Learning Is Messy – Blog

I’m about to begin my 29th or 30th year as a teacher (I’ve lost count), and I’m pleased to say that I’m raring to go. There are just so many exciting possibilities. Having said that, I also see many barriers that continue to muck things up. I decided to look back at posts I’d written at, or near the beginning of the school year. This post comes from 2006, (You might want to check out Doug Noon’s comment on the original) and I couldn’t believe how much of it still pertains to today. I also had to fight off the urge to edit some of my usage and wording … I can tell that mostly my writing has improved … at least in part because I’ve been writing and also reading with more of a writers eye I think – I’m not saying I’m a good writer,  just that I can tell I’m doing better when I have the time and not posting on the run. Oh, it’s my 30th year teaching I just realized. Hope you find this interesting being 4 years old (and the links still work too … amazing! : )

Before about 8 years ago some of us recognized that a student raised in poverty (both of money and/or spirit) or in an environment of fear and upheaval was probably just not going to be focused on school, and would very often be a negative, distracted, distractive member of the classroom. I was lucky enough to teach at a school that had an underlying theme of dealing with these kids in a way that would hopefully lead them to realize it was their situation – not themselves that was bad, and realizing the rest of us were not like the people that had “messed them up“ we were not the ones to take it out on. (“We” being students and staff.)

Teachers and administrtors saw that they got counseling of one form or another, made sure they knew the rules and norms of behavior AND we took the time in our classrooms to have class meetings and teach lessons on how to treat one another and discuss issues and point out why some kids acted the way they did and role played how to deal with different situations etc. We had some major successes  - note these successes were not about test scores directly (but indirectly to the max), they were about changing peoples lives for the better. The time we took to do this was even partially “made-up” because overall student behavior was better, so there was less class time taken up by disruptions – it was more than worth it – and you felt like you were really helping to make a difference.

Many of our most troubled students were now able to focus enough to begin to learn the academics they had missed while they were beating themselves up inside (and some of us on the outside). Realize the really, really troubled students had missed (and still do) not just most of the curriculum (since preschool) that they were supposed to be learning, but also how to do school at all. They were much more ready to learn these things now, but it takes a long time to retrieve 5 or 6 or more years of school you missed – missed because you were there in class in body, but not in mind or spirit. That’s a ton to catch-up on. Not just the reading, writing and math, but the when to sharpen your pencil, and how to borrow something, or be a member of a group, etc. etc. etc. (One of the rubs with NCLB is that these kids that are just now able “to do school” – their test scores are taken as a failure because they are not at grade level – they don’t look at improvement, if they grow at least a year in a year that should be adequate growth – I feel schools that turn these kids around should be given an award not basically reprimanded for helping kids and families)

One of the pieces of fallout from the testing craze has been the time to do this kind of work with children. And because its not a focus, many teachers now have little experience working with kids in this way – “the non-conformist students just screw up the test scores” that’s how they are seen too often because we don’t have the time or resources to deal with them positively. It just takes too much time.

Remember this?:

All I Really Need To Know I learned In Kindergarten – Robert Fulghum 1986

Share everything.
Play Fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt someone.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life-learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon …

Do they still have time to teach this in kindergarten?

Doug Noon over at Borderland writes:

When we looked at the test scores of our students, I noticed that all of my below-proficient-scoring students had histories of domestic abuse. I raised my hand and asked, “Will the administration allow us to include Domestic Abuse as a demographic category?” because it seemed like a significant variable. The whole staff was silent. My principal waited a moment for the question to sink in and diplomatically replied, “No.” The meeting continued.

How many of us are “using data to drive instruction” these days? I see some hands up out there. I propose we add some categories to the data so that we get a truer picture of ALL the remediation we might need to apply: Poverty level, parents’ educational level, home situation(s), number of times a student has moved during their school career, nutrition, health – you get the idea.

Stephanie at Change Agency chimed in on Doug’s post with this:

If we are to achieve the stated goal of leaving no child behind, then the effort has to become a community-wide goal that involves everyone – and simply analyzing test scores to death is not the solution.

I am optimistic overall that we might be starting to see the light and realize that relying so much on testing, and therefore reading and math only instruction might not be the way to make a difference for our students. (2010 update – Boy was I wrong here!) My current principal seems to really, really get this – this is one of the reasons I am so looking forward to this, my 26th year teaching.

Doug supports my optimism by pointing us to an article in the New York Times – It Takes More Than Schools to Close Achievement Gap – By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO, Published: August 9, 2006

Check it out – it brings hope!
Learning is messy!

- This post is actually a comment I left on the “Taking Note” blog. The author, John Merrow wrote about his support of the LA Times plan to publish student test scores as a way to “out” teachers:

Face it. They did this story because it was mostly easy to do … the data was already there, there are always people available to interpret the data and draw conclusions, and the conclusions drawn had shock value, made great headlines, and drew national and probably international attention. Most people don’t understand test results, issues schools deal with, the difficulties with evaluating “good teaching,” and more. Our journalists and press have abandoned us – they do what is easy and shocking because it is cost effective and won’t ruffle too many feathers. Let’s do some deep stories on the other issues that hold back students, teachers, administrators, schools and education in general. What are the other big issues? How about all these large textbook companies that continually promise huge test score gains if their series is purchased for millions of dollars. Are they part of the problem? Is societies reluctance to change a model of school that is over a century old because change is hard part of the problem?

We have decided that education issues are easy when they are not. So instead of investing in finding the best answers we can, we rely on assessments that everyone agrees are poor at best (but they’re what we have), and because dealing with issues like poverty, indifference, language, teacher effectiveness and more are hard, very hard, we develop an education plan that attempts to step around them. President Kennedy, when he spoke about going to the Moon, talked about doing so because it was hard. Look what breakthroughs came from the work and research that went into that endeavor – in computer science, science in general, nutrition, health, materials and so much more. We have the money … those billions of dollars that are earmarked for a very flawed and narrow RTTT.

Let’s re-purpose some of that money to do the R&D necessary to REALLY make a difference. Let’s fund many approaches instead of mainly KIPP clones when no one associated with KIPP will send their own kids to the schools they advocate. What breakthroughs in pedagogy, health, psychology, family/parent involvement, art, math, reading, science and so much more will we discover? They would be exciting times that just might rival the space race. What implications might that have for the rest of the world too?

Do we need to find and deal with the poor teachers in our ranks? Yes! Do we need to make our schools the best they can be for now and our future instead of just making another tweak of a 100 year old + model for schools that we hang onto because it is what we know and change is hard? Hell yes! So let’s do that instead of wasting time on bandaid, easy approaches.

Learning is messy!

Seeing that the Department of Education is hosting a cyber-bullying summit this week caused me to wonder aloud something that I and others have wondered before:

How much of the cyber-bullying and other online safety issues would be helped if schools were encouraged, empowered and supported in moving to a new pedagogy where technology was ubiquitous, and therefore made safe use and ethics lessons as prevalent from an early age as are traffic/crosswalk safety, scissor safety, playground safety, bus safety, stranger danger, swimming/water safety, chemistry/science class safety, various PE safety and more? How much money would be saved versus the cost of dealing with cyber-bullying and other online crime? Would that, coupled with not purchasing textbooks (or at least not as many) and other “programs” pay most of any added cost to ramping up technology purchases and professional development costs involved?

Oh, and maybe our children would be safer too.

Learning is messy!

So the RttT 2^nd round “winners“ were announced today and what bothered me about it the most I think, is that it shows that a very narrow-minded policy is going forward and the negative side of me sees only bad things for education. Not only because I disagree so vehemently with it’s narrow “one size fits all” approach, but that they have covered their tails by leaving it open to states to try other ways if they want, knowing that that isn’t going to happen for a whole bunch of reasons.

What bothers me more is that they/we are spending lots of money, and so when things don’t go well, or as well as they could have, (DANG! – we could have REALLY innovated and REALLY tried many diverse ways to change education for the good) but instead we will hear how AGAIN tons of money was spent and education is still poor and there won’t be the stomach for NOW funding truly innovative approaches that we could have learned from what worked, what didn’t, maybe that what works for some students in some locations doesn’t work for others in other locations … but we would have found out, or at least found out more than we know now … and that chance has been piddled away for maybe another 20 years (although I hope not).

I’m also left to wonder why not really demand many approaches? This education thing is supposedly a huge issue and problem. Why is there this very stubborn denial of trying any other pedagogical approach other than charter schools? I hate to say it, but it makes me suspicious that someone has the fix in to make this NOT work. (yes I’ve heard all that before and who it might be and why, end public schools, the billionaires boys club has become the education department because they are education experts somehow just because they are rich, it’s elitism at work, and so on) I guess I was hoping for more from our leaders and I’m frankly very disappointed and disillusioned about it today.

You’ll have to pardon me here. I originally meant to embed this video in my last post, but at the time I was at the airport and couldn’t make it work, so here is my TEDxDenver ED presentation embeded … unless of course it doesn’t work … again. I would have just replaced my last post, but there were a few comments and I didn’t want to just delete them. Now I have learned how to embed video in my blog … which for some reason I had never done before. So, learning really is messy:

UPDATE 2 (7/15/2010)- OK, the video is back up sans my intro because my mic had an issue at first and the sound wasn’t great, so they edited that part out… not a big loss. I showed a slide of a classroom from 100 years ago and mentioned how Rttt (without naming it) was more a return to that era, like we just never got that 100 year old pedagogy down right and if we do so now that will fix the schools.

UPDATE1: I’ve been informed that they have temporarily taken down the video for more editing. It was posted by mistake before they were done. I will put a new link up when it returns. : )

Learning is messy!!

Well I tried to embed the video here, but I can’t get it to work from here at the airport, so instead I’m just putting the link here instead:

TEDxDenverEd- BrianCrosby- Back to the Future?

When they are done editing they will also post the videos of each presentation.

Learning is messy!

I’ve had numerous requests for links to the student work highlighted during my TEDx Denver ED talk tonight. Just about everything is linked to right here on this blog. Just look at the top of the right hand column under “Pages” and you will see “Links To My Students’ work.”

Presenting my talk was a fantastic experience that I will blog more about later. I do need to say thank you to all of you … my presentation was a reflection of the work those of you that are part of this expanding network of learners help me and my students with everyday.

Learning is messy!