For the legal school year July 1, 2014, through June 30, 2015, we completed 249 days of school. There were twelve holiday/vacation days and one sick day. The rest were weekends (except that we did use one Saturday as a school day.)
We took over three dozen field trips, not counting duplicate visits to the same museums. We saw Jupiter's four largest moons through a telescope, gathered eggs from a hen house, ice skated, picked strawberries, and admired two-thousand-year-old sculptures.
We read about Alexander the Great as well as Gerald and Piggie. We measured rainfall; we threw paint-filled eggs at a canvas. We traveled out of state twice, north and south.
How magnificent time can be, when we set our own schedule. Yes, there was time for piano lessons and swimming lessons, but also time to climb a tree, explore a stream, dig in the sand with friends. Time to meditate, and time to make a raucous noise. There was time to ride roller coasters. Time to mess around with magnets.
It was a year of abundance. Next year will not be the same, but a new series of adventures. Whatever the future brings, we had a great first-grade year.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Sunday, May 11, 2014
What was missing from my education?
I'm thinking back to my K-12 education--what I remember of it. While it was adequate in that I finished twelfth grade reasonably well prepared for college, I didn't like it much (especially grades 4-8), and I want to avoid making some of those same mistakes with my own child.
I went to school in three different districts in two states. What was missing? This is a draft, as I'm thinking 'aloud' here.
1) A sense of direction.
I didn't feel that I had any kind of road map, that there was some intentionality behind the daily assignments. This was especially true when the assignments were required without regard for whether I had already mastered the skills or content they were intended to reinforce. I'm not sure that many teachers, districts, or states had given deep thought to why we were marching through the curriculum--but if they had, it was not shared with the students. Consequently, I was disengaged. Some candor about purpose, some framing, some throughlines, some drawing attention to recurring themes would have been so nice. I feel that if we want kids to connect the dots, we have to let them know that the dots are intended to make a big picture.
2) Tinkering.
Nearly everything was a closed-ended question: monkey see, monkey do. I got very good at providing right answers, fast, with no creativity. The purpose of any activity was predetermined and generic, and any "what ifs" were considered a distraction. When I eventually had a chance to create my own project in a gifted pull-out program, I had no ideas. I had neither had enough input nor been encouraged to build the skills to generate something of my own. (However, I did very well on the SAT.)
For student-owned project time to be effective, students must have access to generative topics on a regular basis, and there must be time to delve into material and then allow it to sink in before we ask for output.
3) The physical world.
I sat and was lectured to in class; I sat and read books (my main hobby); I sat in front of the TV. I did little with my body and little outdoors. Half an hour of PE once a week only confirmed my sense that I was clumsy. Now that screens are everywhere, the danger of being disconnected from physical reality is all the worse.
4) Genuine inquiry into other places and peoples.
I didn't get to start a foreign language until seventh grade, and then it was at a 'lite' level. Anything we did with regard to other countries and times was superficial; there was no serious attempt to understand viewpoints significantly different from our own, much less how they evolved or unfolded. Of all the ways in which my education was shallow, this might be the worst, in that it subtly devalued other human beings.
5) Community.
There was no sense of being on a team working toward a common vision. There were rules, but they did not emerge from a consensus of our values; they were merely imposed. Achievements were for one's own sake, mostly in that they increased one's status with adults. We were not in it to change the world, not to benefit our neighbors, but to get a good report card. Especially as kids get older, this is patronizing; it's no wonder that so many eventually decide the hoops are not worth jumping through.
6) Reflection.
There was no time set aside, when we finished something, to consider honestly what we had gotten out of it and whether it was any good. Like #1, if this was being done, it was not done by the students. As with many of these missing items, the lack of planned reflection indicates that students do not have the authority to shape their own learning.
I went to school in three different districts in two states. What was missing? This is a draft, as I'm thinking 'aloud' here.
1) A sense of direction.
I didn't feel that I had any kind of road map, that there was some intentionality behind the daily assignments. This was especially true when the assignments were required without regard for whether I had already mastered the skills or content they were intended to reinforce. I'm not sure that many teachers, districts, or states had given deep thought to why we were marching through the curriculum--but if they had, it was not shared with the students. Consequently, I was disengaged. Some candor about purpose, some framing, some throughlines, some drawing attention to recurring themes would have been so nice. I feel that if we want kids to connect the dots, we have to let them know that the dots are intended to make a big picture.
2) Tinkering.
Nearly everything was a closed-ended question: monkey see, monkey do. I got very good at providing right answers, fast, with no creativity. The purpose of any activity was predetermined and generic, and any "what ifs" were considered a distraction. When I eventually had a chance to create my own project in a gifted pull-out program, I had no ideas. I had neither had enough input nor been encouraged to build the skills to generate something of my own. (However, I did very well on the SAT.)
For student-owned project time to be effective, students must have access to generative topics on a regular basis, and there must be time to delve into material and then allow it to sink in before we ask for output.
3) The physical world.
I sat and was lectured to in class; I sat and read books (my main hobby); I sat in front of the TV. I did little with my body and little outdoors. Half an hour of PE once a week only confirmed my sense that I was clumsy. Now that screens are everywhere, the danger of being disconnected from physical reality is all the worse.
4) Genuine inquiry into other places and peoples.
I didn't get to start a foreign language until seventh grade, and then it was at a 'lite' level. Anything we did with regard to other countries and times was superficial; there was no serious attempt to understand viewpoints significantly different from our own, much less how they evolved or unfolded. Of all the ways in which my education was shallow, this might be the worst, in that it subtly devalued other human beings.
5) Community.
There was no sense of being on a team working toward a common vision. There were rules, but they did not emerge from a consensus of our values; they were merely imposed. Achievements were for one's own sake, mostly in that they increased one's status with adults. We were not in it to change the world, not to benefit our neighbors, but to get a good report card. Especially as kids get older, this is patronizing; it's no wonder that so many eventually decide the hoops are not worth jumping through.
6) Reflection.
There was no time set aside, when we finished something, to consider honestly what we had gotten out of it and whether it was any good. Like #1, if this was being done, it was not done by the students. As with many of these missing items, the lack of planned reflection indicates that students do not have the authority to shape their own learning.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Monday, November 4, 2013
Links to look at
I love the Information Age! It's so easy to find people who can inspire and inform my teaching. If you're not familiar with any of these resources, by all means, take a look:
- Lori Pickert, author of Project-Based Homeschooling. Great post here on DIY for kids.
- Teacher Tom, lead teacher at a play-based preschool. Great post here: Plastic Hammers.
- Amy Night, kindergarten teacher. Great post here on behavior management in kindergarten.
- Dan Meyer, math teacher. Interesting post here on digital textbooks.
- Geoff Krall, math teacher. Post on getting kids to be willing to work hard.
- Jose Vilson, math educator/activist. Post and interesting comments on open doors in classrooms.
- Audrey Watters, education writer. Thoughts on ed tech and politics.
- Alfie Kohn. Even if you haven't heard of the others, you probably know of Kohn--but if not, here's a link to some of his articles.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
On Math
First, some observations:
1) An awful lot of people are intimidated by math.
2) Many people are rather bad at math. I don't mean in the haven't-done-trig-in-twenty-years-and-would-have-to-do-it-over sense, but in the never-really-understood-fractions sense.
3) Groups 1 and 2 overlap quite a bit.
4) A fair number of elementary school teachers fall into group 1 and/or 2. If you don't believe that, please read Liping Ma's book Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics (some libraries will have it as an e-book).
It wouldn't be surprising, then, that having parents and/or teachers who fear, loathe, or lack skill in math would lead to kids' lack of confidence and competence.
What to do?
I propose a math refresher course to reinforce not just procedural, but conceptual math for adults. The main ideas:
1) An awful lot of people are intimidated by math.
2) Many people are rather bad at math. I don't mean in the haven't-done-trig-in-twenty-years-and-would-have-to-do-it-over sense, but in the never-really-understood-fractions sense.
3) Groups 1 and 2 overlap quite a bit.
4) A fair number of elementary school teachers fall into group 1 and/or 2. If you don't believe that, please read Liping Ma's book Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics (some libraries will have it as an e-book).
It wouldn't be surprising, then, that having parents and/or teachers who fear, loathe, or lack skill in math would lead to kids' lack of confidence and competence.
What to do?
I propose a math refresher course to reinforce not just procedural, but conceptual math for adults. The main ideas:
- Math is not here to confuse you, but to help you make sense of things.
- All of the operations are variations on counting. Addition is counting more; subtraction is counting backward; multiplication is counting groups; division is counting how many could go into groups; exponents are just faster multiplication, and roots are the reverse of exponents.
- Understanding place value matters.
- When you have a good sense of a number, you know how to compose it and decompose it for your convenience (e.g., sometimes when dealing with 17, we will think of it as 10+7 or 15+2 or 20-3 for easier computation).
- Likewise, shapes can often be broken down into simpler shapes for ease of understanding.
- Units matter.
- You should not ever make math cute if the cost is inaccuracy or distraction. Do not let Pinterest lead you astray here. Present concepts and examples in a way that makes sense.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Misplacing Education
One Parents' Night about eight years ago at the excellent private school where I then taught, a parent asked me an interesting question. I had explained to parents that many homework assignments would be uploaded to my class website and could be readily printed at home, and even reprinted for extra practice when students were reviewing. Mr. Y, who I believe is a businessman, expressed concern: If I put my materials online where anyone could have access to them, wasn't I giving a [very expensive private school] education away for free? Why could someone from [a different school] not just take my materials and use them?
I reassured him that there were no trade secrets in my worksheets--everything I made was, if not common knowledge, easy to find out in a book. The important part of a [name of our school] education was what happened in the classroom.
He appeared to be satisfied with my answer, but upon further reflection, I realize that it was incomplete. Mr. Y was mis-locating or mis-placing learning in written materials. This is a reasonable mistake: excellent books and other materials do make a good education much easier.
However, the imprecise answer I gave him was also misplacing education. You might suppose my reference to "what happens in the classroom" meant instruction: my explaining ideas, telling facts, and demonstrating processes. This is also a reasonable mistake, because well-thought-out instruction is likewise a valuable component of education. But if I watch you do brain surgery and you narrate what you're doing, am I a brain surgeon? If I watch the Olympics and listen to the commentary, am I an athlete?
If I had thought better of it (which I did not with an unanticipated question and only a few minutes with that audience), I would have told him that I could likewise videotape my instruction and put that online--and still not be giving a [school name] education away! I suspect that many teachers, as well as students and parents, misplace education by thinking of it in terms of instruction.
Learning, though, is the process of developing thought and performance, of changing from an incorrect or incomplete process to a better one. To answer Mr. Y precisely, I would have had to explain to him that the education happens when I have his daughter try doing what I just showed her how to do, she gets it wrong, I talk with her to uncover the error in her thinking, we correct the error, and then she tries another example and gets it right. And of course, there is no way to replicate that without feedback, the interactions between the student and teacher that indicate what is going well and what needs improvement. There is nothing I could put on my website that would replace that process.
How else do we misplace education?
These errors in thinking are along the lines of supposing that if you gave me a scalpel, a video of a brain surgery, a great med school textbook, and a standardized evaluation afterward, I'd be a neurosurgeon. Anybody want to sign up to be my first patient? :)
I reassured him that there were no trade secrets in my worksheets--everything I made was, if not common knowledge, easy to find out in a book. The important part of a [name of our school] education was what happened in the classroom.
He appeared to be satisfied with my answer, but upon further reflection, I realize that it was incomplete. Mr. Y was mis-locating or mis-placing learning in written materials. This is a reasonable mistake: excellent books and other materials do make a good education much easier.
However, the imprecise answer I gave him was also misplacing education. You might suppose my reference to "what happens in the classroom" meant instruction: my explaining ideas, telling facts, and demonstrating processes. This is also a reasonable mistake, because well-thought-out instruction is likewise a valuable component of education. But if I watch you do brain surgery and you narrate what you're doing, am I a brain surgeon? If I watch the Olympics and listen to the commentary, am I an athlete?
If I had thought better of it (which I did not with an unanticipated question and only a few minutes with that audience), I would have told him that I could likewise videotape my instruction and put that online--and still not be giving a [school name] education away! I suspect that many teachers, as well as students and parents, misplace education by thinking of it in terms of instruction.
Learning, though, is the process of developing thought and performance, of changing from an incorrect or incomplete process to a better one. To answer Mr. Y precisely, I would have had to explain to him that the education happens when I have his daughter try doing what I just showed her how to do, she gets it wrong, I talk with her to uncover the error in her thinking, we correct the error, and then she tries another example and gets it right. And of course, there is no way to replicate that without feedback, the interactions between the student and teacher that indicate what is going well and what needs improvement. There is nothing I could put on my website that would replace that process.
How else do we misplace education?
- In urban and high-poverty schools in particular, we think of discipline as education, because discipline is necessary for instruction and feedback to occur uninterrupted. Some principals like discipline enough to overlook the fact that it is not education.
- We often think of standards and curriculum as education, but it is clear that they are not--especially when standards are not met and we keep marching right on through them, year after year. This is an error that might be associated with the Common Core. Setting clear and high standards is valuable, and well-aligned curricula make teachers' work easier, but if it were that easy, American education would be very different right now. You might say that I should be able to run an eight-minute mile, but since I can't, obviously I need more than a "should."
- We think of assessment as education, when in fact good assessment is merely an indicator that education is or is not happening (and poorly designed or administered assessment does not even do that well). This is the error of No Child Left Behind. Okay, you test my mile time and I run too slowly. (I could've told you that!) What then?
- Class size matters, but it is not education. Like discipline, small class size helps education. In a class of fourteen rather than thirty-four, I'm much more likely to notice Miss Y's error and have time to talk through the process with her.
These errors in thinking are along the lines of supposing that if you gave me a scalpel, a video of a brain surgery, a great med school textbook, and a standardized evaluation afterward, I'd be a neurosurgeon. Anybody want to sign up to be my first patient? :)
Friday, March 15, 2013
Points I'm Pondering
Point #1: Among the axioms of education is "Every teacher is a reading teacher." It should follow that every teacher is a reader, and that every education major is a reader. This is not being enforced.
Point #2: Another axiom is "All children can learn," or as Adler's Paideia Proposal phrases it, "All children are educable." This one kind of creeps me out, because the assertion suggests that not everyone thinks so. (Contrast "Schooling takes place in buildings," which is such a commonplace idea that no one bothers saying it, though a lot of science, PE and art can be done outdoors.)
As differentiated instruction advocate Jim Grant points out, not all children learn at the government rate (45 minutes a class, 180 days a year, 13 years until you're done)--certainly kids don't learn by merely being present when instruction takes place. One of my concerns about schooling is the amount of time being wasted. Why does kindergarten, which forty years ago was thought unnecessary, need to take seven hours a day? How much time in those thirteen years does a child spend traveling to and from school; standing in line; waiting for administrative items to be in order, for everyone to find the right page and a pencil and paper, for a disruption to be over and instruction to resume? How little time is spent thinking about big questions (or "throughlines" as they say at Project Zero)?
And for all that, if all children can learn and they are each spending 14,040 hours in school (less a few sick days) at a total cost of over $100,000 per student, why are so many finishing school with so little evident education? Right now there are about fifty million American children in public schools. If you add in the teachers (and I'm not including principals, support staff or those in post-secondary education), something like eighteen percent of Americans are going into school Monday morning.
Yet for all the investment of time and money, the average U.S. eighteen-year-old, by all appearances, is not so full of information as to name the capital of Canada (in some cases, I'm afraid, nor that of the United States), not skilled enough at reasoning to find the logical flaw in a letter to the editor, not good enough at math to compare the prices of different sizes of pizza, not engaged enough in civics to go out and make an informed vote for governor, not physically conditioned enough to run a mile, not law-abiding or health-conscious enough to have avoided binge drinking, and not sufficiently exposed to the fine arts to hum along to any classical music that hasn't been in a TV commercial lately. She or he has not learned to speak a second language fluently, is not ready for college math, and doesn't read any books that aren't required. A quarter of teens drop out before graduation. Of those who have a diploma, a fifth can't get into the military because of their low ASVAB scores.
So all children can learn, but many of them don't seem to be learning much in school. Is it possible to get the American system of education to a point that most people will find satisfactory?
Point #2: Another axiom is "All children can learn," or as Adler's Paideia Proposal phrases it, "All children are educable." This one kind of creeps me out, because the assertion suggests that not everyone thinks so. (Contrast "Schooling takes place in buildings," which is such a commonplace idea that no one bothers saying it, though a lot of science, PE and art can be done outdoors.)
As differentiated instruction advocate Jim Grant points out, not all children learn at the government rate (45 minutes a class, 180 days a year, 13 years until you're done)--certainly kids don't learn by merely being present when instruction takes place. One of my concerns about schooling is the amount of time being wasted. Why does kindergarten, which forty years ago was thought unnecessary, need to take seven hours a day? How much time in those thirteen years does a child spend traveling to and from school; standing in line; waiting for administrative items to be in order, for everyone to find the right page and a pencil and paper, for a disruption to be over and instruction to resume? How little time is spent thinking about big questions (or "throughlines" as they say at Project Zero)?
And for all that, if all children can learn and they are each spending 14,040 hours in school (less a few sick days) at a total cost of over $100,000 per student, why are so many finishing school with so little evident education? Right now there are about fifty million American children in public schools. If you add in the teachers (and I'm not including principals, support staff or those in post-secondary education), something like eighteen percent of Americans are going into school Monday morning.
Yet for all the investment of time and money, the average U.S. eighteen-year-old, by all appearances, is not so full of information as to name the capital of Canada (in some cases, I'm afraid, nor that of the United States), not skilled enough at reasoning to find the logical flaw in a letter to the editor, not good enough at math to compare the prices of different sizes of pizza, not engaged enough in civics to go out and make an informed vote for governor, not physically conditioned enough to run a mile, not law-abiding or health-conscious enough to have avoided binge drinking, and not sufficiently exposed to the fine arts to hum along to any classical music that hasn't been in a TV commercial lately. She or he has not learned to speak a second language fluently, is not ready for college math, and doesn't read any books that aren't required. A quarter of teens drop out before graduation. Of those who have a diploma, a fifth can't get into the military because of their low ASVAB scores.
So all children can learn, but many of them don't seem to be learning much in school. Is it possible to get the American system of education to a point that most people will find satisfactory?
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