Threadless 101

I love helping students to find authentic audiences and purposes for everything they do.  As a result, I think the new promotion from www.threadless.com, entitled “Threadless 101,” is a cool opportunity for students of all ages to gain a genuine audience for their artwork.

In Threadless’ own words:

“Looking for an innovative project to spice up your curriculum? We can help!  We at Threadless would like to introduce you to a unique art and design project developed especially for you and your students: Threadless 101. In Threadless 101, students are assigned to create an original design for a tee shirt. Their designs are critiqued and voted on by the class and the student with the highest scored design will not only be featured in our Threadless newsletter, but also awarded a Threadless Gift Certificate.”

Sounds more interesting that just hanging artwork up in the hallway to me.

Rethinking Student ‘Work’

I hereby propose that we stop referring to what students do in our classrooms as ‘work.’

Words are powerful things.  When we spend all day telling the students to work on their math worksheet, create artwork, complete their homework, or work quietly and independently, what message are we telling the students about school?

Just as important, what message are we telling ourselves?  That the lecture-worksheet-test cycle is somehow good enough?  That students aren’t supposed to find joy or have a genuine interest in what they do in school?  (”Sure, my class hated that unit, but that’s normal!  You know how 6th graders are…”)

And yes, KIPP teachers, you of the “Work Hard. Be Nice.” mantra: this means you, too.

Beyond Portfolios, Part 2

After typing my previous post, Beyond Portfolios, two days ago, imagine my delight today, as I’m reading What Would Google Do? byJeff Jarvis, to realize that he is saying many of the same things:

“Should we be forcing people to go through 18, 16, or even 12 years of school — trying to get them all to think the same way — before they make things?

…We may want to creative a preserve around youth — as Google does around its inventors — to nurture and challenge the young.  What if we told students that, like Google engineers, they should take one day a week or one course a term or one year in college to create something: a company, a book, a song, a sculpture, an invention?  School could act as an incubator, advising, pushing, and nurturing their ideas and effort. What would come of it?  Great things and mediocre things.  But it would force students to take greater responsibility for what they do and to break out of the straitjacket of uniformity.  It would make them ask questions before they are told answers.  It would reveal to them their own talents and needs.  The skeptic will say that not every student is responsible enough or a self-starter.  Perhaps.  But how will we know students’ capabilities unless we put them in the position to try?  And why structure education for everyone around the lowest denominator of the few?” (p. 212)

Obviously, I agree, and I particularly like the ideas found within the two sentences I bolded.

Beyond Portfolios

After 13 years of work getting a K-12 education, why is it that all a student has to show for it is (if things go well) a diploma?

It seems to me like our goals should be so much different, such as:

In writing: students should have a very rich blog with hundreds of quality posts on it, as well as several major self-published pieces and several other items that were genuinely published by outside sources (editorials in the local paper, columns for a trade magazine, etc.)

In science: students should have at least one patent and/or at least one invention that they’ve actually created a prototype for (or, better, that has had copies of which have actually sold)

In math: students should be able to balance a checkbook, understand how to stay out of debt and avoid credit spending, and understand how to interpret biased statistics and advertisements correctly; they should also be able to solve any real-world math problem they may encounter in life (figuring out the reduced cost of having improved gas mileage, determining  the amount of interest that would accrue on various home loans, figuring out which jar of peanut butter costs less per ounce, being able to make two-thirds of a batch of something, etc.).

In social studies: students should be able to read every article in the newspaper and understand (when applicable) the article’s significance and the historical events that have led up to the event being described.  When applicable, students should also understand the geography of the location(s) being discussed, as well as the religious and political backgrounds of the people groups involved

Finally: students should be heading to their post-K-12 life with a plan for the future, rather than just heading to college because everyone is doing it.  They should have an extensive understanding of a significant number of careers in their preferred field(s) of study as well.

What We Say vs. What We Do

We say that we believe in multiple intelligences, but we spent inordinate time on just two of the intelligences.

We say that we believe in constructivism, but we don’t build on (or even find out) what students already know.

We say that we believe in differentiation, but we assign the same thing to everyone without taking ability into account.

We say that we believe in Bloom’s taxonomy, but then we ask students to answer exclusively factual or quick recall questions.

We say that we want to create critical thinkers, but then we tell the students to do exactly what we say.

So the question is: why don’t we really mean what we say?

Why Is School So Fake?

School as it typically operates here in America is virtually always fake.

Students read things they haven’t chosen to read, try to answer questions they never asked, write things for an audience of just one person, and learn isolated “skills” that are stripped of their contextual meaning.

Sounds awful.  Yet I’m convinced that we do this on purpose.

To make school real means that our students would have choices, and that frightens us.  It means that students would write real pieces designed for real audiences; student work might start showing up in the local newspaper’s opinion pages or on blogger.com.

Beyond that, students might start forming serious opinions about controversial topics.  They might decide that they don’t like much of what their government is doing.  They might form their own opinions about evolution, climate change, environmental degradation, democracy, capitalism, socialism, communism, religion, patriotism, money, debt, war, prejudice, or poverty.

Imagine the parental outcry if children came back from school with meaningful, informed opinions about issues like those!  The pitchforks would be sharpened amid cries that the schools were brainwashing our children, making them think differently than the parents wanted.

So we keep it safe.  We study sanitized dates, names, and places; we shy away from non-fiction, reading virtually all fictional stories; and we study mathematical concepts in isolation from each other and the real world.

We’ve turned the separation of church and state into something much larger: a separation of school and all-topics-that-could-possibly-be-controversial-to-anyone.  In short, we’ve separated school from everything that is real.

Khan Academy

I want to take a moment to give some link love to Sal Khan over at www.khanacademy.org.  If you teach math from about 3rd grade on up through Calculus, go over to that page and click the link near the top of the page that says, “free, adaptive math program available here.”  Once you register, then sign in, you get to work at your own pace through a variety of math skills that build sequentially, many of which have video tutorials if needed.  A very cool tool for students to add to their arsenal.

After reading Work Hard. Be Nice.: How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America by Jay Mathews, I also want to point you to the musical chants and rhythms of Harriett Ball, found over at www.harriettball.com.

The Future of Education: One Teacher’s Prediction

As we all know, a financial crisis is upon us, and I believe that we have every reason to believe that the U.S. education system will be profoundly affected by it.  Here’s my crystal-ball-like prediction as to where education will head in the next six school years:

2008-2009: Our story begins with most U.S. districts strapped for cash.  As a result, some districts are moving toward sharing a superintendent among several districts, others are facing state intervention due to unmanageable deficits, and others are trying to cut the total number of school days to balance the budget.

2009-2010: With the DOW now under 5,000, GM officially going through bankruptcy, and money for education being slashed repeatedly, even mid-year, schools start trying more severe implementations of the usual types of cuts we’ve seen before.  Art, music, physical education, and foreign language programs are the first to go.  Many rural schools change from a 5-day schedule to a 4-day, extended-day schedule to try to save money on bus runs and utilities.  On Fridays, since there is no school, many of those districts host pay-to-participate classes or day care options to bring in revenue and accommodate working parents.  Class sizes increase.  More districts reduce social workers, assistant principals, counselors, health care workers, etc., as well.  A push for national standards gets into full swing and is very successfully pitched as a cost-saving, efficient way of teaching in the 21st century.

2010-2011: With the economic Depression continuing, the Obama administration hurriedly institutes a national set of standards in time for the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year.  www.school.gov is set up as a one-stop online spot for teachers to secure all the resources they need to teach to the national standards.  Large corporations earn windfall profits if their online textbooks are chosen as the official national textbook for one or more classes.  Controversy ensues as it becomes apparent that many of the textbooks have been chosen due to political payoffs/bribes, not for the quality of their content.  Interest groups also play a part in determining what is found in those textbooks: as a compromise, touchy subjects like evolution and climate change are barely mentioned in the textbooks at all.  In the end, a standardized national assessment is also chosen, and it is planned to be implemented in grades 2-12 beginning in the Spring of 2012.

With the 2014 deadline approaching, where 100% of students were supposed to be proficient in reading and math in every school in the country according to No Child Left Behind, the NCLB legislation is replaced by new “Education For All” legislation that places a great deal of emphasis on mastery learning.  As a result, students who do not pass the national exam each spring are no longer going to be permitted to move to the next grade level.

With standardized resources available online, and with schools no longer offering much in the way of extracurricular activities, homeschooling flourishes.  Collaborative homeschool efforts that do provide art, music, physical education, etc., take root particularly because most families no longer are able to find two steady jobs for both parents anyway, so more of the stay-at-home parents (whether placed in that position by choice or lack of job options) choose to homeschool.

2011-2012:  With housing prices now just 35-40% of what they were in 2005, which reduces property taxes dramatically, schools continue to make ever-more dramatic cuts.  Virtually all districts make sports and extracurricular activities pay-to-participate endeavors, even in once-wealthy districts.  With insurance costs for teachers taking up too much of schools’ budgets, many states start group insurance programs for teachers that they legally compel teachers’ unions to accept, saving large sums of money while reducing the quality of teachers’ insurance substantially.

In urban and suburban areas, the concept of “two schools in one” becomes very popular.  In these areas, two groups of students are housed in one school building.  One group runs from January 1 to June 30, while the second group runs from July 1 to December 31.  In that 26-week school year, students are able to get in about 125 school days that are about 8 hours long.  This 1,000-hour school year is close to the current hourly requirements and allows students to pursue jobs, online classes, or extracurriculars in their time off.  These school districts sell off their no-longer-needed land and building for a one-time budgetary boost that helps them through these lean times.

The spring of 2012 arrives with much fanfare as the first sets of AAATs (American Academic Achievement Tests) are given.  Nationally, 22% of students fail and will not be allowed to pass on to the next grade.  Widespread differences in results (Austin, TX, for example, has just a 3% failure rate) leads to huge accusations of cheating.  A wave of angry protests begins from parents and teachers of students who will not be allowed to pass, but so does a flurry of pro-accountability media sentiment.  Everyone, it seems, is talking about education.

www.school.gov now contains video tutorials for every math, science, and social studies lesson in the entire K-12 set of standards.  Online assessments, problem sets, games, and activities become much more plentiful on the site as well.  Language arts standards, which have proven themselves to be harder to turn into specific and actionable tasks, are set to have their own videos and more comprehensive materials in 2012-13.  Despite a lack of funds, most middle and high schools in the USA now require that each child have a laptop throughout the day.  In some urban areas, schools and colleges collaborate to offer wireless internet services to entire cities, and e-learning is hailed as the savior for all that ails us.

21% of students fail the 2012 AAAT tests.  This improvement (from 22% failing last year) is widely hailed as proof that the system is working.  A few commentators point out that 51% of black students failed the AAAT tests, but not much else is heard in terms of this disparity.

2012-2013:  With sturdy, decent laptops now available for under $50, virtually every child in third grade and higher now uses a laptop for the vast majority of in-class work.  www.school.gov becomes even more robust, and is seen by many as a replacement for the live teacher of yesteryear, except in the very early grades.  As a result, class sizes soar.  In many schools, only one teacher is hired per grade level, along with an additional paraprofessional for every 30 students (beyond the first 40) in that grade level.  A school with 125 sixth graders, for instance, typically now has one teacher and three paraprofessionals helping the students to work their way through the sixth-grade materials found on school.gov.  This cost savings, combined with the cheaper health insurance, lack of extracurriculars, and two-schools-in-one approach, allows schools to get by on about half of the money (adjusted for inflation) that they needed in 2007.

Homeschooling flourishes to even greater levels as any parent who wants her child to experience any form of schooling other than the e-class format found on school.gov has to provide that herself.  With over 25% of the school-age children in America now homeschooling, the government decides to crack down, proposing that (A) homeschooling parents must have a teaching certificate and (B) all students must complete the entire school.gov set of materials (chapter quizzes, interactive experiments, videos, etc.) each and every year.  Alternative forms of education enter a crisis period as lawmakers discuss whether to allow them to continue.

Again, 21% of students fail the AAAT tests.

2013-2014:  This is as far as the crystal ball goes.  With fuel costs now astronomical, schools no longer offer transportation to students.  Students must be transported to school by parents/guardians or, in many cases, are allowed to work through the school.gov materials on their own from home as they keep in touch with a paraprofessional assigned to them.

A compromise of sorts is struck with homeschooling parents: in the final legislation, parents are not required to have a teaching certificate, but they must complete a 30-hour course found on school.gov.  In the same legislation, homeschooled students are forced to complete only the unit tests found online at school.gov; they do not have to watch every single video or complete every single assignment.  There are 10 unit tests per year in language arts, math, science, and social studies, making it 40 tests in all, not counting the standardized assessments each spring (which all homeschoolers must take as well).  Homeschooling advocates feel a mixture of anger and relief at this verdict.  It is stifling, but it could have been even worse.

Teachers and paraprofessionals are now routinely assigned 50 students each, since it is rare that all of those students would ever actually show up physically in school on any given day.

Juvenile crime increases.  A few commentators claim that this is because of the 6-month and/or 4-day-per-week school year, giving students too much free time, which some do not use very constructively.  Others assert that a lack of meaningful teacher/student relationships is a cause of this increase.

24% of students fail the AAAT tests.  Concerns are raised about this increase in the failure rate, but no one is yet able to pinpoint the cause.  The Algebra II, Calculus, Physics, and American History courses, classes that over 40% of students failed, are made easier for the 2014-2015 school year.  Just 2% of homeschooled students, notably, fail this year’s AAAT tests.

A few social commentators begin to notice an appalling lack of creativity among American youth.  These warnings are ignored for the time being.

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Your thoughts or predictions are welcomed in the comment section below!

TED talk: Bill Gates on Education

The first 8 minutes of Bill Gates’ most recent TED talk (from earlier this week) was about preventing malaria, but the final 12 minutes of his presentation are focused on education and how to improve the quality of teachers in America.  It’s worth 20 minutes of your time to check this out.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bill_gates_unplugged.html

Which Matters More: Knowing Facts or Thinking Well?

Time for a quick quiz:

1.  What is the name of the bone that runs from your shoulder to your elbow?

2.  What is the capital city of New Hampshire?

3.  What years made up the duration of the French and Indian War?

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The three questions are all derived from common upper elementary grade level standards in the areas of science and social studies.  If you’re in fourth or fifth grade, in other words, these are exactly the types of things you’ll need to know.

But why?  If most of the productive adults in America would get 0 or 1 out of those 3 questions correct (but could look them up in seconds), why should we expect our students to get them right?  Moreover, why would we ever reasonably believe that students who were taught that type of information would retain it for any meaningful length of time?

If we can agree that students quickly forget most of the specific dates, names, and vocabulary terms taught in science and social studies classes, why are we so insistent on still hammering away at them and requiring them on our assessments?

I am dumbfounded by this disconnect.  In fact, I hereby propose a rule of thumb that I call the 20/20 principle: “A maximum of 20% of class time should be spent teaching facts you can find online in a maximum of 20 seconds.”

Oh, and for those of you who were wondering, the right answers are humerus, Concord, and 1754-1763.  How’d you do?