teachers still couldn’t figure out how to sync up the souped-up tablets for academic use in the classroom at the start of the school year. In less than a week, though, teens were able to circumvent the locks for fun and playtime at home faster than you can type “LOL.”

The way I see it is, if we teachers are having difficulty in using these things, all we have to do is ask a student for help.

Back when my own kids were in high school, they had to take a computer class. They would come home many a day complaining or laughing over the fact that they completed the teacher's assignment in 10 or 15 minutes and spent the rest of the period playing Solitaire, doing homework for other classes, or just goofing off with their friends. Every kid in the class did the same thing, but these waste-of-time classes were mandated. Every kid in the class had grown up with computers but was being "taught" to do tasks they'd been doing for years. To them, it was a joke.

Since then, computers have advanced. High school computer classes haven't and neither have elementary classes. My students go to their technology class once a week to "learn" on the computers. While not all of them have computers at home, the theory behind teaching children with computers is that they will play educational games. I call it the "Noodle Kidoodle" theory of education.
While various engaging, colorful games have now been used for years, I haven't seen any evidence as to their effectiveness. Of course, that means nothing. The educational establishment is sold on technology, as are parents, as are students, as are the developers of these games and programs.

Remember: These “reform” programs are not about stimulating brain cells. It’s all about stimulating the Benjamins. Pearson is the multibillion-dollar educational publishing and testing conglomerate at the center of the federally driven, taxpayer-funded “standards” racket. For Pearson, ed publishing and ed computing are a $6 billion global business. For nearly a decade, the company has plotted a digital learning takeover. According to industry estimates, Pearson’s digital learning products are used by more than 25 million people in North America. Common Core has been a convenient new catalyst for getting the next generation of consumers hooked. As I reported last week, Pearson sealed its whopping $30 million taxpayer-subsidized deal to supply the city’s schools with 45,000 iPads pre-loaded with Pearson Common Core curriculum apps earlier this summer. I repeat: That works out to $678 per glorified e-textbook, $200 more than the standard cost, with scant evidence that any of this software and hardware will do anything to improve the achievement bottom line.

Somehow, even when there is no money, or less than no money, there is still money to waste - uh - I mean spend on computerized gadgets. And somehow, no matter what kind of corruption and poverty  is being written about, any writer can attack Detroit as the epitome of all that is wrong with this country.

The abysmal history of federal investments in ed technology is as crystal-clear as an HD touch screen. Take President Obama’s $49 million technology initiative for the Detroit public schools, funded by federal stimulus money. The city is bankrupt. The urban school system is overrun by corruption, violence and incompetence. The federal ed tech program showered some 40,000 new (foreign-made) ASUS netbook computers on Detroit, plus thousands of printers, scanners and desktop computers to teachers and kids from early childhood through 12th grade. The district budget is $300 million in the hole. Meanwhile, the board slashed special education buses and shut down 70 schools. Have the devices helped students “compete in a global marketplace,” as champions of the program promised? SAT scores in Detroit remain “stagnant.” High school graduation rates are rock-bottom. According to the most recent data, just 3 percent of Detroit fourth-graders are proficient in math; 6 percent are proficient in reading. In 2010, 11 people were charged in connection with a lucrative fencing scheme involving hundreds of DPS computers, which they stole and sold on eBay or peddled to friends and family.

One of the painful facts of education is that it is not a game. It is as serious as your life. You would think that people who have been in the educational profession for as many years as some of these computer-pushing dolts have been would understand that, but I've come to understand that many of them can't make that admission. In their mind, there has to be a "magic bullet" that will get information and skills into students' brains easily and painlessly. There is no such thing. Education isn't always fun, in fact it may rarely be fun, but it is always rewarding. Yes, games can be good for review, but when it comes to absorbing content, you'd better get out that pencil and paper, along with a book, and get to work. You can play on the internet after you've done your homework.

Labels: computers, education, technology

posted by Harry @ 5:19 PM 1 comments

The Progressive Inner City Classroom

One of the problems of educating poor children in modern society is that the students who try to learn, to better themselves so that they can move up in society and become a contributor instead of a parasite, is the savage peer-resistance they face. Thomas Sowell has written about this pernicious influence in the United States among black students who accuse high achievers among them of "acting white." But it's not a racial issue. Theodore Dalrymple writes of the same pathology in British schools.

What did they mean by this apparent paradox? They meant that anyone who tried hard at school and performed well was wasting his time, when he could have been engaged in the real business of life, such as truanting in the park or wandering downtown. Furthermore, there was menace in their words: If you don't mend your ways and join us, they were saying, we'll beat you up. This was no idle threat: I often meet people in their twenties and thirties in my hospital practice who gave up at school under such duress and subsequently realize that they have missed an opportunity which, had it been taken, would have changed the whole course of their lives much for the better. And those who attend the few schools in the city which maintain very high academic standards risk a beating if they venture to where the poor white stupids live. In the last year, I have treated two boys in the emergency room after such a beating, and two others who have taken overdoses for fear of receiving one at the hands of their neighbors.

Peer pressure, especially when it's violently negative, as adults know, and as we try to encourage our own children to avoid, has a tremendous effect on a child's education. Study and hard work that leads to beatings and hospitalization is a powerful incentive for giving up. The future parasites do not allow anyone in their domain to rise above that setting. Everybody must remain equal, that is, equally stupid, equally poor, equally miserable, and equally a drain on society.

Among Progressives, we are being taught to abhor differences in wealth among Americans. The distribution of wealth, we are told, is too skewed in favor of the rich. This is something new and dangerous to society. This inequality is bad news. In the name of fairness, wealth needs to be redistributed. If you are too successful, and you make too much money, you can be threatened. If you are an oil executive, you can be hauled before Congress and paraded before the American public in a glorious show trial. And to Progressives, this kind of harassment is not only acceptable, but noble. Because some people are poor, and some work hard for very little money, those who make a lot of money must justify their wealth. Businessmen who have made an honest living and have committed no crimes can be vilified and threatened by our elected officials because they're not equal, because they've used their talents are resources to rise economically above the rest of us. As our president has told us, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money." How much money is enough? He didn't say. But we can assume that above a certain amount, you qualify for a beat down.

The really perverse part of this mode of thought, is that I'm pretty sure that it's shared among Obama's wealthy supporters. We know though, that as long as they keep funneling a portion of their lunch money to Obama's reelection campaign and other causes that he supports, they can never make enough money. Some capitalist oppressors are more equal than others.

And if it's not the president bullying us into poverty, it's an environmental group. How much bullying does it take before the wealth creators give up and leave the rest of us to sink into equality? Once we have an entire society of parasites though, who does that society feed off of? We only have each other.

It's no wonder the Left sides so adamantly with Islamists. They to want equality, at least their Islamic version of equality, you know, Muslim males most equal, infidel females least equal . . .


I wrote all of the above back in August. And since then, I've ignored my blog. I started posting a comic strip, but once school started, I didn't have time to draw. Between school, tutoring, non-blog pro-Israel activity, and going to the gym, who's got time to draw?

But getting back on topic, the rise of the OWS movement has proven everything I've written. There is a sample here. Make sure you watch the video. My question at the beginning is, what are they so afraid of that they refuse to cooperate with a conservative web-based news service?

Am I back? Who knows? Who cares? If I have time (ha!) I will continue my amateurly drawn comic strip.

Labels: education, islam, Obama, Progressives

posted by Harry @ 7:20 PM 2 comments

Kids Without Dads

I've always been a sucker for advice columns. I don't know why. Maybe reading about other people who are so lame they have to write to a stranger to solve their personal problems makes me feel like I'm less of a loser when faced with my own problems. Maybe I'm just nosy. But when I read this question to advice columnist Carolyn Hax, I got angry.

I just found out I'm pregnant. I'm slowly getting to be very happy about this news even though it was not, ahem, planned.

My boyfriend wants to get married before the baby comes. But is a baby the right reason to get married? I've not always been supportive of marriage because I've seen what happens to friends when they divorced, and it wouldn't have been nearly as messy if that slip of paper were not involved and they could have just walked away. If it helps, we're both mid- to late-30s but haven't been together very long.

That question comes up a lot these days, doesn't it? Here is Carolyn Hax' answer:

With a child, do you really think either of you will be able to "walk away"? Would you want that?

The slip of paper can be a nuisance, but it can also be an advantage. The image I have in mind is of a decorative border fence around a garden. A foot-high frill isn't going to keep anyone in or out, but having it there is usually enough to keep adult feet on the sidewalk and out of the flowers (dogs and children will ignore it, which fits the metaphor nicely). While my own view is that it's not necessary for a strong, committed relationship, a marriage can help a couple's mind stay focused on the commitment.

There is more to the answer, but the child is never mentioned again. I was surprised the child was mentioned at all outside of being an inconvenience to the mother and a possible financial drain to the father. I was going to write to her slamming both of the dopes in this situation, but it's none of my business, and there are millions of children born into that exact situation every year. And how many of those fathers walk away? Or run away? One letter from one disgruntled dope (me) won't change anything.

Part of the reason I get angry at people who are so cavalier about bringing a child into the world without any kind of family structure is that, where I teach, I meet many of those children. They don't know their fathers. Or they see their fathers occasionally, if ever. Some of their fathers are in jail. Some are just gone. I don't even know how many children in my school are growing up without fathers, but it is a majority. And it leaves a dad-sized hole in each one of them.

I was speaking to a mother of one of my students just the other day. Dad lives in another state. I assume he has another family. There is a step dad at home. I met Step Dad. He seems like a decent caring guy, but for this little girl, he's not Dad. Her grades are terrible, she's depressed, she misses her father. I've spoken to Father. He too seems like a decent caring guy. But how often does he see his daughter? Not nearly enough. Most of the time, he is a voice on the phone or an image on a computer screen. What will happen to this poor child as her mother panics over her grades and is worried that she will be retained? I don't know. But she's probably lucky in that her mother (and probably her father) care.

One of the other girls in my class reigns as bully supreme. She's not that big, about average sized, but she's willing to push just about anybody around - and then lie about it. With personal responsibility being so totally outmoded in the adult world, think about that lack among fourth graders. Nothing is ever her fault, because she didn't do it. Even the fruit-throwing incident, witnessed by the entire class, she didn't do it. It was somebody else throwing fruit at her.

She's gotten better over the course of the year, but recently has started backsliding. She smacked a first grader who kicked her on the playground after she insulted him. She had to hit him, because, after all, what would happen to her reputation if she let a little first grader get away with kicking her? And yes, that was part of her rationale for striking the kid. Her father is in jail. How long and for what, I don't know. I don't ask any more. In the past, I've gotten answers from kids about how their dads or uncles, or whomever in the family is locked away, was set up and is innocent. Or sometimes the kids just don't know. She's got a Stepdad too. Again, he seems like a caring fellow, but I don't know what goes on at home.

There are others this year. I recently ran into a former student. The last time I saw him, about five years ago, he was out playing with his toddler-sized son. I ran into him again recently. He's married now, with two more kids. To a different woman. She doesn't want him seeing the mother of his first child, so he doesn't. Where I may have respected him a bit for taking time with his son as a toddler, that respect is long gone. He's willing to let his first child become just another statistic.

I don't remember the circumstances he was raised under, but I do remember that he was part of a trio of trouble makers who the gym teacher and I, independently of each other, dubbed "The Three Stooges." Moe, Larry, and Curly were obvious to anyone who watched them interact with each other. This kid was Curly. Last I heard, Larry was in jail. Moe and his family moved to another state after the year he was in my class.

So the cycle continues; single moms, absent dads, kids who walk into the world already emotionally and intellectually damaged. But don't talk about responsibility. That's just plain old-fashioned, and has no place in today's modern world where the government is here to take care of all problems.

Labels: children, education, fathers

posted by Harry @ 11:16 AM 1 comments

State of the Teacher's Union

Like everyone else, I've been watching the madness in Wisconsin. Being a public school teacher, (yeah I may have mentioned that once or twice in the past) I'm disgusted with the teachers in Wisconsin. I understand not wanting to take a pay cut. I took one this year, and I have to pay more out of pocket for my insurance. It hurts. I hate it. But I also understand that the money has to come from somewhere, and if the money isn't there, cuts have to be made. (I'm a taxpayer tool, as much as I hate that). I also know that my school district has made some poor financial decisions in the past that I and other teachers are now paying for. Could we have done anything about that? Probably not. But that's another post, the one where I question why we have school boards.

But back in Wisconsin, how can teachers pretend that they have the best interests of the students at heart when they've abandoned their students or dragged them along to the demonstrations in order to save their own paychecks? Students are supposed to learn what from this? The benefits of mob rule? If the democratic process doesn't produce the results that you want, then it's time to hit the streets? The union has become the fourth branch of government? Why work when you can protest? Doctors are frauds who will write phony prescriptions for political purposes? Teachers are liars who will abandon the students that they've agreed to teach if they don't get their way?

I've watched some of the videos of the union protesters. It's obvious that civility is only expected from conservatives and Republicans. Union members, Democrats, and anyone else on the Left is free to make their own rules and be as rude and violent as they want. Who's going to care? The Press, who is on the side of the unions? The Obama White House corruptocrats, who are owned by the unions?

We're on February break this week, and if I believed in this madness, I could go to Lansing to protest too. I'd rather find a way to get some of my paycheck back from my union that spends my hard earned money on outrageous salaries for union leaders and sends money to organizations that I don't much care for.

Oh, and more money for education does not, as we have seen for years, improve the quality of education. We need vast curriculum changes for that.

Another absurdity that is subverting the democratic process and that is being given tacit approval by the Press and by the White House, is the childish and undemocratic tactic of the Democrat representatives in Wisconsin leaving town to avoid having to vote on Gov. Walker's bill. Had Republicans done this to avoid voting on Obamacare, they would have been tarred and feathered.

The whinyness and selfishness of the left, the fact that they are willing to sink as low as necessary and be as brutal as they are, and damage the country and the country's laws without a second thought in order to get their way is truly amazing. I do hope the grown ups are able to restore order at some point, and that students are able to go back to school.

Labels: Democrats, education, MSM, teacher's union, the Left, Wisconsin

posted by Harry @ 7:15 PM 4 comments

Korea's kids just like ours, 100 years ago

This is by Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press. It's about education. And it makes a lot of sense. How can I not reprint it?

SEOUL, South Korea -- "If they can do that in South Korea, we can do it right here in the United States of America."

President Barack Obama said that last year. He was talking about school. He was talking about hours. He was talking about how hard South Korean kids work, how long they study, how much time they put in -- more than a month longer per school year than their American counterparts.

I am writing this from South Korea, where I have spent a week, much of it speaking to high school kids. And I can tell President Obama pretty confidently that we can't do what they're doing here.

Because we don't believe in it.

South Koreans treat school like a full-time job plus a full-time marriage. They put in day hours and night hours, followed by weekend hours. It is not uncommon to see children in school uniforms walking home late at night. It is not uncommon to see them studying through weekends. There is private English education on top of the public education. Families split apart to improve a child's training. You hear stories about schooling that runs from sunrise past sunset, with breakfast, lunch and dinner being served in the building.

What you don't hear is cheerleading squads. What you don't hear is spring break trips to Cancún. What you don't hear is classes to boost self-esteem, to celebrate an ethnic group, to explore the arts. What you don't hear is "Glee" or "High School Musical" or other coolness-driven entertainment fantasies about high school fashion, sex, talent or jockdom.

How are our kids supposed to mimic these kids when this place doesn't look anything like the American school system?

It's funny, because most of the kids here want to be American.
Battling to get ahead in life

Not in the citizenship sense. They don't want to join our army. They want to be American in speaking English, in gaining wealth and status, in rising to the top. One of the questions I was asked by media here was, "What do our children have to do to become global leaders?" That's not a common question in the U.S. -- not to a visiting writer, anyhow.

There is an obsession with getting ahead here that begins with the classroom and permeates the adult workplace, where rigid hours and meager vacation days are the norm. The attitude mimics one you heard among American immigrants in the early 20th Century: "If you don't do well in school, you won't get to college, if you don't get to college you won't get a god job, and if you don't get a good job, you'll be a loser."

There is no shame in that lecture here. It is not viewed as corny or clichéd. It is part of the national pride, if not the national obsession.

How are American kids going to copy that? We're not disciplined enough, we're not hungry enough, and, most importantly, either parents don't say it enough, or if they do, kids ignore them.

That also doesn't happen in Korea. Respect for elders is paramount in Korean society. There are actually different words used to reflect deference to age -- a much older person is addressed one way, a slightly older person another.

They don't make comedies here where the 10-year-old is the brilliant family member and Mom and Dad are bumbling knuckleheads -- and divorced. The family dynamic is different. And as most educators will tell you, family is where future school performance begins.

Which, by the way, doesn't mean Korean kids are happier. It may be quite the opposite. Everywhere I went, I encountered teenagers in love with my book "Tuesdays With Morrie," because the teacher in it showed compassion and encouraged humanity, not just grades. Many kids told me, "I wish in my life I would meet a Morrie."

Many older kids wondered how you find meaning in your life if you are studying and working almost every spare hour.

And studies show that while Korean kids do amazingly well on certain standardized tests, those who come to America for college often drop out, unaccustomed the approach we take.

All of which suggests that Obama was a bit naive to think an extra month in school is going to put our kids on par with the high-scoring South Koreans. Their success runs much deeper than that. Their issues do, too.

Our kids laugh more, play more sports, express themselves more openly. The kids here are serious beyond compare, and they are driven to succeed. I'm not sure which system I'd prefer, but I know they are apples and oranges, and the length of a school year is only a tiny difference. It may take a village to raise a child. But it takes a country to educate one.

Labels: education, Mitch Albom

posted by Harry @ 6:06 PM 3 comments

Teacher Concerns - or - More of My Same Old Complaints

I was talking with my wife's cousin. He's a high school teacher. He teaches in a rural, predominantly white school district on the west side of Michigan. When it comes to education, we believe in many of the same silly things: learning to read and write properly - in standard English, and with all of the proper mechanics - speaking clearly, again in standard English with all of the proper mechanics - and teaching students the basics of English grammar, syntax, spelling, and usage so that they can think, and when called upon, to communicate their thoughts clearly and accurately. He gets frustrated because year after year, he has to teach remedial English skills to high school students. He has the same problems with his students that I have with my elementary school classes.

My wife is in college. She's going for her bachelor's degree. She has to write papers, which I proofread. According to her, many professors have given up on having their students write papers using the proper mechanics of the English language. If the paper is understandable, that's good enough. These post high school students never learned to write properly.

Now, since I am merely an elementary school teacher, and at the bottom of this educational ladder, I can hardly be called an expert. I've spent 21 years in the educational field, but it's all been in the classroom, not in the hallowed ivy halls learning the educational theories of Dewey, Piaget, etc. So what could I possibly know that these experts don't?

Well, one thing I think I know, or at least I have a sneaky suspicion of, is that what I do, and what my colleagues teach and don't teach down here at the bottom, affects students' abilities though the rest of their lives, including college. Just as I should not still be teaching students that proper punctuation must be placed at the end of every sentence, neither should high school teachers and college professors. I also spend a lot of time every year teaching students how to write a sentence, explaining how to recognize one, how to begin and end it, making sure it has a subject and a predicate, and expresses an idea. Most truly have no idea of any of this.

Rather than have students engage in "peer editing" when neither student editing each others' paper has any idea as to what's right or wrong with them, I try to read everything they write. And then I have to meet with as many students as possible to help them figure out the right way to express themselves in writing. This also includes insisting that they speak standard English in the classroom. I teach in an "urban" district, which means almost all of my students are black, so it's really tough in the beginning of the year. It's almost like teaching another language to them. I've had students give up when I insist that they phrase their question to me in the way I've told them to. I don't accept "Do we 'posed to . . ." or "What is you doin'?" or - well, you get the idea. For some students, it's very difficult to speak correctly. It gets easier, and by March, rather than restating the proper phrase, I can merely insist that they "speak English." But it does all work together: speaking, writing, reading, spelling.

But that's only my opinion based on years of classroom experience, and even more experience over the past 5 or 6 years tutoring students before and after school and during the summer. And it's also the opinion of parents whose children I have tutored, and who have done the work necessary to actually learn. I haven't had my theories reinforced in the great educational colleges of our nation, though. It's against their philosophy.

Part of the problem is that, as much as we talk about understanding the scope and sequence of grades K-12, each teacher in each grade, for the most part, only knows what they are required to teach with only a vague idea as to how it fits into the rest of the picture. And each new reading and writing program that comes along does nothing to change that. As I've written before, each new program is based on the previous programs that have been tossed aside. Today's reading and writing guru, Lucy Calkins, will be abandoned and forgotten in about three to five years. And somebody new will be acclaimed as the latest and greatest while teaching the same way, but with new bells and whistles. This has been the way it has been for the 21 years I've been teaching. And as long as teachers are forced to jump on these revolving bandwagons by their administrators, resource leaders, and consultants, it's not going to change.

The current fashion in reading has returned to a controlled vocabulary. The change from controlled to open and back is a longer pattern taking a generation or more to make that circle. Leveled books are the current panacea, and students are expected to write, as always, without worrying about mechanics, since as we are taught - concern for spelling and punctuation will only slow down their thoughts, and they will be bogged down, unable to even complete that first sentence. Teachers are instructed to give "mini-lessons" in the finer points of writing. Do the mini-lessons work? I don't know. You should ask the college remedial reading and writing instructors to find out.

Want to know what's really funny about this? At one of the first Calkins workshops I attended at our local intermediate school district, the consultants were discussing with us how to change the program so that it would be applicable to the remedial needs of our students. This is as chuckle-worthy as when we were being introduced and trained in the basal program we used previous to Calkins. After being shown all of the wonderful resources (thousands of dollars worth) some of our teachers angered the trainers by insisting that the remedial books were not low enough for our lowest students. And it wasn't just annoyance, these trainers were steamed.

I will be trained in the Calkins stuff, but I will continue to start students at the beginning as I always do. I will also continue to run my mouth at staff meetings and at workshops, especially when all of the teachers are well trained but still getting the same miserable results that we've always gotten. But the question still remains - how do these people keep getting by the same B.S. time after time?

Labels: education, Lucy Calkins

posted by Harry @ 7:31 PM 3 comments

Bad Dads

Neil Steinberg is a good dad. He's taken for granted. That's probably normal. The wife and kids are used to having him around. I know my family is used to me - and my paycheck - and the occasional tutoring money - and rides when needed - and fixing things around the house - and being the one to be woken up when the kids have to puke in the middle of the night. (I don't know why it was me, but thankfully we're past those days). But that's just me being a dad. Millions of us do it. Other men don't. Steinberg calls them "bad dads." I have other names for them. I end up teaching their children while they're off doing whatever it is the scum of the earth do.

That’s why I feel a certain irrational envy for bad dads. You know the kind — shifty, gimlet-eyed petty criminals in plastic windbreakers who are forever hopping freight trains. Kids worship that kind of dad, mostly in the movies, but sometimes ]in real life. Look at Barack Obama. He was with his dad for what, a week after age 5? And he wrote Dreams from My Father.

and

All a bad dad has to do is arrive semi-sober at the big game — slipping into the stands at the last second — then give a thumbs-up and a toothless grin of encouragement to junior as he comes to the plate, and all is forgiven, the credits roll, and the music swells. A happy ending.

In a way, Steinberg is right. I've known kids who worship their dad who abandoned them. Sometimes the worship wears off though. I had a student this year, a fourth grader, who told me that he cares nothing for his father. His mother was getting married, and that was fine with him. I had another student a few years ago who was angry at her jailed father. She thought he was stupid. Her step-father was in the picture, so there was a male figure for her. She was happy with him.

I get students year after year, as do all of the other teachers I work with in this "urban district", who spend day after day mourning the loss of something they've never had but instinctively know they should have, a father. Some fathers just leave, or never show up in the first place. Others split at some point because they leave the mother. However it happens, those children are damaged, some more than others, but they all carry their psychic scars.

Situations arise that would never happen to a child in a stable two parent family. My first year of teaching, the music teacher kicked one of my students out of class for some misbehavior. The rest of the class laughed. She tried to calm them down and show them how unfeeling they were by scolding, "Stop it! How would you like it if your mother was a drug addict and you didn't know who your father was?" That didn't help matters at all.

Another time, a little boy was waving goodbye to his father. A little girl standing nearby told us that was her daddy too. The boy's response: "That's only because your momma's a 'ho', and my daddy did her."

I've seen big tough boys cry like babies because their fathers couldn't visit them the coming weekend - again. I've had missing fathers show up after not contacting their children for years in order to establish a relationship. And wouldn't you know it, it's always the mother's fault. Dad tells me about the mother's drug or alcohol use, or endless partying, and he is concerned for his child. And all of that may be true. But there were certain decisions made years ago that placed that child into this situation.

I did have a dad step up to the plate this year after I couldn't contact mom and grandma, who insisted that all of the problems were due to dad. After dad surprisingly demonstrated that he was a responsible parent, mom showed up regularly. Suddenly she was concerned and was going to do everything she needed to do in order for her daughter to succeed. Well, almost everything. It would have been nice had she had her daughter in school more often.

I saw one of my former students with his young son. It was good to see him taking an interest. (Who knows if he still does?) When I taught him, he was tight with two other young fellows. I was not the only one who saw them as Moe, Larry, and Curly. This was Curly. He seemed to have grown up.

I recently found out that another former student knocked up his fifteen year old girlfriend, a perfectly normal occurrence in the neighborhood where I teach. I can't offer any congratulations. I know what's coming.

I know two things about this situation. It's no longer a function of "ghetto culture." It has seeped into the mainstream, and single motherhood is no longer the scandal it used to be. It's almost accepted that "dad" will fade off into the sunset leaving mom with damaged kid - or kids. And the only thing I can do about it is to raise my children to understand that it is proper, acceptable, and the only right way to bring children into the world by first being married.

Labels: Ann Coulter, children, education, single parenthood

posted by Harry @ 8:32 PM 1 comments

Fourth Grade Hamlet

This year in my fourth grade class, we've been reading Hamlet. We began reading as soon as we returned from spring break. We'll be done with the play in about a week, (this is Shakespeare's longest one) and then we'll watch one of the movie versions.

Hamlet is tough. It's long. It's kind of "talky" in some parts. I can't say that all of my students are enjoying it. I can say that some of them are. Our discussions are way more fun than talking about the stories in the reading book. Some students have read ahead. Others claim that they've already seen a Hamlet movie. And I believe them when they start telling me how Hamlet kills Claudius and then also dies. They haven't mentioned Ophelia though.

The writing assignments I've given on the play show that for the most part, they are (with a lot of help from their teacher) understanding what's going on. They're picking up on the characters' motivations, on plot devices and twists, and making logical (but not always accurate) predictions on the direction of the story.

Two of my students have gone to the library and checked out Hamlet in other editions than the one we are using. One is one of my top students. The other one has given up trying to do most of the work and has adopted the "get on the teacher's nerves" method of getting attention - except for Hamlet. He made me read a scene with him the other day. He got to be Hamlet. I was relegated to being Horatio. It's a good thing I know who's boss in my class.

I used to get my Hamlets from Scholastic. Their edition has gone out of print, so this year I had to pick up a few used odd-ball editions. I noticed Dover had their Hamlet Thrift Edition for $1.50. They also have a volume featuring Hamlet along with Macbeth, Othello, and Romeo and Juliette for $2.50. Five of my students gave me money to place an order for those books. I also ordered a few copies of Charles and Mary Lamb's Ten Tales from Shakespeare because I know that they will be read. (And I ordered a few things for myself.) Somehow, probably due to my amazing math skills, I ordered an extra copy of the four-play volume. (And yes, I think Big Bill Shakespeare would have approved of that bit of word play.) A few students offered to buy it from me.

Some high school drama students came and performed some scenes from Hamlet for my class. My kids loved it. And they asked (mostly) appropriate questions of the performers afterward. Some of my boys were acting a little too "hot to trot" over some of the female players, but things still worked out well.

One of the things I learn year after year, is that we can teach children great literature. Even though the skill level of students entering my class gets noticeably lower year after year, they can still appreciate Shakespeare. I can't say they appreciate him over Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but that's no reason to hold back.

We don't have to dumb things down to get students to learn. In fact, even though I'm not what you'd call an expert, I think I'm safe in saying that the dumbing down trend has had a negative effect; students are getting dumber, learning less, and in many cases losing the ability to learn as less is expected of them.

Labels: education, Hamlet, reading, school, Shakespeare

posted by Harry @ 8:22 PM 1 comments

Yet More Educational Stupidity

Will the idiocy never end? How bad do things have to be before those in charge make the changes that must be made? Here is another fool offering her prescription for continued failure. She thinks she's advocating for the poor and downtrodden who have no chance at getting a decent education. If she knew anything about education, she would understand that she brings nothing useful to the discussion. She is another nonthinking dolt who thinks that the government can solve all of our problems for us if we only calm down and let it. Personal responsibility has no place in her world view. And of course, in her universe, charter schools are part of the problem with American education.

As we struggle to make universal health care a reality, we are dismantling the one national institution whose mission is generally applauded: the delivery of free public education for all of our children.

Lesson: if it's free, it must be good. In fact, it must be better. Why? Fool, because it's free. Never mind the fact that by any measure available, education is not being delivered to a large portion of our children by the "free" public schools. That should be especially and painfully obvious to anybody in and around Detroit. So one must wonder how anybody in the editorial department at the Detroit Free Press could take this basically anti-capitalist rant seriously.

The idea that essential social goals can be achieved by free market practices is a delusion.

And essential social goals are defined as exactly what in this woman's socialist world? So what is the gist of her complaint?

Charters are simply enabled to bleed students – and their accompanying dollars – from the public, universal system. Although charters must accept students on a first-come, first-served basis, they can limit enrollment numbers, thus leaving many out. Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem program is rightly honored, yet children are accepted by lottery. Many who wish to participate are left outside.

Equality! That is the gist of her problem. All students don't have equal outcomes. And there must be equal outcomes or the system isn't fair.

But as she tells it, every student can't escape public schools and get into the charter schools that do allow their students to excel. Her idea of equality isn't being met. She would rather have the current system-wide failure continue. That way, all students could be equal in their failure; equality of outcome. Her idea of equality is a Harrison Bergeron world. Hasn't that been the result of all societies that have used government mandates to meet "essential social goals?"

It would be beyond the mental capabilities of this woman to stretch her thinking to wonder if perhaps the methods being used by successful charter schools should be used in a greater number of schools so that more children could succeed. No, that would lean too far in the direction of free markets. And we know that it is the fault of free markets that the United States, and western civilization in general are such miserable failures when it comes to allowing people to have a free productive life. That's why so many flee to the government controlled utopias of Cuba, Zimbabwe, N. Korea, and other happy, thriving utopias where essential social goals are being achieved.

So tell me again, why are these idiots still being taken seriously?

Labels: charter schools, Detroit Free Press, education

posted by Harry @ 2:49 PM 1 comments

Another Reason Public Education Will Never Improve

Public school administrators still take advice from those who are still stuck on stupid. Here is a prime example.

More recently, a coalition of community leaders proposed an Excellent Schools Detroit initiative that includes the expansion of charter schools to improve graduation rates for Detroit students.

As these various initiatives will likely increase Michigan’s already large charter enrollment, inserting civil rights standards into the legislation authorizing these schools – and more completely understanding students’ outcomes in charter schools and nearby traditional public schools – is crucial.

Concerns about racial isolation are largely absent from the burgeoning charter school movement, which has instead recast school choice as the central civil rights issue. A new report from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA finds that nearly 80% of Michigan’s black charter school students attend intensely segregated minority schools. Even in a state infamous for the segregation of its black students, that percentage is extraordinarily high.

Charter school segregation is not just an issue for the city of Detroit – more than 70% of Michigan’s charter school students attend school outside of the city limits.

Why does this matter? Research shows that attending racially diverse schools significantly improves students’ academic achievement, graduation and college attendance rates.

B*llsh*t. I don't believe you. That is idiotic. Show me the research. The authors of this article have replaced real world facts with their own prejudices. So students from wealthy monoracial school districts will increase their college attendance if they're in class with students of other colors? Explain how and why, please. It makes no sense to me.

Such provisions would require charter schools to make themselves truly open to students of all backgrounds by providing services such as the school lunch program, instruction for English language learners and free transportation. These provisions are especially important in highly segregated places like the Detroit metro area, where locating charter schools near boundaries with suburban communities, providing transportation and conducting metro-wide outreach to students could help create diverse educational options.

And this will cost how much? And we are to pay for it how? Oh, that's right, tax the rich. Redistribute their wealth. Isn't that the solution to everything that ails racist American society?

Michigan’s Legislature could follow the example of states like Colorado or Rhode Island and require charter schools to stipulate how they will attain a diverse student body before they gain approval. The Michigan Department of Education could also provide technical assistance to charter operators to help them better structure their outreach and admissions policies to attain a more diverse student enrollment.

Great! More senseless regulation to inhibit the growth of charter schools. Isn't that the real reason behind this moronic plan? If these boneheaded idiots were truly interested in improving schools, charter or otherwise, they would be screaming for a stronger phonetic-based curriculum that is rich in content.

In fairness to the authors of this fiasco, they did author a 130 page PDF document called Choice Without Equity Somewhere in that mess, there may be a good argument for what they are proposing, but after skimming a few dozen pages, (yes, I'm too lazy to wade through the whole thing) I couldn't find anything that makes any educational sense. What the authors are missing due to their stupid obsession with race and segregation, is that so many minority students attend segregated charter schools because they aren't being served by public schools. Their parents are making sacrifices in order to get them to a school that they hope will be good for their children. They understand that the color of the student sitting next to their child has no bearing as to whether or not their child excels. But according to the authors (skimming quickly) minority students need more access to white students. Is this racism? I don't know, but if Rush Limbaugh stated that minority students needed white kids in their classes in order to succeed, he'd be called racist.

To counter the stupidity of Choice Without Equity, read Thomas Sowell's "The Education of Minority Children". Sowell says,

Will Rogers once said that it was not ignorance that was so bad but, as he put it, "all the things we know that ain't so." Nowhere is that more true than in American education today, where fashions prevail and evidence is seldom asked or given. And nowhere does this do more harm than in the education of minority children.
The quest for esoteric methods of trying to educate these children proceeds as if such children had never been successfully educated before, when in fact there are concrete examples, both from history and from our own times, of schools that have been sucessful in educating children from low-income families and from minority families. Yet the educational dogma of the day is that you simply cannot expect children who are not middle-class to do well on standardized tests, for all sorts of sociological and psychological reasons.
Those who think this way are undeterred by the fact that there are schools where low-income and minority students do in fact score well on standardized tests. These students are like the bumblebees who supposedly should not be able to fly, according to the theories of aerodynamics, but who fly anyway, in disregard of those theories.
While there are examples of schools where this happens in our own time-- both public and private, secular and religious-- we can also go back nearly a hundred years and find the same phenomenon. Back in 1899, in Washington, D. C., there were four academic public high schools-- one black and three white.1 In standardized tests given that year, students in the black high school averaged higher test scores than students in two of the three white high schools.2
This was not a fluke. It so happens that I have followed 85 years of the history of this black high school-- from 1870 to 1955 --and found it repeatedly equalling or exceeding national norms on standardized tests.

Read the whole thing. Sowell is always worth the time.

Labels: charter schools, education, racism, Thomas Sowell

posted by Harry @ 3:40 PM 2 comments

Professional Development

As part of our professional obligations in the state of Michigan, we teachers have to take a certain number of "professional development" hours. Usually they are provided by the school district during professional development days and after school meetings. I don't do too well at these any more. I usually spend the day tuning out or drawing pictures. It's not that the presenters are bad (some are - some aren't) but as I've explained in previous posts, it's the same old crap repackaged - and repackaged - and repackaged.

During the last PD day, I took notes. Here they are:

I said over and over and over again, this meeting's going to be a drag.

By ignoring effective teaching strategies, we are subject to another useless workshop on a reading instructional technique that will make no difference in student achievement, and that will be replaced a few years down the road with the next latest and greatest reading program. It will be under the aegis of the next reading guru. It will have most of the same elements of Reading Workshop (the current latest and greatest - H.) because Reading Workshop has elements of previous programs. It will pay lip service to the phonetic component and it will make no difference at all.

We aged veterans will sit through these workshops wondering why those administrators in charge still buy into this madness. Why do they insist that THIS TIME things will be different. This time student achievement will skyrocket.

And a few years down the road, when we are still having staff meetings - the topic being "how can we increase flagging student achievement?" nobody will make the connection: same techniques, same refusal to begin at the beginning, same refusal to explicit phonics, same dismal results. We will find the holes in the method. They were obvious from the beginning.

New (?) technique - leveled books - but nobody asks if it wouldn't be more effective to give students the ability to figure out the majority of words.

Now we've been given a program that calls for a huge number of books, but we don't have the money.

Is this another example of more money being poorly spent?

Personally, I'd like to have thousands of books, but if we can't, a few excellent titles that teach reading and content would suffice.

Riggs - so much cheaper and more effective.

Colleges are teaching this stuff too. Must be on a carpet (another crutch?) for "turn and talk."

Constant talk of leveled books low enough in each class instead of - how do we improve skills? Oh yeah - guided reading. (a bit of sarcasm there - H.)

Conference on modifying the program. We have to modify it right out of the gate? Is this really what we want?

Stigma of reading groups now becomes stigma of leveled books.

After the meeting I unloaded on a co-worker. He's heard my rant before, and he was willing to spend a few minutes listening to m vent my frustration.

At least we didn't have to do anything on chart paper.

Labels: education, failed reading programs, Riggs Institute, teacher education, teaching

posted by Harry @ 6:45 PM 5 comments

Why Teach Basics?

I did my student teaching in an Open School setting. It was child centered. Part of their reigning progressive philosophy was the rhetorical question, "Does a child really need to know what a verb is?" Their answer would have been a resounding "No!" Mechanics were not stressed at all. As I knew nothing about education, since all I had under my belt were methods classes and a few small group experiences with students, I happily went along with the program. And it wasn't a bad school. The teachers and the students seemed to be happy there. It was a magnet school, so parents had to want their children to attend. Teachers worked hard. So did some students. It was a K-8 school and I did notice that over on the middle school side of the building, things were pretty raucous . . . all the time.

I was there for ten weeks. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. My mentor teacher was one of the best teachers I've ever seen. She didn't go wholeheartedly for the open classroom model. She had some structure and more than a few expectations. I left wishing that all schools could be like that one. I even tried to model my own classroom like the one I had learned in.

Over the years, as I'm sure I've written about, students didn't learn as much as they were supposed to learn under the open classroom model or under any of the other models that I was exposed to. I've also written about my conversion from the blind unquestioning following of "whole language" curriculum to one favoring explicit phonics instruction. This is in spite of the fact that the public schools still march in lock step to the whole language drummer, accepting new programs with the same foolish faith that previous programs were adopted. Teachers who have been in the business long enough, understand that the newest are the same as the recently discarded, but since they don't know what else to do, they grumble a bit and then go along knowing full well that except for the cosmetic changes, the newest, in this case, Reading Workshop by Lucy Calkins, most recent of big time curriculum gurus, is the same as what's been abandoned.

Explicit instruction in the basics is frowned upon, but a recent reading episode with my class reminded me why grammar, spelling, syntax, capitalization, and punctuation must be taught to avoid the current problem of high school graduates struggling to read their own diplomas.

The passage in the science book (which we read chorally) reads as follows:

For instance, the pectoral sandpiper travels from northern Canada to southern South America each fall. These birds return to Canada in the spring when the weather in Canada warms up.

No big deal, right? The problem was that in the book, it looks like this:

For instance, the pectoral sandpiper travels from
northern Canada to southern South Amer-
ica each fall. These birds return to Canada
in the spring when the weather in Canada
warms up.

At the hyphen, everyone stopped and struggled for a minute to put the word "America" together. Then they continued reading. It sounded like:

Each fall these birds return to Canada in the spring when-

That's where I stopped them and made them go back to the beginning of the passage. And they did the same thing.

So I stopped the Science lesson and gave them a lesson in punctuation. At this point, it's not that most of them can't read the words. They're only reading the words. They're not reading the stories. I reread the passage to them the way they read it and the way it should be read. Then we talked about the difference in meaning.

One of the things I've always had to work on is mechanics. Now, since students are coming into fourth grade with even lower skills, it's become more important to teach and reinforce these skills. Teachers are taught that mechanics don't matter. They can teach "mini-lessons", or work these lessons into the revision process, or who knows what. The problem is that students haven't learned what a complete sentence is. When they write, many have very little idea where one sentence ends and the next one begins. The don't use punctuation in their own writing because they don't know how. Because of this, when they read, the don't really see the punctuation, kind of like the things we see but don't really notice in our daily travels because they just aren't important. To the students, punctuation marks may as well be random scratches on their papers. And capital letters? Something to be added when the teacher tells you to add them. So I will continue to reteach these skills. Some of them will get it, but none of them will ever be able to claim that I didn't teach them.

We teachers are still battling the whole language lobby. If we are ever able to defeat them, things will get better.

Labels: education, phonics

posted by Harry @ 6:28 PM 6 comments

Responsibility

Whose responsibility is it to make sure a child is fed? Being a parent, I always assumed that one of the responsibilities that parenthood brings is providing for the children that you bring into this world. I know that others disagree with me, and that there have been parents since the beginning of humanity who have ignored their children, ran away from them, or worse. But the average parent who brings or sends their children to school every day should take that responsibility seriously, and I'd like to think that most do.

At the school where I teach, around 85 percent of students qualify for a free or reduced price lunch. And now, as I'm sure I've reported before, all students are entitled to free breakfast, which is usually some kind of sickeningly sweet General Mills cereal and milk, or a Poptart, or these weirdly shaped edible objects that are labeled as bagels with cream cheese. Not all of the students eat these breakfasts. Some pull out their Flaming Hot Cheetos, or Cheez-it's, or Doritos, or BBQ flavored potato chips, or Airheads, or Snickers bars instead. I used to object. I used to insist on healthy snacks. Parents overruled me.

One little girl has come in late a couple of times recently, around 11:00. This is about a half hour after snack time, and almost two hours before lunch. Both times she's asked if she could get her breakfast. She was hungry. Mean guy that I am, I refused. Students pick up their breakfasts when they walk in the room at 8:25. By 9:00, the remaining breakfasts are carted off to be reused the next day. She would have had to walk down to the other end of the school to the cafeteria, where lunches were already being served to beg for her cereal and milk. I thought it would take too much more time out of her already shortened school day. Then she asked if she could eat her snack, a bag of chips. I wasn't going to let her until she explained that Mom doesn't feed her breakfast on school days, as she gets a free breakfast at school.

Yes, she is being raised by a young single mother, you know, the kind that Ann Coulter was less than kind to when she had the politically incorrect nerve to reveal the statistics on how poorly children of single mothers do in life. Coulter took a lot of heat from resentful members of the media who can't admit that their feel-good opinions of their own virtue have no basis in reality. This is the kind of mother that Coulter was talking about.

I have no doubt that mom loves her daughter and that she is doing the best she can. However, mom, like many single moms I've dealt with over the years, is working and going to school. She wants to improve her own life and the life or her daughter, but due to the time she must spend on her own pursuits, time and money for her daughter are in short supply. Should she and other single moms be held up as heroes for working hard for their children?

I don't think so. Yes, they're working hard, but they've made the poor decision to create a human being who is totally dependent on them, who looks to them as the example for life, and who has to suffer due to the adult's lack of maturity and decision making ability. Single moms have to work much harder than women who have a husband to help with child rearing. And as Ann and other vilified writers point out, children need fathers. And not just to make sure they have breakfast at home on the days that they're late for school. Well, that is, I think there are other reasons. I'll ask my kids.

One mom, a few years ago, thrilled at the birth of her latest fatherless child, was further cheered because her boyfriend (the father) was visiting regularly and wanted to help raise the child. I never heard anything about the father of her child who was in my class.

It's not just single moms though. One year, one of my students came in with a free lunch form. I sent her to the office to turn it in. She was from a two parent family. Mom drove a new Mercedes.

Is the government, through myriad welfare agencies, subsidizing laziness, cheating, irresponsibility, and poor choices? You bet they are. But that's one of those things that's obvious to anyone who has been paying attention to patterns in child rearing these past 40 years.

Labels: Ann Coulter, education, government, single parenthood

posted by Harry @ 1:13 PM 1 comments

More Reasons to Appreciate Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell is one of the great minds in the world today. If the MSM and the rest of those who control the output of information in this country weren't so stupidly "progresssive" he would get the recognition he deserves. It's a loss to our nation that he isn't more widely recognized and pushed on readers by the idiots running our MSM.

Labels: economics, education, Thomas Sowell

posted by Harry @ 8:12 PM 1 comments

Harry Opens His Mouth

Monday is staff meeting day. This past Monday, we had grade-level meetings. The fourth and fifth grade teachers met at one of the elementary schools to discuss curriculum; what's working and what's not working. It was a chance to sound off on the lameness of Everyday Math, and to discuss how the rudiments of this year's latest and greatest reading program, Lucy Calkin's Reading Workshop is going. Since most of us have only been trained on one minor portion of it, and others were awaiting more training, there wasn't much to discuss. But we did get to talk about the carpets each class received in order to help implement this new, latest and greatest reading method.

Labels: education, Riggs Institute, teacher education, teaching

posted by Harry @ 8:01 PM 6 comments

What's in it for Me?

That's the current mode of thought, isn't it? The government is throwing money around like they have it. Now, it's $4,500.00 to buy a new fuel efficient car if you trade in your old gas guzzler. There's even a catchy title, "Cash for Clunkers." My little gas sipper will be two in November. I dumped my minivan for it. It was either that, or dump around $5,000.00 into repairs on the old rust heap - uh - I mean, clunker. Being the frugal (cheap) guy that I am, I had to figure out what would pay better in the long run. Had I known this was coming, I might have made a different decision.

That government check would have covered over one third of the cost of my bare bones GM. I bought the cheapest one I could find. It's all manual. You even have to roll the windows up and down by hand. I thought the salesman was kidding when he told me that. My kids had never even been in a car that didn't have automatic windows. It was a novelty for days and a story to tell their friends for months.

My father, though, is tickled pink. He's retired, his savings took a big hit like everyone else's but he wants a new car to replace his '98 Buick with over 100,000 miles on it. He's not the only one salivating over this example of government largesse. Isn't that nice of our government, handing out money like that so that people can buy the new cars the government wants them to buy? And who am I to complain? It's not my money their going to be handing out. That's long gone. They're giving my children's and grandchildren's cash.

Is anyone complaining about government turned into Santa Clause, Tooth Fairy, and Easter Bunny all rolled into one? Only those humorless conservatives. They have this weird idea that people should earn their living. Talk about reactionary. Don't they get it? A new day is dawning. All we, the people have to do now, is hold out our hands and say, "gimme." The nice government worker person will oblige our every whim . . . until that person decides that work is strictly for suckers and quits to stand in the handout line with the rest of us progressive thinkers.

So who is going to do the work, when it becomes so much easier to just not work. I'm hearing stories of able-bodied people who have lost their jobs, and as hard as it may be for you to believe, due to extended unemployment benefits, they're not looking for another job. They're tired of working. They know that Obama will provide. The states feel that way. The severely debt-ridden state of Michigan is looking to grab a few billion in stimulus funds. And that will make everything all better and insure that Governor Granholm gets reelected. (I heard that Obama blessed the funds going to blue states so that Democrats will keep their positions.)

Schools are also looking to the feds for more money, and according to Instructor magazine, they're looking for (surprise) "Stimulus" cash. It's not that school districts are being selfish, they just want to save teachers' jobs so that our students can continue to get the world-class education that American public schools have been providing for generations. Of course, from my own experience as a public school teacher, I've seen horrendous amounts of taxpayer money wasted in various ways. But that's another post.

The aim here is to get money from the government now, before that money goes to someone else, and everyone points and laughs at you for being the last doofus on the block actually holding a job.

Labels: Cash for Clunkers, education, Obama, Stimulus package

posted by Harry @ 3:02 PM 5 comments

Creative Teaching

As the education establishment continues to flail their arms and run in circles to find a way to improve the American school system, the question of creativity in the classroom comes up. We are told that in order to motivate students, to get them to "think outside the box", to give them the enthusiasm to learn, to not "stifle their individuality", we as teachers must find creative ways to deliver lessons. We must also encourage creativity in our students.

I used to look for and create creative lessons. It was fun. The one question it took me a while to ask though, was: are the students really learning? That is, are they learning the content I was trying to teach? No matter how much the education mavens deny it in their insistence that students must be taught "higher level thinking skills", content is important and has to come first. If you don't have the content, what is there to think about?

I remember teaching fractions with Hershey Bars. I told my class that they were Hershey Fraction Bars. I did this on my own, as I'm sure hundreds of other teachers did because - hey look! They're divided into fractional portions! At some point, someone who was more creative than me wrote a book on how to use Hershey Bars to teach math.

Did my students love these lessons? You bet they did. Their participation was terrific. They followed every direction. We played with fractions for the whole math period and got to enjoy our candy bars. The next day, was there the increased understanding I had hoped for? Was there any understanding? I wasn't so sure as I had to reexplain everything I thought I'd taught the previous day. The candy was good though.

For a couple years in a row, I had my students work in groups to make board games based on European explorers. (I found the idea in a teacher's magazine). Very few of them actually had any information about the explorer they were supposed to be based on. The students had fun though, and they were willingly engaged in creating their board games. And that is supposed to count. In fact, had I been a student teacher being observed during those lessons, the engagement would have been more of a point than whether or not the students were learning.

There was a role playing game that I was able to buy many years ago, where students pretended that they were creating colonies in the New World. We spent time forming groups, drawing maps. learning about the various problems they would face as colonists, but I stopped before we'd finished when I realized that they were learning nothing of the real history of the colonists. We could have spent fifteen minutes reading about the tribulations of the early colonists to the New World and figured out that it was a tough way to go.

Not every creative endeavor has been a flop. I've done writing projects with students involving synonyms, characters in stories, extending stories, and proper word usage in which I think students have learned what I was trying to teach. In order to do those projects well though, there was a certain amount of content knowledge that students needed. The students who had a firm grasp of that knowledge did better than the ones who didn't.

Science demands that students engage in "hands on" learning. We do activities and demonstrations in order to better understand science concepts, but again, these activities are grounded in content knowledge. I was able to purchase a large amount of K-Nex one year because I was able to show how I was going to use it to teach Science. That year I spent two class periods with my fourth graders building K-Nex models before I became frustrated at their inability to follow the K-Nex directions. We wasted so much time building the models that the next year, I had students who wanted to build, come after school. I still spent a lot of time rebuilding. Now I just build the models myself or call on students from the previous year who are bright enough to interpret the directions. While K-Nex is a good tool for teaching some Science concepts, it hasn't been as great as thought it would be. Maybe it's worked better for others.

I know teachers who don't want to follow the curriculum because it doesn't allow their own creativity to flourish. I used to agree. Now I think the only thing that counts is that the students learn what we are trying to teach. If a teacher is that intent on being creative, there are other options. Write a symphony - or a song - or a novel - or a poem. Paint a picture. Build a sculpture. Design a building. Dance. Nobody is interested on how creative a teacher is if the students aren't learning.

Students still need the basics. If they can be delivered and learned creatively, that's fine. But we all know that school isn't always fun and that as much as it does offend some people, learning is hard work. There's no creative way around it.

Labels: education

posted by Harry @ 8:12 PM 9 comments

How Words Cast Their Spell

I have a friend who teachers higher level math at a local big-time university. Sometimes we talk about the current state of education. He turned me on to this article from the current issue of American Educator. I highly recommend it to those of you who are interested in reading, writing, and spelling instruction. I knew most of this stuff already, and you homeschoolers probably know it too. But to see it expressed out in the open, without apologies, as if it's become OK to challenge the educational status quo; that was exciting!

Here's a lengthy excerpt. It's a lengthy scholarly article, but I highly recommend reading the whole thing . . . if you're interested in teaching reading. The only quibble I have is that the pace they recommend can be a lot faster, as it is with Riggs.

More recent studies, however, do not support the notion that visual memory is the key to good spelling.6 Several researchers
have found that rote visual memory for letter strings is limited to
two or three letters in a word.7 In addition, studies of the errors children make indicate that something other than visual memory
is at work. If children relied on visual memory for spelling, regular
words (e.g., stamp, sing, strike) and irregular words that are
similar in length and frequency (e.g., sword, said, enough) should
be misspelled equally often. But they are not. Children misspell
irregular words more often than regular words.8
So, if words aren’t memorized visually, how do we spell? That
will be thoroughly explained later in this article. For now, here’s
the short answer: Webster was right not just on the importance
of spelling, but on how to teach it too. Spelling is a linguistic task
that requires knowledge of sounds and letter patterns. Unlike
poor spellers, who fail to make such connections, good spellers
develop insights into how words are spelled based on soundletter
correspondences,† meaningful parts of words (like the root
bio and the suffix logy), and word origins and history.9 This
knowledge, in turn, supports a specialized memory system—
memory for letters in words. The technical term for this is “orthographic
memory,” and it’s developed in tandem with awareness
of a word’s internal structure—its sounds, syllables, meaningful
parts, oddities, history, and so forth. Therefore, explicit instruction
in language structure, and especially sound structure, is
essential to learning to spell.

Don’t Students Learn to Spell through
Flashcards and Writing Words?

Given both the widespread belief that English spelling is irregular
and the previous studies that stressed visual memory for words, it’s no surprise that many teachers teach spelling by writing
words on flashcards and exposing students to them many
times or by having students write words 5 to 10 times. Unfortunately,
the effectiveness of such methods is not well established.
In contrast, studies show that spelling instruction based on the
sounds of language produces good results. For example, to test
whether a visual approach or language-based method is better,
researchers taught spelling to typical second graders using two
different methods: a visual method and a method in which students
focused on correspondences between sounds and letters.10
After administering lists of words as spelling tests, these investigators
drew the attention of the visual group to their errors, wrote
the correct spellings on flashcards, and showed children the correct
spellings. In contrast, the children in the language-based
group were given instruction on the sounds involved in their
misspellings. The group that received the language-based spelling
instruction showed significantly greater progress than the
visual group. Similarly, another researcher, after examining five
successful spelling instructional approaches for children with
learning disabilities, observed that the successful programs had
one thing in common: they were all based on structured language
instruction that explicitly taught principles like soundletter
correspondences.11 Researchers also have found that
second and third graders at risk of literacy problems improved
their spelling (as well as their word recognition, handwriting,
and composition skills) after structured spelling instruction
based on the concept that speech sounds are represented by
letters in printed words (i.e., the alphabetic principle).12 And a
series of studies showed that training in phonological awareness
(i.e., awareness of the sounds that make up language) improved
the spelling and reading of children in low-income, inner-city schools. The training was especially effective among the lowestperforming
children.13 In sum, these and other studies have
found that effective spelling instruction explicitly teaches students
sound-spelling patterns. Students are taught to think about
language, allowing them to learn how to spell—not just memorize
words.

Labels: education, reading, Riggs Institute

posted by Harry @ 2:27 PM 6 comments

Rosie O'Donnell, Enemy of Literacy

I don't know much about Rosie O'Donnell except that she gets into arguments with other famous people like Donald Trump. From what I've read about these arguments, she seems to be thin skinned and a backstabber. I could be wrong. It's just my impression. Today, it was reported that she is ending her blog. Normally, I wouldn't care. I didn't even know she had a blog. But some if it was reprinted. This is how she writes.

earthquake in la
wow
i flew in the night b4 the big one
january 94

b4 parker was born
i was in rehearsals for GREASE
we were opening in boston
i was needed in hollywood

as betty rubble
was shooting a macdonalds commercial
mc rib
if my mc memory is right

i was at the 4 seasons
bumped out of bed
it sounded like a runaway train
in the next room

robert klein was in the lobby
talking to the shaken concierge
"so- the mnm's rolled out of my mini bar -
will i b charged for them?"

cracking us all up at once
tension breaker
lil comedy never hurts
when u r scared

She claims to love children and pretends to be an advocate for children. But if she really wants to help, she will stop writing like an illiterate teenager, and start writing like an adult. Maybe it's because I'm a teacher, and work hard to get children to write in English, using the mechanics of English so that they can be understood, but I cringe just looking at it. I wouldn't accept her blog writing from a second grader. It's obscene for an adult who claims to want the best for children to write like that. Would she accept that from her own children? I was once even accused by a student of teaching the way I do so that my students can sound intelligent.

I didn't link to it because I find it offensive. So if you're interested, you will have to google it on your own.

Labels: education, Rosie O'Donnell

posted by Harry @ 8:06 PM 3 comments