Education makes your life better

Education changes everything.  I saw these words in our park district booklet of classes.  They also had this motto:  Parks make life better.  These are great mottoes  My wise friend and colleague had this response when I shared the mottos with him.  "Education is the fertilizer that improves everything, even the economy."

Teachers help make students smarter.  I often hear teachers say we teach students how to think.  My wise teacher friend says they already know how to think.  I think he is right.

Expand life opportunities for all youth

I read this goal "expand life opportunities for all youth" on the Stupski Foundation website.  I shared it with my principal and colleagues.  We had been talking about our school's mission and vision statement.  One of my wise teacher friends said that we are expanding the size of the frame around our students' view of the world.  I drew a cartoon of this image of a growing frame and maybe I will add it here. 

I meet a professor last summer who teaches at "We the People" teacher institutes. ("We the People" is an excellent history and civics curriculum for 5th, 8th and 12 graders.   Students get excited about public speaking and current issues too from "We the People." I think that is an amazing result.  This professor said that one of life's greatest pleasures is getting together with friends over dinner and talking about ideas and issues.  She is right.  We want our students to see that gathering together and talking about ideas is fun.

A High School Principal's Insights

I interviewed a principal that I had worked for. He had great insight gained from 35 years in the field.  The article I wrote after the interview was published in 2004.  I recently found the notes I took. 

How did you become a teacher? 

I didn’t plan to become a teacher. Both my parents had been teachers and my wife was a teacher so maybe I tried to avoid becoming one.  I wanted to go into banking or public administration.  In college I had a football scholarship and I majored in history and political science. I got an M.A. in history.  

A friend of mine had gotten a job teaching and coaching football.  He asked me if I could help him coach.   The feedback I got from the kids---the spontaneity of it----was great. I was trying to share my love of the sport and my philosophy on hard work and commitment and they responded to it. They bought it!  I hadn’t ever experienced that before.  It was exhilarating. 

So I changed directions and got a teaching credential.  My first teaching job was a “new teacher” kind of assignment; teaching six different classes and moving to six different rooms.  I was just happy to have a job. 

What is your philosophy of teaching? 

When I first started teaching, I though I was just imparting knowledge.  My philosophy has changed since then.  I thought about the question:  What do I really want kids to walk away knowing?  They wouldn’t retain all the subject matter.  It may sound simplistic, but I wanted them to be able to think.  I wanted them to be able to separate fact from opinion.  I didn’t want my students to see the past as static or judge the past by the present.  In class, we re-created the past; we did a lot of simulations; we used primary sources.  We reenacted the trial of Dred Scott, the treason trial of Robert E. Lee and the McCarthy trials.

My mantra to vice principals and principals:  we are teachers.  There is a natural tendency to think vice principals are patrolmen.  We are not patrolmen but teachers.  Kids make mistakes and we try to teach and train them to do what is important.  Mistakes are part of growing up.  The educational system is not a penal system.  Teaching should be fun and kids should have fun at school.  It is a balance to put it altogether.  I can’t do it by myself.  I need the staff .

I was a Socratic teacher and I think I am a Socratic administrator.  I think on questions and come up with more questions.  When people start giving me answers I get suspicious. 

How did you become a principal?

I became a principal because I wanted to challenge myself as a teacher and coach.  I thought to myself:  Where would I have the most impact on the students and the system? 

It was a tough decision to become a principal because my wife and I were raising a young family. I wanted to work with the bigger picture than just the picture inside my classroom and as a coach on the field.  I wondered if I could make an impact by using my teaching philosophy.  Principals are teachers first.

What are you most happy about and most proud of? 

The “buck stops” with the person in charge.  We are like a large business here; we have 2,100 kids and 80 staff members.   I’m happy with the staff we have hired.  They put kids first and kids’ success first. 

I didn’t want this high school to be a place where kids come to watch teachers work.   We keep reflecting on the philosophy we’ve adopted:   “Every student is an active learner.” I can walk away; we have a philosophy in place. We believe in the philosophy.

We were getting feedback from students.  They were saying: “We don’t have to read because the teacher will tell us what we need to know.”  We have worked really hard to become knowledgeable in reading comprehension strategies.  Secondary teachers are not, by training, reading teachers.  We have taught the students strategies to take control of their own learning.  There is a unified note taking system, a unified essay system, bibliography and citation system.  Kids aren’t coming to school to watch teachers work.

Kids are great at search and retrieval.  They’ll find it, but they won’t see the larger picture.   I say, don’t give them search and retrieval questions but more analytical questions.

Kids can hit every target that you make if they know what the target is and it doesn’t move on them.   Tell them:  This is the target.  This is what I want you to know.  Don’t pull the rug out from under them and change the target without telling them. 

What are you most disappointed about? 

I don’t want to live my life by looking backwards. 

What do you think of current educational events?  What do you think of the No Child Left Behind Act?

Assessment is important but you don’t get the calf fatter by weighing it more often.

You have to learn to assess what you are expecting students to learn.  You can test facts but then you’re just teaching facts.  What do you want to assess?    I see three concentric circles.  In the outer circle are “things that are nice to know.” Cultural literacy facts like George Washington was the 1^st president.  The assessment for “things that are nice to know” is usually a multiple choice test.  In the middle circle are concepts and facts that are “important to know.”  Concepts like civil rights, power and citizenship.  The corresponding test for this is to have students create or recreate the concept.  

The 3^rd circle is the core.  This is what is enduring and what is crucial that you want you kids to walk away with and remember 15 years from now. A teacher knows you can’t assess topics in the third circle with multiple choice questions and search and retrieval questions.

The current testing is assessing the outside layer “nice to know” knowledge. That is so foreign to me.  I’m looking at the core circle.  For that we need multiple forms of assessment.

What are your future plans?  

First I’m going to sit back and reflect. I’m going to think about:  How can I have more control of my time and have the biggest impact?  I never felt like the person who says they can’t wait to retire.  It was in January of this year that I starting questioning myself:  Do I have enough energy for this?  A high school principal has to be everything to everybody.  I need to support my music, curricular (English, Foreign Language, etc.) and athletic programs.

I can’t sit in my office and do all that.  I have to be out there.  It takes a toll on your family life.  I thought:  Can I continue to have the impact that I want without wearing myself out? 

I want to have more control of my time instead of having time control me.

This is a six or seven day a week job.  There haven’t been that many Sundays that I haven’t come in to do paper work.  If I don’t come in I pay the price all week.  

I separate being a leader from being a manager.  A leader does the right thing.  He or she has vision and bigger picture thinking.  A leader brings people together.  A manager does things right.  He or she does the budget right.  I thought I was becoming more of a manager than a leader.

                         

To be successful the kids have to make a connection someplace to the school.  They connect where they are drawn.  There are Drama kids, athletic kids, Science Olympic kids and Interact kids.  I need to support them.  I adopted the jazz band this year.  I love to see them.  I'd rather be doing that then sitting behind a computer.  Kids give me more energy than I probably give them.

Have you heard of Khan Academy?

Many of you have heard of Khan Academy.  If you haven't, Khan Academy is a very very large collection of short online videos narrated by Sal Kahn that teach algebra, calculus, economics and other subjects.  The mission of Khan Academy is to offer a free world-class education to anyone anywhere.  

One of my favorite parts about Khan Academy is that a person can keep track of his or her progress in math from basic adding and subtracting to exponents and even calculus.  It is like the banquet table is all set and the student can taste different foods and skip others. 

I tried an experiment at school.  My students accessed the website http://www.khanacademy.org/ at home, kept track of their progress on a Google account and showed me their progress at school.  My experiment was to find out why Khan Academy is so popular and successful.  If I knew the reasons and agreed with the reasons I would then spread the word.  

If Khan Academy videos helped my students learn (or review) well enough to correctly answer the questions about number lines, percents and scientific notation, great!  If the video didn't help them understand prime numbers then I or another teacher would teach the lesson in person. Several of my students spent over 20 hours on Khan Academy over the course of a month.  I asked them what they liked about Khan Academy.  Students liked seeing their progress and this encouraged them to make more progress. 

Sal Khan explained in a TED talks lecture that the data surprisingly showed technology can personalize and humanize education. This may sound ironic and I have met people who are skeptical of and against online learning because they say it is impersonal and not self sustaining.   Khan says that math students preferred the narrated videos over him in person because they could pause, rewind, and repeat the videos at their own pace.  The students didn't have to face embarrassment that they should have have learned their times table in 4^th grade or be anxious that they didn’t understand adding fractions completely the first time it was taught.  Learning from the videos is humanizing and replaces the one-size-fits-all lecture.  Khan Academy can be personalized and tailored to fit you.  

Classroom teachers have assigned watching Khan Academy videos as homework and then used class time to do group projects, math application exercises, peer tutoring and video making.  The traditional classroom routine of lecture students, assign homework, give tests is changed around or "flipped." The old routine of teaching math doesn't expect mastery or encourage experimentation.  A traditional math course keeps moving, and everyday new skills keep being added.  Yikes!  At the high school level, if a student struggles with algebra or hates algebra it is probably because there is a hole, several holes or many holes in their past math education. 

We all have "swiss cheese like holes" (says Sal Kahn) in our math knowledge.  Having these holes keeps students from making progress in math and liking math.  At the high school level, I hear a lot of students say:  "I hate math!" or "I am not good at math."  Khan Academy shows the student and teacher exactly where and what those holes are and offers step-by-step problem solving hints and video lessons to help fill in these holes so a student can become happy and confident.

How much does the annual No Child Left Behind test cost my state and your state?

There is a non-profit group called California Common Sense that started as a summer project among Stanford students.  The group's mission is to: "open government to the public, develop data-driven policy analysis, and educate citizens about how their governments work. "

Collecting data and graphing the information gets rid of the secrecy and confusion surrounding state finances.  We can all follow the money which then makes it possible for us to cheer on or change what our state government is doing.

I looked at the website today    http://www.cacs.org/ca/site/about
and watched a short video introduction. 

I had been talking with friend about how we can find out the cost of the annual No Child Left Behind test to our state.  The information was hidden.  I asked California Common Sense for help.  I filled out the "Contact Us" form on the website.  
Subject: How can I find out the cost of the STAR test on CA? 
I explained that I am working to have the No Child Left Behind annual test administered every other year instead of every year.  I wrote that I believed less testing, such as every other year, would improve schools, help make students' smarter and plug up a money and resource drain. 
I know the test is mandated by federal law, however, it would be significant to find out how much the test costs each state every year.  Some school administrators tell me they spend a month organizing the testing for their school site.  Teachers spend a week of their time being test proctors.  Students take the tests and sometimes even in subjects like biology that they haven't yet taken in high school.  Students see that state money is poured into the test and not into them and their learning.  I've never written or spoken the word "Kafkaesque" before, but I thought of it while I was writing this.

A wise friend, who is outside the education field, says that testing should be a celebration of all that you know and learned that year instead of a punishment.  Is he being naive? 

Schools are cutting back on elective classes

I was sad to hear that the local high school canceled all four sections of wood shop. I remember learning to sew in junior high school. I can remember how amazing it was to understand for the first time how clothes are put together. It seemed magical to me that a person could sew two pieces of fabric together and then turn it inside out and be amazed.

Victoria Bernhardt collected responses from 10,000 students world-wide

Victoria Bernhardt is a researcher and professor. She collected responses from 10,000 students.  The students were asked to finish in their own words these sentence starters. These are the top three responses:
In order to learn.....I need to have a teacher who cares about me.
I like school because....my teacher has fun making me learn.
I like school because....my teacher makes me learn things I never thought I could learn.

I especially like the response:  "my teacher has fun making me learn."  If the teacher enjoys the subject matter, the enjoyment is contagious.

On teaching teenagers

Teenagers can be refreshingly blunt.  Their new humor can make us adults do big belly laughs. One time at a summer economics conference for teachers and teens, the one teen group yells "Yanni, Yanni, Yanni" enthusiastically in a skit meant to illustrate how supply and demand changes ticket prices for a Yanni concert. They then held up signs over their heads that read "Yawn-y! Yawn-y!" I love that.  New, bold and refreshing.

The "No Child Left Behind" law turns 10 years old

I read this quote from a teacher printed in Time magazine: "No Child Left Behind never changed how I taught. I know what my kids need." It made me think that it would be a great to collect from as many teachers' as possible opinions and wisdom and store it all in one place (like a gigantic graffiti wall!) in order to inform  public opinion and change public policy if it needs to be changed. The quote is from Bridget Cole, a fourth grade teacher from Colorado.  She said it in response to the Obama Administration freeing 10 states from some of the landmark education law's toughest requirements.

A few years ago I was motivated to write a letter to the Secretary of Education and to California's State Superintendent suggesting we only give our students the statewide tests mandated by "No Child Left Behind" every other year or every third year. 

Here is part of the letter:  The yearly "No Child Left Behind" testing has had more negative than positive effects. As a parent, I see that the focus has made learning workbook centered, repetitive, superficial, disconnected, disengaging and dull.  Teaching and learning should be engaging, theme based and designed to encourage deeper thinking and lifelong learning.  Keep the curiosity alive! (That exclamation I didn't have in the original letter.  I was making a reference to a great speech by Jessie Jackson, that I have on audio tape, "Keep Hope Alive."

As a teacher, I remember what teaching was like before "No Child Left Behind" testing.  The focus on testing has taken a lot of creativity and enjoyment out of the work day.  Let's give these tests every other year or every third year!

A math teacher in Bangladesh makes math a "joyful priority"

I read in a magazine I get called Saudi Aramco World about a math teacher in Bangladesh who leads math education in his country. The article states:  "Since 2005, Muni Hasan has led Bangladesh's students in the International Mathematics Olympiad and is the leading creative force revitalizing the nation's approach to math education. He does this by using a network of community-building math festivals, daily newspaper columns, teacher training and new textbooks that emphasize exploration and questioning rather than rote memorization."

The newspaper column about math is a great idea.  That can be done here or where you are. I noticed a science column in our local weekly. Smart idea.

I remember as a kid seeing textbooks in Germany that were paperback.  They were paperback because the students had to buy them. Many textbooks in the U.S. are usually not as great inside as the cover leads you to believe so I am usually skeptical when a teacher puts them out on display at back to school night. Then again, they make a colorful display because the covers are usually beautiful photographs and images.  We use a biology book here that weighs a lot and has a beautiful photograph of a grizzly bear on the cover but inside is disappointment. No lists of great experiments to do at home or at school, but there is an emphasis on hundreds of vocabulary words that bog down and kill interest in the subject. I remember a great Algebra book I had in 8th grade. It was unique enough to remember. It contained "Peanuts" cartoons and also M.C. Escher drawings.  My teacher made us love math and the book was fun to look at.  Out teacher gave us daily puzzles to solve and it was fun. 

Who wouldn't want to go to a community building math festival? Hurrah for Munir Hasan! He says: I have always dreamed of turning my country into a nation of world-class, advanced mathematicians and scientists."

Some people are know-it-alls when it comes to education

My mom would say in German: "Nie wird so viel ueber Education geredet, wie hier in Amerika."
(Nowhere else in the world is education more talked about than in the U.S.) My wise colleague says this is because everyone in the U.S. has had experience in the educational system and thinks they know something about it.