BlogHer - K-12 - Comments

Michelle Rhee

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 21:59:32 -0600

For more on Michelle Rhee, check out my blog post from this past August.

I haven't yet read the Time article, but I imagine it provides even more concrete examples of rewarding teachers for good work. I'm looking forward to reading it--thanks for the tip.

Best,

Leslie

BlogHer Contributing Editor, Research and Academia
My blogs: The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toybox

See related article in Time Magazine

gringainteguz — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:11:12 -0600

I read the aritlce by Gladwell with keen interest this week. Yesterday I picked up a copy of Time Magazine from December 8. The cover story is about Michelle Rhee, and her crusade as superintendent to reduce the number of incompetent teachers in the Washington, DC district. As a former US educator, I vividly recall the wide range of capabilities of my peers. Tenure created an environment that fostered mediocrity as well as downright ineptitude. I agree with almost of the points made by Mr. Gladwell in his article.

Laurie, a gringa in Honduras,

laurieishere.blogspot.com

"Withitness" isn't intuitive

Kim Pearson — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 11:56:43 -0600

Gladwell is precocious, but sometimes he strikes me as the embodiment of Pope's warning that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." What he calls "withitness" is what Du Bois called "sympathetic touch" -- the belief that each child can learn, the ability to establish a rapport with your students, and the understanding of the practical steps needed to get each student to the desired learning outcomes.

The first problem that colleges of education have is that they were set up to serve a public education system that was created for an economy and culture that no longer exists. An additional problem is that most new teachers come from backgrounds that are very different from those of the children they are teaching, and they are often at a loss for how to relate to them. There are lots of people working on those problems, and only some of them are in Colleges of Education.

Still, my colleagues who are specialists in this area tell me that the ERIC database is full of research that explains what works in public education:

1. Small classes

2. Culturally responsive pedagogy

3. Subject mastery

4. Ongoing professional development and mentoring for teachers

5. Effective strategies for supporting parent and community involvement

It would be wonderful to see Gladwell use his status to encourage more conversation about these research-based solutions.

KimBlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

Thanks

mashadutoit — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 01:58:24 -0600

This is excellent, and the links you provide very interesting. At a gut level, the idea of a "four month intensive training camp" is pretty scary. Sounds like a indoctrination sausage machine to me. And I agree with the people who point out that the team aspect of teaching is essential.

Official language?

LizzieH — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 09:30:51 -0500

I get tired of people saying that English is the official language of the US because IT'S NOT TRUE! English is our de facto common language, but there is no federal law designating English as our national language.

Immigrants to the US should absolutely learn English in order to be successful here, but how to make that happen is a hugely complicated problem. There are so many factors that influence how quickly someone will be able to become fluent and literate in English, from the age they start learning English to what their first language is (and how different it is from English) to their own natural abilities with languages. A one-size-fits-all approach is never going to work for everyone. The other problem is that if you focus on teaching English first in the K-12 system, by the time the student has learned enough English to function in the classroom with his or her English-speaking peers, the student has missed out on learning math and science and history and all the other academic subjects unless there has also been instruction in these areas in the student's native language.

--Liz

I blog about creating a life worth living at: www.inventingmylife.blogspot.com

Should determineif parent willing an able

darby — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 13:06:18 -0500

if a parent is interested in this type ofeducation assistanc eprotocol i think it'goodbut wonder about threat to affect kid's grade kids should be gradedon their own efforts no parent's or lack therof

Possibly means well, but . . .

Kalyn Denny — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 09:16:34 -0500

I guess I don't even have time to write all the things I see as problem with this approach, but you've done a great job outlining them. My third grade students have homework M,T,W, Th nights where they may need parental help sometimes, and I feel lucky that most kids seem to be getting help from their parents. On the other hand, I ask the parents to sign off how many minutes their child has read on the students weekly planner sheet once a week, and I can't get at least 1/3 of the parents to do that. Week after week some kids don't have their minutes signed.

And yes, I'd say it's 100% certain that this guy is not a parent. Neither am I, but I'm not totally unaware of how hard it must be.

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

Demographics tell the tale

Mata H — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 07:56:18 -0500

Here is the income comparison for Montclair with the national median:

Montclair: $74,894
National: $41,994

And this number is also shaped by the fact that there is a part of Montclair below the poverty line. The rich here are very rich. Look on realtor.com. The cheapest home, which is a collapsing fixer-upper is $239K. The most expensive listed is $3,600,000. The median home price is $486K. This is Olympia Dukakis's home town. Yogi Berra lives here.

My point is that this is largely an indulgence for people who are of a privileged background. The Times article did say that one family did not have English as their primary language and had to call the teacher to explain, and that another family without a computer had to call in their reports. The fact that some families must have been made to feel embarrassed just makes me want to cry. I think of my own family, good blue collar folks, and wonder how many sets of parents in my family would have been uncomfortable, or felt ashamed of their lower level of education, but would have felt obligated to not hurt their children's future.

But then again, that is part of why I am moving from where I live (Upper Montclair, NJ - in a rental, not a mansion) to buy a home in Massachusetts in a more real-world, real-people environment. I know this was not "my" town when I walked into the supermarket on Mother's Day and they had a harpist playing in the vegetable section.

~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs harplessly at Time's Fool

wow

dynamitt — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 06:43:10 -0500

I'm not sure what to say. I do agree it is nice to see a teacher thinking 'out of the box' as mention, but I also agree that he can not have though this all through. The sort of assignment can not be for everybody.

Maybe if there were different assignments which required a range of different skills it could include more parents. I have personally only experience with getting parents involved in pre-school and we offered a wide range different volunteer work to the parents to get them involved. This was ranging from picking up our mail at the post office, launder the art smocks to type up news letters to mention some.

Dina
dynamitt

Sounds sadly familiar

Maria Niles — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:30:07 -0500

During my elementary school years I ended up for a variety of quirky and pedestrian reasons changing schools nearly every year so I experienced many of the educational experiments of the 70's.

In the fourth grade we had open classrooms (self directed learning) so on the first day of class I tested out of reading and math for the year and other than a few weeks of science and social studies I spent the school year keeping a study journal and going to the library every day, checking out a book, reading it, returning it and repeating the process. I possibly learned more by all that reading but it was truly a heroic effort by my teacher to handle her classroom within such a ridiculous curriculum structure.

At a new school in fifth grade classes were structured with poorer testing students in upper grades paired with higher testing students from lower grades with the idea, at least in part, that the presence of higher testing kids would help the other students pull their scores up. But as Kalyn notes that difference can span far more than a single grade. My teacher and the aide had their hands full with teaching the below grade level sixth graders and just couldn't focus on the fifth graders who had reading and math skills at the junior high to high school level. We were pretty much on our own in a divided not collaborative classroom. I did get to make an awesome paper mache platypus though since we were all equal when it came to learning geography via the location of exotic animals.

I think Miguel's point is well taken - technology isn't make things better if the fundamental approach doesn't change.

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Beyond Help

Great Post

Kalyn Denny — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 09:56:50 -0500

Great post. I can't speak for upper levels, but in K-6 education it's truly sad how the economic and political realities force us into teaching methods we know are not ideal. I teach third grade in Utah, with a class of 28. (Remember, they are 8 years old if you think that doesn't sound too bad.) I have four students who entered my class with a score of .5 on their last years reading CRT (No Child Left Behind testing.) That means their reading skills are below first grade level. I have other students who read at a junior high level. Even if I had a reasonable number of students, I couldn't possibly structure my classroom so it meets the needs of these two very diverse groups.

I will refrain from going into a full-on rant about how I can't possibly let the students direct their own learning (even the ones who are capable) because there will be some little obscure bits of information that are on the NCLB tests that they won't learn and my school will fail to make AYP (adequate yearly progress, which means in most states that the school must improve their scores 2% per year, no matter what the previous year's score was.) Sufficeth to say that the entire NCLB law is based on flawed logic and makes it a lot harder for us to provide a meaningful experience for the students.

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

AMEN AMEN AMEN, Leslie

lauriewrites — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 11:44:32 -0500

This is a wonderful post and I think I'm going to blog my response in full, because I think it's such an important topic. These two points you made in particular really resonated with me.

We shouldn't be training students--we should be teaching them to think, to solve problems, to communicate. And to do that, we must get them reading quality literature, studying history, and writing, writing, writing. That just doesn't happen much in auto mechanics and other vocational classes.

Absolutely! Critical thinking is way underrated and also suffering, from what I see. Many students (of all ages) and their family members tend to be obsessed with "declaring the major" or picking the one that will take them straight to the highest paying job. They're disappointed when they get me as an advisor -- at first - because I talk about picking something, or waiting to pick it - that they won't be miserable with in the long run. "Should I do business or nursing to get a job?" Er...I don't want you as a nurse unless you REALLY want to be one. Seen what nurses have to do? Could you handle it?

There's a disconnect, often, between "major" and "career" and "job I'll have to do day in and day out." That's why I'm a huge fan of the gap year for high school graduates and experiential learning - internships, jobs that relate to the major/career ideas rather than retail or foodservice, job shadowing, etc.

As crazy as that may seem, she needs to take that winding path between ages 18 and 30 to explore all the different aspects of her personality, all of her interests. Chances are, if she had declared a food services major in high school, she wouldn't have gone straight to the culinary academy. Rather, she would have been ready to move on to the next thing--and she'd be unprepared for that next thing because she wouldn't have had the chance to take as many different courses and electives as possible to broaden and deepen her critical thinking skills. I've taken a similar, albeit not quite as dramatic, route to where I am now, and much of who I am grew out of the broad spectrum of courses I took in high school and college.

I ask at orientations who the people are who have no idea what they want to do yet. They rarely raise their hands because they're embarrassed, because they've often been criticized for it, at 17 or 18, just when they're coming out of the treacherous waters of high school. I tell them that whoever they are, that's fine, and usually the most unsure have the most interests/are the most interesting (haha), which is a GOOD thing. And if anyone else is in there who felt pressured to pick, and they change their minds in the next year or so, that's totally normal and also not bad at all!

Thanks again, Leslie. Good food for thought.

Laurie

LaurieWrites

In the old days, at least in

writergal8 — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 08:51:37 -0500

In the old days, at least in Toronto, Canada, kids were streamed into academic or vocational type HIGH SCHOOLS when they enter high school in Grade 9 (or age 14). Those who were to attend 4 year universities went to collegiate institutes, which were more or less public prep schools. Everyone else went to a vocational school. Collegiates were usually in middle to upper middle class neighbourhoods while everyone else had the vocational institutions (usually technical schools). Academic programs offered at collegiates have not changed much...many still offer Latin, which was a matriculation requirement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Technical/vocational schools are pretty much regular high schools, though they offer more technical courses.

As for actual majors, there are plenty of jurisdictions where kids are forced to pick "majors" or at focus on certain subjects only at some point in high school. It happens in many continental European schools as well as in the UK (ok, I know, you're going to say that kids in "sixth form college" technically aren't in high school, but some high schools actually offer sixth form programs). In Ontario, as well as most parts of Canada, the curriculum is standardized by the province. Therefore, the universities actually list the required Grade 12 courses a kid must take in order to qualify for admission. For example, a student seeking admission to the business program at University A must have, in addition to the standard core English course, two Grade 12 math courses and a business course. Well, all these courses have prerequisites, since they are Grade 12 courses. You would probably have had to take something in Grade 10, 11 or even 9. So yeah, while a kid might not have to declare a "major" in Grade 9, he/she pretty much is pre-business, pre-engineering or pre-lib arts by Grade 11.
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My Memories — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 09:31:38 -0500

My son is currently in the gifted program. My daughter will be entering the program this year. Although my son has not had issues yet, my daughter has. Even teachers who work with children in the upper end of the scale, still expect them to all learn and think the same way. In our state the gifted program is a part of the special education program - just like SLD.

I myself have considered homeschooling. My sister home schooled my nephew (now 20) through his High School years. He is learning disabled (SLD) and she was able to bring his reading level up, something the public schools could not do.

~Sheila~
http://4mymemories2.blogspot.com

An alternative gifted education

Judy Perez — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 19:17:26 -0500

The education system in this country does not work on so many levels, and it will be a long time before it can be fixed. I have two gifted children; one mathematically and one artistically and the system failed both. After 6 years in the school system and 5 years out of it home schooling, I would never go back. We are all happier. My kids are bright, articulate, confident and creative. But their greatest gift is that they are still curious. Life is our school, learning is as second nature to them as breathing. Non traditional opportunities to learn are all around us and what ever scholastic bit my kids may miss along the way can always be made up in a basic college class.

If you are interested in seeing how my kids have developed their talents while being homeschooled you can look on my blog here.

Also don't believe the myth about homeschoolers not learning social skills. We have belonged to secular homeschooling communities in 3 different states and the social skills that have been exhibited by the children in all 3 far out weigh what I have seen with schooled kids.

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