[When] Are We on the Same Team?

I'll start with a story I heard from my kids several years ago. I wasn't actually there. Every year my parents run a "grandparents camp" where the parents aren't allowed. (Cool, huh?!) And this story is from there.


Two of my nieces (sisters) used to fight a lot. Now they get along well, but back in the day, when they were closer to 8 and 10 years old, that wasn't the case.
So the story goes that they had been fighting while in the car, and they started yelling at each other,

"I'm telling Mom and Dad on you." "I'm telling Mom and Dad on you."

And my kids intervened (according to them), and said,

"What are you two doing?! You're on the same team! You're on the same team!"

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Side Note: You might be thinking (accurately) that this tells you something about my and my husband's relationship with our kids, and you'd be right...

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So anyway, I've been thinking about the relationship between parents, teachers, and the school board. Right now, trust is kind of low (between teachers and the school board/administration, for sure, and maybe between parents and the school board as well), and I've been wondering:

Are we on the same team? When are we on the same team?

Take me, for example.
I'm clearly in agreement with lots of the Ann Arbor school administration and board's initiatives: A2 Steam, the IB program, taking a clear stand against guns in the schools, just to name a few.

But I'm not in agreement with some positions they have taken on testing, on the processes for decisions, and on teacher evaluation.
[Quick summary: I believe parents have the right to opt students out of testing; that the end does not justify the means; and that you'll be hearing a lot about teacher evaluation in the coming weeks.]

But I AM completely in agreement with the school board and the administration on how much harder we need to fight to get adequate funding for schools--not just Ann Arbor's schools, but Flint's schools, and Detroit's schools, and Traverse City's schools, and Alpena's schools.

What's more, I really appreciate when the administration and school board are willing to stand up to the state and demand safe schools and well-funded schools.

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So I sometimes find myself torn. I want to support the school board and administration's work in Lansing; I want to support many local initiatives.

I don't want to support testing. I don't want to support activities that alienate and frighten teachers. I don't want to support pushing anything through without due process (except in an emergency, obviously).

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And as I reflect on my children's interactions with their cousins, I think the appropriate answer is:

Sometimes we are on the same team. And sometimes we're not.  But a lot of the time, we're really on the same team, in that we all want the same thing--excellent schools.

Yet we don't necessarily agree on how to get there.

You know what? I don't think that is a bad thing.

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I hope we can remember that when it comes to Lansing and funding or keeping guns out of our schools, no matter what our local differences are, we will need to unite.




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Five Thoughts About Labor Day and the First Day of School

1. Read about the history of Labor Day here. Remember that in the late 1800s, the average worker worked 12-hour days, 7 days a week.

2. In most public schools in Michigan, we have unionized teachers, custodians, secretaries and principals. If you think any of them are paid too much, get too much time off, have pensions or other benefits that are too high, just remember. . . they didn't negotiate those contracts by themselves. There was somebody. . . administrators and school board members, generally. . . on the other side of the negotiating table.

3. For a lot of schools, the first day of school is tomorrow, and in Michigan, that is going to be the first full day of kindergarten in many school districts, including Ann Arbor. Between the time that my oldest child started school and now, kindergarten has gotten much less play-ful and much more work-ful. Let's hope that full day kindergarten will still be fun for kindergartners.

4. That reminds me of a story:

When my (oldest) son was in first or second grade, he never seemed to want to read at home.
One day I said to him, "Why don't you want to read? Reading's fun!"
And he said to me, "Look mom. Maybe someday reading will be fun. But right now, it's work!"

School--it's a day of labor for both students and teachers. But that doesn't mean it can't also be fun.


5. Where I grew up, school always started the day after Labor Day. You might know that the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashana) also starts in September. As a Jewish kid, growing up, it never ever made sense to me that the "New Year" started in December. Clearly, the New Year started in September. I hope this new school year is a good one for you and for your kids. I foresee a lot of battles ahead. . . I hope to be writing more about testing. . . charter schools. . . arcane details of contracts. . . and more. But time presses, so we'll see how the blogging goes. I had told a friend of mine that when September starts I always feel like a Mack Truck has hit me. [She found that to be a helpful comment, because it validated her feeling. Maybe it will help you too.]

Mack AC-model flatbed delivery truck from the Petersen Automotive Museum

Testing Tales

I'm hoping to do a series about testing--talking about the MEAP, the MAP, the ACT, the SAT, the MME, etc. But it's such a vast subject and I've been a little bit stymied as to how to break it up. Add to that conundrum a busy schedule and I've been thinking about how to write this up for a couple of months now, but I haven't actually set pen to paper [rereading this, I feel I should note--that is just a figure of speech!]. Now I have decided I will move from inward to outward. In other words, I'm going to start with myself.

I've never been a particularly anti-test person. I always thought that test taking was a skill that people needed, just like writing, arithmetic, or learning how to tie a shoelace. But I also thought we shouldn't overemphasis tests.

For myself, I have pleasant memories of filing into the school cafeteria to take the Iowa tests. I was lucky that my name wasn't something long like Smolensky or Blagojevich [sneaky reference to a former Illinois governor who is going to jail this week] because they were too long to fit in the bubbles. And of course I made sure to fill in the bubbles well with my newly-sharpened #2 pencil.

Do you remember the Iowa tests? They have a long history. They were first developed in 1935. The Iowa tests are what are called "norm-referenced" tests.  In other words, they score test-takers on a bell curve. Some students will be above average; the majority will be average; and some students will be below average.  [Below, there is a drawing of a bell curve. See how it looks like a bell? Hence the name.]

The Bell Curve

The idea behind a norm-referenced test is that it describes a population's distribution. In other words, not everyone will perform well--some people will perform poorly. But in a particular population (say, for example, Lake Wobegon, where "all the children are above average,") all of the kids could score to the right of the center line--and would look good when compared Lake Woestayhere, where all the kids are below average.

On the other hand, you can see the problem. In the broader population, it is impossible for everybody to score well. Half the test-takers would have to be below average. If a large population moves its scores (everyone starts reading better), then the bell curve shifts to the right--but still, half the kids are below average. Also, norm-referenced tests tend to focus on the kinds of questions that differentiate between students, and not the kinds of questions that show proficiency in certain areas. In other words, the point of the test is to rank students.

If, by chance, you have ever had a teacher who "graded on the curve" or "curved the grades," that teacher was working toward a certain middle ground. If she or he expected that most of the class would get a B, but the average grade was a C, they might think "I guess I made that test too hard" and they would move the average up to a B. I was very thankful for that in college physics, where my C- turned into a B- thanks to a professor's curving of the final exam.

In my test-taking heyday--which might have been eighth or ninth grade--I enjoyed the tests as a break from my regular school work. I enjoyed completely filling in the circles. I didn't feel any pressure about the tests, because a) they didn't mean much of anything and b) I always scored well on tests. In other words, whether it was an Iowa test or an IQ test (which is also scored on the bell curve), I was always well along on the right-hand side of that curve.

I never had test anxiety, which definitely helped.

But it's also true that students who fit my profile tended to do well. And of course, doing well is positively reinforcing. And since I did well the first time, why get nervous about the next year's test?

What, you might wonder, is "my profile?" Well, to begin with, I lived in a primarily white, upper middle/middle class town. I had two well-educated parents, both with graduate degrees. I had lots of books in my house. Only one of my grandparents had finished high school, but they all could read in more than one language. It turns out that the confluence of a comfortable income and an educated, literate family lead a certain population to do very well on tests. And that is true, whether the test is a norm-referenced test like the Iowa tests, or a criterion-referenced test like the MEAP.

Criterion-referenced tests sound, on paper, a lot better. In a sense, they are more like the kinds of tests that we took in high school. If you were taught the future tense in a language class, you would be expected to demonstrate that knowledge on a test. Theoretically, every student in the class could get an A if they had studied and mastered the future tense. And in this simple example, that might actually happen.

In real life, in criterion-referenced tests like the MEAP, that never happens. There are a lot of reasons for this, but here are a few.
1. Students come in with different weaknesses. If one of those weaknesses is reading, that will show up in every single other test. The social studies and science tests--and even the math tests--require a lot of reading.
2. The "cut scores," as to what "proficiency" means, change. That just happened this year in Michigan, and guess what--a lot of kids who looked "proficient" last year don't look proficient this year. Even though they might have actually done better.
3. Not all teachers teach everything that might be on the tests. And even if they cover the subject matter, the questions might be unintelligible to the student. Take, for instance, an example that a teacher gave me a few years ago. Her students (upper elementary) had a question on the reading comprehension exam about logging. Yes, I'm talking about the cutting down of trees. Her students, however, had a different understanding of logging. One logs into a computer, and logs out of a computer. . .  That reading comprehension passage made no sense at all to those kids.

But anyway, back to me. I've now had two children go through the college application process. They've taken a lot of tests. Like me when I was growing up, they have two parents with graduate degrees. Like me growing up, they live in a middle class community--and an academic community too! That is another kind of privilege. Like me, they did relatively well.

And my youngest son? He said to me, "I like the tests."
"Really? Why?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "we don't do any work during the testing periods!"

And that's Part I. More about testing, coming soon to a blog near you.

Of Presidents and Project-Based Learning

This is a great story about how a 12-year-old girl went above and beyond with a school project, and found out that all of the U.S. presidents except one are related to a certain King John, the one who agreed to the Magna Carta. If you were wondering how project-based learning works, here is a good example. And if you are a genealogist, the cautionary tale here is that you shouldn't ignore the maternal line, even if it is harder to trace. . . apparently all the professionals had only looked at the paternal lines. . .

Community High School Graduation: May You Have Many Such Joyous Occasions

Written on 6/2/2010
Last night, my son graduated high school. Many people have asked me, "What was the Community High School graduation like?" Of course, it was AWE-some. It was my son!

Seriously, it was awesome in many ways, not just because it was my son, and if you want to see the video, you can, because it is going to be on CTN (Channel 19)! (It was two-and-a-half hours long; watch the first 30-40 minutes and you will get a very good feeling for the night.) Premier: Friday, 6/4/2010, 7 p.m. Replays: 6/5, 2 p.m.; 6/6/, 9 a.m.; 6/8, 11 a.m. or call 734-794-6150 for more times.

At my high school graduation (public school in the New York City suburbs), we girls wore long white dresses and the boys wore white dinner jackets. We had voted against caps and gowns. The ceremony was held on the football field (inside the track). Those of us in the top 10% (I was 19/26, there were 262 students in my graduating class) sat in rank order. Luckily, one of my best friends was right next to me. The rest of the class sat alphabetically. The superintendent and principal were supremely boring. The student council president gave an insipid speech about rainbows. We were called across the stage one by one. And that's the way it was. Even today, except for the lack of cap and gowns, I think there are an awful lot of graduation ceremonies exactly like mine.

Not so at Community's graduation.

In complete randomness of order (well, not complete randomness--number 10 was chosen to be last), here are ten things I really liked about the Community High School graduation:

1. It was not random. It was very well-planned out, with musical interludes, a cartoon movie and a slide show, and even a stretch break. I was told it would be 2-1/2 hours, and it was.

2. The kids. The dress was very mixed, from jeans to suits to caps and gowns.  For the caps and gowns, well--CHS has the rainbow zebra as its mascot, so any color of cap and gown matched. I loved the variety. There were a lot of kids I had known from my son's preschool and from Ann Arbor Open. Some of them looked exactly the same, and others were unrecognizably different (grown!).

3. The Awards: My daughter pointed out to me that most of the graduating class got recognized in the program. Sure, they had the typical "excellence" awards, but they also gave awards for "Perseverance in the study of mathematics," which went to students who stuck with math for all four years, and for PERSONAL fitness (achieving personal goals) and for personal FITNESS (excellence in conditioning).

4. Could there be a more magnificent place to hold a graduation than Rackham Auditorium? It was full of proud parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters. I know it would be too small for the graduating classes of the larger schools, but the ambience was magnificent.

5. Both Todd Roberts (Superintendent) and Jen Hein (Dean) did a good job. Their speeches were short and to the point. Dean Jen recognized the retiring teachers. Their resumes are impressive! Todd Roberts focused on the students' accomplishments, and he made a small mistake, but it was okay (and funny). I'll tell you why in a minute.

6. Thirty seconds. That's the amount of time each student got to speak. Students stuck to their thirty seconds. There was a lot of thanking, particularly of moms, often of teachers, occasionally of dads. There was a lot of quoting: Dr. Seuss, Yogi Berra ("When you come to a fork, take it"), Babe Ruth, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and more. There was a quote in an eastern European language (Russian? Polish?). There were thank yous in Gaelic and Ojibway. There were exchange students speaking.  ("When I got here, I wondered, this can't be school. Is this summer camp?!") There were some stories. One student said, "My game plan when I started high school was to drop out after my sophomore year. But because of Community, my game plan changed. I'm going to college next year, and I am very happy to say that." There were a few songs. Specific memories. There were ideas: that at Community High one didn't feel one had to change one's personality; that at Community High you could find that you loved ........ (fill in the blank): literature, science, nerdiness, a particular person; that teachers at Community High lived to teach; that forum rocked. There were students who said they didn't think they would finish school, but they had made it. And they were proud. Honestly, I don't think that at my graduation most of us would have had such nice things to say.

7. There was Todd Roberts' very small error. One of the members of the Mock Trial team took his 30 seconds to say, "Todd Roberts is a very modest man. I am not a modest man. Our mock trial team didn't compete in the state championship, we won the state championship!" The crowd roared. And laughed. That Mock Trial team is proud--and competitive.

8. Statistics. I like them. According to the booklet, 122 students graduated. I think all but 3 or 4 were there. The counselors processed 423 college applications, and they reported that students were offered nearly $3,000,000 in merit scholarships. I thought that was a typo! My husband pointed out that if a student applied to 4 schools and got awarded $10,000/year in merit awards from all four, that would be (4 x $40,000) $160,000. So even though that student is only going to one school, and can only accept one offer, they still report all four offers. Still, I think that is pretty impressive. Also impressive? Fourteen students going to the University of Michigan. Twenty going to Washtenaw. Lots of kids going to small midwestern colleges (Kalamazoo, Beloit, Siena Heights, Albion, Oberlin, Denison). Students at Wayne State, MSU, University of Toledo, Eastern Michigan, Western Michigan, Bowling Green...and a few going to east coast powerhouses. Most have plans to go to college.

9. Of course the slide show (baby pictures and grown up pictures) was fun, but my favorite part of the slide show was that they included the retiring teachers in it, with their baby/little kid pictures.

10. Forums do rock. Forum is the class that everyone at Community takes for four years. Forum is way more than a home room. If you are lucky, you get the same forum teacher all four years. With your forum, you go on field trips; you fundraise; you discuss. As a freshman, your forum teacher (not the counselor, generally) helps you plan your schedule. Forum leaders frequently serve as the first stop for other teachers, if a student is having trouble; and a first stop for parents, who need information about a developing situation; and a first ear for students. In other words, they divert a lot of work away from the counselors, and often they develop enduring relationships with their students. If there is one thing, I believe, that is completely transportable from Community to the other, larger, schools, and that would make a huge difference in the lives of students and the experience of high school--it is forum. (That explanation, by the way, was not a digression. That was the object lesson of the evening.) Students got introduced, not alphabetically, but by forum. The forum leaders handed out the diplomas, introduced each student, stood next to each student, hugged each student. And it was clear that there was a lot of love going on in those forums, between and among students and students, between and among students and teachers. There was the love.

Was there joy? You bet. Everybody loves a diploma, even the kids who are sad to leave.
May you have many such joyous occasions in your lives.

To the Waters and the Wild

What was the first poem that you remember memorizing? I probably learned Robert Louis Stevenson's My Shadow first, but the one I remember reciting was his poem The Cow. I was in third grade.

The friendly cow all red and white
I love with all my heart.

We are not asked to memorize, or recite, very much any more. It's an art, and it's good practice for--something--our brains, or our hearts?

My son had to memorize, and recite, a poem this past month. He enjoyed it. He came home commenting on how much he liked the poem another child had memorized. "And it was really long," he said--indirectly praising his classmate's performance.

The poem? The Stolen Child by W.B. Yeats.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Do you think the kids all understood it? Does it matter?

In tenth grade, my teacher required us to choose one of two sonnets to memorize. I thought they were both really hard to learn, and I didn't understand either one, so I chose the one that seemed slightly easier. The road not taken--the poem I didn't learn--was Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley. [I didn't learn it, but I still remember which poem it was.]

The one I did learn, but I didn't understand, was William Wordsworth's The World Is Too Much With Us. I didn't understand it then, but now? Now, it speaks to me.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

 Do you have a favorite poem? One that speaks to you?

Second Quote of the Day

True story: I saw a teenaged acquaintance riding his bicycle to school, with his helmet clipped to the handlebars.

I say to him, "Exactly what is the point of having the helmet on the handlebars?"

Says he, "Symbolism."

Quote of the Day

"The harder the math homework is, the more useless the math is."
--High school student

For more background reading, see this post.

Playfulness

Play-ful-ness: Noun
Play-ful: Adjective: per Merriam-Webster, frolicsome or sportive; humorous or jocular
Play-ful-ly: Adverb
Play: Verb. A very old verb, dating from the 13th century.

I've been blogging about some serious topics lately. In this post at annarbor.com, Kass (Pioneer High School teacher and advisor to the Neutral Zone poetry collaborative) makes the point that playfulness in teaching goes a long way. [And he also tells you about an interesting upcoming poetry event, Monday evening November 28th at the Neutral Zone.]

He's right! Playfulness in blogging probably goes a long way too, so here is the knock knock joke my nephew told me the other day:

Nephew: Knock knock
Me: Who's there?
Nephew: You are there!
Comment of my niece, who texted me the whole thing: I don't get it either.

What is Math Good For?

This summer, while up north with my friends, my 10th grader and my friend's 12th grader had the following conversation. (My daughter goes to school in Ann Arbor and my friend's daughter goes to school in Grand Traverse County.)
"Math class is a total waste of time."
"Yeah, it is. Really, there's no need to teach math past middle school."
(Now, note that both of these kids took Algebra in 8th grade, so understand that comment as including Algebra I. Oh, and the issue here is not grades--they are both straight A students.)
Here I interjected that "I use math all the time." But they interjected semi-sarcastically,
"Do you use geometry?"
The truth is that I mostly use algebra (I) and statistics. Although the statistics might sometimes be based on geometric or algebra II or calculus concepts, I don't "see" that background. I don't need to know the difference between a cosine or tangent in order to push the button on the calculator. Yes, the concepts help somewhat, but does everyone really need geometry or algebra II?

"Really," my friend's daughter continued, "I asked my math teacher last year (algebra II) what math was good for, and he said to me, 'Well, if you become a math teacher you will use it teaching math!" (As if. . . ) She laughed.

I really think that--minimally--math teachers need to be able to come up with better explanations!
The fact is that currently, at least in Michigan, math is driving the rest of the curriculum, and it's driving student placement in other classes. How does it drive the curriculum? Here are two examples. In middle school in Ann Arbor, the only subject that is "tracked" is math--so your class placement for other classes is often based on the math class placement. (If you have math third hour, then you can't have Social Studies third hour. Therefore, advanced math kids often have similar schedules--and the same is true about remedial math kids.) The state's math requirements have been upped substantially (although the Detroit News reports that they may be removed). In high school, everyone is now expected to pass Algebra II. If you do poorly in math, you may have to repeat math at the expense of your electives. And if you've been wondering why several local schools have switched to a trimester system--this is a piece of a reason (you get additional electives over the course of the year, and if a student fails a math class they can repeat it in the same year).

So: let's either explain why we teach math, or. . . stop expecting kids to learn it or think of it as relevant. I liked this take on the subject of Why We Learn Math.

This writer points out that,

the subjects that apply the math are always taught after the math itself. Physics, economics, and so forth make the need for quadratic equations very clear, but you would never teach someone physics unless they had first mastered quadratic equations
and that
judging math by its usefulness is missing the point. Why do math teachers need to prove that their material will be vital for daily life in order to make it worth learning? Poetry would never be able to pass that test, nor would history or art. . . We fully recognize that sonnets aren’t “useful,” but we still learn them. We think it makes your life better to have the wider, deeper view of the world that comes with having studied art and literature.

What do you think?

An Unexpected Death

I once asked an acquaintance whose father had died, "Was it expected?"
"No," he said, "it was totally unexpected."

I was reminded of this conversation recently.
When Marika Bedolla-West died, this blog received a huge increase in visitors. Why? It was an unexpected death. An unexpected death, but I didn't know Marika--I posted about it only because I thought people might want to know how to find out more or contact her family.

My daughter is away, and we had sent her a note telling her about Marika's death, but I didn't think she really knew Marika. Well, it turns out that she did. Ann Arbor is a small town, even if it is a big city. And in her letter back to us, she closes with:"How did she die?"

It's not that expected deaths are easier. I don't think they are. But I think they are easier to talk about, at least to kids. He was very, very sick. She was very, very old.

With the unexpected death, it's different.
I do know how Marika died, but I'm not writing about it in this blog. Families deserve to be able to treat death, and grief, privately, if they want. So I will just write more generally.
Every year in Washtenaw County there are kids who have unexpected deaths. It may be from an undiagnosed heart condition; a car accident; criminal violence; domestic violence; suicide; a freak accident.

I find that my daughter's simple question, "How did she die?" tears at my heart. Maybe that is because How just scratches the surface. How leads to Why. Why leads to Who was involved and Might it have been preventable? And even though I know how Marika died, I don't know why. I don't know if it could have been prevented.

What I do know? Some of these unexpected deaths could be prevented. Sometimes we can intervene by taking away a drunk person's keys; by getting help for a depressed person; by reporting an assault; by making sure that someone wears a bike helmet.
When we speak out and speak up, sometimes we can prevent harm.
I'm very fond of Ben Franklin's quote, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." And yet--some of these unexpected deaths could not be prevented. Nevertheless, when we look back at unexpected deaths, our hindsight is perfect, and the "if only I had..." impulse (and related guilt) is strong. Every child who dies has potential that is lost.

In this post, I remember also the kids from my hometown who died of unexpected deaths when I was in high school or college:

For Joe, who was hit by a car while walking on a dark road one night.
For Rex, who was killed by a drunk driver.
For Feffi, who slipped on slick rocks, fell and hit her head.
For Chris, who died in a bar fight when they turned to knives.

I'm still not sure what, exactly, I will say to my daughter. Please do post your suggestions--and your resources--for how to talk to kids about unexpected deaths.

From the Wider World

Brave teacher. I dream a world without prejudice.

Are You a Bocie?

In the town where I grew up, if you wanted to really insult someone, you didn't call them a dope, or a greaser, or a freak, or even a retard (although all of those would be construed as insults).

The ultimate insult: You're Bocies!

In high school, I knew that the kids who went to vocational training, at a centralized location, to become auto mechanics, or beauticians, went to the BOCES location. And I'm sure you see where this is going. It wasn't until after high school that I made the connection between the epithet, and the Board Of Cooperative Educational Services.

Which just goes to show you, that in some communities (and I admit to growing up in a middle/upper-middle/upper class community), career/vocational/technical education has had a bad rap for a long time. Which, I should say, I don't necessarily think it deserves.

It's true that in some communities vocational classes are used for tracking (at my high school, most of the kids who went to BOCES did not do well in school, and came from working-class Italian Catholic backgrounds).
It's true that on average, college graduates make more money.
And it's true that a lot of community colleges now offer some of those "vocational" tracks, but with the advantage of a 2-year degree.

On the other hand:
If we believe in the idea of multiple forms of intelligence, we should expect that some kids will do better in this format.
Some jobs don't really need an advanced degree.
Some kids need to start making money right away, even if they do go on to college.

So: I think options are good, and I feel queasy when I see vocational programs being considered for the chopping block.
Which is why I was somewhat interested to see, on the AAPS web site, a follow-up survey for students from the Career and Technical Education department. It asks if you are the "student" or a "proxy." (Not being either, I didn't go any further.) If it applies to you, I encourage you to fill this out. I'd like to see them survey the rest of us, too.