politically correct
By audhill | January 21, 2008
To honor MLK’s birthday, I’d like to take a little stab at political correctness.
It is my view that promoting politically correct speech is a bad idea. Political correctness catches as many dolphins as it does tuna in it’s all encompassing net. It is the stuff of alienation and power playing, not community building. It should be eradicated as a good and replaced with a culture of personal reflection and self and other acceptance.
Certainly there are borders to everything and some speech is malicious and ill intended, however there is no community where there are guardians of the language. It may be temporarily satisfying for some, but it is ineffective in the long term. It does not produce sensitivity, unless by sensitivity we mean hyper awareness and piety… not awareness of one’s own prejudices so much as fear of labels and not internal goodness so much as self satisfaction. The impact of self or other imposed political correctness is not merely the eradication of malice in speech, but the eradication of ease and trust between people. Real interaction (and therefore potential for communion) is replaced with hyperconscious efforts to negotiate safe harbor.This may seem like a good enough result to those who put their trust in surfaces, but I put my trust in honest interplay (which is messy but more productive).
For that reason, I think that a better suggestion is this: Do not resign yourself to the unsightly demilitarized zones of polite political correctness. Rather, endeavor to be forthright and truthful instead of self protective. Make a point of surrounding yourself with people who say what they think and who expect and accept the same from you. Laugh at the dicey and offensive if it’s funny, but rely on and listen to your inner voice to determine when and where a line is crossed. Avoid the pious and rigorously politically correct, not just because they are the least interesting of people but because these are often the most insincere. Do not be confused by opportunists making use of surfaces to serve their ambitions.
Value honesty, humor, curiosity and openness in others. Never ask them to say the right thing, although be free and brave enough to challenge ideas that you disagree with. That being said, do not offend easily. Accept that sometimes you will be offended. When necessary be unwilling to be silent. With real people create real bridges.
Topics: reasoned, language | No Comments »
How?
By audhill | January 19, 2008
In my experience, classes that are heterogeneously grouped (or, in the case of an advanced group, include unable students) create slower moving classes that disadvantage better students and brings down the level of education overall. I know this is true in the middle grades, where most of the literature read is 3 or 4 years below grade level to support students that can’t read well. I know it’s true in math where students who need basic math computational skills are dragged through a curriculum they can’t understand in the hopes that they will catch up if they are exposed conceptually. I know it’s true in the content areas where we routinely choose text books that are below reading level so that students who have reading difficulties can read the texts.
Those who maintain that the research shows that heterogeneous grouping benefits children, rarely mention and often don’t even know that much of the research demonstrating the benefit of heterogeneity measures social benefits rather than academic ones and that significant research exists that documents the benefits across the board of homogeneous instruction . Because some value social benefits over academic ones, they ignore and obscure a documented decline at the top and no movement at the bottom (those scoring a 1 on the state tests) ( My district has 5 or 6 years of a decline in 4s and rises in 2s and 3s on the NCLB tests in language arts.) It benefits the 2s and some lower 3s, but it should suprise no one that students who are not working at the pace they are able to lose momentum and teachers who teach to the middle provide fewer challenge for the top and less remediation for the bottom.
It should suprise no one to know that differentiation is unequal to the task of consistently creating work that is appropriately challenging for students of widely differing ability or preparedness. It is not merely a matter of classroom management or creating more intricate instruction to meet all needs. Differentiation depends on the concept that every child’s needs can be served by a simple tweak up or down. With such wide disparities, a tweak is not nearly enough.When you have a student reading on the second grade level in the same class with a student at PHS (post high school) level, the entire body of work is nearly always inappropriate for one or another group. Our better students often spend large parts of their school careers in classes where they know everything that is being taught to them before they enter. Enrichment often takes the form of diy projects which usually means extra work and at your seat work that will free up the teacher to work with the bottom. Work that would actually challenge requires more teacher interaction than a system with a significant bottom percentile can afford.
Similarly, bottom students who need focused time on below grade level skill work, often spend their time drowning in teach to the middle assignments and texts that they simply can’t manage. Or patronized by happy work assignments that teach them nothing, but give them a sense of at least accomplishing something. And, then… since the test is always with us, loads of tax dollars are spent on homogeneously grouping those same kids after school and in summer academies in a misguided effort to try to shore up what we are unwilling to address during the school day: different levels of ability or readiness often need different content and differently structured classes. We give lip service to challenging them all equallybut we know it’s not happening. Advocates turn a blind eye (unless it’s their own children on the chopping block); Compliance and complicity allow it to go on.
It sounds equitable and compassionate to keep students of widely differing ability together all day, although it isn’t. But, we can’t simply afford to put children in homogeneous groups all day long, either. Children who are disadvantaged end up never catching up, reinforcing a class based system where some children are successful by birth and others are not. Also, when children who are behind only work in homogeneous groups, they get a skewed idea of what good work is and an even more skewed idea of their entitlements relative to other more able or prepared children. We must agree that every child has the right to see and participate in what’s possible.
If every child has the right to run the race they are ready for among other children who are equally capable and ready to run the same race AND every child has the right to participate in an enriched curriculum and be exposed to the highest level work and standard… if differentiation (certainly as it is practiced and taught) is a pleasant fantasy)… where do we go as an educational system?
Topics: reasoned, education | 2 Comments »
unplugged
By audhill | January 19, 2008
Here’s an admission: sometimes…. surfing the net and social networking makes me feel guilty. It makes me feel the same way I feel about watching TV … I feel so guilty that if the phone rings and I’m watching it, I turn the sound down.. not so I can hear you, but so that YOU don’t hear me (and know what I am doing). I don’t know what you will think listening to The Wire, Lost, or Heroes in the background, but I feel like I’ve been caught doing nothing, when I should be out hiking or making art or writing an article.
My fear is that the person who spends all of his or her time chatting people up online, commenting, watching TV or surfing around is a person whose real life is molding away. And my worry for children is that we have the wrong idea. We think we should find ways of engaging them while they are playing video games or IMing and texting their friends, when maybe what we should be doing, is forcing them to go outside, make them learn and do in the real, real world. I’m not a luddite, but even Bill Gates limits his children’s use of media to 45 minutes a day (and he includes video games in that time).
I’m wondering if I should limit mine. Should we limit our children’s? Maybe so. Clearly there’s purpose and value in establishing guidelines for internet use and for looking carefully at what the endgame is.
I used to say that content is everything, but I don’t think so anymore. I can’t fool myself into believing that if it’s educational (The We only watch the Discovery Channel and PBS Defense), it’s okay to stay online all day. This should be my measurement: online activity that replaces an offline life is addiction and is something to avoid. Successful living depends on balancing the different aspects of one’s life and being sure to have a rich, daily life offline as well as on.
Topics: living, personal | No Comments »
worried, night time headache thingy
By audhill | January 19, 2008
I work in a district that has a very active parent body. Most of the time and with most parents, that’s a wonderful thing. But around grading time,it gets a little sticky… mainly because parents want good grades and every year one or two of them try to bully teachers into giving grades that their children do not deserve.
But, crazymaking parents notwithstanding, I didn’t pull any punches in the first marking period. Just as an experiment, I decided that I would give the straight out truth this year. (not that I don’t try to be truthful every year…. but I’ve been known to overlook an assignment here and there. This year…. every kid got the grade he or she deserved. No squinting my way through to a C where a D was called for. You could say I was ethical, but actually I just wanted to see if gloss-free reporting improved performance.
The problem with being ethical (or experimental) is that there ar
e no rewards for it. A little grade inflation would have saved me from parent calls, emails,and meetings designed to deflect a sour feeling of parental responsibility and worry. It would have garnered me more love and much less time creating materials to use in evaluation. Because let’s face it… if you are inflating, you don’t need three essays where one will do.
Giving the grade deserved is a radical stance and many of my colleagues don’t do it. The consensus is that it’s just not worth it. Just before and after marking periods, I have to ask myself… why do I do it? I know I get more and better work when I don’t give an the option to get a undeserved good grade… but I pay a price for it. (as a former student of mine once said, “Grades come first Ms. Hill. It doesn’t matter what you teach or how nice you are, we like the teachers who give us good grades.”)
Last marking period, instead of a good night’s sleep when I posted my grade, I was awake and staring at them… checking them and preparing my defense. I toyed at the end, knowing which grade was the threshhold grade in each case, which parents would ignore any grade of C or better, which ones would be in asking about a B, which parent just wants their child to pass and which ones want to know exactly why their child got an A and not an A+.
I held my ground. I believe in grades… not because grades have value, but for the reason why they were first developed: to give information about performance and effort when intrinsic information is unavailable. Grades are consequences and acknowledgement.
This marking period is upon us; good luck to me.
Topics: education | No Comments »
midwife syndrome
By audhill | January 19, 2008
Quick! a child wants something. Stop everything and help. Hurry! A parent feels the need to think about their child out loud. Clear your schedule.
I’m about halfway through my profession, and I realize (somewhat suddenly) that the choice to be a giver is NOT the same choice as the choice to be a creator… even though one thought so at the time, and even if it is “creative” profession.
I didn’t invent this term, and I don’t even remember where I heard it, but some days I have a little bit of Midwife Syndrome: that condition where a teacher (or anyone in a helping profession) feels the desire to stop being the one to assist at a birth and instead become the one to give birth (metaphorical or literal).
Midwife syndrome is a condition that can not remediated by professional development or golden opportunities to be a better midwife. It can not be rationalized away by love of children, interest in profession, willingness to work it out. It is a spiritual call to make a radical shift toward personal creativity, perhaps in the midst of teaching, parenting or giving. Perhaps not. But, it is an insistent call, not cured by any other activity than the selfish act of creation.
Topics: Uncategorized, personal | No Comments »
Accidental Kismet
By audhill | January 16, 2008
I’m reading Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi right now. In the section I am reading, Csikszentmihalyi describes a young man by the name of Sam who has had an accidental experience that will define the rest, or at least a large portion, of his life. Up until the moment described, Sam has been an ordinary teenager with no interests outside of the norm. He had no goals other than the goals that pretty much any other boy of his age and social environment might want. That is, until he went with his father scuba diving on a coral barrier in Bermuda. That single event transformed him. He was so mystified and enchanted by what he experienced that he took bio courses in high school, went to college and then on to grad school for marine biology.
…[O]nce he became aware of what went on undersea, Sam liked it — the experience resonated with previous things he had enjoyed doing, with feelings he had about nature and beauty, with prioriteis about what was important that he had established over the years…. Thus he built this accidental event into a structure of goals — to learn more about the ocean, to take courses, to go onto college and graduate school, to find a job as a marine biologist — which became a central element of his self. From then on, his goals directed Sam’s attention…” (Flow, pg 35)
I found this study on a person to be revealing of the way in which a person finds purpose in their life and equally instructive in the way in which purpose is lost. It sounds, as well it might, that the key to Sam’s self discovery was choice. He was able to do something he loved and therefore was transformed. One conclusion might be that we are charged to make learning and experience enjoyable for children so that they might love what they experience and therefore choose ways to make a meaningful existence for themselves. Some others might say that this story points to the superiority of doing over telling in the learning process. Still others would say that the key is an enriched curriculum. Sam’s interests could not have been stoked in a test prep culture where support for a broad range of interests was not available.
So what did this serendipity consist of? A series of events and internal choices had to occur for Sam to make the choice to pursue marine biology rather than, say… to pursue a path of respectable, financially renumerative boredom. One choice was to have an enjoyable experience. But prior to that, he had already been inculcated in a family culture that made much of nature and beauty. By implication, this was not Sam’s first opportunity to experience reverence for and active exposure to nature. To some extent, we might say that the experience fell on a rich soil that had been previously prepared for it.
Similarly, Sam goes on to take bio courses in high school and college. Factually, there is much in learning that is arduous and even rote. One does not pass a bio regents merely on love of the natural world. Successful navigation of SATs, college essays, GREs is not accomplished merely by invoking passion and enjoyment. Therefore, it must also be true that Sam could work towards a goal that included the necessity to do many things that he had no desire to do.
What does it mean that Sam was prepared by a family and an educational system that broadened his life experiences? Why is it important that he was able to delay gratification in order to achieve a greater goal that he valued? Have we have gone down a wrong road for many of our children.? We want to empower them, but it seems that we empower too early, lending strength to posture over substance and whim over intention. Rather than insist that they experience their world, we often allow them to avoid it. In order to have a success story like Sam’s, we must identify what kind of empowerment is necessary and when it is necessary. In fact, we need to redefine empowerment as a forward moving process comprised more of access and opportunity than merely of choice. We should be empowering children with experiences (positive and negative: a scube diving trip can transform a life, but so can learning to cope with frustration or continue in the face of failure). Until we help them to exercise their risk muscle that will benefit them when they are actually able to make real choices. We need to give them the tools and experiences that will enable them to expand their identities and empower them to risk becoming more meaningful version of themselves.
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
rhetoric and debate or saving your bacon
By audhill | January 13, 2008
Topics: edtech, education | No Comments »
Blog Benefits
By audhill | January 12, 2008
Okay… so everyone always talks about how children really need us to teach them about social computing. No they don’t. They do all the social computing they could ever need. But, they do need us to show them uses they aren’t thinking about. That in mind, my question to myself is … am I doing that with these blogs?
What are they getting? What are they missing? What do I want to do differently next year… next week?
Important positives:
1) Minimum requirements of at least one 300 word blog entry each week = having to think up new topics and be creative on demand. As William Faulkner said “I write only when I’m inspired. Fortunately I’m inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.”
2) Clean up patrol: spell check, self edit, paragraphing helps to encourage the idea (new for many of them) that they are their first editors.
3) Assigned writing as well as personal choice: Insures writing for a variety of purposes and topics.
4) Team blogs: creates a sense of a group effort to create good work.
5) Public nature: They write for each other. They want to be read and commented on. Suddenly, writing is a social activity that helps define them to themselves and each other.
Areas to work on:
1) Technology tools: they aren’t all hyperlinking, using html or including images. They aren’t yet making really creative use of interactivity. If I could do it over again, I’d use a software that allowed them to use more tech tools. Guest and junior authors in typepad have much less access to utilities. I’d go to WordPressMU probably.
2) Ability to help them understand how to improve writing is not as easy to do as it would be in a wiki or on paper. I leave comments that they have to interpret. Generally, they probably don’t.
3) Design issues: They don’t really know how to use the visual tools to make their blogs attractive places for readers.
4) Blog Education: Blogging has it’s own requirements to build audience. Professional bloggers use strategies to get their audiences. I might be able to work some of this into future iterations, but not for this year (of course, I have a lot to learn in this regard.. and I would be having them do things I’m not really doing myself.. but anyway…)
Not Working At ALL:
1) No outside commentary or relationships with other classes and students. I could get this going, but there’s so much to work on now, that I don’t want to complicate things yet.
2) No podcasts or videocasting yet. (I want to do this, but the question remains always for me … Am I working their literacy skills while they work the technology. If I’m not.. then I can’t put the time into it (no matter what the tech evangelists say)
For this year, I am happy that they blog once a week, that they pick 3 out of 4 of their topics a month, that they write on a variety of topics, for a variety of purposes, that they spell check, paragraph, self edit, that they look at the blogs every day and write comments and wait for comments. I am happy that they are interested in the Weekly Wow (although I am myself tentative about highlighting some blogs over other blogs). I hope to podcast or video blog before the end of the year with them (we’ll see). I am glad that we are begun.
Next blog entry I think I will write about what blogging costs in terms of time in the classroom and time for the teacher, because it makes no sense to have a program that steals life from the teacher and erodes other curriculum down to a nub.
Topics: edtech, education | 2 Comments »
Up(dated)
By audhill | January 5, 2008
I’m updating by blog after a hiatus. (thank you Damien for the prod; I needed it)
I haven’t been updating of late because all I do is work blogging with my students. I spend a lot of my nights getting their blog entries up. The deal with my tech director for unblocking typepad was that I monitor everything… all the time… and that nothing go up until I’ve read it. I also used to have a password to get onto the blog, but I removed that because the need to log in and relog in twice for each blog made it impossibly unwieldly. I decided that monitoring was enough control for protection of and from students (neither abuse from without or within… that’s the motto) So… I’m monitoring each and every entry and each and every comment. Nothing can get by me.
I’ve learned a lot doing this. This is our current structure and rationale. Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: edtech, education | 1 Comment »
Open letter to a parent that asked…
By audhill | December 8, 2007
Public or private?
Dear Parent:
It’s not about whether the school is public or private. It’s about the individual school or district, the resources available to it, the quality of teachers and administrators, the philosophy of the school system and how committed the investment in that philosophy is. Some private schools are mom and pop stores with inexperienced teachers and stretched resources. If the teacher body is changing all the time, watch out. Also, do they have the resources to provide your child with all the experiences you would want them to have?
Don’t rely on reputation (in public or private); reputations can sometimes be the laurels that schools sit on.
It’s an arduous process finding out whether the school you want your child to attend is actually the right school. Find out what kinds of assignments and what philosophy the different departments advocate. Ask for a book list and find out if the books are on/above or below grade level. Find out how much test prep is being done in your school. IMHO, if there is a significant amount, watch out…. unless Stanley Kaplan Middle School is what you were looking for. But, don’t totally discount the scores, because if the school isn’t getting them, thats an important piece of information. Watch out for jargon and sweet talking. Most of it means nothing and often smarmy talk about authentic assessment or data based instruction or the whole child… is code language. Not always, of course… but authentic assessment can mean portfolios and rigor or it can mean lazy teacher summer camp. Data based instruction can mean evaluating where your child’s strengths and weaknesses are, or it can mean we only care about scores and we’re dropping the ball on any child that isn’t in our crosshairs for that goal. If your child would be a candidate, find out about opportunities for advanced classes and how placement is determined, hetero versus homogeneous grouping, after school activities. What are the arts programs like, what about sports. What kinds of technology is available for children to use. Find out how old/young the teacher population is. You want a mix of experience and enthusiasm.
Find out what your administration (department chairs, principals, superintendents of curriculum and instruction, etc.) did before administration. Evaluate their credentials, as well as teachers. They are the heads of the hydra and their experiences and interests influence the direction of schools.
Also, if your child is in elementary, check out the middle school and the high school. Be sure that you like the view all the way up. Some people like to mix and match… public and private depending on the quality of the different levels. It’s hard to move a child away from their friends at a certain point, but if you like one part of the system better than another… be ready to vote with your feet.
Good luck in your search.
Topics: education | 2 Comments »