Effective & Progressive Unions

Unions should serve as advocates for 1) effective working conditions and 2) worthwhile education.

I'd like to see a more progressive union in Philadelphia that emphasizes:
1)  Teacher-lead professional development.

2)  Healthier lunch choices, regardless of school size or vendor contracts.

3)  Full-time nurses in each school, every day of the week. Think of the opportunities for "wellness studies" link to science, physical education, social studies and electives.

4)  Re-negotiated school calendar that emphasizes time for civic engagement, family time, rest and recreation. Why in the world are children off on Election Day when their parents and teachers are working? How can we re-organize our school calendar so that families have more time to be together? And let's recognize an Indigenous People's Day.

5)  Site-based decision-making with regard to hiring, budgeting and curriculum choices. Let's emphasize students' love of learning, collaborating and presenting rather than isolated content.  Make district-wide curricula optional and collaborative.

6)  Flexible site-based scheduling that emphasizes teachers' co-planning and reflection.

What do teachers unions look like where you're from?  What can we do to help our unions be advocates for worthwhile education?

Teachers' Effective Working Conditions

As a parent, I want engaging learning experiences for my daughter.  As a citizen, I think education should foster and model democracy.

As a teacher with the Philadelphia School District, I am very concerned about meaningful student achievement.  Over the last year, I've been honored to research and co-author a report on the working conditions that make teachers more effective.  A link to the report (pdf or on-line media) is here: Transforming School Conditions.  Here is a synopsis:

Teacher Recruitment:  The teacher residency is a good model for recruitment and support of teacher candidates because it aligns college, district and community policy around student needs.

Accountability: Assessment and evaluation systems for students and teachers need to be reciprocal, broad and holistic.

Life-long Learning: Teachers are more effective with the development of professional networks within and across schools to support teaching and learning.

Teacher Leadership: Teachers need diverse opportunities for teacher leadership that do not require removal from the classroom.

Social Capital:  As a society, we need to invest in community resources to develop and support effective schools.  Children who are safe, healthy and well-rested are more likely to do well in school.

What do you think are the working conditions teachers need in order to be effective?

Teacher Salary Project

There's been some excitement over at the Center for Teaching Quality boards about a new film project called "The Teacher Salary Project."  Of course it's very important to include the voices of teachers in discussions about national, state and local educational policy.  Yet the project may actually being doing more to isolate teachers from the general public.

You can check out a clip from the film and decide for yourself.  I watched the "Before 9 a.m." clip and was a bit disappointed if not embarrassed.

I don't think teachers are going to build allies with other American workers by suggesting that we work harder than they do. Of course child care is incredibly important and teaching is a noble profession. But to suggest that people who take care of their families and put in a hard days work are less worthy than teachers demeans diversity and democracy. We need all kinds of people to be deeply engaged with their families, communities and society in general.

Heck, I'd love to have time to eat a more relaxed and nutritious breakfast with my family every morning. Good for the real estate broker and the choices he has made.

Managing "October Exhaustion"

Today in our "school reform" personal learning community (PLC), we acknowledged that it's very challenging to juggle student engagement, curriculum planning, life-coaching and family communications. And when would we have time to study and discuss national education policy?

We all work pretty hard (and I'd say pretty effectively), but we may also be susceptible to "October Exhaustion." Although this usually hits me -- hard -- in November, I do my best to pace myself so that I am relatively healthy and sane in June.

Elena Aguilar, a colleague from the Teachers Leaders Network, has posted an interesting (and somewhat controversial) survival guide for October Exhaustion in EdWeeks' Teacher Magazine. Her main points are summarized below:

• Take some time off
• Refresh your surroundings
• Re-ground yourself in the “why”
• Celebrate the successes
• Optimize your time
• Get some helpers
• Learn to say no
• Make good health a priority

What do you think? To what extent is this a fair and professional list?

The Limits of Value-Added Models of Assessment

Diane Ravitch (and others) have a lot to say about the limits of the value-added model (VAM).  For those in need of a tune-up on VAM, here is a nice synopsis from the Value Added Research Center.

One of the strengths of the VAM is that is suggests that there are number of variables that influence how "learning" takes place: schools, teacher prep programs, families, communities, teacher:student ratios.  What has to happen with these varables so that children are ready to learn and teachers are supported?

Taken in isolation, VAM has limitations.   For example, effective teachers may be miscast as ineffective, and therefore unworthy of employment, recognition and/or bonuses.*  Perhaps worse -- ineffective teachers could be identified as effective due to stand-alone standardized test scores.

And what if Oak Tree A is transplanted to Garden B?  Or how much time would Gardener B need to be effective in Garden A?  Think about switching from teaching 11th grade physics to 8th grade general science, for example.  Or switching from 5th graders to 3rd graders.  How much time, planning and coaching would you need to get to know the students, the 3rd grade teaching team, the curricula, and the families?  How long would it take for you to be "effective?"

We can also ask whether standardized tests scores are an adequate measure of learning, no matter how you adjust the numbers.

* For more on teacher bonuses, "Teacher Bonuses Don't Improve Test Scores."

John Dewey is an old-head!

A colleague recently asked "How do teachers with different years of experience work collaboratively to engage our students effectively in the classrooms?"  I've been puzzling over a few comments:

1. Effective teachers use a variety of strategies to meet their students' needs, whether the teachers are 25 or 65.
2. I remember that, as a student, my best K-12 experiences were when I was collaborating with classmates on projects -- whether in chemistry or history classes.  We could use a variety of approaches to solve problems or unexplained events, we had a degree of flexibility with our use of time, resources were abundant, and we were encouraged to share our findings via unique and creative presentations.
3. Although I am committed to constructivism, I have found that my students sometimes benefit from a sprinkling of behaviorism.
4. The biggest challenge for me, whether working with older or younger colleagues, has been understanding, if not agreeing on, the purpose of [public] education.  I think that if school communities could work that out (i.e. "What is the purpose of public education?"), teams of teachers, students and families would be in a better position to provide engaging experiences for students.  

A younger colleague recently told me that Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences was passe because "...he was looking really old."  What does that say about John Dewey (1859-1952)?

And a older colleague protested the use of web-based course-ware (such as this platform) because "Technology won't help the kids [learn]."  In some sense, both perspectives are a-historical.
I appreciate both the sense of immediacy and the sense of caution.  But worthwhile teaching is timeless, and effective teachers use a variety of strategies to engage students.  Always have, and always will.

K-12 Copyright fear --- we don't want that here!

Any advice on how to help public school districts extricate themselves from the clutches of "copyright infringement fear?" Some of our work at my high school has been less effective because the district has blocked such information sites as Netflix, YouTube or blip.tv.

One challenge for us has been access to Netflix. Colleagues of mine had used the streaming feature for instructional use and critique in arts, humanities and science classes --- but the Philadelphia School District (PSD) blocked Netflix last year. The explanation was that they didn't want to infringe on copyrights.

Another challenge has been the blanketed blocking of YouTube. There are some fantastic educational videos of protein synthesis, for example, that we cannot access because PSD has blocked YouTube content. We had originally wanted students to create their own video animations and were referencing some wonderful material on the web for context. For a high school that emphasizes responsible use of computers in a 1:1 environment, it's been pretty frustrating.

In 2008-2009, our students of African American history made 30-second "commercials" about civil rights. By the time we had uploaded and indexed them on on blip.tv, and then linked them on Wikispaces (http://orange08-09.wikispaces.com/Commercials [now blip.tv is dead]), we learned that PSD blocked blip.tv when in the PSD network. Forget about in-school cross-curricular reflection and collaboration. (We use TeacherTube now.)

Why not coach students on smart use of educational technology?!?