Rethinking Gifted & Talented Education

If gifted students — making up about the top 1-3% of students in a typical school district — are as many standard deviations above average academically as our special education students are below average, why do we not have specialized G/T classrooms in every school district in America?

Perhaps we have internalized the notion that to claim that certain children are gifted is to imply that other children do not have gifts; this therefore seems elitist and troubles our egalitarian sensitivities.  We also mistakenly think that G/T classes would be somehow “better” than regular ed. classes, making the presence of gifted classes somehow unfair to the students who don’t qualify for them.

None of this could be further from the truth.  “Gifted” should not be a synonym for “pleasant, hard-working student” but rather a label given to students who think and learn in dramatically different ways and at vastly faster paces than the rest of the student population.  These truly gifted students — who in my opinion comprise a smaller percentage of the population than most people think — are completely underserved by the regular education classroom.

(Tangential rant about the percentage of students that qualify for G/T: “For children living in the middle-class suburbs of Washington’s metro area, odds are good they’re prodigies, at least as measured by the school systems’ gifted and talented programs.  At Bethesda’s Westbrook Elementary School, for example, 87 percent of second-graders in 2006-07 were designated as eligible to take part in “gifted and talented” instruction. At the town’s Bradley Hills Elementary, 84 percent attained that status.“  Click here for the rest of that article.)

In some ways, the differentiated instruction movement has hurt gifted education, because we now believe that teachers should be able to differentiate their way into accommodating gifted students’ needs in the regular ed. classroom setting, which is false.

More on what I believe G/T education should look like in my next post.

Don’t Forget the Low-Hanging Fruit

In training teachers to use technology, it’s easy for us to forget that the largest benefits often come from going after the low-hanging fruit.

As Seth Godin has written, from a marketing perspective:

“Imagine that half the cars in the US get 10 miles per gallon. And half get 40 miles per gallon. Further stipulate that all cars are driven the same number of miles per year.

Now, you get one wish. You can give every low-mileage car a new set of spark plugs that will increase fuel efficiency by 5 mpg, up to 15. Or you can replace every 40 mpg car with a car that gets 75 mpg, an increase of 35 miles for every gallon driven.

Which is better?

It turns out that the 5 mpg increase is far better for overall mileage than the 35 mpg increase, even though it’s smaller both as a percentage and absolutely. That’s because the 10 mpg hogs use up so much gas. They’re the low-hanging fruit, not just easy to fix, but worth fixing.

As marketers, we’re tempted to tweak the already tweaked, to turn the 100 to 101, to optimize for the peak performances. That long tail is very long, though, and if there’s a way you can raise the floor (instead of just focusing on the ceiling) you may be surprised to discover that it can have a huge impact.”

This is a principle that we need to remember as we train teachers to utilize technology more effectively.  Instead of putting all of our efforts into getting the most tech-savvy teachers to eke out even a bit more productivity with the newest technologies, we need to redouble our efforts into making sure that our least tech-savvy teachers make gains in their use of educational technology.

I consider it the “No Teacher Left Behind” theory of technology in education, and we would be wise to remember it.

The Demise of Cursive

A recent AP article chronicled what many of us have been saying for a long time: that cursive is a fading skill and as such is receiving less and less attention in the classroom.  But this article had one quote from Vanderbilt professor Steve Graham that really made me laugh.

“Most people peak in terms of [cursive] legibility in 4th grade.”

Washington Post: Learning Styles Don’t Matter

University of Virginia cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham makes a very interesting assertion in a guest column for the Washington Post: he claims that teaching in a way that focuses on students’ learning styles does not work.  Instead, in his words, “Some lessons click with one child and not with another, but not because of an enduring bias or predisposition in the way the child learns. The lesson clicks or doesn’t because of the knowledge the child brought to the lesson, his interests, or other factors.“

It’s definitely worth the time to read the rest of his theory.

Birthdays and The Banning of “Cha, Cha, Cha”

Today my classroom celebrated its first birthday of the school year, meaning it was time for me to introduce my annual yet somewhat-unusual birthday rules.

1.  There will be no “cha, cha, cha” or other extra phrases added when we sing Happy Birthday to the birthday child.  It’s not time for you, the singer, to draw attention to yourself in any way.

2.  Before we sing Happy Birthday for the first time, we’re going to have a talk about what the word “dear” means in the line, “Happy Birthday, Dear ______.”  And when we sing the word “dear” throughout the year, we’re going to mean it.

3.  We’re all going to look at the birthday girl or boy and smile as we sing, focusing on the child to whom we are singing the whole time.

There are probably hundreds of ways that I work to get my students to care more deeply for their classmates throughout the year, but few are more important than ensuring that the students act in a kind, caring, self-effacing manner during others’ birthdays.

Can We All Please Stop Assuming Kids Hate School?

So my son’s second-grade teacher has a reward system involving a marble jar.  According to my son, if the class behaves satisfactorily, a handful of marbles are placed into the jar.  When the jar is full, they get a reward.

Upon hearing this, I sighed.  More knee-jerk behaviorism in the classroom.  Despite my better judgment, I asked the logical follow-up question.

“So, what’s the class reward when the jar is full?”

My son’s response made me cringe even more: “We don’t have to have any homework for a week.”

Lovely.  So we’re basically conceding the notion that homework is unpleasant and is to be avoided whenever possible.

President Obama wasn’t much better in last Tuesday’s speech.  Again, there’s a somewhat negative connotation toward attending school:  “I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.”

Really?  Are we seriously OK with that — with school being a place that everyone dreads?

I’m not OK with that view.  I believe that if school — or homework, or assignments, or topics of study — are drudgery, we’re doing something dramatically wrong.  School should be a place of joy, discovery, and excitement.  Students should say, as some of my former students have commented, “I wish you could hold me back and I could stay in third grade forever!”

Please, to every teacher that reads this, stop doing things that presume that your students dislike school, learning, or studying.

Obama’s Back-to-School Speech

There have been many excellent posts flying around the education blogosphere about the hysteria surrounding tomorrow’s Presidential Address to students (the text of which has already been released and can be found here) regarding the new school year.  Here are a few of the best comments I’ve seen:

From Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed: “It would seem to me that there should be no better place for my children to watch that speech (or any other, for that matter) than in a place where ideas are encouraged, where critical thinking about those ideas is a natural part of the conversation, and where appropriate response and debate can flourish.”

From Eduwonk: “Pretty tepid stuff… the only risk to the nation’s young people is boredom.”

From The Changing Face of Education in Iowa: “Under the circumstances, this would be a great chance to model constructive civic discussion. A great chance to have students analyze “the truth”. Here, we have the president who is emphasizing the importance of visiting with our nation’s students, and we have politicized the discussion.”

From Assorted Stuff: “This is a wonderful opportunity to engage kids in a genuine discussion of the issues raised by the president, even about the artificial controversy surrounding the speech.  That lesson would be far more valuable than anything – ANYTHING – teachers might have planned for that day.”

In light of the crazy fears some people have expressed with regard to this speech (Obama is trying to indoctrinate your children into becoming socialists!!), it is at least somewhat refreshing to see that many educators see the teachable moment this speech could provide.

Reexamining Rubrics

Rubrics have become a ubiquitous form of assessment, but I’ve long felt some uneasiness about their effectiveness.  Shelly over at Teach Paperless just managed to post exactly the thoughts that I’ve long been unable to coherently articulate.  Read this post provocatively entitled, “Rubrics Were Great.”

“The way I see things is like this: a rubric is an insult both to the intelligence and creativity of a student.” Click here for more.

Back From Summer Break!

This summer, I elected not to write on this blog, but instead I spent lots of time reading about and discussing educational topics on a wide range of other blogs.

The best blog I found this summer, by far, is Teach Paperless, found over at teachpaperless.blogspot.com.  Add that to your RSS reader ASAP.

This school year looks to be an exciting one filled with lots of debate about what’s best for children, with California’s “Race to the Top” legislation brewing, numerous 1-to-1 tech programs flourishing, and budgets being slashed everywhere, forcing us all to reexamine how we spend our educational dollars.

To all of my fellow teachers: Happy New Year!  Here’s to a fantastic 2009-2010 school year for all of us.

Technology: One Of the Intelligences? Or Ubiquitous?

I’ve been reading more than I’ve been typing lately, but as I read an endless sea of blog posts and articles about the need for a future of 1-to-1 computing and ubiquitous technology, I can’t help but ask:

Is technological fluency possibly just one of the many multiple intelligences?

Or perhaps this: Is it possible that the tech-savvy crowd is biased in favor of ubiquitous technology use, at the expense of the other intelligences (such as music or art)?

Or, conversely, is technology truly a game-changer that rightfully deserves to permeate everything we do in school?