Value-Free Education Is A Myth

I am a public school educator. This was not a random, "take life as it happens," choice. I chose to answer the call to education in the public sector. I am the product of public, parochial, and private education. I was taught by public school educators, Franciscan order nuns, and military tactical officers in my pre-baccelaureate educational career.

In the nineties, as a private citizen working in various industries that left me unfulfilled and vocationally adrift, I was bombarded by radio and tv messages. "Reach for the power, teach." was one slogan I remember. I also remember in college when an African American visiting professor at Kenyon College had the audacity (I felt at the time) to suggest to me that I had a responsibility to teach because I made it into to one of the top colleges in the nation, was successful there, and I needed to show others the way--- because I was African American. That one bugged me. First, I had zero interest in education as a career at the time-- we all knew that our teachers were overworked, undervalued, and underpaid. I also had been raised by parents who remembered the Jim Crow Era bad old days when the only things academically gifted black males were encouraged to do were to teach or preach.

She also was the first person to inform me I wasn't black, but that I was African American. Honestly, that was news to me. My elementary, middle, and high school transcripts all identified me as black. As a college sophomore, finding out someone changed the rules and decided for me how to claim my heritage was unsettling. It was the mid eighties and academia was encouraging all Americans to become hyphenated.

I did and still do have Countee Cullen's response to Africa in "Heritage" :

What is Africa to me:   

Copper sun or scarlet sea,   

Jungle star or jungle track,

Strong bronzed men, or regal black   

Women from whose loins I sprang   

When the birds of Eden sang?

One three centuries removed

From the scenes his fathers loved,

Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,   

What is Africa to me?

I was miffed, but I did not forget what she said to me. Nearly ten years later, I decided to go back to college to earn my masters and teaching credentials. I intended to teach urban education and I student-taught at West Philadelphia High School. My experiences there could fill a book and they shaped many of my ideas about adolescents and teaching them, but ultimately I ended up teaching in suburban and rural districts.

If teaching is a mission, (and I believe that it is) then we should teach where we can make the biggest impact. For me, I had to listen to my own inner voice. Was that impact going to be greatest in the inner city world that was so different from the life I had known and from the roots that gave me my values? Was I going to do the most good teaching the sons and daughters of captains of industry, finance, higher education, medicine, and manufacturing, or would I do the most good returning to my rural roots?

Having met with success in all three environments, I am (to date) still not sure of the answer. If success is receiving praise for your efforts by your peers, bosses, and clients (students and parents,) then I have made an impact everywhere. One concern I never had was whether I would teach public or private.

All students deserve highly qualified, well-rounded educators, regardless of the sequence of their zip code, their net worth, or their access to the 1%.  Are there schools that offer higher salaries? Yes. For the first time in my career, I teach in the community where I live and worship. I had always been leary of doing that, but it has been a powerfully positive experience. The community knows me not only as an educator but they know the rest of me too. It actually helps to recognize parents on back to school night because they sit in the congregation with you on Sunday mornings, checked out your groceries in the supermarket, inspected your vehicle, or helped you build an addition to the house. I have sung in the choir for years with grandparents of current students, live on the neighboring farm to an aunt. I have gone to national tournaments with neighbors of students and competed with them in leagues. They tease me about grading all the time. My commitment to my profession and to my students is known before many of them see my name on their child's schedule. All these connections actually help build trust in the teacher-parent relationship that is pivotal to a child's success.

Why not private? It's not the same. I lived in a military school environment for eigth and ninth grade. There was a sense of community but it was more regimented and less organic. Parochial education had a strong influence upon my values as a student an as an educator but there is a problem with access. In private schools, children are weeded out and preselected. I think someone who is a teacher at his core can teach any child anywhere. It also still shocks me that a private school in the Philadelphia suburbs offered me a teaching position even though I (at the time) had only a BA in English from Kenyon College and had never learned anything about pedagogy or about best practices. They didn't require that I had a teaching license or that I had gone through the vetting process public school teachers are subject to. I would only have been able to rely on my instincts as an educator without the background in the research to inform my instincts. I would have relied only on my limited life experiences and innate empathy to "read" my students-- no knowledge of adolescent psychology to have a sense of what was normal and what was unusual adolescent behavior. I didn't think I was ready to be a "dorm dad" and educator at 25 without that background.

I didn't believe that I would be giving these millionaires and movie star parents their $30,000/year tuition's worth in 1992. In 2012, I know that what my clients get for their modest investment of property taxes, from all of us, is an unbelievable bargain. They get better educated, better prepared teachers for a fraction of the price and they still get the advantage of small class sizes for optimum teacher accessibility.

I guess that is why I am protective of the influences I allow into my classroom. The values of our school are espoused in our district's mission statement: "Providing progressive education to strengthen the global community." That value is exemplified in our commitment to integrating technology into our pedagogy so that students may truly be global learners-- skyping with other classrooms around the nation and world, collaborating on shared projects. I plan to skype with my students from the USBC Master's tournament this winter in February. Our community food drives and community closet drives for those in need also show our  commitment to an enduring understanding that we are a global community and that we take care of each other. We are teaching values.

Last week, I received an offer to receive a free class set of Ayn Rand novels and I was horrorified at the suggestion that I indoctrinate my students with text whose theme runs against what we strive for. Ayn Rand emigrated to the US from the USSR. Her militant dogma of self-interest and individualism was in reaction to the tyranny of the collective she grew up with in communism. Her writings were embraced by some during the McCarthy era and red scare. It seemed insidious that I, a teacher in a cash-strapped district, would be approached to teach these novels, complete with teaching aids--without an appropriate counterpoint for students to engage in a discourse about the conflicting messages so that they might be able to form their own conclusions.

The head of my education program at UPENN told us something that seemed  somewhat revolutionary at the time. I did not understand it fully until I became an established teacher. He said to us "Teaching is a political act, there is no such thing as value-free education. Know what your values are when you teach. Your students already know what they are." I believe that every member of a community has value and that we have a responsibility to respect each other because only then can we uncover our roles. Can you believe this whole entry was sparked by a piece of junk mail?

“The environment you fashion out of your thoughts, your beliefs, your ideals, your philosophy, is the only climate you will ever live in.” John Maxwell

If you have been following this blog and wondering where these quotes come from that I sometimes use as my blog title, the origin is simple. Every day my students follow a routine. The come to class, sit at their seats, write the Crazy Word of the Day, The Word of the Day and the Thought of the Day. Before I check homework, teach a lesson, show a video, or even take attendance, I review these items with them. Today's crazy word? Gravitas.

The word was published on my blackboard with definition, part of speech, and a sample sentence. To connect to what I was telling them last week about why I want them to be on a weekly word quest, rather than to simply rely on my random words to improve their vocabulary, I repeated the thinking point I introduced to them Friday. "Use what you already know to help you learn new stuff." To educators, that's simply encouraging students to use their own schema. I obviously don't talk in teacherspeak to my students but I am trying to reinforce the notion in their heads that they are not blank slates. They come to me already knowing a great deal more than I expect, but often have gaps in their knowledge where I would assume they have none.

So with gravitas, to help them wrap their minds around the word, I asked students to look at the word and seek a Halloween-appropriate word that they see in the word. Immediately kids were calling out "GRAVE!" and not without some level of ghoulish delight. I pushed further. "What do you think when you think about the word "grave?" More ghoulish replies "Death!" "Dead people!" Then I asked: "How many of you think of funeral when you think of grave?" Still a large portion of the class were raising their hands but the solemnity I knew I would engender crept across some students' faces. "Most funerals are sad and the people there are serious, right? There has to be an equally serious behavior shown by everyone at a funeral, right? Thumbs up if you're with me." Sad eyes made eye contact with me and thumbs slowly went up, barely chin high. I had hit a nerve. "Would it surprise you that if we attempted the etymology of grave and gravitas, we would find the same origin?" Many nodded indicating that would not surprise them. "It means heavy--- so, when we visit a grave we come with a heavy heart."

I am constantly checking for understanding on a base level. Just beause I shared it with them, doesn't mean they "got it." They don't have to get it on the first time through. How many of us learned how to make our bluetooth connections talk to each other on the first try without reminders, refreshers or having someone more tech savvy than us show us all over again a few times? Why do some teachers expect that just because they concocted a brilliant lesson full of bells and whistles, that kids will learn the first try through when even they don't?

I remember boldly stating my teaching philosophy to my future employer, "You can't teach them if you don't love them." That was Spring 1994. I was aware that I might be misinterpreted but I meant what I said and I couldn't put it any more directly or simply. Students know when you are just punching a timeclock and you're in it for the paycheck only. They know when they are being tolerated because you only have a couple more years to hang in there before you retire. I still believe that crazy statement nearly 20 years later.

It is the reason I subject myself to pop music, hip-hop, and rock. I need to know what music is in their heads and what messages are rolling around in there. It is the reason I spend the first two weeks of each school year working on "getting to know you" activities. To establish the message with my students--- "You matter to me." My classroom and my enjoyment of my profession are fashioned by my thoughts.

Thought one - there is no such thing as a "bad" kid, although many kids have a tendency to make a slew of lousy decisions. Thought two - if you want to reach that kid, you have to figure out why those decisions are the choice that kid finds most attractive. Thought three - when you can't reach the kid, it is more of reflection of either your failure to connect or their inability to connect because of issues outside of your classroom than it is a reflection of their quality as a person. These thoughts establish a belief system as an educator, these belief systems bolster ideals that are the foundation of a philosophy. You know mine.

At UPENN, the Graduate School of Education had a philosophy: "Each one teach one." I flipped it. "Each one lose one." To be honest, I'm still not satisfied with losing one, and when I do, that climate of my own making is angst. I just have to hope that someone else was able to help those students that would not connect with me. Defeat is a tough pill to swallow when you care about them all.

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” Arthur Schopenhauer

Sometimes it just doesn't feel like there is much to write about, but it has been six days since my last post so here goes.

We are two weeks from Tech Tuesday. It's the day the middle school will pilot our first BYOD Day (Bring Your Own Device) for the entire school district. Many teachers are apprehensive about how to incorporate BYOD into their lessons. I am choosing to live in a pleasant world of denial about it. I guess I do have a bit of a "been there, done that" attitude about it because I have been encouraging my college students to use their devices in class every summer for years now.

How does a literacy educator incorporate technology into an every day lesson? Take the box, turn it inside/out and step out of it. Huh? Well, students are always grumbling about dictionaries, thesuari, and other reference tools they have to use in class. Let them put their money where their whine is. If they believe that they can find the same quality information from a website that they can find in their textbook, dictionary, and thesaurus, let them.

When you think about it, the same discriminatory thinking required to find contextual definitions, true synonyms and discreet information is also going to come into play when students use the internet to find information. Students know how to cut and paste information from sites but they often don't take the time to read through the information to make certain it is the correct fit. The frustration that comes along the adventure to discovery learning teaches the same lessons as the books do.

On BYOD Day, my students will be well into their writing process for their first formal essay of the year. Students who did BYOD will be able to look up misspelled words online, find better word choice suggestions online, post questions to my wallwisher.com site, draft their first draft online and upload their work to me through edmodo.com

My thought about BYOD is simple: how can students use their own technology to enhance their educational process in my class. I  see no value in making this day a Dog and Pony show. For me, the only change has been a paradigm shift from seeing technology as cheating to seeing the use of technology as an enhancment.

To enhance this blog, I used Shopenhauer's quote. It was an advantage to grow up the son of a multipatented electrical engineer, a television designer. I learned quite a bit about degrees of improbability. Dad said that reason it took so long to go from picture tube based units to flat screen tvs was that the computers were not strong enough to calculate the math needed to get LEDs to work like pixels. He went on to say that some even thought it was impossible to get a flat screen to work because of the computer limitations. 20 years later, most households have some sort of flat screen devise, whether it's their child's PS2 gaming device, a smart phone, a flat screen tv, or a tablet. Flat screen technology is a ubiquitous fact of our lives now. Dad used to say that nothing is impossible but there are varying degrees of improbability. That is to say nothing is impossible but somethings are inplausible-- at this point in time. We need to inspire our students to seek out the next best thing and lead the way to it.

Evolution

In the 1980's, Lee Iacoca would voice-over the slogan: "Lead, follow, or get out of the way." touting Chrysler Corporation's design innovations: the K-car and the minivan. Our district has a new mission statement, tailored to address the needs of twenty-first century learners: "Providing progressive education to strengthen the global community," and Monday's in-service was developed to roll out what that will mean for teachers in our district. As I listened to the concerns of my colleagues, I was reminded of that slogan.

If something is progressive, it is forward thinking. It means change. It is the antithesis of conservative. The year is 2012. We are not on the cusp of the new millenia, we are in the thick of it. We can no more conduct the business of education in this country as we always did anymore than we could teach 20th century learners the same way students were taught in the 19th century. I get that, yet I'm still struggling to make the transition. It amazes me that others don't see the bigger picture sometimes.

The new core standards that all teachers throughout the nation will be charged with teaching in 2014, require new literacy standards that include technology. For those resistant to this change and yet were taught how to use the internet as scholars in school and college, consider this: The internet was new, unfamiliar, rife with potentilally devastating pitfalls and the teachers charged to teach with it were unfamiliar with it. How do I know? I was one of them.

I earned my masters in 1994. I was a student-teacher during the 1993-94 school year, and I acquired my first teaching assignment the following year. Articles were available on the web in grad school but there was no formatting to them. They were not pdf files the way they are now. Most people chose to forgo on-line articles and found the hard copies in the stacks of the library. People used aol or some other internet service to navigate web pages and the material was woefully lacking.

In less than five years, the net morphed from the wild west into an information superhouse that resembled what we have now. We were asked to teach students to research, using it. There were and are pitfalls and we learned the hard way that the suffixes at the end of websites mattered. Whitehouse-dot-com is completely different from whitehouse-dot-gov... remember those days? We adjusted and are approaching mastery.

Our new challenge? Teach students to use their personal webtools in the classroom as scholars;  not just for tweeting, texting, facebooking, videogaming, and killing time. Are there pitfalls to avoid? --some we don't even know about and will get blindsided with in the process-- probably. So what? Aren't we encouraging our students to try new things all the time? When we grumble about change, are we reflecting in our own behavior what we expect out of students when they are introduced to alien concepts like the future pluperfect tense?

Have any of the administrator's threatened us with negative teacher ratings or observations because our best efforts failed? Why fear failure-- how many flights did the Wright brothers attempt before success? How many of Thomas Alva Edison's lightbulbs exploded before he and Louis Lattimer figured out how to make a long lasting filament?

I think having been a transient student, professional and educator helps me accept change more readily than some. The old joke about the only thing you can count on is death and taxes rings true to me. We are charged with laying a foundation for success for the millenial generation. Right now, kids are learning how to accesss information on their own, without our guidance, and we are not teaching them how to evaluate the quality, veracity, and authenticity of that information.

Students are creating online identities without guidance from elders about protecting the only thing they truly own--- their reputation. Students can find information but they don't always know how to ask the question that gets the information they truly need. There are some who say that "That's not my job." as educators. Isn't it? How different are these 21st century challenges from evaluating traditional non-fiction texts? How different is teaching civics from teaching digital citizenship? As a writing teacher, am I ok with standard English's bastardization by the "newspeak" of the internet? John Maxwell said that "The greatest mistake a person can make is doing nothing." If we do nothing, how are we serving the unique new challenges that the 21st century learners will face?

We don't know what the future holds, but if your memory goes beyond 1993 and you think how much our world has changed since then,  imagine how much more the technological revolution will alter our daily reality in another twelve years. Educators are supposed to prepare the next generation for the challenges they will encounter as adults. How else will we help students get there from here without acknowledging these future challenges?

Moreover, public education is under attack and many of the reforms, like vouchers programs seem to be designed specifically to destroy school as we know it. When we don't evolve or when we resist change, aren't we setting ourselves up for extinction? In military school, tactical officers said that "the view never changes if you're always following." I like to see the road ahead, not the posterior of the traffic in front of me.

Growing pains--- they let us know we're alive.

From the Lanes to the Chalkboard and Beyond

Warning - The following message will contain information that is not strictly pedagogical.

When I started this blog a month ago, I gave myself permission to write about whatever was on my mind. In grad school, we investigated student's multiple worlds by turning the lens on our own multiple worlds. I am more than a teacher, yet I teach everywhere I go, and in all that I do. Teaching isn't just a profession, it's part of who I am-- even when I'm bowling.

You read it correctly, and I'm not just a league bowler; I have been a member of the Professional Bowler's Association since 2000 and I have competed in regional events since 1996. On April Fool's Day 2011, I had an unfriendly reminder of my vulnerability, age, and mortality.

It had already been a bad beginning to the new year when I contracted a flesh infection that caused me to lose nearly three weeks of school. The treatment was nearly worse than the ailment. I missed days of work due to my body's poor reaction to the medicine I was told to ingest. Then I recovered, and things seemed to be going well.

A month later, my team and I flew out to Reno, NV for the USBC National Open Tournament and I performed well enough to earn a modest paycheck for my efforts out there. I flew back on Thursday, March 31 and was back to work the following day. I had been coaching the high school junior varsity softball team for 3 years and was just beginning my fourth year. I learned that the two games I missed that week had been dreadful performances. The players lost their games on unforced errors with fielding.

It was raining that Friday. We had indoor practice and the solution seemed fairly clear to all the coaches. We would practice fielding. Triple plays, double plays, passing-- all the things that went wrong that week. All the players were on the "field," a rubber-surfaced gym floor with corrugated grooves that reminded me of a giant basketball cover. All the coaches were going to be runners.

That's when it happened. I used to be a pretty fast runner. Not as fast as my elder brothers and definitely not as fast as my cousin, Ryan Bailey, who just won a silver medal at the olympics this summer in London, but still faster than most. I set out to take advantage of my long strides and speed. I wanted to see if I could rattle my players with worry that I would make it to base before they managed to pass the ball. First base, no problem. Stealing from first to second, I applied my brakes so that I could round the base. Then I felt my knee cork-screw counter-clockwise as my heel transferred power to my other leg.

There was no snap and no extreme pain-- just the sudden feeling that something came loose inside my knee, it felt very unstable and wobbly to the point I called time and hobbled off the diamond. I had no idea how serious the injury was. I knew I had tweaked my knee, and I had enough sense to ask a player to run and get me ice for my knee. I sat out the rest of practice nursing my knee and watching my players.

Three weeks later, I was entering OSS for surgery. In that instant, I tore the left and right meniscus and shredded my ACL. Going into surgery I had hope that the surgeon would only have to repair the meniscus and that the ACL would still be viable. A meniscus surgery has a three month recovery time, ACL-- 12 months. The injury was to my left knee, my sliding knee in bowling--- one of the worst possible injuries for a bowler.

When I woke up in the recovery room, my surgeon was there to bear me the news. He had to take the ACL. He replaced it with a cadaver ACL. My heart sank. I don't really like summer vacation. It's too long and I start missing my job within a couple weeks, but at least I have the time and the funds to practice and compete in pro tournaments. Twelve months? No tournaments? No bowling? Nightmare.

After six months of physical therapy three nights a week, I was released. I had to ice and stretch my knee nightly for twelve months. Nearly a year and a half later, I am finally getting my mojo back on the lanes. Last night on a sport pattern at Leisure Lanes in Lancaster, PA, I shot a 3 game set of 675. I won two out of three matches 258-198, 212-232, and 177-245. This was the third consecutive week I felt like me, and the first week where I had complete confidence in my physical game.

Slow delivery, free backswing, even tempo-- I forgot what this felt like. The muscle memory had faded and only my brain remembered that I used to make strikes look easy. I had never had a serious injury before that. I had broken my big toe but that was minor--- all the doctor did was bandage my bum toe to the good one. I had never been incapacitated to the point where I wondered if I would fully recover.

The brutal experience gave me empathy for my student athletes on crutches and those who underwent surgery. I wore crutches for three weeks. I'm a high energy teacher. It was no fun being hindered by my own body from working the room. I had to slow down because I could not be fast. I couldn't drive my car for two weeks after surgery because my knee would not bend enough to work the pedals. I was in hell.

Last night, bowling with finesse, precision, and power felt awesome. Remembering that feeling has me thinking about my students who face similar uncertainties when they are informed that they need surgery, are going to need extended rehab, and should be  able to play next season. I have been a bowler since I was 7 and joined my first league. The prospect of never bowling again or never achieving at the level I was performing before my injury was devastating, but being a bowler is not my full identity. I have my writing, my music, my family, and my teaching that still help define me. Middle schoolers are very sensitive to a sense of drama; how must they feel when it happens to them, when they may not know that they have other things going for them that matter just as much or even more?

Last night also made me think about the enduring messages we give children as teachers, parrents, coaches, mentors, and other role models. I watched a league mate self-destruct with negative self-talk, calling himself an idiot or stupid for poor executions or failure to make appropriate adjustments at the right moments. They were so focused upon their failures that they could not look upon what these failures were telling them. Who told them they were dumb, idiots, or less than. Problem-solvers may become frustrated with negative results but they are also inspired by failures. Instead of self-doubtm they ask themselves "What went wrong?" and "How do I fix it?" The answers to those questions lead to greatness.

I am thankful I listened to my father about how failures in engineering led him to 5 patents in design. I try and I hope I am succeeding in carrying that message forward to my students. Sometimes disappointments lead to greater things. 

Patience, Epic Fails, and Student Motivation

Not only is it true that not every lesson resolves itself in a single class period, but sometimes a lesson that leaves kids bewildered can be a good thing. Sounds like pedagogical blasphemy, doesn't it? It isn't and I come prepared with ethnological proof to support that assertion.  Our classes are preparing to write their first formal essay of the year, now that we have finished reading the first novel of the year, That Was Then, This Is Now.

Class began with a review of the basic parts of a five paragraph essay. Typical for a Monday, the students were mostly lethargic, listless, and alarmingly apathetic. They had the glazed over "Been there. Done that. Bought the t-shirt" expression on their faces. The problem? They had never been asked to formally use text in a written argument before now, so when I introduced the basic rules for in-text citation, they did not change their affect because they had tuned out, assuming it was more of the same.

I reminded kids to listen and participate but the will and inclination were not present yesterday. When I handed out the guided practice prompts for them to practice two of the rules for in-text citation (MLA Format,) all the sudden students jumped into crisis mode. They had dutifully written down key concepts from the board that they were going to need: "signal phrase, dynamic character, static character." and they were somewhat quiet during the explanation but I could tell they were not really with me. The rythm of the class was "off" and I was uncomfortable.

Their exit pass was to demonstrate what they learned:

Directions: Take a quote from pages 157-158 and another quote from page 42 in That Was Then, This Is Now to show how Mark is a static character using the “Citation for Textual Support” sheet (page 2) in your “Anatomy of a 5 Paragraph Essay” packet.

1.      Prove the point using a signal phrase involving SE Hinton and the character.

2.      Prove the point without a signal phrase.

Many did not finish in my first 2 classes. They forgot what a signal phrase was. Even though we had talked about how Mark was a static character earlier that period and even though we had read the quotes on pages 42 and 157 through 158, students were acting like I was looking for new undiscovered territory. Sounds like a nightmare epic fail doesn't it?

Or was it? By fourth period, word had made its way around the student population that Logan was teaching something difficult and confusing. I found this out because the kids from fourth period told me. When I recounted the behaviors from first and second period while suggesting that their inattention may have had an impact on their depth of understanding, students in the latter classes seemed more motivated to be active learners.

The later students were actively participating by asking questions and were eager to attempt the work publicly. This was one case where the rumor mill helped fuel student achivement. The later students were motivated to see what was so difficult and did not understand their peer's confusion.

Today, the early classes came in wearing their Patti LaBelle new attitudes. We reviewed the first two rules again, this time with better focus from my students. Together, we created a signal phrase incorporating SE Hinton's name, the fact was that Mark was a static character and a quote from page 42.

The sounds of "lightbulbs" turning on in class was audible. The answers to the probing for understanding poll were genuine thumbs up. In short, the shock of not understanding something in class, because they were only half-way paying attention, actually transformed passive learners into motivated learners the following day. Sometimes we learn while we are failing only to succeed on another day. So the next time class seems like an epic fail, consider how my Maudlin Monday turned  into a Terrific Tuesday.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.